Friday, February 24, 2012

Canada's Cyber-Spying Bill A Dangerous Thin Edge of the Wedge

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The new bill was introduced into the house of commons but instantly withdrawn and sent to committee for amendments that would allow law enforcement agencies open access to Peoples' Internet activities without a warrant.  Bill C-30 forces Internet service providers to turn over information about the online activities of any subscriber that is suspected of producing or distributing child pornography.

As detestable as child pornography and pedophilia are, passing a law to allow free access to the Internet activities of all Canadians has caused an uproar that sent the bill to committee to be reworked even before first reading.  Although this bill is supposed to be used to prevent the distribution of child pornography, it can and probably will be expanded to other crimes online.  The music, movie and TV industries will make sure that every peer to peer file sharing user can be hunted down. Surely the Canadian Private Copying Collective is undoubtly watching and waiting for the day they can find out the identities of everybody who buys CD-R and CD-RW discs from the United States in order to avoid paying the recordable media levy.

Warrentless search and seizure of peoples' data will make Canada's Internet look like a totalitarian regime rather than a free nation where a person only needs to be suspected of trading child pornography, movies, music and TV shows.  Nobody including Vic Towes can say where the limits that prevents C-30 from creating a cyber police state.  The biggest supporters are police forces across the country, the only way to get bill C-30 scrapped is to contact local police to tell them to withdraw their support for bill C-30 because protecting children cannot come at the cost of the freedom to use the Internet freely.

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