Internet Privacy Top Priority for Nerd Party of Canada

Canadians both knowingly and unknowingly have been in losing their right to their personal online communications in the past few years in the name of national security.  The national government has been seeking to grant powers to the RCMP and CSIS to collect and inspect information about what Canadians are doing online without ever having to obtain a court warrant.  It is claimed that such warrantless search and seizure of Internet data is required to prevent terrorist acts or stop the distribution of child pornography. 

While these acts are abhorrent, and those who commit them should face a severe punishment, there has never been any evidence that warrantless data search and seizure prevents these acts from happening.  Making these agencies come to court and produce evidence of potential online criminal acts and then having an warrant issued based the evidence is a key part of balancing security and privacy rights of law abiding Canadians.  Postal mail intercepts and telephone wiretaps have played a key role in investigating crimes and bring perpetrators to justice but in order to access these tools law enforcement agencies had to get a court warrant to use them. 

Terrorism and Child Pornography distribution are easily two of the crimes that people want to stop and the national government use them to get the public to support bills that open up warrantless access to Canadians' Internet traffic, previous proposed bills would have opened up warrantless data search and seizure to any suspected criminal code offense.  Had bill C-30 had not been withdrawn in 2013 and become law it would have been a thin edge of a wedge that would have turned this country into a cyber police state.

A vote for the Nerd Party of Canada will defend your online privacy rights while continuing to bring criminals to justice that is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Any party of candidate claiming that access to the Internet activity of Canadians without the requirement of a court warrant is required to bring criminals to justice is just looking to sell out to foreign special interests.

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

The new bill was introduced into the house of commons but instantly withdrawn and sent to committee for amendments that would allow law enforcement agencies open access to Peoples' Internet activities without a warrant.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.