Regarding warrantless searches and access ... reading the text of the bill (OP link) warrants seem to be required. Simple, right?
Well, no, this is a recently inserted block of text in the bill (confirm at the link above):
Exception
(2. 7)(b) However, a copy of the warrant is not required to be given
to a person under subsection (2. 6) if the judge or justice who issues
the warrant sets aside the requirement in respect of the person, on
being satisfied that doing so is justified in the circumstances.
It feels like many democratic leaders are starting to think the CCP model—mass surveillance of citizens—is the right direction, with growing demands for chat control, facial verification, age verification, and more. Fxxk any politician who thinks they are above the citizens in a democracy.
I've been in mainland China for the past year and I wish western politicians would get it through their skulls that most of the ccp model's upsides come from CCTVs in public areas and a police force that prioritizes stopping street crime.
Eh, if you see the reaction to Flock Safety, people object to that one as well.
The problem is that those cameras aren't being put in areas where crime occurs in order to keep citizens safe. They are being put on busy streets to prevent people's ability to travel without being tracked.
Not familiar with that conversation, but is the concern that it will be used to raise ticket revenue from victimless crimes without doing much to prevent the other kind?
The concern is losing all your freedom and privacy for no good reason
Is there actually evidence of flock being used to stop street crime? I've never heard anything about Flock (or Shotspooter) stopping street crime.
Where I am, the local speed cameras have annual documents about the street their on detailing pre-camera vehicle speeds and fatal (pedestrian) accidents and the decreases in both of them since the usage.
Afaik, the concern isn't that it "could slide" its that flock _is used_ by say Texas to monitor out of state abortions. That isn't solving street crime and certainly didn't benefit the local residents.
There is no democracy in countries like Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, plus the EU. What you vote for is not what you get. You vote for X and get the Agenda. Vote for Y and you get the Agenda.
It's the opposite: people are getting exactly what they voted for, they just didn't realize they’re voting for it, because of mass propaganda.
Plus with all the floor crossers recently, the elections just seem moot. You vote for a party because you believe in their agenda, and then the representative joins the other party without any repercussions.
These countries are disguised vassals of the United States.
They're nominally independent but in practice are run by a local oligarchy who generally do as they please within the confines of what the US allows.
Theyre effectively all as independent as Poland or Hungary were under the Soviet Union. i.e. not.
There are the occasional anti-us imperialist and anti-oligarchy candidates who gain popularity but their careers are usually terminated with a deluge of mudslinging or by using bureaucracy to lock them out of the political system.
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I believe that's it's sadly a necessity for control of the population when you have other superpowers employing this.
If you are Europe, and you have democratic elections, you have an informational power asymmetry towards the states that have mass surveillance and control. You are (as we saw last year with the Romanian election that was swung to 60% in 2 weeks over TikTok) susceptible towards influence of other superpowers. Even if you want to keep democratic elections, you need to somehow make sure that the citizens are voting in their interest. If the citizens at the same time are victims of the attention economy, their interest will be whatever foreign superpowers want it do be.
One well-tried solution is to engage and educate the population. However, this takes years, not weeks as the campaigns take, and takes immense resources as people will default to convenient attention economy tools.
Other option is to ban platforms/create country-wide firewalls. It's a lot harder in democratic societies, you ban one app and a new one takes it's place. Cat is kind of out of the bag on this one.
Last and easiest option is mass surveillance. Figure out who is getting influenced by what, and start policing on what opinions those people are allowed to have and what measures to take to them. Its a massive slippery slope, but I can clearly see that it's the easiest and most cost-effective way to solve this information-assymetry
As always, the devil is in the details. How will "mass surveillance" be implemented? How will bad opinions be suppressed? How will misguided officials be blocked?
Even the vague outline you've provided has issues. You can't prevent someone from having an opinion. You can't figure out who is "influenced" vs merely "exposed" (and visible intrusion shifts people towards the former).
You should actually consider the downsides and failure modes of implemented mass surveillance, not "it prevents malicious foreign influence better than my other proposals", because it may be worse than said influence (which does not necessarily translate into control; keep in mind that Georgescu only won the primary and would've lost the runoff had it not been annulled). The world under free information is the devil you know.
I always hold that the problem with mass censorship and state overreach is, they are too powerful and people are too selfish and stupid. There's no good solution, but my prediction is that any drastic attempt to prevent foreign interference will backfire and fail at that (liberal leaders can't use authoritarian tools as effectively as authoritarians). Even Democracy, "the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried", is a better countermeasure; all you need, to prevent anti-democratic foreign capture and ultimate failure, is to preserve it.
To what end would you say the surveillance is for?
So you surveil your citizens and precog their opinions... to do what? Make them have state-sponsored opinions? Don't we already have that without the surveillance?
It's trivial to predict how a human will behave without any surveillance at all. Facebook abandoned their Beacon system not because of the backlash, but because they realized all they really needed to predict user behavior was the user's credit card statements, which they could easily buy.
At some point the constitution is the backstop, and unless we amend it, it should hold true.
> "control of the population"
Who is doing the controlling in this take? "The Government"? Calling for more government control when some say--at least in the US--too much government is the heart of our current political strife. Unless this argument is for corporate surveillance?
As for elections in the age of social media, why not just pass Blackout laws around the date of the election? One week not sufficient? Make it two.
But instead the answer is mass surveillance? To do what? Arrest & detain people, and let the judicial system incarcerate them for months or years while the process plays out?
Regarding banning platforms I’d say just ban the attention driven business model online by forbidding all social media platforms from serving ads entirely.
Thank you. Haven't seen this problem framed in quite this way before. I find the point quite persuasive.
But, I don't understand how this step could possibly work:
> start policing on what opinions those people are allowed to have and what measures to take to them
A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.
> A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.
Which tools, specifically? I know none.
I mean that we are in dire need of such tools!
I also am not aware of any existing tools.
>If you are Europe, and you have democratic elections, you have an informational power asymmetry towards the states that have mass surveillance and control. You are (as we saw last year with the Romanian election that was swung to 60% in 2 weeks over TikTok) susceptible towards influence of other superpowers
When Georgia tried to implement a law to inhibit this type of foreign meddling from all superpowers it was widely branded a "pro russia law", presumably because the west had invested more in astroturfing Georgia.
Which is no different to what the US and Europe was already doing in Romania on an ENORMOUS scale before Russia ran its Tiktok campaign. Russia's campaign evidently resonated with the populace far more than what the NED were doing.
Democracy is a bit like freedom of speech - either you support it even when it makes decisions you dont like (e.g. in opposition to western imperialism) or you hate it. There isnt a middle ground.
If you support the Romanian secret services' decision to cancel the election over a tiktok campaign which was more convincing than better funded NED campaigns which they permit, you probably just hate democracy.
If you think "pro russia law" is an accurate designation of what Georgia was trying to implement - again, you just hate democracy.
Said leaders are only really democratic based on the literal name of the party they signed with when running for office. There's nothing democratic about these types of programs and I have to assume that a plainly explained referendum spelling this out on a ballot would fail miserably.
This is a systemic problem of modern information technology. With social media for instance, either you let the technology run rampant and the worst case scenareo plays out. That is misinformation, tribalism, bidy dysmorphia and the pletora of other issues. The worst case pesamistic mode of what the technology can do, that is self termination. The alternative is that you have to have the watchmen over watch everything and you have the full dystopia model.
While there is a middle road, it is almost never taken as it is the hardest path. The real trick is to not invent the torment nexus but you cannot know this as the n'th order effects are decades beyond the initial creation. But that is so incredibly difficult to anticipate.
Think about it, the transistor was invented in 1947, 70 years later it turned into the surviellance panopticon. Very few could have seen that coming.
I dont have answers just explanations here.
Look at what social media considers to be safe countries.
You are absolutely bombarded with messaging about how Dubai and Chinese cities are the safest places in the world. I have friends who live in each who consider North America and Europe crime ridden shitholes because theft is possible to get away with.
If society believes that crimes is utterly rampant despite it collapsing over the past few decades, there is nowhere else to go but mass surveillance to make sure that even the smallest of visible crimes are stamped out.
The streets of Dubai and pretty much any where in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam etc are orders of magnitude safer than UK, US, France, and other western European countries. Crime appears to be tolerated and reporting crimes doesn't do much, and statistics are managed in western Europe. If you get an opportunity to travel to China, do see for yourself how safe the cities feel, and how advanced (and safe) the public transport systems are.
>If society believes that crimes is utterly rampant despite it collapsing over the past few decades
After having to push for a crime to be actually registered and for others to even report small crimes because police has been so useless in Brussels I lost complete faith in this.
It also doesn't track with prisons overflowing more and more and damn near half of prisoners not having the nationality. It's safer now! But more and more people have experiences so keep your wallet in your front pocket. Watch out as a woman after dark. Avoid certain areas that your grandma described as posh and the trainstation you went to every day in your youth has stabbings now.
It feels like one of a bunch of fronts where we get some kind of hypernormalisation.
There is also plenty of social media and politicians telling you that because of some statistic that the knife wielding gang you yourself saw in the shopping centre in east London in fact does not exist
Getting a warrant for each person is not "mass surveillance". Why do you think a warrant is not required? It is.
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Quick summary for the impatient (the original looks like an extract from Orwell's 1984):
Bill C-22 (Canada, 2026) updates laws to give police and security agencies faster and clearer access to digital data during investigations. It expands authorities to obtain subscriber information, transmission data, and tracking data from telecom and online service providers and from foreign companies. The bill also creates a framework requiring electronic service providers to support access requests.
You missed 'warrentless' in your summary. It's sort of important.
The push by the government here is because Canada is the only one of the Five-Eyes countries that doesn't have these powers, and for the government that's a bad thing.
That access has produced nothing for the USA, the director of the program has stated such to congress. Complete waste of time and money
> You missed 'warrentless' in your summary. It's sort of important.
Less than you would hope: https://web.archive.org/web/20140718122350/https://www.popeh...
Notably, a single secret warrant authorized the surveillance of everyone on the Verizon network:
That warrant orders Verizon Business Network Services to provide a daily feed to the NSA containing "telephony metadata" – comprehensive call detail records, including location data – about all calls in its system, including those that occur "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
I know those are about the US and this law is Canada, but the same things can happen.
Sounds like a Canadian version of CALEA to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
The problem for all 5 eyes (or 9 or 14) is that our co-operation dates back to the cold war and the institutions and thinking have not caught up to current geo-political and technical changes. If anything we are accelerating our co-operation at a time when many voters are seriously questioning the future of the US alliance.
I wish some of our leaders would be more forthcoming about the amount of foreign pressure their governments are under. We talk about the negative influence on social media and politics of countries we are not allied with often but there is an astonishing silence when it comes to the biggest player. There is a very real threat to local values and democracy.
Silence? Didn't Canada's prime minister give some very loud speeches regarding the US and the changing geopolitical landscape, and start making deals in response to such?
Carny seems like two people when talking about trade vs security/military
No he bent the knee pretty badly and made a few headline sounds deals that do little to impact Canada's standing. Frankly Canada doesn't really have any choices the USA will never allow them to "distance" themselves and Canada doesn't really get a choice in the matter.
Speeches are just talk. If I understand this bill, it makes it illegal for service providers that operate in Canada to avoid gathering unnecessary metadata about end users. It also makes it illegal for them to demand a warrant when the government (or US government) asks for the data.
We don’t have to imagine what this data will be used for. If someone goes through an airport and privately spoke to a Trump critic, CBP will use that to extort or disappear them.
The goal of this bill is to let the US censor private communication overseas.
Letting a few cold feet throw away your relationship with the US is absolutely just as stupid as Trump throwing away the US's relationship with Europe/whoever.
I think it is very clear from the way all US allies have reacted to various provocations that we are taking a long term view. That is the reason we are still spying on our domestic populations for the US despite our reservations about the current executive and their actions.
Less so if the US is going to try to request current (prior?) allies to assist in a war against Iran which has already been declared 'won' and was recommended against by pretty much everyone outside of current participants.
No the US clearly believes they would be better off not part of the rest of the world, the best thing we can do is not to drown in that tantrum, and provide the economic embargo they clearly think will bring them prosperity.
I think you can justify this logic only in the case you sincerely believe that the current admin is a fluke and things will return to roughly the previous status quo on the order of a few years. And that isn't unreasonable to think, but you might also want to have a backup plan.
We're in a very low trust and illiberal era. Everyone is convinced that the other side is evil and cannot be trusted, and they are building to laws and infrastructure to contain the perceived threat. And no one imagines that infrastructure will be used against them.
If you're upset about this bill:
- Call your MP (find yours at ourcommons.ca). - Back organisations that fight back (OpenMedia and CCLA have killed surveillance bills in the past - Submit written opposition.
The Cannabis Act angle is interesting.. extends full computer search-and-seizure powers to cannabis enforcement.
Just don't back those organizations too publicly or too loudly if you don't want your bank account summarily frozen
Do you have a source of people’s bank being frozen for backing those orgs?
The endgame is clear. Mass surveillance combined with AI agents. Would almost be like having a personal government spy watching each individual person.
Yep. Everyone can have their own “AI FBI agent” following their every move.
Just have to worry about the AI hallucinations.
Yup, it makes living in stalinist Russia seem like a libertarian paradise
People don't seem to understand how incredibly oppressive society is becoming
They do and they like it. That's what libertarians don't get. Majority of people do support such measures.
The bill claims that it doesn’t grant any new powers. Then it goes on to explain that if you don’t collect meta data and retain it for up to a year, that you can be fined or jailed.
Seems the entire west is getting ready for the AI police state dystopia
Canadian here.
I'm frustrated our governments keep trying to foist essentially the same garbage upon us that has already been rejected over and over before.
Why do we need what amounts to a massive, state-level surveillance apparatus, steeped in legislated secrecy, plugged directly into the backbone of every internet provider?
Would you be OK if police officers followed you around everywhere you go, recording who you talk to, and when and where you interacted - not because there's any suspicion upon you, but simply to collect and preserve all the metadata they might need to find that person up to a year later - "just in case" - to question them about your conversations? Because that's more or less what's being proposed here. The only difference is it happens opaquely within the technical systems of ISP's and service providers where it isn't as apparent to the general public.
It gets even worse if you presume the information will be stored by private contractors, who will inevitably be victims of data breaches, and will be sitting on a vast new trove of records subject to civil discovery, etc.
> The SAAIA ... establishes new requirements for communications providers to actively work with law enforcement on their surveillance and monitoring capabilities .... The bill introduces a new term – “electronic service provider” – that is presumably designed to extend beyond telecom and Internet providers by scoping in Internet platforms (Google, Meta, etc.).
As the article points out, jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of Canada has taken a dim view of warrantless disclosure of personal information. What precisely is insufficient in regard to existing investigative powers of law enforcement and their prerogative to pursue conventional warrants? Why do they need to deputize the platforms who you've (in many people's cases) entrusted with your most personal data?
To be frank, this is the sort of network I would expect in an authoritarian country, not here. The potential for abuse is too high, the civil protections too flimsy, and the benefits purported don't even come close to outweighing the risks introduced to our maintaining a healthy, functioning democracy.
Maybe there need to be some adjustments but we also have to acknowledge that the world has evolved and there have to be some response to that.
In the "old days" when all we had is telephone law enforcement could wiretap your phone with a warrant. As I understand it with an order from a judge your phone could be tapped or your mail could be read. You wouldn't (obviously) be served that warrant or even be aware of it. This was part of a few existing laws/acts. I.e. that's the status quo. If we were a surveillance state back then, we'll be that again.
The other difference from the "old days" is that some of the communication companies are global and not Canadian. I.e. your encrypted conversations go perhaps [to] a Meta data-center in California.
If we remove the ability of law enforcement to monitor and access evidence of criminal activity with a warrant from a judge we are increasing the ability of criminal organizations to operate and coordinate. That is the balance here.
It is true there are other important differences. E.g. the amount of information, its persistence, the ability of hackers and other actors to potentially access it. This isn't easy. But doing nothing is also not great?
I'm also Canadian and I have to admit I haven't been following the details here. It's hard to separate signal from noise and it seems everyone cries wolf all the time over everything. I will read it in more detail and try to form an opinion.
I think it's a preparation for wildly unpopular measures in the next ~10 years. There will be dissent, and they need a way to catch dissidents at scale.
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Source? Rationale?
This is - at best - ignorant hyperbole.
Policymakers automatically are assuming that private corporate infrastructure owned by national businesses and/or businesses operating in the country should be made as part of a surveillance apparatus. This is peak ignorance. The US cloud act makes this assumption without explicitly claiming such.
And I think here lies the opportunity for challenging this in court.
Nobody who needs to see this will see it, unfortunately, but as a (woefully incomplete) bar: if you're an american who wasn't aware of the “not withstanding clause”, and its use, in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you have no business talking about this bill.
Wrt politicians trying to enact privacy-destroying laws in a permanent Ralph Wiggum loop - how about creating an agent monitoring incoming proposals and immediately spamming representatives and opposition the moment anything shows up?
How can I not be flippant? I lived in Canada for a large part of my life (30 years-ish, 15 years ago). The bills are introduced, not passed.
all these governments that supposedly prided themselves on their freedoms and fair processes are somehow becoming prisons to their own citizens
They're right to do that: they filled their country with criminals and gave them citizenship. The natural next step is to make them prisons.
Seriously, and more than that, "by the people and for the people" are increasingly becoming hollow words contrasted with the reality of daily life. Corruption is increasingly rampant, and it's "rules for thee but not for me" everywhere you look (where thee are normal citizens, and me is corporations and government).
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They don't pride themselves on those values though. Claims of democracy, tolerance, freedom, and rule of law are selectively used as justifications for whatever crap Western governments want to do. If they actually believed in these things they would act differently.
There isn't the political will to remove the organized criminals who have been running Canada for decades, since the 1960s if not longer. Most people don't see how dire the circumstances are and even if they feel the country is on the wrong path they continue to believe that voting for the other guy can fix it. Same for Australia and New Zealand.
There is some hope in the British Isles. To anyone reading this who can see that simply electing this party or that party changes nothing: Take a good look at what Restore Britain is doing there, and consider supporting if you're in a position to do so. Nothing is easy, but they are drawing together more people who understand what it really means to say "no" to this system than I've ever seen organize anywhere else.
Reading what Restore Britain stands for just makes them seem like another set of MAGA wannabes rather than the saviours of the UK.
You only need to look at the US to see that a government dedicated to mass deportation is more authoritarian and worse for civil liberties.
Look to America to see what would happen to civil liberty in the pursuit of mass deportations. Discounting many things from the conversation - on the topic of this thread; Restore sounds like they'd be the single worst party to vote for if you were against mass surveillance.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by “organized criminals”? I hope you’re not poisoning the well!
I ask this as someone who has no love or support for the Liberals.
Even leaving aside the unsavory views of the party you mention, it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.
> it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.
I wish.
Brexit was pretty unthinkable even just a few years before the referendum. And now… well, toss-up between the top 5(!) parties, because somehow the Greens and Lib Dems are polling at similar levels to Conservative and Labour, all a bit behind Reform who didn't exist a few years back.
And when bad times come, insular nationalism (both in the sense of xenophobia and autarky) poll well.
The world-wide bad-times storm is getting super-charged right now, though I can't tell how much this is malice vs. incompetence from the White House.
You can’t seriously be suggesting that a political party that most Brits haven’t even heard of has any chance of winning the next election.
I think it goes without saying that things can change unexpectedly in the longer run, but this party simply isn’t a factor in national politics at present.
This defeatist attitude causes the situation we’re in.
Voting against someone rather than for someone is a sure-fire way to get some of the worst politicians in power as possible, they only need to be marginally less bad than the other candidate after all.
Restore Britain is a populist joke btw. Greens might be my side of the fence but they’re also populist. Hard to get air time as a small party without some form of sweeping emotional appeals and “common sense” thinking, even if it’s internally inconsistent and very broad.
Have you realised those in power right now are against you? And it seems to work very well for them.
No, I live in Sweden where coalition governments are pretty common and people tend to vote for the party they agree with.
Same is true in the EU elections, since their system is more democratic than the UK one.
I’m intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the election system in the UK as I am British, but I’ve experienced other formulations and I can see that this line of thinking enables the abuse you claim to be dispelling by allowing it to continue..?
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Never vote for the politicians that even remotely support this.
I often wonder these days. When I refuse all this madness, just stick with Linux, put my kids on Linux. Use VPNs that obscure all my traffic, throw key parties (read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother from some suggestions). What are they going to do? Refuse me access? To what then? What if I find a way? What if I work around the madness?
Will they fine me? Drag me to jail?
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will treat my device as part of me. You shall not pass my firewalls, you don't have my permission. I use my devices to think, my thoughts are my own.
From browsing through the linked text of the bill, this sounds reasonable and in line with the lawful access to records granted to the security services in other western democracies, so that they can fulfil their duties.
Without diving into hyperbole and far-fetched dystopic speculation, what exactly is the problem?
Government overreach isn't far-fetched dystopic speculation and privacy is important to freedom.
Worth mentioning that Canadian PM Mark Carney is the ex-head of the Bank of England and has a long list of pro-uk/globalist affiliations. Given the globalist aligned states and territories are the most on-board in progressing mass surveillance currently, it's sadly not a surprise.
It isn't as if the non-globalist affiliations are any less interested in this kind of control. This is frankly ad-hominem.
Posted for 2 hours and almost half the takes are pretty unhinged and downvoted.
I'd say this is pretty disappointing that they keep pushing these kinds of mass surveillance laws "just in case".
A preferable alternative is to have the hosts moderate the content they serve that is publicly available. But there are cons to that too - what content should be reported etc.
It is beyond time for a Representation Reconciliation. If the People do not control their destiny then tyranny reigns. There is no debate.
It's sad I think we need complete control of "mainstream" internet because most people just scroll TikTok and believe whatever filter bubble they are in, and will vote thereafter.
The majority of people have intellectually regressed into sheep.
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the infrastructure outlasts whoever is in office. that's the part that doesn't get repealed.
The people proposing these kinds of infringements on civil liberties need to start being criminally tried for treason. Not just in this case, or this country, or this hemisphere.
Why are things getting worse and not better
Because everyone's head is stuck in their phone, doom scrolling.
Here you think Canada would be opposing the USA - then suddenly you realise how suspiciously the laws are all the same. This here is not the age verification sniffer, of course, but it falls into a very similar problem domain. Governments increasingly have an addiction to sniff after everyone, without a reasonable suspicion. Everyone is now suspicious to a government. And private companies profit.
I have a feeling that a large of portion of Meta's revenue lies with helping mass surveillance efforts in the West. Is it in their financials?
this just legalizes what's alrsady happening.
The "just" is underplaying how invidious this is.
Correct.
And the preparation for the arrival of the fascist governments continues.
After the Epstein case these lawmaking thugs should be the ones to be put on surveillance cameras 24/7, even when they defecate; as we can see they have no problem to excrete similar stuff from their mouths with these anti-civilian laws.
Imagine what this could be used for when a fascist/communist/genocidal maniac gets elected and make full use of such data to single out groups of people for persecution.
Mere proposals of such a thing should be illegal and people engaged in development imprisoned and banned from holding public office.
+1, democracies really need to start establishing some serious red lines that are not to be crossed. Mass surveillance of citizens by any means (including purchasing it from corporations or obtaining it from other governments). Corporations should not have the rights of citizens, monopolies should be dismantled, and politicians should be able to be ejected and tried for crimes when they're committing them in office (qualified immunity should not only not be an excuse - but we should hold anyone working for the government to a HIGHER STANDARD, not a lower one!). As a start!
You mean when Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of protesters? It's not even something you have to imagine, it already happened in Canada.
So no need to beat around the bush like other countries and bring the kids and age of verification as a justification, just straight up mass surveillance and call it a day.. the only time the Canadian government is being efficient and direct without the bureaucratic BS is when a mass surveillance is implemented, bravo!
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/c22/index.html
The ‘meta-data’ seems to be run off the mill things that telcos and isps already collect. I’m not seeing the tyranny of the police being able to ask bell if this number they have is a customer of theirs so they can ask a judge to get the list of people buddy called.
should have kept the internet open and free, govts and big business trying to control people is a missed opportunity for catching stupid people blabbing all their plans online. now the stupid people are going to think twice before sharing online.
the false premise is is that totalitairianism can be written into the fine print and then managed for the better good by corrupt political, and legal entities. As noted in the article, the SAME people are reintroducing legislation that was so blatantly unconstuitional that they withdrew it, NOT that they couldn't get it enacted, but because they would have to then have to procede with full on terror policeing to maintain there grip on power, which as we all know has proven to be unworkable in the recent tests such as in Minnisota or the continueing blowback from the truckers occupation of Ottawa, and suspension of due process, there. Here in Canada the "spring sweep" by the RCMP, deploying a moving wave of police actions is underway, and they are all hungry for more POWER. All in the service of an over riding need for subserviant labour. I know of endless cases of abuse and have seen the actual police, fucking CISIS files, myself, from back in the day when there online system was essentialy wide open, and there only real issue, is not aquiring data, but deploying it in some way that does not result in the full nightmare of killing fields and concentration camps, for which these fucking assholes dont realise, there is no middle ground, and will go ahead with monitising something along the lines of Stallin Light™, in yet one more example of tedious , hubristic nialistic turds marching forward to create the perfect society. fuck them, as "think shield" pops up on my screen,doing it's unbidden, unremovable, changes to my phone, illustrating perfectly that the government is realy concerned with bieng cut out of the institutionalisation of everything, at least for the poor.
Is all this nonsense being pushed everywhere now because everyone's eyes are on the war?
It’s being pushed all the time
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Ah, really glad that we are keeping up with the fashion. /s
I expect we will see more and more of these things and people agreeing to them with the world plunged into more chaos.
Thanks! I've moved that link to the top and put https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-22/first-r... in the top text.
I'm somewhat concerned with the level of discourse in these comments; there's frankly a _lot_ of, well, ignorant americans talking about the civics of a country they clearly know nothing about. Would there be any chance of having a short note in the top text to the effect of “please keep in mind when you comment that you're discussing a foreign country that, in spite of the cultural similarity, does not work the same way as the US does.”?
Perhaps it's too late for this particular submission, but something to keep in mind in the future.
Can you change the title? It's far more inflammatory than the content, and people here are reacting solely to it.
Geist's headline is
"A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Risks Remain"
not
"Canada's bill C-22 mandates mass metadata surveillance of Canadians (michaelgeist.ca)"
I am OK with this.
Thanks he has been consistently awesome on the topic!
Is this one also the work of Meta?
Why do you say that, did Meta sponsor similar legislation in another country? It doesn't seem like they have strong incentives to push for this. How does it make them more money?
Yes. You can start here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...
"Meta is heavily lobbying for Linux age verification" is true but incomplete. So far as I can tell, in the case of them lobbying for age verification, they're trying to get ahead of public sentiment souring on them and wanting age verification and/or social media bans. Your own source admits that they're specifically pushing for bills that require verification by the OS itself, which conveniently offloads the burden off of them. It also pokes a hole in the (presumed) conspiracy theory, which is that meta is lobbying for the bill so they have an excuse to collect even more info on its users. However, if the verification is done by the OS, it won't have that info.
Why don't they lobby against it altogether if the don't like being responsible?
This is more in line with GamersNexus Community Channel as far as a putting the word out. He is more into this than Linus is IMHO.
If by similiar you mean more spying then yes.
https://wicks.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-...
It's not just me thinking this. I do want more data on this though. It is in their financial statements in terms of a revenue source?
You forgot to add /s!
As a foreigner, It would be near impossible for one company to ask every govt in that world to make this happen (with current political weather conditions).
HN people will always find someway to connect this to their most hated companies (be it Meta, Google, Microsoft)
That might be because the biggest tech companies have the most skin in the game where legislation is concerned. Money and lobbying is essential if you want the market share and the market hold that they have. Doesn’t matter their political stance towards the US anymore when they companies are willing to compromise and host data centers within any govt’s jurisidction.
Meta is definitely lobbying in Canada, I don't know why you think this is so far fetched.
Near impossible? No, meta is frequently making themselves part of conversation on various regulations in the country.
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Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of voting for a political party that matches every one of our priorities. I don't support this bill; I do support some other aspects of the Liberal platform. Likewise with the other major parties. I vote for the one that best reflects my overall views.*
*Well, either that or I vote strategically for the candidate I can tolerate who I also think has a chance of winning my riding.
this legislation comes around with the conservatives as well.
as long as there's a minority government though, public outrage will kill the bill
Canadians, Europeans and United States. Also China, Russia.
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It's a play on the two different names for the Parliament of Canada (Parlement du Canada en français) - everyone agrees how to spell the words in both English and French though.
Therefore OP is literally correct
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"That the country's lack of a self-defense law.".... what on earth are you talking about
Generally speaking, if using force in self-defense, you're limited to a reasonable response.
Some people a) believe that the limit is actually "no force legally allowed" or b) are opposed to any limit on the force used.
I think that's a pretty charitable reading of their position.
An excerpt from a story that takes place in the UK, which is illustrative to an american audience that frankly doesn't know much about how things work in the rest of the world.
“““
[…]
But this is the United Kingdom, and a muggee can't straight-up kill a mugger in self-defence and simply return home to unified rapturous applause. Very large, very serious questions have to be asked, questions to which "But he was trying to kill me!" doesn't qualify as an acceptable answer.
When her solicitor first explains this to her, Laura sits there in the chair unable to actually comprehend what he is telling her, incapable of even a bewildered "Huh?", let alone a full sentence of rebuttal.
They are found guilty, of course: the two-and-a-half people who were left after she'd finished with them. They go away, very quickly. But there is a serious chance that she has broken the law in turn, by having been a victim of attempted murder.
"No. That's not how it is. You've broken no law. That's something you're going to have to keep a firm grip on. It's just going to take a little time and effort and preparation and training to get to the point where a court of law is convinced. It's going to take some reasoning.
”””
--https://qntm.org/sufficiently
[replied to you only because the comments I want to reply to are dead, but still readable, and their nonsense needs response]
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The American's are none-the-wiser. We are fighting terrorist's after all, we need to ease-drop into every domestic household to make sure those "cells" aren't planning anything awful.
This poster is an obvious LLM lol
Yep. em-dashes everywhere.
C=3, so it's bill 322, Skull & Bones.
Just sayin'.
The future is self hosted encrypted invite only networks of trusted individuals.
I don't actually see a problem with this bill. Law enforcement should have access to as many tools as possible to improve their solve rates. In Canada, the police can walk you to the shipping containers confirmed to contain your stolen vehicle, but do not "have the authority to open the containers." [0] I am all for expanding the authority of law enforcement if it means justice is served and people get their (for example) stolen vehicles, wallets, bank accounts, etc. back.
Everyone in opposition of this bill simply has something to hide and is afraid that perfectly lawful legislation such as this will expose their criminal activity.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truc...
Imagine people you disagree with, politically and ideologically, have come into power and they intend to abuse this new capability to harm you directly. That’s where you should want to draw the line at government restraint. Expect abuse and ill will, and you’ll see where the boundaries ought to be. Even if you agree with those in power now, expect power to shift and define potential for harm on that basis.
> Imagine people you disagree with, politically and ideologically, have come into power and they intend to abuse this new capability to harm you directly.
I don't need to imagine, it's already the case; Toronto is a neo-Stasi city. I am simply asking that these capabilities now be applied fairly, across the whole populace, and not just towards people those in power disagree with. Torontonians demonstrate they will sacrifice freedom for safety, and now should obtain neither.
Privacy and rule of law are illusions. On a national level, the invocation of the Emergencies Act to squash the trucker convoy protesters (those deplorables) was recently found "unreasonable:"
> While the extraordinary powers granted to the federal government through the Emergencies Act may be necessary in some extreme circumstances, they also can threaten the rule of law and our democracy
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/convoy-protest-emergencies-...
I can only imagine the delays and damage that police officers opening random shipping containers without a warrant would if it became normalised. Saying "it's definitely one of those" is a rather big claim for someone who hasn't experienced the extreme unreliability of GPS and other radio systems on container yards. I feel bad for the yard personnel needing to re-sealing (and convince the shipping container owner that the seal was broken for a good reason) every single container in that GPS dead zone because there's an air tag beeping somewhere.
The story ends with the police indicating that they do actually have the power to retrieve the car, the officers just didn't want to use their powers in that case.
Nothing in your anecdote would go any differently with these new powers. The police officers refusing to take timely action would still refuse to take action, but now they also know the kind of porn you like. Good for them, I suppose?
I can make sweeping generalizations and baseless accusations too. Everyone in support of this bill is a filthy pervert with a voyeuristic relationship with their government, wishing to push their weirdness onto the rest of the population.
In East Germany typewriters were fingerprinted so police knew exactly who to look for.
Just solving crimes.
Consider: you don’t give a warrant to a wiretap subject. That itself is not that big a loophole. And therefore is unlikely to provoke change.
I don't even understand the concern here. Perhaps the parent thought this meant "a warrant is not required", which is absolutely untrue. Instead, the judge still creates the warrant, and any trial/arrest/action must have a warrant.
(Finding out what ISP a user belongs to, isn't really that private. If you look at the US comparatively, Homeland has a list of every single credit card transaction ever. The US doesn't need to ask an ISP if someone is a customer. What this does is simply confirm, and then the judge can create a warrant specific for that ISP.)
Such as compelling the ISP, or what not, to take action. The ISP is not the subject here. And obviously hiding the warrant from the ISP makes zero sense, as they're going to know who the person is anyhow.
This is stuff that goes back to phone taps. Nothing new here.
Are you suggesting that when investigating members of a criminal organization, they should be notified? It seems pretty reasonable for there to be cases where making a target aware of investigation would be detrimental to proving the illegal activity they are currently engaged in but would likely discontinue if literally told “we are monitoring you specifically now”.
Yes, but the warrant should be revealed eventually. Worst case, if you can't prove or disprove someone committed a crime after X time, you should alert them to discourage future crime (they may have already done more crimes during X time; besides public interest, it also forces you to cut your losses when the alternative would be to dig a deeper hole).
Do these warrants have a fixed maximum duration of secrecy?
“warrant should be revealed eventually. Worst case, if you can't prove or disprove someone committed a crime after X time”
This is the normal thinking, normal brained, route. It’s what we should all strive towards. Anyone who doesn’t agree needs therapy. There should be a window of discovery. 30 days, 90 maybe. But if you don’t have enough to justify notification of investigation, that’s it. No more resources spent. This is how normal precincts work. If they suspect, enough times, to build a large enough case file, to connect the dots and prove you are guilty, they issue a warrant.
Normal, brained, behavior.
What ever happened to hanging around, being a nuisance, and asking them questions? The real problem is cops are scared to cop. A detective used to show up around a place and just make their presence known. That was enough to notify you of investigation prematurely. Now, in the digital surveillance age, they can just sit in the basement eating Cheetos and phone in a SWAT.
This isn't about criminal organizations. One person somewhere can decide to target you, monitor you for 30 years with all the government's resources, and never need to tell you or anyone about it. I don't like that personally.
I don't really see an issue with this section. A judge still needs to issue a warrant, they can also additionally waive the requirement that the cop gives you a copy right away, in special circumstances.
Like are you envisioning a "I totally have a warrant but I don't have to give it to you" type situation? I think it's fairly unlikely, and you would likely be able to get the search ruled inadmissible if a cop tried it.
Are you familiar with parallel construction? That's what this is for. If they have a warrant and show it to you, it says what they can search and why. If they don't tell you what they're searching for and why, they can look for anything, and then construct a separate scenario which just happens to expose the thing they knew would be there from the first fishing expedition. They then use this (usually circumstantial) evidence to accuse you of a crime, and they can win, even if you didn't commit a crime, but it looks like you did. And now they can do it with digital information, automatically, behind the scenes, without your knowledge. (or they can take your laptop and phone and do it then)
I don't see the problem with this. It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it. You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.
Nothing good is going to be solved by expanding law enforcement's power, reach, or lightening any existing restrictions. We are not suffering from crimes due to lack of law enforcement's legal scope. It's quite the opposite.
i know this is an american thing, but does it actually happen in Caanda?
Respectfully, whether it "actually happens" is irrelevant. We want to prevent it from happening.
one of those 'does it happen' vs. 'can it happen'. the latter is all that matters.
But the warrant still has to originally exist with, presumably, a timestamp that shows it existed prior to the search. And modification of the timestamp or lack of such a feature would be a good way to get the evidence thrown out?
It would be inadmissible if the court deems it to impact the fairness of the trial, no? https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...
This is a good perspective, thank you.
There were two commenters that responded 15 minutes prior to your comment. I'd suggest starting there if you want to understand. Then if you disagree with those, you can comment and actually contribute to the conversation ;)
I agree with you. However, talking about downvotes is not interesting and against guidelines.
Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.
It’s a huge problem. The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know something wrong is being done to them. A warrant is not just a term for judicial approval.
The public must have the ability to easily verify police conduct is appropriate, and it must match the cadence of the police work.
> The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know
Er, the warrant is still there to be examined later, no? It's just not necessarily shown to the subject at the time of investigation.
Wouldn't having a warrant, with the purpose redacted - if that's the concern, be a good balance of "proof of legitimacy" but also keeping some presumably sensitive information private?
A warrant usually isn't a free pass to search everything. They are often narrow.
The warrant is the receipt. Even if you believe it's fine most of the time I'm pretty certain most people would feel uncomfortable if they went to the grocery store and weren't offered one. You throw it away most of the time, but have you never needed it? Mistakes happen.
The stakes are a lot higher here. The cost of mistakes are higher. The incentives for abuse are higher. The cost of abuse is lower.
And what's the downside of the person being searched having the warrant? Why does it need to be secret?
How can you be sure, when no one ever knows it is there to examine it?
Unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't define what such special situations are. It leaves the determination of providing the warrant to the suspect entirely to a judgement call of the court.
There may well be reasonable scenarios a majority of people would agree that providing a warrant isn't feasible, but that needs to be codified in law in more detail than whenever the judge deems it so.
why even allow for the possibility of misuse? what is the utility of this little addendum?
Why... would you think this is unlikely? Have... you seen videos of ICE agents claiming to have warrants when they don't?
If the statute doesn't lay out exactly where exceptions can be made, it can be abused.
And everyone should be skeptical enough of government power that they mentally switch out "can" with "will".
I'm not Canadian, but it seems similarly written to how laws in the US have been exploited to be used to spy on Americans. And despite not being Canadian, as an American I have a horse in this race, as the OP notes...
I see a lot of people arguing that these bounds are reasonable so I want to make an argument from a different perspective: There is a strong imbalance of power between the government and the people. My little understanding of Canadian Law suggests that Canada, like the US, was influenced by Blackstone[0]. You may have heard his ratio (or the many variations of it) What Blackstone was arguing was about the legal variant of "failure modes" in engineering. Or you can view it as the impact of Type I (False Positive) and Type II (False Negative) errors. Most of us here are programmers so this should be natural thinking: when your program fails how do you want it to fail? Or think of it like with a locked door. Do you want the lock to fail open or closed? In a bank you probably want your safe to fail closed: the safe requires breaking into to access again. But in a public building you probably want it to fail open (so people can escape from a fire or some other emergency that is likely the reason for failure).This frame of thinking is critical with laws too! When the law fails how do you want it to fail? So you need to think about that when evaluating this (or any other) law. When it is abused, how does it fail? Are you okay with that failure mode? How easy is it to be abused? Even if you believe your current government is unlikely to abuse it do you believe a future government might? (If you don't believe a future government might... look south...)
A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals. We generally have this philosophy because it is needed to keep a government in check. It doesn't matter if everyone involved has good intentions. We're programmers, this should be natural too! It doesn't matter if we have good intentions when designing a login page, you still have to think adversarially and about failure modes because good intentions are not enough to defend against those who wish to exploit it. Even if the number of exploiters is small the damage is usually large, right?
This framework of thinking is just as beneficial when thinking about laws as it is in the design of your programs. You can be in favor of the intent (spirit of the law), but you do have to question if the letter of the law is sufficient.
I wanted to explain this because I think it'll help facilitate these types of discussions. I think they often break down because people are interpreting from very different mental frameworks. Disagree with me if you want, but I hope making the mental framework explicit can at least improve your arguments :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
> A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals.
I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.
You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened, and where it was eventually reigned in with extreme measures (Usually broad and indiscriminate capital punishment).
I know your comment is about fixing failure modes in the legal system, and I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty, but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism? Much worse things are waiting on the other end of the spectrum when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.
I think a practical argument against what you're saying here is simply that solving the mad max stuff doesn't require anything at all like this. The type of crime that's scary and impactful (e.g. terrorism is scary, but so extremely rare that it can't really be considered impactful) is generally trivial to bust.
Are you of the opinion that peoples' default state is a Mad Max-like existence?
The question isn't about idealism or the realistic possibility of said idealism. The question, in my opinion, is whether we can only succeed as a species if a small number of people are entrusted with creating and enforcing laws by force when necessary.
That isn't to say we never need some level of hierarchy or that laws, social norms, etc aren't important. Its to say that we need to keep a tight reign on it and only push authority and enforcement up the ladder when absolutely necessary.
It will end poorly if we continue down the road of larger and larger governments under the fear of Mad Max, and this idea many people have that "someone has to be in charge."
The Mad Max stuff is occurring at scale more due to unchecked governments, and governments that don't work for society than it is from insufficient surveillance
>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.
Building down these high trust scenarios has been the consequence of active policies. You don't just miss these trends and correlations. Not to this extent.
High authority + low trust + abuse gives you situations like we've seen in Russia, Iran, North Korea. These are pretty bad. The people have no faith in their governments and the governments are centered around enriching a few.
High authority + high trust + abuse is probably even worse though. That's how you get countries like Nazi German (and cults). The government is still centered around enriching a few but they create more stability by narrowing the targeting. Or rather by having a clearer scale where everyone isn't abused ad equally. (You could see the famous quotes by a famous US president about keeping the white population in check by making them believe that at least they're not black)
None of the outcomes are good but I think the authoritarian ones are much worse.
But this is also different from what I'm talking about. You can have my framework and trust your government. If you carefully read you'll find that they are not mutually exclusive.The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? That implies that the road to hell isn't paved just by evil people. It can be paved even by good well intentioned ones. Just like I suggested about when programming. We don't intend to create bugs or flaws (at least most of us don't), but they still exist. They still get created even when we're trying our hardest to not create them, right? But being aware that they happen unintentionally helps you make fewer of them, right? I'm suggesting something similar, but about governments.
This and the previous post is well thought out, thank you for the clarity.
>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.
I see "High Trust Society" so much as a weird racist dogwhistle, but feel free to disabuse me of that notion.
I live in an extremely high crime area. Because cops abuse the law to keep their numbers up. If someone checked they would see that my local McDonalds car park is one of the biggest crime hotspots in the country because of administrative detections made on minor drug deals there.
It just so happens that my area is also where the government dumps migrants, refugees and poor people. Its also the case that they test welfare changes here.
I haven't had a single incident here in 6 years. We often forget to lock our doors. My wife takes my toddler walking around the neighborhood at night. I wave hello to the guy across the road who I have like 99% certainty is dealing drugs (Or just has a lot of friends with nice cars who visit to see how long it has been since he trimmed his lawn).
That said, if you turn on the tv 2 things are apparently happening. 1. We are under attack by hordes of immigrants tearing the country apart. 2. We are under attack by kids on ebikes mowing kids down in a rampage of terror.
Politicians, in order to be seen to be doing things, bring laws in to counter these threats. People bash their chests and demand more be done.
But the issue is that its just not happening. My suburb is great. The people are generally lovely, even those in meth related occupations.
When you complain about the trustiness of the society, consider that your lack of trust might actually be the problem? Nothing is necessarily going to break down because you didnt make your neighbors life worse by supporting another dumb as shit law. "Oh no crime is so rampant" buddy you need to get over yourself. Societies don't fail because of socially defined Crime they fail because people prioritise their perceived safety over everyones freedom.
> I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty
Exactly what you are defending.
>what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?
Its at threat from the idealism that you can just pass one more law to fix society.
>don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.
They come up with a bunch of dumbshit laws like the OP. Thats the result.
Re: High trust society general means people are pointing to some implicit unwritten structures that stop something from happening.
Collective notions of shame, actual networks of friends and families that reinforce correct behaviour or issue corrections.
Think about simply how credit networks form and function. And why visiting a food truck or medieval travelling doctor for your vial of ointment is different from buying special products from a brick and mortar establishment.
Basically if you or the network has a harder time back propagating defaults and bad credit in a way that prevents future bad outcomes then that is a loss of high trust.
This isn't about race really unless you are operating at the level of some biological or genetic connection to behaviour ... But that is a pretty strange place to be as there a whole host of confounding factors that are much more obvious and believable and I cast serious doubt that even a motivated racist would ever credibly be able to do empirical studies showing causal links between any given genetic population cluster and the emergent societal behaviour. These are such high dimensional systems it just seems insane to even think one could measure this effect.
The invisible substrate is the society unfortunately ... And we are all bad at writing it down and measuring it.
"He who gives up a little freedom for security deserves neither"
Exactly nothing because you can release the seat belt yourself.
It's about giving up freedoms you might never get back, because it's not your decision anymore after giving them up.
It's become more a shorthand for saying much more. Though the original context differs from how it is used today (common with many idioms).
People do not generally believe a seat belt limits your liberty, but you're not exactly wrong either. But maybe in order to understand what they mean it's better to not play devil's advocate. So try an example like the NSA's mass surveillance. This was instituted under the pretext of keeping Americans safe. It was a temporary liberty people were willing to sacrifice for safety. But not only did find the pretext was wrong (no WMDs were found...) but we never were returned that liberty either, now were we?
That's the meaning. Or what people use it to mean. But if you try to tear down any saying it's not going to be hard to. Natural languages utility isn't in their precision, it's their flexibility. If you want precision, well I for one am not going to take all the time necessary to write this in a formal language like math and I'd doubt you'd have the patience for it either (who would?). So let's operate in good faith instead. It's far more convenient and far less taxing
The quote refers to a Faustian bargain offered by the Penn's. They'd bankroll securing a township, as long as the township gave up the ability to tax them. The quote points out that by giving up the liberty to tax, for short term protection, ultimately the township would end up having neither the freedom to tax to fund further defense, or long term security so might as well hold onto the ability to tax and just figure out the security issue.
Moral: don't give up freedoms for temporary gains. It never balances out in the end.
You dont deserve either.
The issue I have with this quote is that it implies that some people deserve freedom and others do not.
I think a better way to phrase it would be:
> he who gives up a little freedom for a little security ends up with neither
People are let go off all the time. Not because of the law but because who needs the work of chasing and punishing every law breaker in the land. In your own workplace,family and friend circle, count how many times you have seen some one do something dumb(forget illegal) that has caused a loss or pain to some one else. And then count how many times you have done something about it.
I use the speed chime in my Model 3 car to alert me if I'm more than 2 km/h over the posted speed limit, which it infers from its database with the autopilot camera providing overrides.
If I'm over that when passing a speed camera in Victoria, AUS, I'll be pinged with a decent fine to arrive shortly.
Imagine if instead of a chime I got fined every single time, everywhere? All this new monitoring makes it a bit like that, at an extreme. I don't want to live in such a society.
> warrants seem to be required
Applies in the text you quoted, unlike true warrantless surveillance NSA-style?
You still have to get the warrant past a judge, and convince the judge of the higher bar for keeping the warrant secret.
I presume the distinction here could be between a search warrant, which you have to show the subject before entering their house, and a surveillance/wiretap warrant which you for obvious reason's don't.
(Meanwhile, FIVE EYES carries on as usual.)
Is Canada (greatly) defunct? Many canucks around the world that I met seem to be of this opinion, but I've never been there and only know Canadians as hard workers.
I imagine you met the people who got tired of all the slobs.
Look at the recent report on CRA service inquiries and their accuracy. An amazing 17%. It's not hard work that got us there.
edit: Just one of many examples. People rarely even hold doors anymore, we're a far way from our prime.
Next you're going to tell me that Canadians have stopped bothering to apologize!
This makes police indistinguishable from thugs.
Canada does not have a concept of civil liberties in the way USA (supposedly) does. There is no illusion that the government has complete control to monitor, track, and even arrest anyone they want. They do this all the time, even physically tracking and boxing in protesters to beat them.
This is obviously a bot comment. Is there really no room for automoderation of new accounts on HN?
Bot? It sounds to me more like the words you’d hear from an astroturfing American who doesn’t understand anything about Canadian laws. I say that as an American familiar with only some Canadian law, but enough to at least be aware of Rights and Freedoms.
I mean yea, I assume that's the persona it was going for. It was an account just made to post this called canadian000, I would have called it out as a broke uni student being paid to astroturf ten years ago but I assumed that market has been fully cornered by bots by now. Maybe it's just a really dedicated politically-willed crazy but either way it contributes nothing to these discussions and should be banned. It's bad flame bait and ruins the quality of the site.
I'm in Toronto since 92. And yes. Having Not Withstanding clause makes our Bill Of Rights a mockery. We have some rights until Feds / Provincial government decides that they do not like it. Basically it creates some friction / inconvenience for the government when they want to fuck with people but if they're in a mood than they will do it regardless. Judging by what is happening in the US lately maybe having "real" rights / constitution does not really guarantee protection either.
I see people forget how govt de-banked people in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest pretty quickly
I think warrantless access, deanonymising the internet, etc, are things that go together. If you want auto-governance (technocracy), to micro-manage every citizen, these are the foundations you need. As it is already determined that this is what will be happening, no amount of discussion will make a material change - the legislation is going in whether people want it or not. The individual justifications for each legal step in the construction are either going to be done with low visibility, or a trope like ('for the children/terrorists') will be wheeled out. Works every time, so why change?
There is no warrantless access to data here though. None. It's merely showing the warrant to the person being 'searched'. As mentioned elsewhere, the same has been true for decades with someone's phone being tapped.
The ISP can see the warrant. The judge creates a warrant. The court sees the warrant.
How would a wiretap work if you sent the person notice you're listening to their phone?
Clearly some criminal investigations require not notifying the suspect.
Even so, the exceptions don't nullify the rule: find a better way to investigate, citizen rights > all else.
Countries AND the government exist for and at the pleasure of their respective citizens.
Clearly, list the specific cases instead of letting the judge feel what is appropriate is the way to go. Also helps the judge doing the right thing.
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you should probably add a SPOILER alert on your most recent comment
> The truth is, most of the time when people complain about surveillance state or privacy, its because they just want to spout of a bunch of baseless propaganda like race realism or anti vax. Normal people aren't affected by this - nobody cares enough about politics, and most people aren't intelligent enough to form a dangerous opinion.
Where did you get that idea?
edit: it seems the comment I replied to was edited
Because that has literally been the history of the past 10 years.
When people criticized the left, nobody was arrested, nobody got put in jail. During Obamas term, despite the fact that the Patriot act was renewed, nobody ever went to
Its only when right wing people started getting deplatformed for anti vax or race realism rhetoric is when this whole idea started that "liberal governments are actually evil and want to control every citizen and suppress free speech", which all contributed to Trumps victories, and consequently Republicans proved that they were the ones anti free speech in the first place.
Yea, I like how quickly they moved to jailing people over stuff as trivial as jokes once they got in power.[1]
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
Why would you think Canada is fine when the government can freeze your accounts at will?
Why should Trump's actions be the measure to okay to Canada's measures against personal freedom? Trump and Canada can both take away personal freedoms and both are bad.
> Why would you think Canada is fine when the government can freeze your accounts at will?
Can we stop with this nonsense at any point?
The government can declare an emergency. Certain actions can be taken during an emergency which are outside what is typically allowed or bypass normal processes. The actions are subject to a mandatory judicial review within 60 days. The judicial review happened. The government was found to have acted out of line. It's current working its way through appeal courts.
The way you phrase this is, imo, intentionally implying "the government is ALLOWED to freeze your accounts at will". The reality is more in line with "I can murder someone at will.". Yes, yes I can. Because we don't have precogs and a pre-crime division. That doesn't mean it's allowed or accepted.
Direct your energy at this law. This is _actually_ a huge fucking problem.
Because Canada did it in regards to people specifically going against public safety. Trump does it to people who hurt his ego.
And again, the only argument against this is "well you don't want to have the government have power to deem anyone as in breach of public safety in case there is a tyrannical government that misuses this power"
which is hilarious because people think a tyrannical government is going to give 2 fucks about laws in the first place, which is literally happening today.
> The truth is, most of the time when people complain about surveillance state or privacy, its because they just want to spout of a bunch of baseless propaganda like race realism or anti vax. Normal people aren't affected by this - nobody cares enough about politics, and most people aren't intelligent enough to form a dangerous opinion.
That's not the truth. Everyone's affected and the risk will only continue to rise if we let such bills pass. One day it will be too late to do anything, as mass surveillance will be so entrenched as to not be able to form any kind of opposition or to do any kind of serious journalism without getting squished in the beginning before you even get started.
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Its not the dilema part that has been proven. If you basically see other people not cooperating and profiting, the incentive is there for you to do the same.
“Canada is doing just fine”
Found the federal govt employee or boomer who bought real estate in the 90s
Im not even Candadian, but are you implying that Canada has mass homelessness?
Even people who bought up til like 2015 are doing well. Housing in Canada really imploded 2015-2023 or so. Before that, it was still very frothy, but low rates and high immigration and poor policy around speculation and flipping of homes really turned the whole country tits up re: housing.
What, $600k for a 1 bedroom condo on a busy arterial road doesn't seem reasonable to you!?
/s
The federal housing minister literally 2 days ago stood up in the House of Commons and associated the housing cost catastrophe with the war in Iran that's been happening for a week.
Thankfully prices on that front are slowly declining. Another $200k to go at least before they make any sense.
It's not bad. Judges are not crazy and they'll require a reason for this. It could mean 'fraying at the edges' of the law but this is not bad at all.
You can tell where things will land with this generally it's not bad.
If it were Texas or the South where the justice dept. leans a different way it could be a problem.
Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality, kind of hints of lawful, bureaucratic authoritarianism - not arbitrary or political or regime driven, but kind of an inherent orientation towards 'rules' etc. where the system can tilt wayward, but that's completely different than regime, or 'deep institutional' issues and state actors that do wild things.
While this might be true and we'll and good (for now) isn't it still a worry and a threat that the law is written as such?
That is to say, though the "vibe" may be as you say, the law now permits, if not now, at some future instance people with different perspectives or vibes can use the law as written, to other ends.
In short, yeah it may not be Texas now, but a "Texas-like" vibe could germinate and use the laws in the books later.
"though the "vibe" may be as you say, " it's not a vibe so much as a real characteriztion of the law in the context of the system in which it operates.
There is no such thing as a set of 'hard fast rules' like 'software' which governs us.
It's always going to depend on the quality, characteristic and legitimacy of institutions, among other things.
'The Slippery Slope' can be applied in almost anything and I don't think that it is a reasonable rhetorical posture without more context.
'Written Laws' is not going to really stop anywhere from 'becoming like Texas'
> Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality
If the last decade and a half has taught us anything, it's that you can't rely on the state and arms of the state to remain consistent permanently.
In the absence of a free media, as in the US where it's controlled by a handful of billionaires, the people can be manipulated to vote in a government that will run roughshod over precedent and norms.
I totally agree, but that's a question aside from the institutional authoritarianism of statist countries.
Canada and European nations are not very 'liberal' in the sense a lot of people would like - they are communitarian.
We lament Trump breaking norms ... the office of the Canadian PM is almost only bounded by norms, he has crazy amounts of power - on paper.
A Trump-like actor in Canada (maybe UK as well) could do way more damage.
I think that the quality of the judiciary is subjective but real, it can be characterized.
I don't have a problem with this law as it is written, to the extent it's used judiciously, which I generally expect in Canada - but that's only because of an understanding of the system as a whole, not as it is written.
"are one motion from the House of Common from being overthrown." - so this is a form of political constraint, which we can see in the US doesn't work very well if the ruling party wants to ignore concerns and acts at the behest of the Executive.
If the PM holds enough popular support and has even a narrow majority that he can effectively whip, he's almost above reproach.
Everything at the top in Canada is 'convention' even the Constitution and there's barely any real constraint at someone driving a truck through all of it.
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