Are You Concerned about Bill C-2 (the 'Strong Borders Act')?
A lot's been written about how dangerous Bill C-2 is. I looked at the legislation and I'm not convinced it is. But I do think it is evidence of a very important change in governance. This article explains the legislation and lays out what led me to think this.
#Carney #BillC-2 #StrongBorders
This is death by degrees for our privacy, handing over the keys to the police.
Do not allow this to pass. Write Carney. Write your MP. Call them.
Fuck this bill.
I don't know about the Canada Post changes but "the government reading your mail doesn't matter because snail mail is obsolete anyway" doesn't seem like a good attitude to bring to it.
I don't know about the refugee law changes but "government needs the authority to act on the fly unconstrained by the rule of law in case there's a crisis" doesn't seem like a reasonable kind of thing to say about it.
You seem to have no comment on the part about foreign states being "empowered to compel the production" of data or the other changes relating to "subscriber information and transmission data" which seem quite dangerous and are the things I've most often seen other people worried about.
And then of course you don't mention at all the "lawful access" part, both horrific and easy to understand, wherein electronic service providers can be obligated to assist CSIS and the cops in spying on their users in every way possible, and forbidden from telling anyone when they've been ordered to do so.
I'm not an expert by any stretch, so I'm happy to be corrected. But here's my response.
****About opening mail. ****How would you deal with things like smuggling carfentanil through the mail? It just seems to me that so few people write snail mail letters anymore that it seems kinda odd to make a big fuss about it--especially when large envelopes and packages have been routinely opened for years. (I worked in a mail room once in a while and remember seeing large manila envelopes with their corners cut off once in a while---I assumed that this was so a detector could test for illegal substances.)
About 'unconstrained by the rule of law': By definition, it would be constrained by the rule of law---Bill C-2 changes the law, it doesn't just rip of the concept of rule of law. Moreover, there is still a chain of command and a paper trail that would point out when the decision was made and who made it.
About empowered to compel the production. I wouldn't mind a specific reference so I could see what you are talking about. The big reason why I wrote that article was because I kept hearing statements on podcasts and reading them in articles, yet no one produced the actual wording they were so concerned about. And, as I also pointed out, it's very difficult to work through a government Bill and try to figure out exactly what it means.
About Lawful Access Again, if the law says something, anyone who follows that law is, by definition, following the law. There is a process for creating warrants and a paper-trail that identifies who was behind the decision to force access to the data centre. The law has been police are able to get a judge's say-so to bug a phone, plant a tracking device, or raid an office and seize all the paper records for a very long time. Sure thing this could be abused---but as I tried to point out in the article, there's also an opportunity cost associated with making the process of accessing data from server farms so difficult that it allows malefactors to get away with crime.
Beyond these quibbles, there's also the point to remember that this is just a first draft of a policy that is going to go through committee meetings both in the Commons and the Senate. So if there are substantive changes that should be made, there will be ample opportunity for people to raise them. And with a minority govt, there's every chance that these will be listened to if they are in good faith.
The part about foreign states being "empowered to compel the production of transmission data or subscriber information" is in 22.07 under the heading "Enforcement of Foreign Decisions for Production" and some of the implications were recently discussed by Citizen Lab.
My mention of "lawful access" was a demonstration of my bad habit of putting in quotation makes things that are not direct quotes — for which I apologise. It's a phrase that has historically been used to describe the sort of thing described in the bill as "Supporting Authorized Access to Information" in part 15, which I remain surprised that more people do not find outrageous. Michael Geist is one person who's noticed it. The way it's written seems to me absurdly over-broad and simplistic, even if it were basically a good idea which it isn't. I'm no legal expert either, but the language in the bill seems quite plain.
Sure, it's just a "first draft." As I said in a previous comment the committee will have it's work cut out for it. Based on what I understand along with what others have persuaded me of I don't think it's possible that a good bill can result from this starting point. Assuming that the government stands by any of it, we'll see which principles the opposition is willing to stand up for.
I am concerned that both of our 2.5 political parties are completely captured by corporate and foreign government interests. Policy decisions are not made to give Canadians a better quality of life, they are made to benefit politicians and CEOs.
Who cares about strong borders when half of canadians are living paycheque to paycheck and 1200 famlies own more than the bottom 80%
None of the current politicians care about the 80%
I'd say at least some of these problems are caused by the 'opportunity costs' I mentioned in the article. When I write my second article I plan on dealing with this issue. As I see it, most people fear that a strong govt will oppress the citizenry. In my case, I think we need a strong govt to protect people from the free market and capitalism. And I'd suggest the oppressive way our legal and bureaucratic system does things gets in the way of those politicians who might actually want to fix things. But until people of good will are willing to redefine what government needs to do, we aren't going to get to a better place. :-(