Conservative MP Introduces 'Clean Internet Act'

[Paul King]

That's because it is not intended to fight crime. It is intended to invade our 
privacy. The rhetoric in recent years to "fight crime before it happens" means 
to use police state measures and to hold everyone, including past offenders, as 
guilty before being proven innocent. In most free countries, it is the other 
way around.

This snooping law, like all snooping laws, is purported to be a surveillance of 
past offenders. But to know if a past offender is gaining internet access, what 
they really have to do is to examine the registrations, messages, and other 
traffic of the rest of us as well. Laws like this, like all laws that allow 
snooping of our internet traffic without warrant, is a law against everybody, 
not just a law against repeat offenders. I find it difficult for anyone to say 
that the police are only looking at repeat offenders, or foreign terrorists, 
since it is so difficult *not* to look at all of the traffic -- since it is all 
nothing more than a fishing expedition for cops anyway.

Even past offenders -- if they have been punished for their crimes, then I feel 
they have a right to be left alone. If punishment is not enough for them to 
learn their lesson, then I have to say that that is a failure of the prison 
system and justice system, since it is supposed to act as a deterrent. If we 
accept that the justice system works, then we also accept that people outside 
of prison have a right to be left alone.

If we accept that "offenders never change", then we allow the concept of 
"guilty until proven innocent" to be tolerable in a free society. If it becomes 
acceptable to treat repeat offenders in this fashion, then it becomes 
acceptable to treat the rest of us in the same way. We are all guilty of 
something. All that is left is for the police to find out what we are guilty 
of. Would you want to live in a country like that?

Paul King

> 
> Why they would not provide evidence that the steps they propose to fight the
> "crime" are justified somehow in a well documented statistics of crime? Well, I
> never ever saw a well documented, publicly available and discussed statistics of
> that kind. 
> 
> zb.
> 
> 
> On 4/20/07, Meng Cheah <meng-D1t3LT1mScs at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>     http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1884/125/
> 
>     "Conservative MP Joy Smith <http://www.joysmith.ca/> yesterday 
>     introduced
>     <http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1
>     &Par l=39&Ses=1&DocId=2842428#SOB-2010623 > the Clean Internet Act (Bill
>     C-427)
>     <http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Parl=3
>     9&Se s=1&Mode=1&Pub=Bill&Doc=C-427_1&File=24#1 >. The private member's bill
>     would establish an Internet service provider licensing system to be
>     administered by the CRTC along with "know your subscriber" requirements and
>     content blocking powers.Just about everything associated with this bill is
>     (to be charitable) rather odd. Smith introduced it by warning against the
>     use of the Internet to support human trafficking and added that "the bill
>     would address the fact that child pornography is not okay to put on the
>     Internet throughout our nation," though the Criminal Code already does that.
> 
>     The bill itself includes (and I am not making this up):
> 
>     * an ISP licensing system to be administered by the CRTC that is 
>     defined so broadly that it would seemingly capture anyone offering
>     a wifi connection
>     * a "know your subscriber" requirement where ISPs would be required
>     to deny service to past offenders (though the ISP would escape 
>     liability if upon learning of an offending customer, it terminated
>     service and notified the Minister of Industry)
>     * a new power that would allow the Minister of Industry to order an
>     ISP to block access to content that promotes violence against 
>     women, promotes hatred, or contains child pornography.ISPs that
>     fail to block face possible jail time for the company's directors
>     and officers.
>     * the Minister of Industry can prescribe special powers to 
>     facilitate searches of electronic data systems (ie. lawful access)"
> 
> 
> 
> 
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