Again, Scott Tracey, a reporter for the Guelph Mercury, has written a fantastic article about the new legislation coming forward regarding the option of tapping into the internet to monitor online communications. But for good reason folks...
Here's the article:
The online world is starting to overlap with my offline world where my kids are concerned, and I'm feeling a bit freaked out by it.
A couple of months ago my 14-year-old son, Dylan, joined Facebook, and he's routinely surfing the Internet with his hand-held gaming system.
More recently my daughter Sophie's Grade 4 class launched an online reading blog on which they can share views about the books they are currently reading with whoever stops by to take a look.
Now, the reading blog contains no last names, and all posts and comments are vetted by her teacher before they are published. But in signing the permission form a couple of weeks ago, some part of me acknowledged doing so would ever so slightly thin the wall of protection we've subconsciously built around all three kids, and the two girls in particular.
I acknowledge I am perhaps more sensitive about these things than a lot of parents. Spending every day for five years in court will do that to you.
But there are very real and very dangerous threats to our children in this community, as there are in every community.
Recent events, including the arrests of three local men in the largest child pornography investigation in Ontario history, demonstrate how immediate this threat can be.
It was against this backdrop that the federal government confirmed this week it is preparing legislation that could force Internet providers to let the police eavesdrop on emails and electronic chat forums.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan told a Commons committee the new legislation is required because the law has not kept up with technology.
"We have legislation covering wiretap and surveillance that was designed for the era of the rotary phone," Van Loan said.
The law would allow police, once they've jumped through all the hoops necessary to win court approval, to tap Internet service exchanges in the same way current laws allow them to physically intercept telephone calls through the use of wiretaps.
"If somebody's engaging in illegal activities on the Internet, whether it be the exploitation of children, distributing illegal child pornography, conducting some kind of fraud, simple things like getting (a) username and address should be fairly standard, simple practice," Van Loan said. "We need to provide police with tools to be able to get that information so that they can carry out these investigations."
Expect opposition to the legislation.
Former prime minister Paul Martin attempted to introduce similar measures in 2005, but the so-called Lawful Access Bill died on the order paper amid a flurry of negative reaction from the public. Peter MacKay, who was then the Conservatives' justice critic and is now a member of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet, spoke out against the Liberal initiative more than three years ago.
But I think the Conservatives have a shot at passing the new regs this time.
Cybercrime is on the increase, and it is more apparent all the time police do not have the tools to keep pace with the bad guys.
This won't stop the civil libertarians, of course, who have already begun to dig deep into the rhetoric bucket with talk of Big Brother and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
On one feedback forum yesterday, a commenter named Logan panned the proposed bill and called the Internet "the last place of freedom we have."
Hogwash.
Besides the obvious -- that virtually nothing on the Internet is even remotely private -- this legislation will affect only those who are breaking the law.
If you're among the vast majority of Internet users who play within the confines of the law, you will likely not ever know this law is in place. For those engaged in those activities Van Loan spelled out, the legislation can't come soon enough.
Scott Tracey's column normally appears Fridays. He can be reached at 519-823-6068 or via email at stracey@guelphmercury.com.
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1 comments:
i of course think exploiting children, or watching such exploitation, is despicable. no doubt about that. and of course i think kids and their families have a right to feel safe wherever they live and play.
my only concern is that these people have just been charged. so many people get wrongfully charged in canada, or evidence against them turned out to be fabricated or not true, or the cops lied, that we shouldn't assume these people are guilty. lots of people get charged with stuff that they are later found innocent of.
don't get freaked out about my words! i know child porn is horrible. i'm just saying, the cops didn't release any of their reasons for the charge or any evidence against them. they may very well be completely guilty, but that hasn't been proven yet.
if you look at the toronto 18, the 18 men suspected of a 'terrorist' conspiracy, almost half of them have been let off of their charges. and it turns out that they were all set up by spies paid by the rcmp to radicalize them and constantly tell them they had access to explosives and all that. heck, one of the paid spies even took them to a 'terrorist training' camp in the rockwood conservation area. but at least most of them were innocent the whole time... but we saw in the media they were demonized as terrorists and will probably have an extremely hard time ever getting a job.
i have no soft spot in my heart for users or producers of child porn, but don't get up in arms until they've been found guilty or the cops let us know their evidence against them.
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