I have just found this news item about new legislation being brought forward to listen in on the Internet. Fine with me...bring it on!
Here's the article:
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA — The federal government is preparing sweeping new legislation that would force Internet service providers to let police eavesdrop on exchanges in their systems.
The plan was confirmed to a Commons committee Wednesday by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, who says current wiretap and surveillance laws were “designed for the era of the rotary phone.”
Van Loan says there have been situations where police want to act quickly to stop a crime, but can’t because of the current laws.
Under the proposed legislation, police would first have to get court approval before they eavesdrop on Internet exchanges.
The plan is likely to please the RCMP and other police forces, who say current eavesdropping laws provide a digital safe haven for criminals, pedophiles, and terrorists.
However, it’s expected to face stiff resistance from civil libertarians, who warn it would effectively place Canada under constant surveillance in which police would monitor private conversations.
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3 comments:
This shrewdly puts anyone who stands in opposition to this in Parliament in the position where the spin doctors will accuse them of "supporting child porn" if they object to this plan; a plan which at the very least begs the age old question posed by the Roman poet Juvenal: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" - Who will watch the watchers?
I still do not understand why this kind of offence does not qualify for a mandatory life sentence anyways, which itself would be far better at protecting children than opening up this hornet's nest of civil liberty issues.
Mandatory sentences are a great thing to strive for in these horrific cases but sentences can only be given to those that have been caught.
I believe this legislation will help stop the crimes earlier on or if some of the abuse is happening in real time. This will protect children earlier on and get people who behind bars earlier.
My two cents...
The problem is, the argument that having the police monitor Internet activities will somehow prevent child porn is one that does not follow. The police can only ever act on crime, after the fact, based on probable cause. By the time they find child porn online, its too late to "stop" it, because a crime has already been committed.
All it can do is help catch someone after the fact, which brings me back to my point - if we have a system that is unwilling, for whatever reason, to lock these predators away from the rest of us for significant periods of time, how will this do little else but amount to speeding up the catch-and-release of these offenders. That is why I still reiterate my point - why potentially create another problem if the gov is unwilling to properly fix the main causal problem here, which is putting these guys away for a long long time when convicted in the first place. That would go a lot further then a surveillance state, as there are only so many pedophiles out there.
All we need is a justice system with some accountability and teeth. Before we keep making more and more laws, it would be more prudent if we would enforce the numerous ones we already have on the books. By far the most productive thing we can do is lobby to make the justice system more accountable itself, ie, sentences that reflect the depravity of the crime and also some way of holding judges themselves accountable.
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