During the Conservative fight to fool everyone into believing the long gun registry is a bad idea, one of the most frequent and most proximate reasons the CPC and their spambot flaks gave for dismantling and bonfiring the database was that it served as an invasion of privacy that allowed the government too much insight into its citizens’ lives by telling them who had guns and where. One of the folks touting this line was Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who primarily expressed concern that an NDP or Liberal government would get their hands on that info.
He said then, “In order to protect the privacy of law-abiding, long gun owners, those whom that member and his party subjected to gross violations of their privacy, records held by the Canadian firearms program on currently registered long guns will be destroyed.”
Fast forward a few months, and Vic Toews has introduced the Tories’ newest salvo on freedom in bill C30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.
What does this bill propose? Well, you see, it allows the government warrantless wiretapping on all internet communications — ISPs have to turn over names, addresses, all communications, anything the government wants. You know, like they can do now, by getting a warrant. This does away with all that pesky check-and-balance nonsense and lets the government get on with the business of spying on everything the people of Canada does. So too does the even easier methods for getting the information in the new laws requiring ISPs to allow real-time data monitoring via a backdoor for law enforcement. Again, no warrants.
The bill says absolutely nothing about child predators, except in the title, evidently. But Vic Toews had already taken a few swings against anyone who would dare protest against this REAL invasion of privacy. Of course, he obviously had something of a pang of regret for using these execrable tactics, and he’s trying desperately to backpedal, but this video doesn’t lie (thanks sinned34!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1BAHc4Mr5M
One more time through this. Registering weaponry is a violation of privacy, but letting the government have sweeping powers to get whatever information they want whenever they want from ISPs without first justifying it with a court order is all in the interest of protecting the children.
Seriously.
Twitter responded with a hashtag, #tellviceverything, where they helpfully tweeted the obvious computer luddite Vic Twenty Toews (@toewsVic) with every mundane detail of their lives. I plan on very helpfully sending him a link to this post as well, though I’m sure he’s probably going to be well capable of finding dissenters on his own with his broad new powers!
