...
Factor
Before making the order, the Governor in Council must consider
(a) its operational impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(b) its financial impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(c) its effect on the provision of telecommunications services in Canada; and
(d) any other factor that the Governor in Council considers relevant.
...
No compensation
(8) No one is entitled to any compensation from His Majesty in right of Canada for any financial losses resulting from the making of an order under subsection (1).At this point authoritarian pushes are the best case scenario - I’m fearing it’s preparation for wartime.
The Internet and social media in its current form makes it easier for social groups to get larger and more intellectually and ideologically homogenous. As these groups get larger, it becomes harder for individuals to communicate across groups or think for themselves because there are various in-group moderation mechanisms (filtering, banning, ranking, deplatforming, cancel culture, etc). Eventually, the echo chambers become large enough to fight over who gets to run a nation's government. The winner turns into a government that moderates its people (like it always did before it became the government). Multiple such governments emerge around the world. This happened in cycles in the past as well, but modern technology facilitates the process.
To prevent this, we must realize two democratic principles simultaneously: "one shall have the freedom to decide what one sees and hears" and "one shall have the freedom to express whatever they like". It wasn't possible to realize both principles simultaneously in the past without a central authority because if someone is doing something in a public space, you cannot selectively filter them out. If you cover your eyes and ears, you block out not just that person, but everyone else as well. So we came up with rules for behavior in public spaces and wrote them into law. This didn't drastically raise the probability of a democratic society turning authoritarian because there were physical limits on practical group size. It was very hard to rally a large group of intellectually homogenous people. But the Internet and social media completely broke this safeguard imposed by physics. Now, echo chambers form naturally and grow rapidly.
To fix this, we must normalize not moderating or filtering content online in any centralized manner. Instead, we build user-configurable client-side content filters and ranking algorithms so that each individual can decide what they see and post, but nobody can decide what anybody else sees or posts.
We need to replace server-side content filters and ranking algorithms with offline solutions controlled by each individual on their own device. Get rid of likes and dislikes, and get rid of server-curated feeds. Have the server send a raw RSS feed of everything posted in the past day (or whatever time window, sparsely randomly sampled if there's too much) at once, then get it ranked and filtered on the user's device based on the user's preferences and viewing history, and then fetch the actual media associated with those feed entries.
This will, somewhat counterintuitively, increase social cohesion by limiting the inter-group rift between individuals and prevent the formation of large echo chambers. People will be more likely to engage with eachother in good faith. Authoritarian patterns will be more likely to naturally dissolve.
I think I'm missing something here. Why would people not just choose to remain in their echo chambers?
China is going to attack pearl harbour in the hopes that a sudden unexpected attack will cripple the pacific fleet and knock America out of the war. It won’t work, we’ll go through hell again. But every time these places think it will work, and they don’t factor in the fact that they are completely reliant on foreign trade for their economy.
Russia is pretty much in war economy now, they have no choice but to escalate and invade Eastern Europe. They have no chance of winning, but that never matters to crazy people.
If China cut trade ties with the US, which country do you think will still be able to produce everything it needs? People like to think of China as just a source of cheap consumer goods, but we are much more reliant on them than that. Every power plant has Chinese components that keep it functioning. Every farm, automobile, communication network, aircraft, factory.. they all rely on Chinese components and equipment. The list touches every facet of modern American life.
China could make the US unrecognizable within 5 years, without ever launching a single missile
They are now the manufacturing capital of the world, and our position of being the preeminent consumer in the world lasts only as long as our consumers can afford to purchase things.
China runs a precarious political situation which is only as strong as the country is economically stable - which currently it is veering to unstable. It goes without saying the US is also in a precarious situation - it is much more publicized due to the nature of the US airing all its dirty laundry publicly.
Things would get a little more expensive. We are already seeing that with Trump's trade policies. But if the west-aligned world stopped trading with China their entire economy would collapse overnight, with mass unemployment.
It is a shame that Trump is deadset on alienating all of our natural allies in this conflict - especially those in the apac region.
If things get to that level of 'touchy' what makes you think shipping through that area wouldn't be interfered with? South Korea, Japan and arguably the Philippines are the main countries that wouldn't be going through areas that China regularly tries to claim or at least exercise authority over.
My main concern as a European is Russia. It is a historical truth that once a country goes through the process of starting a war economy it doesn’t usually dissolve or sit idle - conflict is going to happen there.
For America, watching from the outside, a civil war seems much more likely than direct war with china.
We are likely in pre-war era right now, dismissing it as "internet phenomenon" is shortsighted.
The Ukrainian war has been presented to me as a mad man trying to take over the world a la Hitler. I think it's more complicated and concerns about NATO expansion, the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, and Russia controlling warm water naval access make sense as motivations for the war, even though they are also be tools of propaganda. It seems clear that Russia believed they had the opportunity to establish themselves as a great power once again alongside China and the US in the "new multipolar world" they harp about.
My question is this: In light of this information, why has the Ukrainian conflict become seemingly (based on resources allocated and increasingly provocative drone incursions into NATO territories) existential for Russia? Are the us sanctions crippling long term without Ukrankan resources? Why are they willing to sacrifice so much if they already have Crimea free and clear?
This crashes with the western view where countries and populations have a right to self determination. Some of the countries that Russia want to fall under their sphere are also members of the EU, which make this even more problematic. Seen from Moscow, EU and western countries have encroached on their turf and this is a problem for them. Seen from the western side, this is wrong, and if Russia is such a bad neighbor that its neighbor join defensive alliances to get out from under their thumb, that is their own fault, and the way the world is supposed to work.
Russia also has a geographic vulnerability where there is no geographic chokepoints from at least Poland and straight to Moscow, which historically has given Russia problems.
Give this, there is actually a rational for what Russia is doing, personally I think it is a bad rational, but there is logic in the madness, even if from my perspective, it is based on a deeply wrong world view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
It's the idea that fraudulent elections in former Soviet states were not merely the result of fed-up populations, but were actually western backed conspiracies with the aim of eroding the Russian sphere of influence.
Ukraine matters to NATO because they are turning more and more to our classical liberal values of freedom, and that is something NATO wants to encourage in general. (in general - note that Turkey and Hungary are part of NATO that don't want to encourage this, and there are other countries not sure)
We can only guess why Russia/Putin thinks Ukraine is existential to Russia. Our best guess is because they were a historical part of the Soviet Union that they are trying to restore. Putin cannot fulfill his vision without Ukraine. NATO countries like Latvia were also part of the Soviet union and so we expect they are next.
?
They are unlikely to pass it directly without changes though. They are a minority government, and the Conservatives have been backed by foreign actors in various capacities in election cycles and are a strong enough opposition that they'll resent the crackdown, and the leftists are generally not fans of the local telecom industry (or the Liberal pandering to industry in general) and will probably want either less protection for telecoms or more protection for individuals.
"This source has a history of bias, but this article is accurate" is the opposite; it tells the reader not to draw an ad hominem conclusion.
Ad hominen is when you use an irrelavent insult in an argument. Not every criticism of a source is an ad hominem.
Edit: to clarify, i think there is a huge difference between saying something like: national post is known to lean right and not really like the liberals so we should verify they are fairly summarizing the liberal proposed law by actually reading the law in question (what parent did) vs for example, national post leans right therefore everything they say is bullshit and should be ignored (which would be an ad hominem)
No, it’s when you argue the truth based on dismissing the speaker. So if Carl is an idiot, and Carl says cats are real, it would be ad hominem to say cat’s aren’t real because Carl said so. (Dismissing an argument isn’t ad hominem per se. Neither is name calling. It’s concluding based on not liking the speaker.)
Is it still ad-hominem if you actually agree with Carl? Doesn't it make Carl's argument even stronger when you say "I'm always against Carl but this time he's right" which is the opposite of dismissing his idea, ad hominem or not?
If you conclude X is right because Carl said so, it’s argument from authority.
> Doesn't it make Carl's argument even stronger when you say "I'm always against Carl but this time he's right" which is the opposite of dismissing his idea, ad hominem or not?
No. It makes his rhetoric (essentially an argument about an argument) stronger. But not argument per se.
adjective - (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
And they were given the benefit of a doubt and vindicated (in the commenter’s own opinion).
Meaning their position was judged on its own merits.
So not really ad hominem.
The closest it gets to the headline appears to be 15.2(2)(d)
> (d) impose conditions on a telecommunications service provider’s provision of services to a specified person, including a telecommunications service provider;
Which is one of the few parts of the bill that restrict what the ISP can provide, and not what the ISP can use. Even then it is of course only properly interpreted in the context of the charter, so the headline remains entirely false.
Canadian Breitbart is probably more like rebel news or epoch times.
Absolutely not, their American owner has cut so much into that newspaper that whatever reputation they had a decade ago is entirely gone. They used to be somewhat of a right leaning equivalent to the Globe and Mail, but this is no longer an equivalent, what comes out of that publication is now extremely poor quality, often entirely false.
This is not anywhere close to the WSJ.
CBC is definitely left wing[1], with a bias towards the liberal party (centre-left). Globe and Mail is centrist[0].
Highly partisan news is generally not respected for good reason though.
Be it Fox News lying and then claiming they're entertainment, not news, so they're allowed to lie; The Telegraph giving a soapbox to various climate skeptics and COVID deniers and having to retract them, or publishing flat out lies by folks like Boris Johnson; the Sun needs no explanation; Sky News Australia (same owner as Fox News) having a "Misinformation and conspiracy theories" section on their Wikipedia; etc.
That's why I cited this excerpt.
Order
(2) If the Minister believes on reasonable grounds that it is necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation, the Minister may, by order,
...
(d) impose conditions on a telecommunications service provider’s provision of services to a specified person, including a telecommunications service provider;
...
Non-disclosure
(5) An order made under subsection (1) or (2) may also include a provision prohibiting the disclosure of its existence, or some or all of its contents, by any person.
Factors
(6) Before making an order under subsection (1) or (2), the Minister must consider
(a) its operational impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(b) its financial impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(c) its effect on the provision of telecommunications services in Canada; and
(d) any other factor that the Minister considers relevant.
...
No compensation
(10) No one is entitled to any compensation from His Majesty in right of Canada for any financial losses resulting from the making of an order under subsection (1) or (2).
> (e) prohibit a telecommunications service provider from entering into a service agreement for any product or service used in, or in relation to, its telecommunications network or telecommunications facilities, or any part of those networks or facilities;
> (f) require that a telecommunications service provider terminate a service agreement referred to in paragraph (e);
Moreover even if, say, 15.2(2)(f) referred to (d) instead of (e) the headline would still be entirely untrue because the charter would prohibit it and this law, like all laws, must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the charter.
What sort of conditions would be allowable here? Its pretty easy to imagine conditions so onerous that it amounts to defacto termination of service.
Whatever conditions you impose they're going to have to
- Preserve access, because the wording of the law makes it clear that can't be removed.
- Be necessary to protect the telecommunications system from a threat (by the definition of 15.2)
- By the charter not be things that are punitive, substantially impact the ability of someone to speak (i.e. to access the internet), etc. For clarity free speech in Canada includes anonymity.
And I really don't see much of interest that complies with all of those. Were it not for the charter part I agree the conditions could be onerous, but "defacto termination of service" would likely be the bar where courts say that's too onerous without the charter.
How's it clear?
--- You're "endangering national security" by "spreading harmful information online". Such speech is not protected by the charter. You are now banned from the Internet. ---
They probably won't do this right away, but the door is open.
And they shouldn't be able to do this to the ISP's suppliers either.
They also could not because the charter would prohibit it. While not all speech is protected by the charter (your categories aren't the right one, but there are categories like CSAM and hate speech), the government doesn't have the ability to prevent significant amounts of protected speech to prevent unprotected speech without invoking the notwithstanding clause (which this law does not).
You realize that while the charter still safeguards your freedoms, it will eventually be overturned if the populace gets used to more and more control over time. Laws like this are cracks in the dam. If you pay no attention to it or give it charitable interpretations, then someday the dam will crumble.
As we seen with the tariff court cases in the US (ie. does "regulate ... imports" mean the power to set tariffs?), vague language like this is exactly what an authoritarian government would use to justify their actions.
>Moreover even if, say, 15.2(2)(f) referred to (d) instead of (e) the headline would still be entirely untrue because the charter would prohibit it and this law, like all laws, must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the charter.
So they can crush dissenters and maybe get overturned in 2-3 years time, by which time everyone forgot? That's exactly what happened with the convoy protests.
You're welcome to respond to those posts if you believe I missed a bit somewhere.
I didn't read the article not because I would have to click on it, but because it is paywalled and I'm not giving them my money, as I said in the post you replied to.
Illegal things are already illegal. Safety and security mechanisms already exist. We dont need additional, punitive, and opaque laws that can be abused.
They really do hate anyone who points out their hypocrisy or makes fun of them. It challenges their corrupt kickbacks directly.
I think it's easy to make a prediction of actual use cases here.
Its pretty common to see the following:
Corruption = Political things I dont like.
Money Laundering = Money things I dont like.
Meanwhile, do you have a case that this /isn't/ corruption, and that money laundering /isn't/ involved?
Or is this just a general complaint about word selection?
Corrupt people like corruption. People who want their money laundered like money laundering.
That said it certainly could enable corruption. "Pay us (the cabinet ministers) some money or we won't let ISPs buy equipment from you". There's just no evidence that is why it is being passed.
Even the supposed intended purpose of restricting equipment may be malicious. Why should the government be able to restrict whose equipment or which fibre operators the ISP can use?
If equipment is the concern, then they can just regulate the actual imported equipment. Canada probably already has such oversight like the US's FCC.
They did not slip in a clause which allows them to restrict which customers ISPs can serve, despite the headline saying otherwise.
You may have charitable interpretations, but 15.2(2)(d) can be used to effectively ban anyone from accessing the Internet. And it can certainly be used to throttle web services the government doesn't like.
I do not believe the government currently has the authority to force telecoms to remove suspected compromised equipment. They've tried without a law. Telecoms have resisted, successfully. You're probably right if they only needed to remove devices they could prove were currently being used for spying, but national security demands that they can do that to devices that they merely suspect are compromised, and that fails on both fronts.
How laws are read can change. It may not fly in court today, but what about 5 or 10 years later? They may not immediately ban anyone, but just slightly throttling the services they don't like with national security as an excuse is detrimental to the free Internet. People will get used to it and then one day, it would be interpreted as "it's ok to allow egregious usage limits", which is effectively a ban. It happens gradually.
> I do not believe the government currently has the authority to force telecoms to remove suspected compromised equipment.
Good. This is the way it should be. The burden of proof is on the government. You cannot assume guilty until proven innocent. If the government really suspects that there is some malicious equipment that slipped past their equivalent of FCC undetected, then they could impose import restrictions to make it impractical for telecom operators to purchase said equipment.
There is a lot they could do on the import regulation side, such as restricting OTA updates for critical equipment to domestic servers, or even restrict firmware updates to offline flashing only. They could make some equipment prohibitively expensive. There are plenty of ways to deal with it besides introducing a law like this.
They are more likely to ignore the law than to change the fundamental principles of how the words are read. It's easier. See the US.
Worrying about this sort of lawless action when writing laws is pointless because no matter how well laws are written they don't stop someone from simply ignoring them.
> Good. This is the way it should be.
I have no interest in rolling over and handing the keys to our communications infrasturcture to foreign powers because the government was not fast enough to realize they needed to ban a company, or because foreign politics shifted and what was a safe enough bet not longer is.
It's not a matter of guilt or innocence. It's not a matter of punishment. It's a matter of maintaining our independence.
Here's a source from not that long ago: https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/01/14/telcos-slow-removal-huawe...
It's a tool used to further it.
> Who's getting kickbacks here?
As a result of this law? Hard to say. It's rather large. Presumably they're _already_ receiving kickbacks or political protection and this allows them to protect and further that.
> It sounds like they're just incompetent
It's amazing how often they're incompetent and how little consequence they suffer from that. This is a canard, and, not a particularly useful aphorism when trying to understand this _particular_ law.
> and brainstorming stupid ideas and writing a law around whatever sticks to the wall.
You're imagining excuses on behalf of powerful people rather than examining the law they've just passed.
You can remove the "seem". They go specifically into that line of business to benefit from juicy corruption.
Our desire for power feeds the Leviathan. To prevent this power must be diffuse.
(Just to be clear, i agree this law is way too broad)
Often the new laws only affect those who are already following the laws. Those who are willing to break the laws will ignore and/or find ways around them (see: Chicago, DC, etc).
Its also concerning to read the quote: “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation.”
Where Canadian telecommunication is almost a duopoly and had major outage a few years ago without any claims of bad actors.
This isn't the best wiki article I've ever seen but it has some examples of the US surveillance over the last century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
ICE does this with location data from mobile apps. They simply buy from a private vendor the information about where specific people are. Then they go detain them.
Some real life friends of mine are on a work crew with some migrants. ICE pulled their truck over, asked the migrants to identify themselves (with different names than they’d been using), they complied, and ICE drove off with them after detaining them.
I asked “Did they have their mobile phones with them?” “Yes.” People literally are carrying around a tracking device, voluntarily, with apps installed on them, voluntarily, that report their location to government authorities who want to detain them.
In my experience as a traveller, any ID from any country is good enough to get a mobile contract. Some countries might check VISA status too, but any valid temporary VISA is generally enough.
Nortel, never forget
Only when people start recognising that was all bullshit and demand their freedom can we collectively fight back. Resist your impulses to go with the propaganda and call every dissenter a conspiracy theorist.
Recognize authoritarianism is extremely common and it happens in "democratic" countries which are absolutely shielded in bureocracy.
You put your philosopher making unprovable assertions against theirs and just say "well it's true I don't know very much about the redshirts and redeemers or the guatemalan civil war as such, but I do have the eternal wisdom of the philosophers."
You can in fact, read the work of a variety of scholars on the comparative study of revolutionary movements in a variety of languages and ideological bents. And what we can see is that anyone that says "it always" while being unable to even identify the majority of countries on a globe is speaking in bad faith, or else genuinely has never given their own thoughts the most cursory and basic inspection.
Everyone has the right to their own metaphysics, but it's not clear what you expect speaking ex cathedra to accomplish.
(Not commenting on the actual claim above you.) Philosophers often make popular sources for supporting evidence because you can find a philosopher that supports most any position. Your question is exactly the one that should be asked as there are usually more objective sources.
Back on earth, its always the left that is motivated by ideology. The only right wing governments who turn authoritarian do so for money and power, not ideology. The ideology of the right (in the west) is specifically designed to be against that.
That's why the biggest body counts always come from the left. At this point, Communism and all wars combined are running neck and neck for the cause of the most violent deaths. Somehow, you lefties always forget that.
2. The claim that "it's always the left that is motivated by ideology" ignores that right-wing movements are frequently driven by ideological commitments: religious conservatism, ethnonationalism, free-market fundamentalism, and so on. Authoritarian right-wing regimes often justify their actions through explicit ideological frameworks.
3. What mechanism in right-wing ideology "specifically designed to be against" authoritarianism are you referring to? Current consolidation of executive power in the US, rollbacks of institutional checks, and expanding surveillance capabilities suggest otherwise. If right-wing ideology inherently resists authoritarianism, how do you explain broad right-wing support for these trends?
4. Body counts correlate with state capacity and willingness to use violence, not economic system. Authoritarian regimes across the political spectrum have committed mass atrocities. Capitalist regimes have overseen famines (Bengal, Ireland) and genocides just as Communist ones have. The common factor is authoritarianism, not left vs. right.
Both extremes don't listen and arguments always fall on deaf ears, especially when perceived as ideologically different. Merits of the argument are irrelevant. Most don't evolve past"My dad is stronger than your dad", it just morphs into "my God is better than your god", or in more recent years "my politics/policy smarter than your policy".
The people at the top want the same thing: to remain in rule. They agree the best way is oppression, they just don't agree who the oppressors should be.
People in the middle usually all want the same thing: better lives, but can't agree which oppressors are the lesser evils
The left has never oppressed the right in this country. Being banned from twitter for saying racial slurs is not oppression.
As for the concentration camp thing you brought up, I know it's hollow words on the Internet, but I'm sorry that it's happening. I live in the UK and tend to avoid news halfway across the world that I can't do anything about. It tends to make my (already precarious) mental healthy worse.
As for the Twitter thing... I think Twitter (or any privately owned social media platform) is free to ban people. I think going to jail for hollow comments made on the Internet is not okay though.
But also, these things are kind of orthogonal anyway.
And for context, I'm what most people on the right would call a libtard: gay, neuro divergent, and the cherry on top is that I'm also a filthy immigrant. So it goes without saying that I strongly disagree with a lot of the stuff said by the"hard right", but silencing/cancelling people won't help improve the situation. It just breeds more contempt and leads into authoritarianism. And it makes the people in the middle question why is the other side so afraid of oppositing ideas.
Authoritarian systems are bad whether right or left leaning. I come from a country ravaged by left leaning authoritarianism that's still recovering from that aftermaths (economically, politically, etc) even if I was born after it.
The zeitgeist changes, so just because it's in my "libtard" interest right now, it doesn't mean it will always be. The left becomes right and vice versa. It's happened before, and it will happen again.
People who want universal healthcare exercise magic money thinking, even though others keep trying to explain that there's no free lunch. It's always other people or other sources who should bear the burden because they cannot afford healthcare for their loved ones. It's obvious why others don't want to pay to everyone else.
Being banned from Twitter is not oppression, but canceling a late night TV show is. You may want to pull your skirt down, your hypocrisy is showing.
Furthermore, I will put it to you that there are a great many people in the "center" who are tired of hearing about the "left" and the "right", have varying opinions on hot topic issues from both sides, and do not fit neatly into these classifications. They just aren't out there screaming in the streets and on the Internet.
Is it? I don't really remember the last time I've seen right-wing discourse that wasn't centered around moral panic, whether terrorism, immigration, reactionary anti-leftist worldviews, or the opposition to LGBT rights, women's rights, abolitionism, or whatever else is the current threat to all of western society. Not to mention all the damn religious fundamentalism.
Also, in the EU, Croatia with Orban, Poland with PiS, and a few others I can't name off the top of my head are all far-right parties following Russia's playbook, with mass social media campaigns, turning state media into propaganda machines, replacing top government positions with cronies, etc.
Also, it seems extremely bad faith to compare thinly veiled attempts at seizing power with vague promises of "communism" to every single instance of anything left-aligned ever. Might as well start comparing every single right-aligned thought to Nazi Germany, it's roughly just as accurate of an argument.
The way it seems to me is that the right is about preserving the status quo, moral panic, and worship of strong(or more like loud macho) male leaders, while the left is about not-always-well-considered attempts to better the world whose main problem is that there is indeed a lot of empty virtue signalling and misprioritizing of policies around the place, especially among the center-left which is like 90% of the large "leftist" parties.
If you go back in time just 40 years, the countries you did (and didn't) mention, were all governed by communists. With considerable body count. Right-wing regimes in Europe after WW2 have negligible body counts compared to communists, and if you want to include WW2 and pre-WW2 times, then communists are still worse, even if you count all victims of Germany and/or NSDAP, incl. Holocaust/Shoah, towards right-wing violence.
See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Just because communism didn't happen in your country doesn't mean in didn't happen elsewhere, and there are still some of us who remember exactly what it was and will protest when someone attributes violence and/or authoritarism only to right wing.
Almost all Communist governments did not obtain the power by a political fight between "right" and "left", but by being installed in power by foreign invaders (in most cases by Russians).
Typically the first action of all Communist governments has been to imprison and/or kill all "leftist" politicians of that country, this having a higher priority than any actions taken against "right-wing" politicians.
Even in Russia, the Bolsheviks and Lenin obtained the power only due to the support of the German war enemies, which they paid back by removing Russia from the war.
The Communists that have been in power have never been any kind of "right" or "left" politicians, they have been just a class of hereditary parasites that have exploited those societies, by controlling everything that was of any value in that country, while claiming that they do this for the good of all people.
The Western politicians are crooks who succeed to fool the feeble minds into voting them. I contrast, the Eastern communists were just slave masters, who did not need any kind of skill, except of displaying loyalty to their immediate boss.
Oh? What an interesting attempt at a retcon. So folks on the left are socialists, but not as socialist as communists? Poor Marx must be spinning in his grave.
> Almost all Communist governments did not obtain the power by a political fight between "right" and "left", but by being installed in power by foreign invaders (in most cases by Russians).
Except for Russia and China, the original communist countries, of course. Even India was influenced, although to a lesser degree. But don't let facts get in the way of your argument.
> hostile state actors are stealing information and gaining access to systems that are critical to our national security and public safety
If they're hostile state actors, they've got internet access from elsewhere. It's a global network.
I am not dismissing cyber-threats, but perhaps I would weigh them differently. To me, the largest issue is the cultural influence and political meddling affected by the increasingly hostile state - Canada's southern neighbour.
A much better defence would be to quarantine or outright block access to the large social media platforms, and make space for homegrown alternatives. On balance, these players do more harm than good, and they're massive vectors for foreign political interference.
Can't you?
What do you think the motivation is?
Why would it makes sense to remove that process, while introducing an incredible opaque decision-making process in its place, which totally bars anyone from knowing why they were excluded from accessing the internet? It even prevents wrongfully excluded individuals from receiving compensation.
For example, I could be cut off from the internet which I need to do my job. Say I'm unable to work for a week or two and then it's determined that I can access the internet because an error was made... Well, as far as I can tell, I'd be SOL. That doesn't seem right...
Worse still is that this seems about as technically competent as using an IP address to determine a person's location. Any serious threat vector, human or otherwise, will find other ways to access the internet or perpetuate their threat if they care to. If they're a serious threat, why wouldn't prison be a better solution than... Calling their ISP and banning them from the internet?
All of this seems very short-sighted, undemocratic, and naive.
And while the 'human or otherwise' phrase I used might seem odd (I know someone's dog isn't shit-posting on X), what I mean to say is something like... What if an LLM is posting from an unsuspecting person's computer and was placed there as a virus? Once it's cut off from that poor person's computer, it's very likely it will eventually or already be functioning from some other unsuspecting person's computer, server, or whatever other device. Their toaster. My point is that we live in an age where there are non-human agents causing harm online. The machine they operate from will not always be OpenAI's or Anthropics, and indeed, will probably rarely be so.
This was already the case with human actors, but it made much worse with the advent of AI-based agents.
Anyone too dangerous to be allowed any access to the internet probably just needs to be in jail. What would be the point in leaving someone to their own devices while preventing them from participating in society at all?
I have only ever been to one restaurant where this was the case (and it was not a very good restaurant in my opinion, so I do not intend to go back there even if they have a real menu, unless they also improve their food and management), but they provided a iPad to any customer who needed it for this purpose (I did not need it, since I was not alone and was with another customer who had their own iPad). (I think it might be better to post the menu on the wall for customers to read. It might be suitable to use e-paper displays if they sometimes change but not very often; this is more reliable and does not require as much power, nor emit too much light.)
What exactly would this entail? Some people nowadays seem to have a very broad conception of "safety", broad enough to cause serious concern on the part of advocates for freedom and privacy.
For all the Canadian railing against Trump, this is an authoritarian play as much as many of Trump's actions.
Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example. Australia's lax control over entities able to access ISP metadata as another.
The problem is that it enables Trump further by allowing him to point at their decisions as similar examples to his own, as justification. I'm only using Trump since he seems to be the one willing to push boundaries the furthest, so if supposedly "more democratic" leaders are pushing such boundaries, then Trump will... Trump them.
I was opposed to freezing bank accounts during the trucker convoys, even though I was opposed to how the convoys were performing their protests. These kinds of measures—and capabilities of governments in general—are anti-democracy in nature and in my opinion, should be rejected by everyone who values democracy.
I'm all for keeping dangerous people offline. I'm all for protecting fellow Canadians from online dangers. We can find better ways to do this, though. I'm very disappointed that such poor judgement is being used by our current government.
The worst part is that seemingly no one gets to know what the cause of the ban is, and there are so few checks or balances before the decision is acted on. It's absolutely bizarre.
It's not hypocritical, there's no such thing as an absolute right to freedom of speech in the EU like there is in the US. Chat Control is widely opposed in the EU and I don't agree with it, but it's not hypocritical nor inconsistent with how the EU treats freedom of expression.
Here are the limitations placed on freedom of expression by the European Convention on Human Rights:
> The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
You won't find those conditions in the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution.
What does this even mean? What kind of crimes can people commit using the internet that justifies bypassing due process for public safety?
There are rules on the books in Canada that allows bypassing due process to confiscate firearms from a potentially violent or mentally unstable person, but I think that is a bit — just a little bit — more justifiable as the crimes that can be committed with a gun are much more serious than the crimes you can commit with the internet. Also, the internet is almost a necessity to be a part of functioning society whereas guns are not.
... which means what? They espouse ideas "you" don't like?
You are literally part of the problem. "Dangerous to others" is a meaningless phrase that can be twisted to mean anything you want.
One might think it's all part of the plan. Real freedom and self determination has been a fleeting blink of an eye in the history of humanity, and only achieved by a few peoples. Those at the top have always considered it a violation of their right to rule, and they've never stopped working to take back what they believe was stolen from them. Sadly I think they're going to eventually win, and the light will go out.
This sounds like it makes sense, but in reality, the most authoritarian countries throughout history and presently are highly nationalist.
A strong and cohesive national identity does not reduce authoritarianism. If anything, it seems to be one of the primary and most reliable indicators of authoritarianism.
That doesn't address what I wrote though. I didn't say that is the only way authoritarianism could arise.
Then this country is fucked.
It's really hard to have some kind of national identity when the previous PM goes and says things like Canada might be the first post-national state.
Is there a reason why national identity and being a high-trust society need to be linked?
These are trivial to overstay without oversight and millions of people have. Regardless of the relative merits of this policy, it certainly isn't what canadians voted for or even permitted public discussion of beforehand. Combine this with the social welfare state unraveling and the government suggesting disabled citizens to kill themselves after their benefits are cut, and it's had a sharply radicalizing effect.
So the government is panicking, trying to crack down, and will no doubt propel some dubious populist to power who can handily win simply by reading an opinion polls and not denouncing the majority of the public, in public.
What light? What eventual winning? Stop watching children's movies and reading children's books.
No it isn't.
Canada is a country that has historically been weaker on free speech and free assembly and individual rights compared to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Canada#Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_banned_in_Canada
A website operator was convicted of obscenity in 2016, a comedian was fined for making a joke about someone's appearance in a comedy club while on stage, the government debanked people as an extrajudicial punishment for a disruptive assembly without due processs... it's a lovely country but they have more tradition of using the state in conjunction with corporate power to express value judgements with the force of law. America is an outlier, not a baseline.
This is a fabrication of your own mind which you have now started arguing against.
Deepseek also speculated you might have a mood disorder or an incurable learning disability, but I told it that kind of speculation might seem like a personal attack and is totally out of bounds.
I'm also hopeful that the requirement for a well educated workforce will nudge societies towards more freedom than the historical norm.
Impossible to be so sure.
> I'm also hopeful that the requirement for a well educated workforce will nudge societies towards more freedom than the historical norm.
"The educated" have been among the most susceptible to authoritarian tendencies and propaganda, so I would not be too hopeful of that.
https://jacobin.com/2022/10/chahla-chafiq-iranian-left-khome...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pot_pol.shtml
Also there have been demonstrated to be other ways around the problem of educated population. Divide them against other classes of the population for example. Or subsidize and encourage non-productive people.
And even if everyone was educated and wanted better, how would they ever vote for more individual rights and freedoms if the suppression of those rights is the only thing keeping them safe from other groups in their country?
Forever is a long time. I’m betting on ‘not forever’.
Couple this with the fact that educated people often buy into authoritarian ideologies. At least that’s what I’ve seen. If there is any legitimate basis behind American anti-intellectualism this is it.
But a label doesn’t necessarily match reality — just like North Korea isn’t a democratic republic.
A lot of people have trouble with that concept, eg, thinking that a party called “Liberals” believes in liberal governance.
You want to know what a liberal sounds like? Listen to Bill Clinton's speech in the 90s or a current day Republican. Those are liberals.
I mean, this is just delusional.
Most liberal politicians in the US are slightly center right. And the US is not alone in that.
There's very, very, VERY few marxists out there. What happens is that someone is neoliberal in 99% of circumstances. And then they take a slightly more communal approach to one problem. And now, they're Marxist.
Uh, no. They're neoliberal, they're just not stubborn.
If you're on the US and you advocate, say, single payer healthcare, you're not a Marxist. You can listen to these people. They're staunch capitalists, and they're arguing we should make an exception for this one thing.
That's not Marxism.
> Every single one of them is better described as Socialist or Marxist.
I’m sorry but that is not true.
E.g. Liberal Party of Australia is a centre right party.
As an objective matter, the convoy protests are documented to have resulted in no deaths, eight injuries and a few hundred arrests (and very speculative estimates of economic damage); whereas the George Floyd protests are documented to have resulted in nineteen confirmed deaths, over 14,000 arrests and ten figures of directly measurable economic damage (i.e. insurance claims resulting from vandalism and arson).
Listen to your language. Freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful protest are now far too much leeway? The very rights protected by the Charter? Because they are protesting against things you like? Or protesting for things you don't like? Your like and dislike trumps their freedom does it?
You do realize who you sound like, don't you? Think about it. Mull it over carefully in your mind. Your rhetoric is dangerously close to a well-known Sozialisticher party.
One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
(https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
Go enjoy everything daddy gov tells you. If you claim it's an overreach you're a seditious agitator working for "the enemy (TM)"
I wish I was surprised that people can hold opinions such as this, but I see so many cheering for authoritarianism in what once were liberal societies. Freedom dies not with a bang but a wimper after being crushed by people with "good intentions".
If we put someone in jail, as in to disable their ability to interface with society, we would have the expectation to feed and shelter them decently for that duration. Removing access to funds under the emergency act has no baseline duty of care expected from the government, despite government action disabling them from acquiring food or shelter independently in modern society for a number of days beyond which someone could starve. The number of days is unpredictably constrained by popular sentiment in a heated moment not a pre-encoded ethical baseline.
I don't think this hypothetical and the potential grave consequences is going to be often likely, yet i don't see why it need be a possibility to entertain.
Yes. They did attack their sources of income and blocked protestors from accessing THEIR money to stop them from protesting.
You minimizing it like "just a few accounts, just a few days" is not only false but also doesn't acknowledge the fact that it should NEVER Happen.
But hey, there's always the one saying that reality doesn't happen even when the government attacks from all angles as a coercion mechanism. What's the euphemism now? What's the handbook? "Free speech but not freedom of consequences"?
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-8/first-re...
Anyone familiar enough with Canadian law to know how much bearing this condition might have in practice?
Personal opinion as a Canadian, and may not be popular...but I like it's done this way to a degree, I actually have more faith in the Governor in Council than how the courts might interperate this, there is a lot of political risk to using this, and I do believe that the crown will in fact enforce parliamentary accountability. If this truly is a national security tool, these powers are less alarming than, say, those granted directly to an independent agency or to security services acting without crown/ministerial oversight.
(6) Any order made under subsection (1) must be published in the Canada Gazette within 90 days after the day on which it is made, unless the Governor in Council directs otherwise in the order.This is a disgusting power grab. 'Because I said so, trust me' is not a justification.
I don't know how digitised the Canadian government is, but banning people from accessing the government is cruel.
You will not dissent effectively against the government.
What forms of digital identity could be used to enforce an internet kill switch / blockade for specific humans?
Advocates have been warning about this bill (and previous iterations and attempts at the same theme) for a long time. It's being opposed by all sorts of people, certainly not all Conservative party supporters, as is readily apparent with an appropriate Internet search. See for example https://ccla.org/privacy/fix-dangerous-flaws-in-federal-cybe... from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and https://sencanada.ca/Content/Sen/Committee/441/SECD/briefs/2... their submission to the government regarding the previous attempt at the same thing.
Your links don't support the the claim in the title of the national post article. The CCLA is complaining that it would enable the government to make telecoms install backdoors, and otherwise violate privacy rules, not that the government could "strip internet access from specified individuals". I haven't read the bill closely enough to know if I agree with them on that, but a bill having a different issue doesn't justify the false headline by the national post that everyone is discussing here.
(I have not read the contents of the national post article, as it is paywalled. So I can't comment on any other consequences actually described in the article).
Many people ITT have already explained, including in direct replies to you, how they are.
Furthermore, the notwithstanding clause only allows overriding some rights. It does not override the entire constitution.
Freedom of conscience and religion.
Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.
Freedom of peaceful assembly.
Freedom of association.
Right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
Right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.
Right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.
Right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or punishment.
Right to equality before and under the law and right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
The most important right is the requirement to have regular elections so that any overreach can be repealed or simply not renewed. Everything flows from that.
In practise the charter has been very effective in protecting the rights of canadians. I feel that it is more effective than the american system despite the american system having more absolute garuntees on paper.
Not at all. Russia has very regular elections, for example. Even DPRK has elections!
You might say that those are an obvious fraud, and it's true these days, but it wasn't always so. Up until 2011 or so elections in Russia in and of themselves were "free" in a sense that your vote counted. The problem is that you can't really have a free and fair election when things like "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" are suppressed. If the government can control most information flow and crack down on dissent, it doesn't matter if the people can vote; it'll ensure that they'll vote the right way.
> In practise the charter has been very effective in protecting the rights of canadians. I feel that it is more effective than the american system despite the american system having more absolute garuntees on paper.
The problems with the American system stem largely from the US constitution originally being based on the notion that the federal government shouldn't be able to do anything except that what the Constitution says it can (and similarly for state governments & their respective state constitutions). While it's great in principle, in practice it means that the US constitution has relatively few explicit restrictions, and those are often vaguely worded, which then allows for the kind of judicial shenanigans that are routine here.
At the same time, if the courts do enshrine some specific right as protected, the government has very little leeway to override that.
As for Canada, I feel that the jury is still out. CCRF is still fairly recent, and you guys just don't have the history of a sufficiently intense political conflict to see how well it holds up in a crisis, and what the government might do.
Sure.
The soviet union also had a constitution that gave strict garuntees of freedom, much stronger than the american constitution. It of course wasn't worth the paper its written on.
Having a written constitution with rights and freedom is no different then having elections. You can do it for real or you can do it as a show. Canada's actual elections safeguard its democracy. The fact that russia has fake elections is no more a counterpoint than the soviet constitution is a counterpoint to the american constitution. Just because someone else has the fake version doesn't mean the real version doesn't exist.
> As for Canada, I feel that the jury is still out. CCRF is still fairly recent, and you guys just don't have the history of a sufficiently intense political conflict to see how well it holds up in a crisis, and what the government might do.
The charter is not the starting point of canadian constitutional law. While it added a lot of rights and is certainly an improvement, Important legal victories like striking down laws for violating freedom of speech or declaring that women are allowed to hold office happened before the charter was adopted.
I dont know its correct to apply the label "conservative" to Quebec.
The notwithstanding clause is about ensuring Parliament remains supreme.
If you exclude Quebec,laws invoking the notwithstanding clause have been struck down by courts more often then they have succesfully been used.
Or, from giving fifty bucks a month to their neighbor?
Or from a phone plan that has next to no background check: buy a cheap SIM from a convenience store, activate with credit card and you have data.
Your isp emails you that they are terminating your account.
You phone gets disconnected.
You call them and helpdesk doesnt have a clue why.
You try to sign up for new services and they refuse and wont say why.
All because a politician has decided it 'reasonable' to disconnect you from the internet; and he can order complete secrecy and there's no judicial oversight.
Perhaps you showed up at the wrong protest? Note how they seized the bank accounts of protestors and even an entire small bank only a few years ago.
Always take legislation like this seriously and hold your representatives responsible for it. Let them know that their political career in your constituency is finished for good if they support such moves. Let their political party know that they're not winning your constituency again until the damage is reversed. There's no room for subtleties and pleasantries when they're clearly showing you that they don't value your autonomy or the checks and balances on their abuse of power.
But it isn't. I've gone the route of writing my representatives but when most people support the measures or at least don't oppose them they can easily laugh in your face or outright lie to you, claiming that protests aren't banned when they are (e.g. covid times) and things like that.
Most people here probably called me some government/media pushed negative label just for protesting to uphold freedom/constitutional rights/human rights.
It's not that easy to advocate effectively once you realize gov/media funded propaganda permeates really well.
The democracy we need threatens those in power.
What say does the average poor person in your town have? To endorse someone they cant control? To choose from amongst the few candidates that the big interests have developed and then cross their fingers??
Letting individuals control production creates a divided society, one of workers and one of owners.
Where one has unequal leverage over the other but are supposed to (on paper) exist on the same democratic level.
Mom and pop shops may come your mind, or someone who owns a franchise or small business, the truth is that even small business owners are nearly wholly beholden to large capital and huge finance capital.
What say does a walmart employee have compared to the owners of walmart?
While you were learning about what the hell the electoral college is, some others were being trained on how to lobby effectively.
Mass democracy threatens the status quo almost entirely.
There does not exist a party for the people. And if it were to exist it would be outlawed and threatened like they have been in the past.
Would you suppress a peoples party if you had billions on the line?
There is a reason why labor movements have been nearly completely wiped out from collective history.
Those who don't take this govts anti-socialist stance seriously must realize that the history of modern warfare and the history of anti-socialism share way too much space.
Mass democracy is a threat to the status quo.
It's not "getting bad" it "is bad."
What you're asking for is rule by minority. At an extreme, an autocracy.
Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines ask us to be kind and constructive when engaging in discussions here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit:
I didn't even notice until later, the final word of that comment. WTF indeed. This is absolutely not okay on HN, and we have to ban accounts that do it repeatedly.
Or conversely, weigh someone's opinion higher simply because of phrasing rather than content.
In the case of this comment "wtf are you talking about?" may be at the milder end of the spectrum of abuse, "moron" certainly isn't.
I can't believe that people are defending that.
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlm...
How would one find out information about the process, find a lawyer etc. without internet access?
"There were arrests, therefore this was not a valid protest" is a very dangerous argument to be making, and I furthermore strongly doubt that you would apply this standard consistently to causes you endorse.
In the sense that you can sue to have the order challenged? How's this different than what Trump's doing, where the government does something illegal (or at least legally dubious), and there's "judicial oversight" because aggrieved parties can sue the government?
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors, as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Were the bank accounts seized before or after the conviction?
That's a good question. The article doesn't say and I haven't read the bill.
> Were the bank accounts seized before or after the conviction?
Before, of course. That was one of the justifications for invoking the emergency powers, and it wouldn't have been controversial otherwise. This is a digression, though, as there is no mention of any legislative changes to bank account seizures in the article.
How are your responding to me making affirmative comments that there's judicial oversight if you havent read the bill?
You misunderstand. After it's done, only then could you sue and get judicial review. But it's all in secrecy, so you dont know what or who you need to sue. So you cant get judicial review.
Umm,that's how court systems work in general. You sue when someone wrongs you. I'm not sure how else it could possibly work.
> Were the bank accounts seized before or after the conviction?
This is a different topic, but there were 2 different bank account freezes. Some were frozen due to a contempt of court order (this didn't involve the government, a private citizen brought the lawsuit). The more controversial was the emergency powers seizure. Arguably the protestors were engaging in manifestly illegal conduct. Personally i think its akin to how you can arrest someone before conviction, but opinions vary. As far as i know, the bank accounts were only frozen while the protestors were engaging in illegal action and were released once the situation was resolved.
Court ruled the use of Emergencies Act against convoy protests was unreasonable, violated Charter:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-federal-cou...
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors
Wrong. Many people whose accounts were frozen were family/friends who were not even at the protest.
Court found:
> The judge said the economic orders infringed on protesters' freedom of expression "as they were overbroad in their application to persons who wished to protest but were not engaged in activities likely to lead to a breach of the peace." He also concluded the economic orders violated protesters' Charter rights "by permitting unreasonable search and seizure of the financial information of designated persons and the freezing of their bank and credit card accounts."
If you get into that scenario, you suspect the government cut you off, but you go to a lawyer and have literally nothing. The court will not take the case.
>econd, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors,
They seized hundreds of accounts; later had the banks terminate the bank accounts.
In fact, not only protestors but people who donated to the protest got their bank accounts seized.
>as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Protesting the government, in front of parliament is mischief? Political prisoners.
>n general, protests do not engage in torturing the local populace with 95db of air horn for 16 to 20 hours a day. The account seizure also required emergency powers.
Which was found to be unconstitutional.
But Bill C8 wont be abused by this same government? How about abuse in the future by other governments?
As far as I can tell accounts were frozen, not seized. Do you have a reference for donor accounts being seized?
ref: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...
When it comes to civil rights like Section 8 of the charter. There's no such thing as 'frozen'
They were searched, seized, and later returned.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/td-bank-freezes-two-a...
You have to go back to figure out how the government knew what bank accounts to seize. They didnt go up to each person and ask to see their debit card. Police dont have a ready list of bank accounts to seize.
The source of the seizures was the gofundme leak by a hacker. Who has since been arrested, convicted, and is in prison for a separate hacking incident. Canada gave him immunity to his crimes during freedom protest. They took the donor list and seized from there.
That's not true, the fundraising platforms raising funds for the convoy had to register with FINTRAC and failing that, the banks can track who is sending money to those platforms for those accounts. It even says so in the article you linked. What's the source that the government used the leak to find the accounts?
give a man a fishing boat and you can threaten to take it away if he starts doing things you don't like.
That kind of threat mostly comes from overseas anyway, so this doesn’t actually solve any real problems.
Case in point: the recent Salt Typhoon incident (spoiler: it was China) https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/salt-typhoon-canada-cyber-s...
Just another authoritarian attempt by the Liberal government.
The nature of the bill is that a minister can remove services from specified person without any interaction with due process. They can also make this directive secret indefinitely. Is such power required? Could it be abused?
This bill does not allow the minister to remove services from any specified person. It allows the minister to order telecoms stop receiving services from specified persons (i.e. huawei). It allows the minister to put conditions on, but not remove, services the telecoms provide to a person.
I agree I wish there were more limits on the secrecy portion.
Every law is always wrapped in a package of anti-terrorism, cyber security, or protect the kids. This is a given. Let us not pretend not to know whats going on here.
When Bill C-26 was introduced, OpenMedia and our partners in civil society.. unpacked what the bill meant for Canadians, raised the alarm about its risks, and put forward practical recommendations to improve cybersecurity without compromising privacy. Civil liberties groups, academics, and experts joined us in calling for change. While a few of our fixes were adopted, most were ignored. Those unfinished issues now carry over into Bill C-8.. This campaign is about restarting the national conversation on cybersecurity and privacy. If we push harder this time, we can shape Bill C-8 into the law Canadians want and deserve.
I suspect they want this purely as a punitive measure for people they don't like, kinda like the time they froze the bank accounts of vaccine passport protestors (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385).
They don't even have to pass laws to ban VPNs or read private chat messages or enforce identity verification, or whatever other unambitious attempts other governments are making. This will do it all:
Knock knock, it's the Chinadian government. You host a web service that uses encryption? Great. Now provide a backdoor for us or we'll ban you. Oh and don't tell your users. We'll ban you for that too.
---
Hello user, we noticed that you've shared some concerning information online, and you're also using this E2EE chat service that we can't monitor. A friendly reminder from the government: continuing to use such services and spreading such harmful information online may cause your Internet connection to malfunction.
> “Malicious cyber-actors are breaching our country’s IT systems, accessing sensitive information and putting lives in danger,” he said.
> Anandasangaree added that “hostile state actors are stealing information and gaining access to systems that are critical to our national security and public safety.”
... and these hostile state actors are doing this from their checks notes home in Ottawa, using a Rogers internet connection they're paying for?
My wife has been trying to reach me for a while as well.
If you think but I don't like the COVID truckers, well that's fine for now. Wait until there is something you vehemently disagree with the government about. Freedom of speech must be protected, regardless of how much you like the content or the speaker.
ETA: What might be the justification for censorship in this bill? The telecom network is critical infrastructure. You're spreading mis/dis/mal-information, according to the government. Therefore you are harming the integrity of the telecom network.
It’s completely orthogonal that the government didn’t want to be that bad, that they changed it, or that they ditched the plans to implement nationwide in its (according to the government) bad form at the time.
I cannot understand how Chinese news consumers cannot see this. The doublespeak is so obvious, that I cannot think of anything else, that it’s just propaganda.
Eh?
You can criticise Israel all you want. Some people might not agree and start pointing fingers at you but go ahead and criticise.
What kind of justification is this?! Seriously, do they think people are 6-year-old toddlers that all you have to say is "Oooo bad guys out there!!" and they will just magically believe everything you say after?! This is mockery, an insult to people's intelligence at best, and a fucking dystopian one mixed with digital ID at worst.
Also, are they gonna ban satellite based internet after? Clowns.
From the Wikipedia page on the US National Guard [1]:
> The National Guard is a state-based military force that becomes part of the U.S. military's reserve components of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force when activated for federal missions.
The National Guard constitutes military troops under federal activation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_(United_States)
Here's one source you can read about it: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/men-deported... Here's a source on torture in CECOT: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgq7nxkpkp4o
But feel free to look up the cases listed in the articles and research them yourself.
im not fine with another 20 canadians being kicked out of society every day, especially when there isnt even mail service.
im not in favour of forcing all companies and apps and whathaveyou to implement these checks
Special thanks to dang for banning me about ~30 times and shadow banning me another 50. Doing the good Lord’s work.
Before you downvote, consider that by supporting this legislation this person wishes to do the same.
It skews the idea that the world is left, when the reality is that opposing thought is being censored.
Then that leftist is killed by a far-right assassin.
Wake me up when that happens. Pigs might just fly.
If the US continues its current trajectory for a couple more years, will Canada be a welcoming beacon of goodness?
(Obligatory great scene in Handmaid's Tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJEjrNB2iTA&t=40s )
There's a non-zero chance we follow Trump/MAGA, but I would say its unlikely.
My impression is that politically and culturally we have been becoming less welcoming to less well off immigrants. Since the motivation for this feels largely economic (and thoroughly pushed by foreign media and online trolls), economic hardship from losing the US trading relationship is likely to make it worse. I'd compare this more to the sort of anti-refugee sentiment you've seen in Europe for the last decade than what you're seeing in the US now. Of course being anti-refugee when its looking increasingly likely that our southern neighbour will somehow create a refugee crisis would be... unfortunate.
American media has an outsized influence here. When they complain about, say, trans people, you see a loud echo of that here. What that means when American media seems to be increasingly bowing to Trump is... worrying but unclear. At the same time the baseline is much more accepting of differences, cultural or personal, than the US baseline. If I was trans I'd choose Canada over California every time, pre and post Trump.