The price of liberty may be more than eternal vigilance. Must we also employ all-knowing vigilance? Encyclopedic knowledge of all possible dirty tricks freedom’s enemies may employ?
One such is burying the latest assault on liberty in legislation about an unrelated matter in hopes that nobody will notice.
In Canada, a controversial effort to sabotage online privacy has wormed its way into a bill supposedly about strengthening border security: the Strong Border Act (Bill C‑2).
It’s not exactly new, since, as Reclaim the Net reports, it’s something “law enforcement agencies have been pursuing since the late 1990s.”
As with populations south of the border, the people themselves hate such interference. “Despite being repeatedly rebuffed by public opposition, parliamentary committees, and Canada’s highest court,” observes Ken Macon, “the drive to erode digital privacy protections continues.”
In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that Canadians have a right to expect that their subscriber information will be kept private. In 2023, the courts affirmed that users’ IP addresses were also entitled to protection. Investigators couldn’t simply rummage through a Canadian’s subscription details and surfing history without a warrant.
But the new legislation would entitle authorities to make warrantless “information demands” on service providers.
If this legislation ostensibly about the border is enacted, service providers would, on demand, have to identify particular users and whether the provider possesses his transmission data. The actual data itself would not have to be handed over, but Macon stresses that permitting such indirect searches would “effectively sidestep the very privacy protections the courts have upheld.”
Vigilance, indeed, knowing our governments’ lust for omniscience about us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
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