Ottawa Archives - Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Public Safety Canada, an agency responsible for safety, security, emergency preparedness and this kind of thing, recently urged Canadians to protect themselves when using public Wi-Fi by also using a VPN.

“Using a VPN protects your data,” the agency said.

True.

Unless — unless others in the government succeed in requiring VPN companies to uniformly sabotage the privacy of their customers.

The mechanism for crippling VPN’s? That would be the pending legislation to force VPN providers to retain personal data which users expect them not to retain, in this way killing these companies’ very reason for being as well as Canadian Internet users’ reasons to employ these companies.

We netizens want some security. A VPN required to track and store information on customers seeking security is, ipso facto, insecure.

Bill C-22, or the Lawful Access Act, introduced by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in March, would require customers’ data to be retained for a year. Everybody’s data, mind you, not just the data of persons suspected of a crime.

“Oh this is just rich,” says Windscribe, a VPN provider based in Toronto. “Bill C-22 is driving VPN businesses like ours out of Canada because of the required user logging. And in the same breath you tell people to secure their data with VPNs.”

If things go on like this, Ottawa’s impulse to destroy or try to destroy online privacy will override any contrary impulse to help people preserve online privacy. Thereby obliging Canadians who do value it to figure out a way to override the override.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Nano Banana

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Government Under Siege

“This city is under siege!”

“This is a threat to our democracy!”

“There’s a nationwide insurrection!”

“This is madness!”

This is not a recording from January 6th and, no, it’s not happening here in these United States. Look north. Those are the words of Ottawa’s Police Chief Peter Sloly.

Sloly was addressing what The Washington Post reports are “big rigs and other vehicles — emblazoned with signs blasting [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau in obscene language and reading ‘Mandate Freedom,’” adding that an estimated “5,000 people and at least a thousand tractor-trailers and other vehicles clogged the streets of Ottawa over the weekend.”

“The situation at this point is completely out of control,” Ottawa’s mayor told a radio audience, “because the individuals with the protest are calling the shots.”

“It’s not a protest anymore,” argues Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “It’s become an occupation.”

Meanwhile, this anti-vax-mandate effort spurred by these truckers is spreading across the country, including “the blockade of an important U.S.-Canada border crossing” in Alberta.

I can certainly see how these government officials might feel they are under siege, with an occupying force impinging on their freedom to act as they wish. Not a good feeling at all.

But isn’t that the same feeling these truckers and others are experiencing? Aren’t they being occupied by a government that demands a measure of control over their bodies? Their very livelihoods? That is willing to block their ability to earn a living to gain that control?

Public officials might ask themselves how come so many people are so upset that it looks like an “insurrection.”*

And then consider their position as public servants, that they may be in the wrong. Not the protesters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The Post story mentioned only four arrests made so far in Ottawa, none for insurrection.

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