Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

New bills encroach on our privacy

Forty-five years ago, the late Pierre Trudeau famously said "the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation."

Then justice minister, he had introduced an omnibus crime bill that tackled societal taboos like abortion and divorce and uttered his pithy line to reporters outside the House of Commons while specifically defending the privacy rights of homosexual couples. It was a decidedly Liberal approach befitting 1967, the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

In its own determined haste to rewrite the current Criminal Code, the Conservative government would rather push us in the direction of 1984. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, that is.

The Stephen Harper government has already introduced its omnibus crime bill, C-10, and that's not the problem, since the legislation contained therein is hard-hitting and should put criminals behind bars where they belong. Critics have complained about the inflexibility and harshness of mandatory minimum sentences for so-called minor offences, but there is at least no doubt the legislation targets people who break the law.

However, the government on Tuesday tabled bills C-50 and C-51, its ironically named "lawful access" legislation. Today, it is nothing of the sort. Our current government believes it should have the right to invade not only our bedrooms but our telephone conversations and computer hard drives - surreptitiously and without regard for accepted judicial process - on the supposition that the guilty will be more easily unearthed if the innocent also have to surrender their expectation of privacy to faceless investigators.

It is as if Conservatives like Harper and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews see value in having the powers of Big Brother.

Toews recently defended the proposed legislation against a pointed attack by saying you either support the bills or you support child pornographers, and in so doing he defaulted to the lowest common denominator. In a majority House, that apparently passes for debate. In a free world, however, this legislation does not pass the smell test.

"We are talking about the expansion of surveillance without judicial authorization," said Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian. "This should scare you."

Government shouldn't be in the business of scaring the populace. Good, responsive government should aid law enforcement agencies in the detection and prevention of crime without the need for legislation that strips away basic human rights and freedoms normally associated with a First World democracy.

This particular legislation would require Internet ser-vice providers to keep records of their clients' Internet activity and to make that information available to the government and police upon receipt of a warrant.

The bills would also give the government and police unfettered access, without need of a warrant, to the IP addresses, email addresses and cellphone numbers of those customers.

Certainly, modern criminals have tapped into the power of the Internet and they must be found and prosecuted.

But that doesn't justify granting police and government unlimited powers of search and seizure - either virtual or physical - in the hopes that somewhere in a constant flow of mostly innocent though highly personal information evidence of wrongdoing will be found.

That shotgun approach is archaic and though it will surely result in the arrest of some criminals, it will first erode public confidence in the sanctity of privacy.

Sadly, it seems inevitable. The current opposition, like the electorate, is powerless against a parliamentary majority that will pass the laws on which it campaigned last spring.

For better and worse, the Conservatives hold sway and it matters not to them what critics have to say; only that the government and police be allowed to listen.

Original Article
Source: edmonton journal 
Author: editorial 

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