Oh-Oh, Canada

I had no intention to follow up last week’s post about our new Liberal government, but along with passing the Throne Speech, said government has introduced into Parliament Bill C-2, dubbed The Strong Borders Act, which is, in a word, scary. It would give CSIS agents, police officers and peace officers – which apparently includes border agents, prison guards and special constables – the ability to demand information from electronic service providers about whether someone is a subscriber, as well as the municipality in Canada or abroad where they receive or have received the service. The cops who patrol the university campus here are ‘special constables’.  Good grief.

Better yet, it would give them this ability without a warrant if there were “reasonable grounds to suspect” that a crime could be committed, or that any breach of a law passed by Parliament may take place. Uh, may take place? And – suspected by who? My neighbor?

Notice carefully the ‘any law passed by Parliament’. So, this aspect of the bill has nothing really to do with border security. If the police (or campus cop or CSIS agent) think maybe you said something nasty about a ‘equity-deserving group’, or you might have shoplifted or you might own an illegal firearm or purchased untaxed cigarettes – they can demand info about you from ‘electronic service providers’. Note also that the term is not internet service provider, but electronic service provider, so who does this include? Your cell phone service provider, surely. What about the bank where you do your internet banking? Is that included among those they can demand information from? Honestly, I dunno.

(George, meet BB)

The Globe has had a lot of coverage of this already, and they note in one piece that Canada’s Supreme Court in 2014 knocked down an earlier attempt at similar legislation when it ruled that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in internet subscriber information, and then later added that the same was true for IP addresses. That is to say, you have the right to expect that your ISP will not reveal your IP address to a campus cop if asked. This new attempt to gain the same powers is absolutely Trumpian. Keep pushing until you find a judge or judges who will rule in your favour. The Minister of Public Safety has said he will be issuing an explanation of why this bill is in compliance with the Canadian Charter. That should be interesting.

It will surprise no one to hear that Canada’s police chiefs are applauding this provision of the bill, which brings me to the larger point. That this bill was introduced by the new Liberal government does make me more wary of what they are going to get up to now that they are in government, but the instinct to violate privacy is truly all but universal among government officials and police. They are sure they are the ‘good guys’, and will say things like ‘if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear from such legislation’. That is bullshit. Governments are big, messy, barely-supervised organizations, as are their police forces, and if you give such organizations easy access to private information, someone somewhere within them will use it for no good purpose.

Of course, a sizeable segment of the Canadian population will be for this kind of thing. One commenter on one of the articles in the Globe wrote “Bring it on, I’m all for the cops having an easier time going after criminals, illegal immigrants, drug lords, etc, etc.”

Yea, the cops are always the good guys, they would never mis-use this info, or use it against anyone but a drug lord. They would surely have ‘an easier time going after criminals’ if there were no constraints on them at all. Just let them homes to have a look around and see if anything shady is going on, or stop and search your car while you’re driving to work, or just stop and search you when you’re out on a walk. Yea, let’s make it easier on the cops to do their job, that’s the ticket.

A Conservative MP has already criticized the privacy-reducing provisions of this bill, and good for her, but I have little doubt that had the Conservatives won a majority, they would be putting forward something similar. As I wrote, this instinct is universal among government types. They are the good guys, and they should always be allowed to do the good things they want to do. To protect us, of course.

That being said, the Liberals did try to sneak this stuff through by putting it into a 140-page bill (according to the Globe) that is supposed to be about border security. It’s a crisis, don’t ya know, Donald says so, and the Liberals know not to let a crisis go to waste.

Those in government cannot and should not be trusted with private info. No matter who they are or what they claim.