EDITORIAL: Privacy at risk
If you’re reading this online, the Canadian government, aka Big Brother, may soon be taking note.
Because that’s the kind of power they’ll have if the Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act passes through Parliament as it was originally conceived. And don’t anyone dare start squawking about it, warned Canada’s Public Safety Minister Vic Toews when he introduced the legislation last week; to do so would align critics with child pornographers.
The bill is Orwellian in scope. If passed, it would give police the ability to demand personal information about telecommunications customers without a warrant. Internet service providers would also have to install equipment or procedures that would allow them to make a record of every website their customers visit, every email they send and receive, and then make that information available to authorities at their request.
The legislation casts a huge driftnet of suspicion to catch a very few small minnows. And the potential for abuse of that power is frightening. Dossiers could be built, ready to be unleashed at the most opportune moment to stifle dissent. There was a time in some countries such files led to banishment to prisons or gulags.
Toews’ conjuring of the child pornographer boogeyman to justify such a sweeping power is facile.
It’s also needless. Police already have the power to monitor the online activities of suspected predators, provided they have the evidence to convince a judge their suspicions are valid. And Internet providers already have to capability to record the online activities of customers police suspect may be online predators; they fulfill 94 per cent of police requests for information.
Putting everyone’s online privacy at risk in order to reach that other six per cent is too high a price.
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