My day kicked off with a nice adrenaline boost of outrage when I found out from the comments section of another post (thanks, 900-ft Jesus) that Canada's New Government™ wants to start spying on us:"Privacy watchdogs are crying foul over an attempt by the Public Safety Canada to come up with legislation that will force telecommunications providers to cough up personal information about their clients to authorities.
A consultation document obtained by CTV News reveals the government is planning to hold talks to "address the challenges faced by police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Competition Bureau when seeking timely access to basic Customer Name Address (CNA) information."
Due to a current lack of legislation, the document states, some telecommunications companies choose to provide customer information to police when it is requested, while others demand a court order before releasing any information at all."
Having just completed a 2-month long income tax battle with these extortionist thugs, this news wasn't music to my eyes. Or my blood pressure.
Two things: If I'm reading this right, the feds want pretty much unlimited access to our private net surfing and telecommunications information without court orders and without our knowledge, which sounds disturbingly similar to the NSA's methods in the US. The last paragraph in the quote above also stunned me, because it indicates that not all telecommunications companies "demand a court order before releasing any information at all". I thought a court order was required at all times before releasing customer information -- at least, information that can't be gotten in a phone book or Whois search. Clearly I haven't been keeping my eye on this aspect of Canada's New Undercoverment™.
In addition to 900-foot Jesus, also blogging about this outrage today is A Creative Revolution and Another Point Of View, who was first to flag the issue 2 weeks ago. There'll be more to follow on this, for sure!
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