...
Factor
Before making the order, the Governor in Council must consider
(a) its operational impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(b) its financial impact on the affected telecommunications service providers;
(c) its effect on the provision of telecommunications services in Canada; and
(d) any other factor that the Governor in Council considers relevant.
...
No compensation
(8) No one is entitled to any compensation from His Majesty in right of Canada for any financial losses resulting from the making of an order under subsection (1).
I think this current wave of low social cohesion and authoritarianism is caused by recent technological advances. Indeed, this phenomena I'm about to describe is a precursor of war, but the causal relationship is the inverse of your suspicions. And I think it can also be fixed by other recent technological advances. Here's why and how:
The Internet and social media in its current form makes it easier for social groups to get larger and more intellectually and ideologically homogenous. As these groups get larger, it becomes harder for individuals to communicate across groups or think for themselves because there are various in-group moderation mechanisms (filtering, banning, ranking, deplatforming, cancel culture, etc). Eventually, the echo chambers become large enough to fight over who gets to run a nation's government. The winner turns into a government that moderates its people (like it always did before it became the government). Multiple such governments emerge around the world. This happened in cycles in the past as well, but modern technology facilitates the process.
To prevent this, we must realize two democratic principles simultaneously: "one shall have the freedom to decide what one sees and hears" and "one shall have the freedom to express whatever they like". It wasn't possible to realize both principles simultaneously in the past without a central authority because if someone is doing something in a public space, you cannot selectively filter them out. If you cover your eyes and ears, you block out not just that person, but everyone else as well. So we came up with rules for behavior in public spaces and wrote them into law. This didn't drastically raise the probability of a democratic society turning authoritarian because there were physical limits on practical group size. It was very hard to rally a large group of intellectually homogenous people. But the Internet and social media completely broke this safeguard imposed by physics. Now, echo chambers form naturally and grow rapidly.
To fix this, we must normalize not moderating or filtering content online in any centralized manner. Instead, we build user-configurable client-side content filters and ranking algorithms so that each individual can decide what they see and post, but nobody can decide what anybody else sees or posts.
We need to replace server-side content filters and ranking algorithms with offline solutions controlled by each individual on their own device. Get rid of likes and dislikes, and get rid of server-curated feeds. Have the server send a raw RSS feed of everything posted in the past day (or whatever time window, sparsely randomly sampled if there's too much) at once, then get it ranked and filtered on the user's device based on the user's preferences and viewing history, and then fetch the actual media associated with those feed entries.
This will, somewhat counterintuitively, increase social cohesion by limiting the inter-group rift between individuals and prevent the formation of large echo chambers. People will be more likely to engage with eachother in good faith. Authoritarian patterns will be more likely to naturally dissolve.
We’re definitely in the pre-war era. It’s like when Britain was trying to negotiate with Hitler while rearming in the background.
China is going to attack pearl harbour in the hopes that a sudden unexpected attack will cripple the pacific fleet and knock America out of the war. It won’t work, we’ll go through hell again. But every time these places think it will work, and they don’t factor in the fact that they are completely reliant on foreign trade for their economy.
Russia is pretty much in war economy now, they have no choice but to escalate and invade Eastern Europe. They have no chance of winning, but that never matters to crazy people.
I think the problem with most average left of center people who want to be agreeable and civic minded is they have total incredulity at the government would actually do anything really screwed up, especially as they are so "moral" with their performative political correctness. How can someone who cares about the rights of minority groups act so tyrannically? There's always a glitch though somewhere, and people assume pious in one dimension, pious in all dimensions.
I'm not sure why you would mention "left of center". This seems to be true for everyone, look across the border of Canada if you want an example. People tend to be trusting of others, because society came to be through collaboration.
Why do you think this? Talking to Canadians (and Americans) who self-describe as left of centre, from centre-left to progressive and even a few beyond, this is not the case. People were afraid of what Poilievre would do. Americans definitely understand that Trump is doing really screwed up things. I don't think it is partisan. Off the top of my head, we saw leftists protest against Trudeau, Biden and Obama on gas pipelines, people locked in cages and drones.
The argument made here seems to be that the power to prevent unlawful access or threats is somehow required to keep us all safe. But if someone was an actual threat, do we really think they’d be using the internet with their own identity? Like if someone is willing to hack into a power station or some other critical infrastructure, they’ll be simultaneously stupid enough to use their own credit card?
Illegal things are already illegal. Safety and security mechanisms already exist. We dont need additional, punitive, and opaque laws that can be abused.
Is this even corruption? Who's getting kickbacks here? It sounds like they're just incompetent, and brainstorming stupid ideas and writing a law around whatever sticks to the wall.
Yes, illegal things are already illegal. But, if you alter the law, you can create new areas to monetise or ways to extract private information from legally minded citizens. In other words, these laws are nothing to do with preventing illegality, they are about control. They are co-ordinated across different legal jurisdictions too.
This argument is often unsuccessfully used in other areas; gun rights jumps to mind.
Often the new laws only affect those who are already following the laws. Those who are willing to break the laws will ignore and/or find ways around them (see: Chicago, DC, etc).
The Leviathan cannot be controlled. It hungers for power and control. People in positions of power are deceived into thinking that if they just had a little more power they could fix so many things. The Leviathan grows. The people are crushed.
Our desire for power feeds the Leviathan. To prevent this power must be diffuse.
I get the impression a lot of this is not just people but companies. So in theory the order might be - don't use any huawei routers, we think they have backdoors, etc.
(Just to be clear, i agree this law is way too broad)
We live in very confusing times.
Democratic countries start acting more and more like big brother.
Its also concerning to read the quote: “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation.”
Where Canadian telecommunication is almost a duopoly and had major outage a few years ago without any claims of bad actors.
So it has been on the upswing recently but my understanding is that in the US we have been doing pretty much as much surveillance as technology (and also generally the 4th amendment) practically allows since at least WWII, and especially during the Cold War. Many law abiding people opposed to government policy (e.g. civil rights leaders or anti-war activists) have always been surveilled with dubious cause.
The current “workaround” to the 4th amendment is to simply have private companies who do surveillance and then buy bulk data from them.
ICE does this with location data from mobile apps. They simply buy from a private vendor the information about where specific people are. Then they go detain them.
Some real life friends of mine are on a work crew with some migrants. ICE pulled their truck over, asked the migrants to identify themselves (with different names than they’d been using), they complied, and ICE drove off with them after detaining them.
I asked “Did they have their mobile phones with them?” “Yes.” People literally are carrying around a tracking device, voluntarily, with apps installed on them, voluntarily, that report their location to government authorities who want to detain them.
It always starts with the left, not the right. Read "The True Believer". It's not the poor folk that start a revolution. They are too busy trying to survive to do anything else. No, it's the idle bourgeois. They are the most unhappy as what they seek is just out of their reach.
This is one of those weird cold war american things that has not aged very well. Why would a philosopher be a good source for this instead of an anthropologist, an economist, a statistician, or a student of comparative revolutions? Is that really how it should go down?
You put your philosopher making unprovable assertions against theirs and just say "well it's true I don't know very much about the redshirts and redeemers or the guatemalan civil war as such, but I do have the eternal wisdom of the philosophers."
You can in fact, read the work of a variety of scholars on the comparative study of revolutionary movements in a variety of languages and ideological bents. And what we can see is that anyone that says "it always" while being unable to even identify the majority of countries on a globe is speaking in bad faith, or else genuinely has never given their own thoughts the most cursory and basic inspection.
Everyone has the right to their own metaphysics, but it's not clear what you expect speaking ex cathedra to accomplish.
A few fascist movements sprang out of leftist movements, or had some small overlap in rhetoric with the left, but by and large the most repressive Western governments have come firmly if not exclusively from the right.
In China you expect this because you get 5% GDP growth every year, housing that actually gets more affordable, government-subsidized growth industries and jobs. In Canada you get all the totalitarianism with GDP growth less than inflation, skyrocketing housing, and a zip line directly from Waterloo to Market Street.
It's not confusing at all. It's the same trend we've been having for ages and that most people have cheered for because they were usually dunking on their political rivals, the "evil enemy (TM)" or "protecting the children/against covid misinformation", etc.
Only when people start recognising that was all bullshit and demand their freedom can we collectively fight back. Resist your impulses to go with the propaganda and call every dissenter a conspiracy theorist.
Recognize authoritarianism is extremely common and it happens in "democratic" countries which are absolutely shielded in bureocracy.
Good things are good and bad things are bad. It's not contradictory for someone to like a bill that says "if you try to convince the population vaccines are bad, your internet service should be terminated" and also dislike a bill that says "if we say so, your internet service should be terminated"
That's an absurd overreach. I can't figure out what the real motivation for this is.
> hostile state actors are stealing information and gaining access to systems that are critical to our national security and public safety
If they're hostile state actors, they've got internet access from elsewhere. It's a global network.
I am not dismissing cyber-threats, but perhaps I would weigh them differently. To me, the largest issue is the cultural influence and political meddling affected by the increasingly hostile state - Canada's southern neighbour.
A much better defence would be to quarantine or outright block access to the large social media platforms, and make space for homegrown alternatives. On balance, these players do more harm than good, and they're massive vectors for foreign political interference.
I don't believe this is about disinformation at all. It's about not letting hostile state actors have an off switch for our infrastructure (only really relevant in wartime), or to be able to man in the middle it at will (relevant in both as an espionage tool). I.e. it's a cyber war measure not a propaganda war measure.
I support prohibiting people from accessing the internet IF they're proven to be dangerous to others if they access the internet. But this applies to any public space or commons, internet or otherwise, and we already have the means of accomplishing this... With a due process.
Why would it makes sense to remove that process, while introducing an incredible opaque decision-making process in its place, which totally bars anyone from knowing why they were excluded from accessing the internet? It even prevents wrongfully excluded individuals from receiving compensation.
For example, I could be cut off from the internet which I need to do my job. Say I'm unable to work for a week or two and then it's determined that I can access the internet because an error was made... Well, as far as I can tell, I'd be SOL. That doesn't seem right...
Worse still is that this seems about as technically competent as using an IP address to determine a person's location. Any serious threat vector, human or otherwise, will find other ways to access the internet or perpetuate their threat if they care to. If they're a serious threat, why wouldn't prison be a better solution than... Calling their ISP and banning them from the internet?
All of this seems very short-sighted, undemocratic, and naive.
And while the 'human or otherwise' phrase I used might seem odd (I know someone's dog isn't shit-posting on X), what I mean to say is something like... What if an LLM is posting from an unsuspecting person's computer and was placed there as a virus? Once it's cut off from that poor person's computer, it's very likely it will eventually or already be functioning from some other unsuspecting person's computer, server, or whatever other device. Their toaster. My point is that we live in an age where there are non-human agents causing harm online. The machine they operate from will not always be OpenAI's or Anthropics, and indeed, will probably rarely be so.
This was already the case with human actors, but it made much worse with the advent of AI-based agents.
In modern society it's pretty much impossible to live without using the internet. You can't apply for a job, you can't apply for a rental. You can't even order a burger at some restaurants without scanning the QR code.
Anyone too dangerous to be allowed any access to the internet probably just needs to be in jail. What would be the point in leaving someone to their own devices while preventing them from participating in society at all?
> You can't even order a burger at some restaurants without scanning the QR code.
I have only ever been to one restaurant where this was the case (and it was not a very good restaurant in my opinion, so I do not intend to go back there even if they have a real menu, unless they also improve their food and management), but they provided a iPad to any customer who needed it for this purpose (I did not need it, since I was not alone and was with another customer who had their own iPad). (I think it might be better to post the menu on the wall for customers to read. It might be suitable to use e-paper displays if they sometimes change but not very often; this is more reliable and does not require as much power, nor emit too much light.)
> proven to be dangerous to others if they access the internet.
What exactly would this entail? Some people nowadays seem to have a very broad conception of "safety", broad enough to cause serious concern on the part of advocates for freedom and privacy.
It will invariably be reduced to "saying mean things on the internet" by the government. I do not understand why people are so willing to give governments an ever-increasing amount of power. People never learn from history.
> Why would it makes sense to remove that process, while introducing an incredible opaque decision-making process in its place
For all the Canadian railing against Trump, this is an authoritarian play as much as many of Trump's actions.
Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example. Australia's lax control over entities able to access ISP metadata as another.
The problem is that it enables Trump further by allowing him to point at their decisions as similar examples to his own, as justification. I'm only using Trump since he seems to be the one willing to push boundaries the furthest, so if supposedly "more democratic" leaders are pushing such boundaries, then Trump will... Trump them.
I agree that it's an authoritarian play, completely. That doesn't mean I think we have an authoritarian government, but I do see the nature of the bill as authoritarian. Ideas like this should be unwelcome in Canada, period.
I was opposed to freezing bank accounts during the trucker convoys, even though I was opposed to how the convoys were performing their protests. These kinds of measures—and capabilities of governments in general—are anti-democracy in nature and in my opinion, should be rejected by everyone who values democracy.
I'm all for keeping dangerous people offline. I'm all for protecting fellow Canadians from online dangers. We can find better ways to do this, though. I'm very disappointed that such poor judgement is being used by our current government.
The worst part is that seemingly no one gets to know what the cause of the ban is, and there are so few checks or balances before the decision is acted on. It's absolutely bizarre.
> Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example.
It's not hypocritical, there's no such thing as an absolute right to freedom of speech in the EU like there is in the US. Chat Control is widely opposed in the EU and I don't agree with it, but it's not hypocritical nor inconsistent with how the EU treats freedom of expression.
Here are the limitations placed on freedom of expression by the European Convention on Human Rights:
> The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it
duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
You won't find those conditions in the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution.
This particular type of authoritarianism is primarily from the left in the west. The EU, the UK, Canada, it is the political left implementing these policies, often using them to censor right wing views (e.g., Objecting to immigration gets labelled racist -> justified censorship. Objecting to trans women in women only spaces gets labelled as hateful -> justified censorship, etc...).
> proven to be dangerous to others if they access the internet
What does this even mean? What kind of crimes can people commit using the internet that justifies bypassing due process for public safety?
There are rules on the books in Canada that allows bypassing due process to confiscate firearms from a potentially violent or mentally unstable person, but I think that is a bit — just a little bit — more justifiable as the crimes that can be committed with a gun are much more serious than the crimes you can commit with the internet. Also, the internet is almost a necessity to be a part of functioning society whereas guns are not.
Your isp emails you that they are terminating your account.
You phone gets disconnected.
You call them and helpdesk doesnt have a clue why.
You try to sign up for new services and they refuse and wont say why.
All because a politician has decided it 'reasonable' to disconnect you from the internet; and he can order complete secrecy and there's no judicial oversight.
Perhaps you showed up at the wrong protest? Note how they seized the bank accounts of protestors and even an entire small bank only a few years ago.
Let me remind everyone this again. Democracy is not an autocracy with time limits and turns. It's not a system where you elect a few individuals and hand them the power to rule over you for a few years. They are supposed to be your representatives who raise your concerns and protect your interests in a forum that takes decisions that affect all of you. Legislation like these are the small steps that convert the latter into the former. Democracy is fragile. Just electing a candidate periodically is not enough. It depends on the constant effort, vigil and activism from the citizens to safeguard it. It wont survive your apathy. As idealistic as it sounds, this burden is the true cost of living in a democracy. This is a harsh lesson that's recorded in history again and again.
Always take legislation like this seriously and hold your representatives responsible for it. Let them know that their political career in your constituency is finished for good if they support such moves. Let their political party know that they're not winning your constituency again until the damage is reversed. There's no room for subtleties and pleasantries when they're clearly showing you that they don't value your autonomy or the checks and balances on their abuse of power.
> Always take legislation like this seriously and hold your representatives responsible for it. Let them know that their political career in your constituency is finished for good if they support such moves
But it isn't. I've gone the route of writing my representatives but when most people support the measures or at least don't oppose them they can easily laugh in your face or outright lie to you, claiming that protests aren't banned when they are (e.g. covid times) and things like that.
Most people here probably called me some government/media pushed negative label just for protesting to uphold freedom/constitutional rights/human rights.
It's not that easy to advocate effectively once you realize gov/media funded propaganda permeates really well.
That was a bold statement that the children on here will no doubt downvote into oblivion as will mine. I'm tired of having this same argument over and over--just having the ability to vote for draconian shit doesn't mean you get to lord over everyone else! The power mongers in control of most Western governments are insane lunatics who use fear against hapless, low-information fools. They seem hell bent on eliminating every single basic freedom we ever had? Why? I keep hearing "neo-feudalism" but that's just a label, it's not the why. Also, why not just eliminate voting completely? Well, I mean, it's nearly a formality in many places these days already, but they like that little semblance of false legitimacy, I guess.
Democracy is fake; it's the rule of whoever controls the money, influence, media, and pulls the proper manipulation tactics to manipulate the public through fears. It was funny watching the digital ID in the UK, how they were using "porn and kids" for the left-leaning crowds, and "immigrants" for the right-leaning ones, but ultimately the result of both is the same: more control, more surveillance, and decaying freedom.
While I agree with most of this and oppose this bill, your last two lines are a mischaracterization. There is judicial oversight, but only after the order is implemented. Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors, as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today. In general, protests do not engage in torturing the local populace with 95db of air horn for 16 to 20 hours a day. The account seizure also required emergency powers.
There is not judicial oversight. You never know there was an order.
If you get into that scenario, you suspect the government cut you off, but you go to a lawyer and have literally nothing. The court will not take the case.
>econd, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors,
They seized hundreds of accounts; later had the banks terminate the bank accounts.
In fact, not only protestors but people who donated to the protest got their bank accounts seized.
>as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Protesting the government, in front of parliament is mischief? Political prisoners.
>n general, protests do not engage in torturing the local populace with 95db of air horn for 16 to 20 hours a day. The account seizure also required emergency powers.
Which was found to be unconstitutional.
But Bill C8 wont be abused by this same government? How about abuse in the future by other governments?
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors
Wrong. Many people whose accounts were frozen were family/friends who were not even at the protest.
Court found:
> The judge said the economic orders infringed on protesters' freedom of expression "as they were overbroad in their application to persons who wished to protest but were not engaged in activities likely to lead to a breach of the peace." He also concluded the economic orders violated protesters' Charter rights "by permitting unreasonable search and seizure of the financial information of designated persons and the freezing of their bank and credit card accounts."
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors, as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
"There were arrests, therefore this was not a valid protest" is a very dangerous argument to be making, and I furthermore strongly doubt that you would apply this standard consistently to causes you endorse.
> There is judicial oversight, but only after the order is implemented
In the sense that you can sue to have the order challenged? How's this different than what Trump's doing, where the government does something illegal (or at least legally dubious), and there's "judicial oversight" because aggrieved parties can sue the government?
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors, as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Were the bank accounts seized before or after the conviction?
Applying for jobs has almost entirely moved online these days. And this is just one of many such things. Does whoever wrote that bill understands that? Or do they just naively think that "it's just time out for people who break the rules".
They want to ruin the lives of those who oppose them. The Canadian Liberal government has previously attempted the same goal by de-banking protestors, in a move that the courts later ruled unconstitutional.
If there's an avenue for extrajudicial punishment it seems like every government is angling to use it. How did we wind up with such openly vindictive and unprincipled people in our governments? Like you call yourself Liberals, surely it's clear as day that such a thing isn't compatible with how you believe government should operate. You're doing this because you can't arrest them for a crime—shouldn't that give you pause?
No one got "debanked", it was a temporary freeze for a few days and for a small number of accounts. I also disagree that it was to ruin the lives of those who oppose them, the money was released back to them, that seems like an odd way to ruin someone's life. Surely the tyrannical Liberal government would have been able to do more than keep them from accessing their money for a few days if they truly wanted to ruin lives.
Let's not defend the konvoy agitators here, these were legit seditionists who were given far too much leeway to start with. Cutting off their access to crowdsourced funds was too little too late, they should have been shut down more forcefully much sooner.
Readit News
At this point authoritarian pushes are the best case scenario - I’m fearing it’s preparation for wartime.
The Internet and social media in its current form makes it easier for social groups to get larger and more intellectually and ideologically homogenous. As these groups get larger, it becomes harder for individuals to communicate across groups or think for themselves because there are various in-group moderation mechanisms (filtering, banning, ranking, deplatforming, cancel culture, etc). Eventually, the echo chambers become large enough to fight over who gets to run a nation's government. The winner turns into a government that moderates its people (like it always did before it became the government). Multiple such governments emerge around the world. This happened in cycles in the past as well, but modern technology facilitates the process.
To prevent this, we must realize two democratic principles simultaneously: "one shall have the freedom to decide what one sees and hears" and "one shall have the freedom to express whatever they like". It wasn't possible to realize both principles simultaneously in the past without a central authority because if someone is doing something in a public space, you cannot selectively filter them out. If you cover your eyes and ears, you block out not just that person, but everyone else as well. So we came up with rules for behavior in public spaces and wrote them into law. This didn't drastically raise the probability of a democratic society turning authoritarian because there were physical limits on practical group size. It was very hard to rally a large group of intellectually homogenous people. But the Internet and social media completely broke this safeguard imposed by physics. Now, echo chambers form naturally and grow rapidly.
To fix this, we must normalize not moderating or filtering content online in any centralized manner. Instead, we build user-configurable client-side content filters and ranking algorithms so that each individual can decide what they see and post, but nobody can decide what anybody else sees or posts.
We need to replace server-side content filters and ranking algorithms with offline solutions controlled by each individual on their own device. Get rid of likes and dislikes, and get rid of server-curated feeds. Have the server send a raw RSS feed of everything posted in the past day (or whatever time window, sparsely randomly sampled if there's too much) at once, then get it ranked and filtered on the user's device based on the user's preferences and viewing history, and then fetch the actual media associated with those feed entries.
This will, somewhat counterintuitively, increase social cohesion by limiting the inter-group rift between individuals and prevent the formation of large echo chambers. People will be more likely to engage with eachother in good faith. Authoritarian patterns will be more likely to naturally dissolve.
China is going to attack pearl harbour in the hopes that a sudden unexpected attack will cripple the pacific fleet and knock America out of the war. It won’t work, we’ll go through hell again. But every time these places think it will work, and they don’t factor in the fact that they are completely reliant on foreign trade for their economy.
Russia is pretty much in war economy now, they have no choice but to escalate and invade Eastern Europe. They have no chance of winning, but that never matters to crazy people.
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Illegal things are already illegal. Safety and security mechanisms already exist. We dont need additional, punitive, and opaque laws that can be abused.
They really do hate anyone who points out their hypocrisy or makes fun of them. It challenges their corrupt kickbacks directly.
I think it's easy to make a prediction of actual use cases here.
You can remove the "seem". They go specifically into that line of business to benefit from juicy corruption.
Often the new laws only affect those who are already following the laws. Those who are willing to break the laws will ignore and/or find ways around them (see: Chicago, DC, etc).
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Our desire for power feeds the Leviathan. To prevent this power must be diffuse.
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(Just to be clear, i agree this law is way too broad)
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Its also concerning to read the quote: “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation.”
Where Canadian telecommunication is almost a duopoly and had major outage a few years ago without any claims of bad actors.
This isn't the best wiki article I've ever seen but it has some examples of the US surveillance over the last century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
ICE does this with location data from mobile apps. They simply buy from a private vendor the information about where specific people are. Then they go detain them.
Some real life friends of mine are on a work crew with some migrants. ICE pulled their truck over, asked the migrants to identify themselves (with different names than they’d been using), they complied, and ICE drove off with them after detaining them.
I asked “Did they have their mobile phones with them?” “Yes.” People literally are carrying around a tracking device, voluntarily, with apps installed on them, voluntarily, that report their location to government authorities who want to detain them.
You put your philosopher making unprovable assertions against theirs and just say "well it's true I don't know very much about the redshirts and redeemers or the guatemalan civil war as such, but I do have the eternal wisdom of the philosophers."
You can in fact, read the work of a variety of scholars on the comparative study of revolutionary movements in a variety of languages and ideological bents. And what we can see is that anyone that says "it always" while being unable to even identify the majority of countries on a globe is speaking in bad faith, or else genuinely has never given their own thoughts the most cursory and basic inspection.
Everyone has the right to their own metaphysics, but it's not clear what you expect speaking ex cathedra to accomplish.
Nortel, never forget
Only when people start recognising that was all bullshit and demand their freedom can we collectively fight back. Resist your impulses to go with the propaganda and call every dissenter a conspiracy theorist.
Recognize authoritarianism is extremely common and it happens in "democratic" countries which are absolutely shielded in bureocracy.
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> hostile state actors are stealing information and gaining access to systems that are critical to our national security and public safety
If they're hostile state actors, they've got internet access from elsewhere. It's a global network.
I am not dismissing cyber-threats, but perhaps I would weigh them differently. To me, the largest issue is the cultural influence and political meddling affected by the increasingly hostile state - Canada's southern neighbour.
A much better defence would be to quarantine or outright block access to the large social media platforms, and make space for homegrown alternatives. On balance, these players do more harm than good, and they're massive vectors for foreign political interference.
Can't you?
What do you think the motivation is?
Why would it makes sense to remove that process, while introducing an incredible opaque decision-making process in its place, which totally bars anyone from knowing why they were excluded from accessing the internet? It even prevents wrongfully excluded individuals from receiving compensation.
For example, I could be cut off from the internet which I need to do my job. Say I'm unable to work for a week or two and then it's determined that I can access the internet because an error was made... Well, as far as I can tell, I'd be SOL. That doesn't seem right...
Worse still is that this seems about as technically competent as using an IP address to determine a person's location. Any serious threat vector, human or otherwise, will find other ways to access the internet or perpetuate their threat if they care to. If they're a serious threat, why wouldn't prison be a better solution than... Calling their ISP and banning them from the internet?
All of this seems very short-sighted, undemocratic, and naive.
And while the 'human or otherwise' phrase I used might seem odd (I know someone's dog isn't shit-posting on X), what I mean to say is something like... What if an LLM is posting from an unsuspecting person's computer and was placed there as a virus? Once it's cut off from that poor person's computer, it's very likely it will eventually or already be functioning from some other unsuspecting person's computer, server, or whatever other device. Their toaster. My point is that we live in an age where there are non-human agents causing harm online. The machine they operate from will not always be OpenAI's or Anthropics, and indeed, will probably rarely be so.
This was already the case with human actors, but it made much worse with the advent of AI-based agents.
Anyone too dangerous to be allowed any access to the internet probably just needs to be in jail. What would be the point in leaving someone to their own devices while preventing them from participating in society at all?
I have only ever been to one restaurant where this was the case (and it was not a very good restaurant in my opinion, so I do not intend to go back there even if they have a real menu, unless they also improve their food and management), but they provided a iPad to any customer who needed it for this purpose (I did not need it, since I was not alone and was with another customer who had their own iPad). (I think it might be better to post the menu on the wall for customers to read. It might be suitable to use e-paper displays if they sometimes change but not very often; this is more reliable and does not require as much power, nor emit too much light.)
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What exactly would this entail? Some people nowadays seem to have a very broad conception of "safety", broad enough to cause serious concern on the part of advocates for freedom and privacy.
For all the Canadian railing against Trump, this is an authoritarian play as much as many of Trump's actions.
Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example. Australia's lax control over entities able to access ISP metadata as another.
The problem is that it enables Trump further by allowing him to point at their decisions as similar examples to his own, as justification. I'm only using Trump since he seems to be the one willing to push boundaries the furthest, so if supposedly "more democratic" leaders are pushing such boundaries, then Trump will... Trump them.
I was opposed to freezing bank accounts during the trucker convoys, even though I was opposed to how the convoys were performing their protests. These kinds of measures—and capabilities of governments in general—are anti-democracy in nature and in my opinion, should be rejected by everyone who values democracy.
I'm all for keeping dangerous people offline. I'm all for protecting fellow Canadians from online dangers. We can find better ways to do this, though. I'm very disappointed that such poor judgement is being used by our current government.
The worst part is that seemingly no one gets to know what the cause of the ban is, and there are so few checks or balances before the decision is acted on. It's absolutely bizarre.
It's not hypocritical, there's no such thing as an absolute right to freedom of speech in the EU like there is in the US. Chat Control is widely opposed in the EU and I don't agree with it, but it's not hypocritical nor inconsistent with how the EU treats freedom of expression.
Here are the limitations placed on freedom of expression by the European Convention on Human Rights:
> The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
You won't find those conditions in the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution.
You are literally part of the problem. "Dangerous to others" is a meaningless phrase that can be twisted to mean anything you want.
What does this even mean? What kind of crimes can people commit using the internet that justifies bypassing due process for public safety?
There are rules on the books in Canada that allows bypassing due process to confiscate firearms from a potentially violent or mentally unstable person, but I think that is a bit — just a little bit — more justifiable as the crimes that can be committed with a gun are much more serious than the crimes you can commit with the internet. Also, the internet is almost a necessity to be a part of functioning society whereas guns are not.
... which means what? They espouse ideas "you" don't like?
Your isp emails you that they are terminating your account.
You phone gets disconnected.
You call them and helpdesk doesnt have a clue why.
You try to sign up for new services and they refuse and wont say why.
All because a politician has decided it 'reasonable' to disconnect you from the internet; and he can order complete secrecy and there's no judicial oversight.
Perhaps you showed up at the wrong protest? Note how they seized the bank accounts of protestors and even an entire small bank only a few years ago.
Always take legislation like this seriously and hold your representatives responsible for it. Let them know that their political career in your constituency is finished for good if they support such moves. Let their political party know that they're not winning your constituency again until the damage is reversed. There's no room for subtleties and pleasantries when they're clearly showing you that they don't value your autonomy or the checks and balances on their abuse of power.
But it isn't. I've gone the route of writing my representatives but when most people support the measures or at least don't oppose them they can easily laugh in your face or outright lie to you, claiming that protests aren't banned when they are (e.g. covid times) and things like that.
Most people here probably called me some government/media pushed negative label just for protesting to uphold freedom/constitutional rights/human rights.
It's not that easy to advocate effectively once you realize gov/media funded propaganda permeates really well.
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Please avoid snarky tropes like this on HN. We're trying for something different here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I can't believe that people are defending that.
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlm...
If you get into that scenario, you suspect the government cut you off, but you go to a lawyer and have literally nothing. The court will not take the case.
>econd, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors,
They seized hundreds of accounts; later had the banks terminate the bank accounts.
In fact, not only protestors but people who donated to the protest got their bank accounts seized.
>as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Protesting the government, in front of parliament is mischief? Political prisoners.
>n general, protests do not engage in torturing the local populace with 95db of air horn for 16 to 20 hours a day. The account seizure also required emergency powers.
Which was found to be unconstitutional.
But Bill C8 wont be abused by this same government? How about abuse in the future by other governments?
How would one find out information about the process, find a lawyer etc. without internet access?
Court ruled the use of Emergencies Act against convoy protests was unreasonable, violated Charter:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-federal-cou...
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors
Wrong. Many people whose accounts were frozen were family/friends who were not even at the protest.
Court found:
> The judge said the economic orders infringed on protesters' freedom of expression "as they were overbroad in their application to persons who wished to protest but were not engaged in activities likely to lead to a breach of the peace." He also concluded the economic orders violated protesters' Charter rights "by permitting unreasonable search and seizure of the financial information of designated persons and the freezing of their bank and credit card accounts."
"There were arrests, therefore this was not a valid protest" is a very dangerous argument to be making, and I furthermore strongly doubt that you would apply this standard consistently to causes you endorse.
In the sense that you can sue to have the order challenged? How's this different than what Trump's doing, where the government does something illegal (or at least legally dubious), and there's "judicial oversight" because aggrieved parties can sue the government?
> Second, the bank accounts seized did not belong to protestors, as the leaders of that siege were convicted of mischief, two of which are being sentenced today.
Were the bank accounts seized before or after the conviction?