Protecting Children from Internet Predators (Bill C30) Critics Labeled Pro-Child Porn

[yeti]

Online surveillance critics accused of supporting child porn
CBC News, 13 Feb 2012

Critics of a bill that would give law enforcement new powers to access Canadians' electronic communications are aligning themselves with child pornographers, Canada's public safety minister says.

"He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers," Vic Toews said of Liberal public safety critic Francis Scarpaleggia during question period on Monday, after Scarpaleggia asked about a bill expected to be tabled Tuesday.

The "Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other acts" appeared Monday on the parliamentary website that lists bills scheduled to be introduced.


Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the lawful access bills
will 'bring our laws into the 21st century and provide police
with the lawful tools we need.' (Canadian Press)

The bill is expected to contain provisions from previous similar bills that have raised the concerns of privacy watchdogs and consumer advocates. Those "lawful access" provisions would:

• Require internet service providers to give subscriber data to police and national security agencies without a warrant, including names, unlisted phone numbers and IP addresses.
• Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police.
• Allow police to get warrants to obtain information transmitted over the internet and data related to its transmission, including locations of individuals and transactions.
• Allow courts to compel other parties to preserve electronic evidence.

Toews, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais are scheduled to make an announcement at 12:30 p.m. ET Tuesday that will likely be the introduction of the new bill.
P.O.V.

Scarpaleggia alleged during question period Monday that the government is "preparing to read Canadians' emails and track their movements through cellphone signals, in both cases without a warrant."

He questioned whether the government could be trusted with such "sweeping powers" and suggested they could be misused to intimidate Canadians gathering to protest issues such as a pipeline or pension cuts.

Toews responded that every province supports the bill and similar legislation was first introduced by the Liberal government when it was in power, before the Conservatives were elected.

"As technology evolves, many criminal activities, such as the distribution of child pornography, become much easier," he added. "We are proposing … measures to bring our laws into the 21st century and provide police with the lawful tools we need."

He then went on to make the statement suggesting Scarpaleggia was aligning himself with child pornographers.

It's not the first time Toews has painted critics of lawful access as aiding the makers of child pornography, said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who has raised his own concerns about lawful access.

On Twitter, Geist posted a link to a Feb. 3 tweet from Toews that read, "Lawful access will aid child porn investigations. I call on the NDP to stop making things easier for predators and support these measures." He also referred to a similar Toews remark on Nov. 15 that suggested opposition to lawful access amounted to support for both child porn and organized crime.

Anticipating the reintroduction of lawful access legislation, many privacy and consumer advocates and opposition politicians, including the federal, provincial and territorial privacy commissioners, have been speaking out and lobbying against the proposals recently.

Many have expressed particular concerns about the provision that would require internet service providers to hand police subscriber data without a warrant. While the Conservative government has likened this to information available from a phone book, critics say it could be used to get far more information about law-abiding citizens.

For example, Geist said it could indeed be used indirectly to track Canadians' movements through their cellphone signals as Scarpaleggia alleges. That's because technology exists to scan for the identification numbers of cellphones nearby, and subscriber data from wireless providers would be able to link those numbers to the names and addresses of individuals.

"All without court oversight," he added in an email.

[FastTadpole]

Thanks yeti. I was asked about this by a mate a few minutes ago. This Bill, of course, has little to do with protecting the Children from Internet Predators.

An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts
is also known as Bill C-30 and Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act
http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISInfo/BillDeta...Id=5375610

Full Bill Text
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/...Id=5380965

  C-30_1.pdf (Size: 542.6 KB / Downloads: 14)

Reading it now...

This jumped out at me at a first glance skimmage of the 110 page document.
“data” means representations, including signs, signals or symbols, that are capable of being understood by an individual or processed by a computer system or other device;

So really that could encompass anything and everything when defined in such obtuse legal terminology. Books, your heartbeat, financial transaction records, CCTV recordings of children going to school, medical history, direct or indirect action with any device, abstracted entity or person ...

This looks suspect but requires a bit more digging on my/our part:

23. Personal information, as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, that is provided under subsection 16(1) or 17(1) is deemed, for the purposes of section 7.5 and subsections 9(2.1) to (2.4) of that Act, to be disclosed under subparagraph 7(3)(c.1)(i) or (ii), and not under paragraph 7(3)(i), of that Act. This section operates despite the other provisions of Part 1 of that Act.

"Video Link", "Arrest Warrant" and "Examination of Place or Site" have been amended to be redefined as follows:

(2) For the purpose of determining the probative value of a record or a copy of a record admitted in evidence under this Act, the trier of fact may examine the record or copy, receive evidence orally or by affidavit, or by a certificate or other statement pertaining to the record in which a person attests that the certificate or statement is made in conformity with the laws that apply to a state or entity, whether or not the certificate or statement is in the form of an affidavit attested to before an official of the state or entity, including evidence as to the circumstances in which the data contained in the record or copy was written, stored or reproduced, and draw any reasonable inference from the form or content of the record or copy.

More to come on this one.

A Conservative bill can slide right through, if they want it to, with their majority in the House and Senate... save for a challenge from the Supreme Court of Canada.

[FastTadpole]

Quote:How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists
from the not-as-simple-as-you-might-think dept

There's proposed legislation in the US (sponsored by Lamar Smith) and in Canada (sponsored by Vic Toews) and in the UK that uses various flimsy justifications for the mass collection of data on telecommunications users. The data covered by these proposals varies, but includes things like URLs, phone calls, text/instant/email messages, and other forms of communication. Some of this proposed legislation deals with communication metadata, e.g., sender, recipient, time, etc.; some of it deals with communication content, e.g., the full text of messages.

I'm going to gloss over the specifics for two reasons: first, they've been covered exhaustively elsewhere, and second, I think it's an absolute certainty that whatever these proposals contain, the next ones will contain more.

The putative reasons given for these proposals are the usual Four Horseman of the Infocalypse: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers. One would think, given the hysteria being whipped up by the proponents of these bills, that one could hardly walk down the street without being offered raw heroin by a grenade-throwing child pornographer carrying currency from 19 different countries.

Of course, everyone who's actually studied terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers and money launderers in the context of telecommunications knows full well that nothing in these bills will actually help deal with them. The very bad people who are seriously into these pursuits are not stupid, and they're not naive: they use firewalls, encryption, and tunneling. They use strong operating systems and robust application software. They use rigorous procedures guided by a strong sense of self-preservation and appropriate paranoia. They're not very likely to be caught by any of the measures in these bills because they'll (a) read the text and (b) evade the enumerated measures.

Yes, there are occasional exceptions: every now and then, a clueless newbie or a careless dilettante turns up when they're caught. And of course when that happens, there's always a press conference announcing the event, and many claims that it's a "major blow against crime" and a flood of self-congratulatory press releases. But it doesn't mean anything, except that someone was either stupid...or careless...or was set up.

The unpleasant reality that these bills are trying to avoid is that catching very bad people requires diligence, patience, expertise and intelligence, aka "competent police work." There's no substitute and there are no shortcuts. This means that these bills will achieve very few of their stated goals; that is, the benefit to society from them will be minimal, if any.

But what about the cost?

I don't mean the financial cost, although that will be high -- much higher than those proposing such legislation are prepared to admit; I mean the cost to society as a whole.

If such legislation passes, then everyone will know that every ISP is building a database -- a highly useful database for very bad people. It's the sort of thing that some very bad people have been trying to construct for years, often at considerable expense and effort. How very nice of someone else to build it for them, saving them the cost and trouble -- because they, and/or their agents, will of course target it for acquisition. And given the parade of security breaches and dataloss incidents we see on a daily basis, it's certain they'll get it. (My bet is that they'll get it before it's even finished. Any takers?)

There's an old military saying -- a bit of inter-service trash talk: "The Air Force builds weapons; the Navy builds targets".

Politicians who propose such measures appear to be thinking that they're building a weapon -- a weapon that law enforcement agencies can use to pursue people who've committed, or are suspected of committing, crimes. But they're not. They're building a target. They're building the mother lode for stalkers, pedophiles, spammers, identity thieves, child pornographers, blackmailers, extortionists, and yes -- terrorists. A Techdirt story just a few days ago gave some rather creepy examples of what Target's data mining can do...and they're just trying to sell you stuff. Imagine what very bad people are capable of, given far richer data and the rather obvious inclination to break the law at will.

What's worse than building a target? Telling everyone you're building a target. What's worse than telling everyone you're building a target? Telling everyone where it is. What's worse than telling everyone where it is? Telling them what's in it. Yet that's exactly what these bills would do: force the construction of a target, inform everyone that it exists, where it is, and what's in it.

I'm sure that the very bad people these bills allegedly target are delighted. I'll bet they're having a hard time not expressing their enthusiastic support. But my guess is that most of them will heed Napoleon's sage advice: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

I'm not the only one who's observed that these databases are targets, not weapons. So has Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian:

"This is going to be like the Fort Knox of information that the hackers and the real bad guys will want to go after. This is going to be a gold mine. [...] The government will say that they can protect the data, and they can encrypt it. Are you kidding me? The bad guys are always one step ahead."

But this is not the worst of it -- that is, the certainty that very bad people will find ways to acquire these databases and to correlate them with each other and with still more databases isn't the endgame.

Particularly talented intruders will not only get it, they'll monitor it in real time. How do you feel about someone knowing where you bank, that you've made three phone calls to stores today, and that you have a Visa card with the following number that you just used from a hotel room 300 miles from home? How do you feel about the web browsing of your teenage daughter being observed by someone who's also reading her instant messages and listening to her VOIP calls, and has the IP address she's using in her college dorm room?

And even this is STILL not the worst of it. Given the rampant Internet and computer illiteracy that we see every day out of law enforcement, private investigators, journalists, and others around the world -- such as the clueless people behind these bills -- it's only going to be a short time until "the logs say X" becomes semantically equivalent in the vernacular to "X is true". And it is at that point that some of the more talented very bad people won't just acquire this data: they'll modify it.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2012022...ists.shtml