It's the game of Go. Also known as baduk, weiqi, igo. It's a board game known for being pretty old.
kbal
joined 2 years ago
I keep expecting that at any moment the prime minister will become aware of what ended up in the text, the government will back down in shame, and the bill will be withdrawn and never seen again. But even if they do recognize the need to do that — as previous governments did with similar legislation that wasn't as appallingly bad as this bill — I suppose it will take a few months. Let it be a constant annoyance to them until that time.
You're telling me it's illegal to construct an elaborate ruse to deceptively persuade people to have sex with you? Makes sense I guess, but that's not what I learned from every single 20th-century TV sitcom.
All right well it was nice chatting with you. I had some strong feelings about C-2 and the discussion has left me more confident that I didn't miss anything, that it's just as bad as it looks.
So it would appear that there is already some ability to find phone locations without a warrant already.
Yeah, I imagine there is some kind of exemption to whatever legal convention, regulation, or perceived risk of liability normally prevents them handing out that information to anyone who asks which applies in case of medical emergencies. Perhaps somewhere in the regulation pertaining to e911, at a guess. But mobile phones are of course are already a privacy disaster as they operate now. Society is still in the process of becoming accustomed to that. I imagine you're probably aware that the advice not to bring a phone if you go anywhere near a protest march is now commonly heard.
The phone company is of course happy to assist law enforcement — and anyone who can convincingly impersonate law enforcement — in any way they can get away with, so long as it doesn't cost them money. That is why all the provisions in C-2 protecting and providing new opportunities for the "voluntary provision of information" are themselves consequential. What they're not permitted to share with the cops, they are definitely not permitted to simply sell to data brokers either — but for some types of data it's law enforcement that has been restrained in what they're allowed to ask for, not the telcos that were prevented giving it away. That's what creates the situation you mention with data brokers, which new privacy law could usefully address.
When it comes to Facebook and Twitter, I believe that one way or another the surveillance advertising business model ought to be outlawed. But that's another story.
Medical data is one place where there are some serious laws about privacy, I grant you. It's a rare exception to the general rule. Some of the problems you perceive to be about privacy law seem to be more the result of simple incompetence and ignorance on the part of whoever designed e.g. the immigration website you were trying to use. It seems much like the familiar situation where online banking software won't work on custom Android ROMs or their website refuses to load on Firefox — they will claim it's for the benefit of your security and privacy but you should not believe them.
My feelings about elected officials do not come into it except to be dismayed that any of them would come up with or vote for such legislation. I voted NDP due to having some admiration for their local candidate if that means anything by way of answering your questions.
As I understand it (and as other commentators e.g. La Presse have confirmed) some of the new data collection powers in the bill require a warrant, others do not. Phone location data appears to sometimes fall on the "not" side along with anything voluntarily shared, "subscriber information", and other metadata. There are many other parts besides which look problematic. But it's Part 15 which for me is the worst.
The relevant expertise I have is in telecom and computer technology. I was around for the "crypto wars" in the 1990s, the previous big push towards making secure communications illegal in the USA. The good guys won, that time, and as a result people today can communicate safely with friends and family around the world using apps like Signal. Aside from all other problems with this bill, whatever in it alarms me and compels so many others to decry it, for me it's part 15 that exemplifies the kind of egregious and unjustifiable attempt to do away with privacy and security I never thought I'd see in Canada.
If an online fentanyl retailer wants to "hide behind an international border" they will presumably pick one that is not party to the treaty. As is often the case, the criminal bogeymen used to justify new intrusions upon privacy will have the easiest time evading them. It will be the rest of us who suffer the consequences. The new opioids are by their nature easily-smuggled, and determined people will continue to have ways to gain access to them. No feasible amount of totalitarian police state oppression is really going to change that. Other approaches seem more promising.
Other approaches to fighting off the sickness that is Meta also seem more advisable. Consult Cory Doctorow for ideas.
Certainly we do sometimes need cooperation between nations in law enforcement. Perhaps in some areas even more of it than we already have. There is no need for it to come at the expense of our privacy, security, and freedom from unwarranted cross-border surveillance — I think the amount of that we already have is sufficient.
If it collapses due to the whole country having been blown to bits by Israel that could also be somewhat inconvenient for people in Iran.
I feel like you are probably right about housing. It's far from the only problem in that industry, but misguided and convoluted zoning laws sure do contribute to our woes. In many places it seems to me that things like minimum parking space requirements, building code problems, and restrictions on mixed residential/commercial development do make it illegal to build well-designed neighbourhoods. I've seen one ambitious cooperative housing project in particular that was stopped in its tracks because of such things.
On the other hand we are not really burdened with a surplus of thorny privacy laws that make our lives difficult. We do not even have anything much like the GDPR. Rather than being a growing burden on law enforcement, electronic communications and new tech have already given the spies and the cops more power than they've ever had before to collect information about us all in ways that would've been unimaginable in centuries past. Automated license plate readers. Mass Internet data collection. Social media. Surveillance cameras everywhere. Face recognition software. Credit cards. Satellites. Stinger. Automobile telemetry. Trackable cards instead of tokens for the subway. Bugs and wiretaps that are undetectable. Data brokers. And so on. Meanwhile, which new data privacy laws do you object to?
There is an urgent need for more housing. There is no urgent need to give US law enforcement the ability to get location data from my phone without judicial approval through a fully-automated system that the telecom was ordered to install and prohibited from telling anyone about.
The situation is more politically complicated as it relates to international treaties than one could appreciate from simply reading the bill. Not being party to the treaties it seems designed to enable does not strike me as a "cost" to be avoided. I think Citizen Lab did a good job (as they always do) in writing about that. See part 2, in which they explain how one such treaty could leave people "vulnerable to arbitrary and abusive data collection practices." The references they provide in support look rather convincing.
As a whole, the 2AP’s proposed method of expediting higher volumes of cross-border sharing of evidence is by eliminating or diminishing human rights safeguards, including the obligation to obtain prior, independent judicial authorization when seizing private information and sharing it with foreign law enforcement authorities. Rather than “establishing high standards, the protocol prioritizes law enforcement access at almost every turn.”
The convenient data sharing with foreign law enforcement in combination with the unprecedented new powers for CSIS to spy on everyone — aside from being out of place buried in the middle of a bill ostensibly about border security — is a bizarre and sudden departure from the country's previous level of respect for human rights and I'm mystified as to why you're trying to defend it.
The secret of how to do strong encryption is out, since 1991. You can't erase it from everyone's minds. Criminals can not be stopped from using it by passing laws against it. Its only law-abiding people who will be made unsafe by that.