Be afraid.

The party that thrives on spreading false fears is engineering a true reason to be afraid.  But of course, they won’t open this piece of legislation for debate, nor will they be honest to Canadians as to how it will affect us.

The package is benignly nicknamed “lawful access,” but isn’t benign.  If the Conservatives move forward with it, it would feature a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers.   

(Emphasis mine)

The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight...The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, e-mail address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.

The second prong requires Internet providers to re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance...These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions.

Having obtained customer information without court oversight and mandated Internet surveillance capabilities, the third prong creates a several new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.

Lawful access raises genuine privacy and free speech concerns, particularly given the fact the government has never provided adequate evidence on the need for it, it has never been subject to committee review, and it would cost millions to implement yet there has been no disclosure on who would actually pay for it. Given this, it is not surprising that every  privacy commissioner in Canada has signed a joint letter expressing their concerns.

Not only is the substance problematic, but the attempt to fast track lawful access virtually guarantees that it will not be fully vetted. For example, over the past few weeks there has been mounting concern that the legislation would also create new criminal liability for hyperlinking to content that incites hatred and for using anonymous or false names online.

As we cheered on countries who used social media to spread the desire for change and allowed people to organize, our own government plans to control freedom of speech here, on the Net in particular.

This is no big surprise since it has been one of the few areas where harper could not control dissent.  Social media has not been kind to him, and with good reason.  With nearly every newspaper supporting the harper regime, it has been left to the Net users to expose the serious abuses of his government and the obvious direction in which he is taking our country against the will of most Canadians.

Youtube has been especially unfriendly to the master strategist.  It is a powerful social engine due to brief messaging tightly scripted, presented with visuals.

A few months ago, several articles came out about limitations public servants are subject to during elections.  While the purpose of the legislation is to assure that public servants remain non-partisan and take a moment to assess their involvement with politics before over-stepping bounds, such limitations were deemed undemocratic, stifling public servants’ rights to be actively engaged in politics.

This access act would stifle every Canadian and do so without justification, without providing those silenced with recourse, without oversight agencies protecting individual privacy or freedom of speech rights.

Meanwhile, the harper government has just made sure it can deny access to its own doings.

In a major decision, the court decided that Canada’s Access to Information Act does not apply to the records controlled by the people at the top of the government’s power pyramid: the prime minister, cabinet ministers, and their staffs.  And though the current Conservative government promised in the 2006 election campaign to ensure that ministers’ offices would be subject to the access law, it fought that principle in court.

We can see where this is going.  The harper regime can operate in secrecy as it plans major changes that affect us all, while any person who questions or criticizes - as is not only our right, but our responsibility in a democracy - will be silenced, perhaps even charged.

With a majority, harper will slide the lawful access legislation through easily since there is no longer an opposition that can vote him down.  He owns the Senate majority as well, so forget sober second thought or in-depth review working out the legalities or fairness of the act.  Harper will bury this in another omnibus crime Bill that will allow even the little bit of debate in the House to turn to the usual harper dishonesty of criticizing opposition to parts of the Bill as criticism to the more benign parts he puts in for window dressing.


And silencing dissent, stopping the sharing of information, making criticism criminal...that's just the beginning.  There are reasons why leaders like harper want to control information and discussion at all levels.  They want to make sure we don't have any chance of opposing what he knows will be highly unpopular changes to our country, our way of life, our very rights in order to pursue his own very narrow, backwards, extremist view of what Canada should be and how Canadians should live, even at very personal levels of religion, marriage, rights, and how we spend our money.

Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em, because our days of free speech and activism on the Net are numbered.  The very people who have been resisting this type of tyranny will be the first to be silenced.