Canada Passes 'Anti-Terror' Spy Bill, Taking Away Civil Liberties

from the because-fear dept

Wed, Jun 10th 2015 4:12am — Mike Masnick

While the US is actually showing signs of (marginally) limiting the NSA's surveillance capabilities, Canada has gone in the other direction. A month ago we mentioned the push on bill C-51 and it has now passed the Senate after passing the House of Commons a few weeks ago and is now the law in Canada. It's a broad snooping charter for the government to have much greater surveillance powers and take away civil liberties for Canadians, all in the name of protecting them from terrorists. This follows on France passing similar laws and the UK pushing for something similar as well. It appears that governments around the globe are seizing on the "Keep Fear Alive" mantra to get greater and greater power to spy on citizens.

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Filed Under: c-51, canada, civil liberties, surveillance, terrorism

34 Comments

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Seegras (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 4:18am

Fascism on the rise
What we really see here is a worldwide re-arising of fascism (by any other name).

It doesn't matter whether it's "communists" or "jews" or "terrorists" that are used to justify it, these are just the scapegoats. The goal is the same, total control of the population.

Sad times.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 4:32am

Who would want to try and bomb Canada anyway?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 4:37am

History will not look too kindly on this era.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 4:41am

This and linked articles are light on the details of which civil liberties are taken away.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:08am

Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 10th, 2015 @ 4:41am
Basically all of them.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:09am

New World Order ,or am I being paranoid?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:11am

Keep Fear Alive
A page right out of Hitler's playbook.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:32am

Re: Fascism on the rise
I recommend that Canadians go out to the cemetery today and piss on your grandfather's graves. Go ahead. You know you want to.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:51am

Which civil liberties are being taken away?
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Paul Renault (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 5:57am

Making lemonade..
Now we can ask the MPs who aren't members of the Conservatives whether they'll repeal C-51 in the forthcoming election. It's be a clear choice.

Methinks the NDP will be the only option.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 6:00am

Five Eyes, what did you expect? Seems about time to use an allow list, and get rid of the block lists.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 6:13am

Harper and his pals can't go soon enough. The Liberals can follow them out the door since they all supported this bill as well.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 7:02am

Re:
From the Globe and Mail article:
Among the things CSIS agents will be legally allowed to do is to seek a warrant to break into someone’s home, seize and copy documents, “install, maintain or remove any thing” (presumably a monitoring device), or do anything else a judge agrees is reasonable in these heightened times.

Also gotta like the minor limitations:
in taking measures to reduce a threat, CSIS can’t kill or harm anyone, or “violate the sexual integrity of an individual.”
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JustShutUpAndObey, 10 Jun 2015 @ 7:39am

Re: Re:
..."in taking measures to reduce a threat, CSIS can’t kill or harm anyone, or “violate the sexual integrity of an individual.”

Note that the bill doesn't provide any penalties for violating this minor limitation.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 8:10am

Re:
Harper, to give himself more power. He has already proven he is willing to sell out Canadians for money
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 8:19am

Re:
Apparently none you need to be worried about. Move along peasant you serve no purpose here, and best not look into the eyes of your betters as you go!
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Kaden (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 8:26am

C51 is all in the name of providing as many ways as possible to eliminate dissent against Harper's natural resource policies.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 9:21am

Looks like the Orange wave is set to sweep across Canada as Harper and his cronies can't keep it in their pants.
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tqk (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 10:10am

Re:
Are you new to this webby thing? Can't follow links and read?
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tqk (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 10:14am

Re: Fascism on the rise
What we really see here is a worldwide re-arising of fascism (by any other name).

Wierd, eh? However, I hope and expect this one gets laughed out of court by our supreme santaclauses.
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You are being watched (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 10:50am

Re:
There won't be anyone left to record this era by the time it's done.
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Irving, 10 Jun 2015 @ 10:52am

Canadian mainsream reporting
It seems Canadian media have already received their orders from the PMO - there's not a mention of this on any of the major news websites.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 11:28am

'to get greater and greater power to spy on citizens'

and the thing is, this is exactly what it's all about! this is exactly what the various governments wanted to do all along! they haven't had the slightest interest in trying to stop terrorist attacks and they no full well that they wont get even marginal information from listening in on all the phone calls, reading all the mail, etc etc. the whole aim is to be able to know what every single ordinary person is doing, saying, thinking, writing and where they are going and who they are meeting.this is total bullshit about wanting to stop terrorists, they are far too sneaky for this to have any hope in catching them. as us ordinary people have nothing to hide, the government can now find out everything about us and the most likely reason is in case we are earning more money that we say and are not paying that extra bit in tax! it doesn't matter that the likes of McDonalds, and Amazon pay less than a guy on permanent disability, despite earnings hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, it's too much like hard work for the IRS to go after them, but us, it's a walk in the park!!
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 12:14pm

Re: Re:
Legally allowed to seek a warrant from a judge? This aspect actually seems pretty good compared to other countries.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 1:03pm

Re: Re:
How's that for horrifying, they actually felt it necessary to make it explicitly clear that the agents aren't allowed to kill or rape someone when they break in. You don't include something like that unless it's happened in the past, possibly several times.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 1:07pm

Re: Canadian mainsream reporting
Of course, if you want to control a population, control the information they have access to, and therefor the discourse. Any good would-be-tyrant makes taking control of the press one of their top priorities.
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tqk (profile), 10 Jun 2015 @ 1:11pm

Re: Canadian mainsream reporting
Maybe they're all just in jail. I see nothing on TO Star, CBC, or NP.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 2:00pm

Re: Re: Fascism on the rise
These santa clauses have saved our asses ubder Adolf Harpy majority governemnt...only 4 months and he and his creationist-lets-bomb-iran-so-israel can join the fun, causing a domino effect where other nuclear powers allied or favourable to Iran gets involved. The Russian Generals who spoke not under anonymity, they don't do that thing much over there, saying attacking Iran means WWIII and the end of the human race as long ago as 2007 when tere was a mini revolt in the highest ranking army/navy/air force officials wanting to conduct no more war for Israel. That pipeline which is the other reason for going into afghanistan was a) secure opium poppies, to make meds on the cheap by pharmaceutical companies, not necessarily big pharma, most opiates one can be scripted around these places either comes from the large australian poppy fields made for such purposes, afghanistan, the golden triangle..but that one much less than it used to and finally to resume heroin production to keep the populace sleeping it awau.

b) is that ridiculous TAPI pipeline which was the prime reason before 911 and all that when the US was negotiating withthe afhgan government for the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India pipeline...14 years later and none of it was built. Read Pepe Escobar's Empire of Chaos book to get a feel of all the oil and gas dominating every other industries, yes, even silicon valley and the like. from a globetrotting journalist who has friends in almost every country out there, and some pretty high sourcs, but he protected his sources and never got shit from the US gov, true he doesn't live in north america, now, but he did for years
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AnonCow, 10 Jun 2015 @ 2:43pm

At least we had 9/11 to rationalize our self-destruction of the Constitution. What's their excuse?
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Kronomex, 10 Jun 2015 @ 3:21pm

Doubleplusgood.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2015 @ 4:26pm

Re: Canadian mainsream reporting
I heard of it on CBC Radio One news a couple times in the morning then the reports were cut out as "new info came in". Emailed CBC about it and that was their answer. CBC is a very neutral (or was) public broadcaster, probably the best chart in the world. Problem over there is they are being screwed with with budget cuts every year since Harper got his majority. so the CBC has had a slight anti-conservative slant for a couple years and now its reserved...and it you want to hear the really important shit going on, gotta listen to the 4 and 5am news, where many many things get mentioned to disappear in the following days unless other media picks it up. Like how people in that retardel cold winter we had 2 years ago in Canada, remember the Polar Vortex shit? lol, to me it was just winter as it should be in my area of canada, when I was a kid under 10, temperature over 25 in the summer was really rare, and glacial days where schools get closed (they only shut down them down when the temperature hits -31 without child factor here).

Also, watch out Duceppe is back as chief ot he BQ, as the fal of the bloc is mostly whatgave harper is majority, not the NDP alone, it was a combo of two, and in the last election, the BQ in Quebec(obviously they dont have seats in other provinces) had 23 to 25% of popular vote, but since we work with the outdated british parliamentarism system of first pass the post (most counties won, nevermind the popular vote, Harper got away with very slim minorities very seldom with his evil plans from 2006 to 2011 when a vote of no confidence was voted in. So if the Bloc is back just moderately, I live in one of the ridings wth a BQ parliamentarian, got in as NDP and when they started to remove all socialism from the party constitution he said fuck these poseurs and joined the BQ and it's 3 other members. The person who caused all this debacle Maria Ourahni or something, she's a canadian iraqi who lives here since al ong time, and if the rhetoric that women have to wear burkas to prevent evil spirits inside men like lust to take control of them, man arab, (i mostly met Lebanese and Syrian girls (when they were still our friends and became our enemies for no reason, so now people like her..i think was able to get her citizenship but any would be Syrian wishing to leave for Canada...nope, even if you have a Master's Degree in anything oreven a PhD, Canada will refuse you, same with Iran. Canada has changed so drastically under that, i'm out of insulting true epithets right now
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Gary Mont (profile), 11 Jun 2015 @ 4:11pm

Five Eyes pulls the wool again because... terrorists!!
"Canada Passes 'Anti-Terror' Spy Bill..."

Well geez, its about time.

After all, Canada has been wracked with literally hundreds of suicide bombers and dozens of ISIS assaults and beheadings, on an almost daily basis for decades now.

The country is a smoking ruin and the population devastated, wandering aimlessly through the debris of their once symmetrically perfect igloo cities.

No longer does one hear the old familiar refrain of "Ey! Howdy Ey!", among the homeless, war-torn remnants of that once happy land.

Its about time the forces of Goodness and Light had some laws with teeth to ferret out these huge nests of evil murdering muzlums, hiding under the now smoke-stained and burnt beds of the FUD frightened Canadian People.

/s

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Gary Mont (profile), 12 Jun 2015 @ 11:36am

Re:
"At least we had 9/11 to rationalize our self-destruction of the Constitution. What's their excuse?"

Orders from Britain - the head of the Five Eyes - to help normalize the coming martial law environment of the USA and stem the flow of Americans seeking asylum in Canada.

Canada is merely the "Tech Resource and Training" wing of Five Eyes, and like New Zealand (the Dirty Tricks and Wetwork wing), has to do whatever its told to do, regardless of the cost to the people of that nation.

Gotta stick to the Plan Stan. Can't kill the Internet without first establishing North American Martial Law ye know.

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Gary Mont (profile), 12 Jun 2015 @ 11:39am

Re: Re: Canadian mainsream reporting
In Canada, the term "Free Press" is a trademark label, not a descriptive designation.

Canada is a Dominion, not a Democracy, and its citizens have the rights to obey the law and die in war.
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