statism watch

Remember when Tony Clement hung up on the CBC’s Search Engine during some rather pointed questioning by Jesse Brown? It would appear that public accountability is not one of this Ministry’s strong suits.

Flashback: Security guards stop MPs, students from distributing fair use flyers at Toronto copyright townhall | Can The Public Be Heard On Copyright Issues? | Copyright Consultation Launches: Time For Canadians To Speak Out | Third stab at copyright law ‘reform’ to kick off with consultations | Time to slay Canadian file-sharing myths | Canadian copyright lobbyists leaned on “independent” researchers to change report on file-sharing | Think tank plagiarizes, pulls report on Canadian piracy | Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets | Latest Round of Closed-Door ACTA Copyright Negotiations Wrap Up | Digital rights groups sue for access to secret ACTA treaty | Critics waging a cyber offensive to fight copyright changes | Canadian Industry Minister lies about Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up | The Canadian DMCA: Check the Fine Print | Government ready to drop copyright bomb | Transparency needed on ACTA | Revamped copyright law targets electronic devices | New Attempt to Align Canada’s Copyright Act with USA Coming Soon | Canadian DMCA To Be Introduced Tomorrow Morning?

CBC News
August 28, 2009

Industry Canada has dismissed allegations that it is altering submissions from the public to its website on the current copyright reform consultations.

The government ministry has sent a letter to Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor who is closely tracking the consultations, that counters some of the allegations he made on his blog Thursday.

“I read with some disappointment the allegations posted [on] your blog that you think the government could be altering submissions to our site,” wrote Darren Cunningham, director of communications for Industry Minister Tony Clement. “I can assure you and anyone who reads your blog the suggestion is patently false.”

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Alternative points of view at the ‘industry townhall’? Obviously, that’s not permitted under this regime. Hell, they handcuffed Geri Hall, comedienne and star of This Hour of 22 Minutes when she stood up, in character, to quiz Harper a year ago. That might have been embarrassing. Moreso if the townhall in Toronto were allowed to tilt against the government and industry position. You’ve got until September 13 to let the Conservative administration know what you think about their copyright ‘reforms’.

Flashback: Can The Public Be Heard On Copyright Issues? | Copyright Consultation Launches: Time For Canadians To Speak Out | Third stab at copyright law ‘reform’ to kick off with consultations | Time to slay Canadian file-sharing myths | Canadian copyright lobbyists leaned on “independent” researchers to change report on file-sharing | Think tank plagiarizes, pulls report on Canadian piracy | Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets | Latest Round of Closed-Door ACTA Copyright Negotiations Wrap Up | Digital rights groups sue for access to secret ACTA treaty | Critics waging a cyber offensive to fight copyright changes | Canadian Industry Minister lies about Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up | The Canadian DMCA: Check the Fine Print | Government ready to drop copyright bomb | Transparency needed on ACTA | Revamped copyright law targets electronic devices | New Attempt to Align Canada’s Copyright Act with USA Coming Soon | Canadian DMCA To Be Introduced Tomorrow Morning?

Michael Geist, MichaelGeist.ca
August 28, 2009

The Canadian Federation of Students has issued a press release disclosing a disturbing incident just prior to last night’s townhall in Toronto. CFS says that students attempted to distribute a flyer outlining the organization’s position on fair copyright outside the townhall. The students involved were approached by private security guards who threatened to remove them from the hotel if they continued to do so. The CFS decided to distribute the flyers specifically because of the limited number of speaking slots and the fear that they would not be called upon to speak (they were not). It is hard to understand how distributing relevant materials outside a public, government-run townhall is viewed as grounds for ejection. As the chair of CFS-Ontario notes, “it is ironic that while students are concerned that new legislation may allow copyright owners to lock up information, the government is locking up its own consultations.”

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Made some mistakes? Smoked a joint in the past? Got bad credit? Sorry, you are no longer eligible for employment. No need to do a background check any more – potential employers of all sorts will be able to just swipe your card. For that matter, you’re going to be asked to produce it on a daily basis - the police services across Britain have placed an order for handheld ID scanners: they’re turning the country into a prison camp. And since your passport details will be on your enhanced ID card as well, you can forget about travelling: you’re on the no-fly list. So what? Some may say – I’m not a criminal. Well, get ready to be treated like one, regardless.

Flashback: UK national ID card cloned in 12 minutes | Alberta Hutterites need enhanced driver’s licence photos: top court | US: REALID tracking chip ID card resurrected by PASS initiative | India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards | BC Bars swipe patron IDs, collect data | UK: Passport details to be kept on ID register despite card U-turn | Incoming CSIS chief to seek biometric data at border | Ontario’s high-tech driver’s licences pose privacy risk: watchdog | Police will use new device to take fingerprints in street, vendors say face scanning next

Ian Grant, ComputerWeekly.com
August 28, 2009

Privacy advocates have reacted angrily to reports that the government plans to link national identity records to criminal records for background checks on people who work with children and vulnerable people.

Up to 11 million such workers could be affected immediately if the plan goes ahead.

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of privacy advocates NO2ID, said the move was consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy to create so-called volunteers for national ID cards.

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Flashback: ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Should Obama Control the Internet? | Cybersecurity law would give feds unprecedented net control | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Declan McCullagh, CNET
August 28, 2009

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

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Flashback: ACLU Sues US Department of Homeland Security over Border Laptop Searches | Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets | Revamped copyright law targets electronic devices

Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post
August 28, 2009

Obama Officials Say Oversight Will Grow

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.

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As a result of commitments to the IMF, Canada is, for the first time in a decade, issuing bonds in US currency. The funds then raised will be placed in the EFA. That’s just one aspect of how Canada is tied into the international monetary system. And as numerous media stories from the past year have made clear, the engineered economic crisis is to be used a pretext to accrue more power to centralized global banking systems. For students of history, economic entanglements constituted the Europe’s initial steps on the road to integration as well, back when it was judged counterproductive to inform the peoples of Europe of this plan. Altiero Spinelli, an early architect of the EU, admitted his United States of Europe ‘would not come about democratically,  but would have to be implemented gradually without the peoples of Europe grasping what was happening until they were presented with a constitution’. Which was precisely what happened. Hey, do you remember any kind of national consultation on Canada joining the IMF? No? Thought not.

Flashback: Central bank of Canada stands ready to inflate currency in response to strong loonie | Boost Bank of Canada powers: Carney | Central banks to take off ‘training wheels’ | Central Bank of Canada ‘considering’ regulatory changes, ‘continuous private liquidity creation’ | Obama Regulatory Reform Plan Officially Establishes Banking Dictatorship In United States | Bank of Canada poised to print money to buy bonds | Harper Pledges to Double Funding to International Bank at Americas Summit | Which Banks Will Rule? | World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | IMF emergency fund is doubled to $500bn, Northern Rock bank granted $14bn bailout | How realistic is a North American currency? | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Central banks continue inflating global economy | Central Banks Move to Transfer Wealth from Taxpayers to Banks | Fraser Institute: The Case for the Amero

Andrew Willis, The Globe and Mail
August 28, 2009

Canada plans to raise up to $3-billion in its first U.S.-dollar denominated bonds in more than a decade, as the federal government prepares to pay for commitments made to the International Monetary Fund.

The federal Finance department announced Friday that it will issue U.S. dollar debt “in the near future,” and underwriters have been chosen for the financing. RBC Dominion Securities, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are leading the sale

This bond sale is for a maximum of $3-billion, sources say. When the money is raised, it is earmarked for what’s known as the government’s Exchange Fund Account, or EFA. That fund supplements the country’s foreign exchange reserves, and also meets Canada’s pledge to support the International Monetary Fund, which typically lends in American dollars.

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