Canada's Tories go after Internet Crime

[Solauren]

Tory bills look for greater access to Internet activity, user info

OTTAWA - The Conservative government wants to give police greater powers to eavesdrop on Canadians in cyberspace.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan introduced two bills Thursday that would give law enforcement much greater access to Internet communications and the personal details of subscribers.

The proposed legislation would:

-enable police to access information on an Internet subscriber, such as name, street address and email address, without having to get a search warrant.

-force Internet service providers to freeze data on their hard drives to prevent subscribers under investigation from deleting potentially important evidence.

-require Telecom companies to invest in technology that allows for the interception of Internet communications.

-allow police to remotely activate tracking devices already embedded in cellphones and certain cars, to help with investigations.

-allow police to obtain data about where Internet communications are coming from and going to.

-make it a crime to arrange with a second person over the Internet the sexual exploitation of a child.

Nicholson, flanked at a news conference by police officers, said the changes were necessary to keep up with the changing times.

"Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st century tools for police to effectively investigate crime," he said.

Van Loan added: "The legislation contains important tools to allow our law enforcement community and our intelligence officials to combat crime and terrorism in the face of rapidly evolving communications technologies."

Privacy and civil liberties advocates have raised alarms over the changes, particularly the measure to remove the obligation of police to obtain a warrant before getting personal information about a Canadian Internet user.

Some Internet service providers willingly gave over such information to police in the past, but others insisted on warrants first, which raised the ire of law enforcement officials.

The new regime would allow a select number of law enforcement officials to see the data, and would conduct regular audits on how the information is being viewed and accessed.

I have mixed opinions of this bill. I'll repost the points and give my thoughts on them

-enable police to access information on an Internet subscriber, such as name, street address and email address, without having to get a search warrant.

I actually have no problem with this. Unless you are insanely careful online, that information is all on the internet to be found anway. This will just save time when it comes to figuring how who someone is to get the warrant to go talk to them, if needed.

-force Internet service providers to freeze data on their hard drives to prevent subscribers under investigation from deleting potentially important evidence.

Okay, this I have a problem with. As far as I know (I've never worked at an ISP), it's impossible for ISP Customer to erase information from a ISP by remote, in such a way to prevent recovery. I'm not ever sure if that's possible at all without physically damaging the hard drive.
However, I'm not sure how to handle this otherwise. A search warrant should allow the police to obtain the original storage medium, should it not?

-require Telecom companies to invest in technology that allows for the interception of Internet communications.

Does that technology even exist? Is that even needed once you know which user you are dealing with?

-allow police to remotely activate tracking devices already embedded in cellphones and certain cars, to help with investigations.

I have no problem with this. This could save lives. However, why it's in an internet related bill is beyond me.

-allow police to obtain data about where Internet communications are coming from and going to.

I have no problem with this. This would greatly help in alot of online investigations. i.e Tracking down people that have the expertise to diguise their online origin.

-make it a crime to arrange with a second person over the Internet the sexual exploitation of a child.

I thought this would already be a crime. It's still conspiracy.

[Uraniun235]

As far as I know (I've never worked at an ISP), it's impossible for ISP Customer to erase information from a ISP by remote, in such a way to prevent recovery. I'm not ever sure if that's possible at all without physically damaging the hard drive.

I'm guessing this is like a little free website provided by the ISP? I don't think there'd be a way to do so reliably - you could fill all your allocated storage with garbage and hope that the system writes data to the same place your data was last time, but that's not guaranteed.

You don't need to physically damage the hard drive in order to prevent recovery of data - all you need to do is overwrite the data.

Does that technology even exist? Is that even needed once you know which user you are dealing with?

Yes, this technology exists, though requiring telecoms to front the cost for it rather than law enforcement seems like a raw deal to me.

[Phantasee]

-allow police to remotely activate tracking devices already embedded in cellphones and certain cars, to help with investigations.

I have a huge problem with this one, and it's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to get a new phone. It's one of those cases where it's in the public's long term interest to limit police powers. It's excessive and over reaching, IMHO. Unless they get a warrant, with the same procedure as getting a warrant for a wiretap and other surveillance, they shouldn't have the power to remotely track anyone's movements, no matter how 'criminal' they appear to be.

[Koolaidkirby]

my problems with most internet crackdowns are that they A: expect ISP's to monitor their users web access, which is stupid, we dont make phone companies monitor their users for potential illegal activities and then cut off their access do we?. and B: letting people monitor what your doing without a warrant, if you think someones doing something illegal, you should have to get a warrant to look through their stuff, period. just like how you need a warrant to search someones house + tap their phones, you should need a warrant to monitor someones internet traffic.

[Sephirius]

my problems with most internet crackdowns are that they A: expect ISP's to monitor their users web access, which is stupid, we dont make phone companies monitor their users for potential illegal activities and then cut off their access do we?. and B: letting people monitor what your doing without a warrant, if you think someones doing something illegal, you should have to get a warrant to look through their stuff, period. just like how you need a warrant to search someones house + tap their phones, you should need a warrant to monitor someones internet traffic.

What he said. Fuck this bill. If this shit happens I'm going on Tor fulltime. Isn't it ironic that this bill is coming at the same time that Iran is doing similar things to find 'dissidents'?

[Edi]

my problems with most internet crackdowns are that they A: expect ISP's to monitor their users web access, which is stupid, we dont make phone companies monitor their users for potential illegal activities and then cut off their access do we?. and B: letting people monitor what your doing without a warrant, if you think someones doing something illegal, you should have to get a warrant to look through their stuff, period. just like how you need a warrant to search someones house + tap their phones, you should need a warrant to monitor someones internet traffic.

QFT. As well, the suggestions have been made with absolutely zero thought put into implementation. Putting such monitoring systems in place would cost billions and billions of dollars and they'd be guaranteed to fuck up the services in any case. I work for a major ISP and I have yet to see a major system alteration that didn't fuck things up well and good.

The problem is, again, a bunch of technological ignoramuses making pronouncements about shit they can't even begin to understand and they sure as fuck will not accept any of the costs associated with implementing these ideas.

Of that bullet point list, #2, #5 and #6 are fine (subject to review and being written competently), the other three are the problematic ones.