The new conservative government is attempting to push through a series of crime related legislation. Most of which I don't really know about, but I do know about "Lawful" Access. To be fair it was originally a Liberal initiative. Either way it is a pretty naive and impractical bill.
The Lawful Access Bill will make it mandatory for internet service providers to collect your personal information when you use the internet and then hand it over to the police if they should ever ask. They won't even need a warrant and they'll be able to find out litterally everything you ever do online. Right now you may be reading this on Facebook. After this bill, the police will know everything you ever post here - without court oversight.
Privacy aside, this bill will force ISPs to monitor and store everything everyone does online. That seems tricky and indeed witll require them to build significant infrastructure to do so. Running a 1984 version of the internet isn't cheap and this cost will be passed on to consumers. To make matters worse, smaller ISPs won't be able to keep up - effectively reducing the number of providers and competition in our already dominated market.
Right now we only have three major providers and Canadians have been forced to pay more for their internet. If this bill get's passed, not only will we have to pay more for unnecessary infrastructre, but we'll also be living in a near monoploy, so be prepared to pay again.
The biggest problem I have with this is that the police have never once shown a need for this sort of system. There really hasn't ever been an instance where their current powers have stopped them from solving a case. Their current tools are sufficient.
The bottom line: Please speak out and spread the word if you have any interest in your privacy, your pocketbook or sensible legislation. An affordable open internet is important to Canada: socially, economically and culturally. You can find more information here:
http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying
Thanks for reading
-Liam
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