Quotulatiousness

September 21, 2011

Tories drop “lawful access” provisions from omnibus crime bill

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:16

That’s a bit of good news on the civil liberties front:

A controversial Internet surveillance bill has been omitted from the federal Conservative party’s proposed crime legislation.

Today, Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Rob Nicholson held a press conference to introduce the Conservatives’ promised omnibus crime act, titled The Safe Streets and Communities Act, which focuses on crime and terrorism. However, an expected component of the act regarding Internet surveillance known as “Lawful Access” legislation was nowhere to be found.

The set of Lawful Access bills would have warranted Canadian law enforcement and intelligence agencies the power to acquire the personal information and activity of web users from internet service providers (ISPs). ISPs would also be required by an additional provision to install surveillance equipment on their networks.

The legislation would essentially give law enforcement the ability to track people online without having to obtain a warrant. The federal NDP and Green parties, and civil liberties groups among others decried the bill as overly-invasive, dangerous and potentially costly for internet users.

That’s the good news. The rest of the bill, as Grace Scott points out, is awash with “tough on crime” noises:

The Safe Streets and Communities Act will increase penalties for sex offenders, those caught with possession or producing illicit drugs for the purposes of trafficking, and intends to implement tougher sentencing on violent and repeat youth crime. It also plans to eliminate the use of conditional sentences, or house arrest, for serious and violent crimes.

Not much “liberal” about Britain’s Liberal Democrats

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:45

Patrick Hayes reports from the Liberal Democrat conference:

What is the most ridiculous aspect of the Liberal Democrat 2011 conference? MP Sarah Teather’s cringeworthy attempt at a stand-up routine during her speech? Or maybe business secretary Vince Cable’s attempt to paint the current economic crisis as the equivalent of a war?

Actually, far and away the most farcical element of the four-day conference so far has been the fact that the Liberal Democrats persist in calling themselves ‘Liberals’, while at the same time announcing a range of policies that could deal a bodyblow to individual freedom. From plans to introduce parenting classes, to proposals to ban Page 3 girls and give the state powers to put investigative journalists behind bars, a rebranding as the Illiberal Democrats must surely be in the pipeline.

This trend was evident before the conference had even begun, with an unprecedented vetting of conference delegates that reportedly led to lots of members refusing to attend on the basis that the checks were ‘authoritarian, disproportionate and wrong’. Police advised that at least two individuals should be banned outright from the conference, with the Lib Dems agreeing in one of the cases.

September 18, 2011

Chinese censors crack down on . . . talent shows?

Filed under: China, Liberty, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:49

They’ve become too popular, and the text voting for winners sets too much of a democratic example, so China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is ordering talent shows off the air:

The latest run of the hugely popular Super Girl contest finished on Friday. A spokesman for Hunan Satellite Television said it would not show any TV talent shows with mass participation next year because it had been accused of breaking time limits.

“Hunan Satellite Television obeys the state watchdog’s decision and will not hold similar talent shows next year,” said Li Hao.

“Instead, the channel will air programmes that promote moral ethics and public safety, and provide practical information for housework.”

[. . .]

SARFT decreed that talent shows could not be shown in prime time — between 7.30pm and 10.30pm — or screened for more than two hours a day. It also banned text voting — with some suggesting officials were concerned that the democratic method of choosing the winner was a bad influence.

September 16, 2011

No free speech, please, we’re Canadian

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Ken at Popehat has a lovely summary of the “all Jews should be sterilized” fracas at York University:

Pity poor Professor Cameron Johnson at York University. He was just trying to make this fundamentally Canadian concept clear to the students in the class he was teaching by giving examples of unacceptable opinions. Really, reminding them that some opinions are unacceptable was, in the Canadian context, an act of great patriotism, akin to starting an American lecture with the Pledge of Allegiance and possibly a barbecue. In the course of being so very Canadian, Prof. Johnson mentioned that the sentiment “all Jews should be sterilized” was “unacceptable.”

[. . .]

By uttering the words, Prof. Johnson committed speechcrime. That’s a strict liability crime; intent is irrelevant. Moreover, in thinking that he could utter a series of offensive words by putting them into a specific disapproving and pedagogical context, Prof. Johnson committed a hate crime against the Moron-Canadian community, which is too stupid to grasp context, and the Entitled-Canadian community, which believes that it is un-Canadian to require them to pay close enough attention to follow context. Prof. Johnson knew or should have known that his class of 450 people would include members of the Moron-Canadian and Entitled-Canadian community.

And indeed it did — in the form of Sarah Grunfeld, a member of the Moron-Insipid-Entitled-Canadian community. Sarah Grunfeld was outraged to hear, sort of, that her professor thought that all Jews should be sterilized, and started quite a stir, complaining to York University officials and various community members. Tumult and inquisition ensued. The Canadian media acted in an appallingly un-Canadian manner, focusing on the so-called “context” of Professor Johnson’s words and the utterly irrelevant detail that he was Jewish. Grunfeld, raised by her actions into a position of leadership in the Entitled-, Insipid-, and Moron-Canadian communities, did her best to set them back on the path of right thinking

September 12, 2011

The increasing militarization of the police

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Radley Balko shows how the tools given to the authorities to fight the war on terror have instead been used to further expand the war on drugs:

New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

It’s a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America’s police departments.

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs.” Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America’s drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

[. . .]

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, “Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

Update: Also from Radley, a look inside the SWAT team leader’s world.

[. . .] note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.

September 10, 2011

How much damage to personal liberty will the new US/Canadian security deal inflict?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:35

An article in the Globe and Mail discusses — in very general terms — the new security deal negotiated between the US and Canadian governments:

U.S. and Canadian negotiators have successfully concluded talks on a new deal to integrate continental security and erase obstacles to cross-border trade.

Negotiators have reached agreement on almost all of the three dozen separate initiatives in the Beyond the Border action plan, said sources who cannot be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The few remaining items mostly involve questions of wording and should be settled in time for an announcement in late September.

[. . .]

Opponents have raised alarms that an agreement would cost Canadians both sovereignty and personal privacy. But failure to implement the agreements could further impair the world’s most extensive trading relationship, and put manufacturing jobs across the country at risk.

Details of the agreement are closely held. But goals outlined earlier include specific proposals to co-ordinate and align such things as biometrics on passports, watch lists, inspection of containers at overseas ports and other security measures.

[. . .]

Canadians who believe that the United States has sold its liberty because of fears for its security, or who resist any further economic integration with the troubled economic giant, are likely to oppose the Beyond the Border proposals.

I don’t oppose trade with the US — far from it — but I do feel very strongly that the US has reduced the liberties of its citizens in pursuit of security (check the topic SecurityTheatre for lots of examples). I don’t want to see that trend exported to Canada in exchange for better economic access to their markets.

September 8, 2011

The bold gendarmes, redux

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:24

David Hughes has a list of recent events showing the modern British police attitude:

Last week, this newspaper carried a striking photograph of a passer-by at the Notting Hill Carnival trying to trip up a young knifeman who appeared to have just stabbed someone.

At the back of the picture, a man was clutching a bleeding stomach wound. On the left were two uniformed police officers, watching events unfold. They appear to have made no attempt to intercept the man: indeed, he seems to have run right past them. It was left to the sightseer — later identified as Valentine Simatchenko, a former Russian policeman — to try to intervene. Fortunately, the man with the knife was later arrested and charged.

[. . .]

The common theme in all these cases — and many more — is the institutional petulance displayed by some police officers. They throw their weight around because they can; they go for the easy, not the hard, arrests; they act as though they are the law, rather than its upholders. Such officers may be a small minority, but they have a disproportionately damaging impact on the image of the police. It has helped sour the force’s relationship with those who should be its natural allies.

As you can see, this isn’t new, although it seems much more prevalent than back in the day:

H/T to Chris Greaves for the original link.

September 7, 2011

Brendan O’Neill – The Riots: A Mob Made By The Welfare State?

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

The Perry-Paul pie-fight

Filed under: History, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

The Ron Paul campaign released a new video, pointing out the fact that Paul had been one of a small group that originally supported Ronald Reagan for president (on the basis of Reagan’s professed desire for small government and lower taxes). Rick Perry, on the other hand, worked for Al Gore’s first presidential bid:

As Michael Suede says, it’s amazing that the Perry campaign’s response actually highlights Paul’s consistency and principles:

The Perry campaign released this statement in response to the pummeling:

     “Rep. Paul’s letter is a broadside attack on every element of President Reagan’s record and philosophy. Paul thought President Reagan was so bad, he left the GOP,” said [Perry spokesman Mark] Miner. “It will be interesting to hear Rep. Paul explain why Reagan drove him from the party at tomorrow’s debate on the grounds of the Reagan Library.”

     In one part of the letter, Paul wrote, “There is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government. That is the message of the Reagan years.”

     Paul continued, “Thanks to the President and Republican Party, we have lost the chance to reduce the deficit and the spending in a non-crisis fashion. Even worse, big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished.”

     Paul even went so far as to call Reaganomics, “warmed-over Keynesianism.”

In other words, Paul initially supported Reagan because Reagan talked a great game on issues that Paul supported: reducing the size of government and lowering taxes. Reagan was elected, continued talking the talk, but failing to actually do anything — in fact, government continued to grow during his presidency (even if you discount the military build-up). Paul broke with Reagan because Reagan hadn’t done what he was elected to do. And the Perry campaign thinks this is a negative?

You can say a lot of positive things about Reagan, but his actual record was not what his Republican hagiographers pretend that it was.

In the letter, Ron Paul explains that spending under Reagan exploded and that the administration didn’t live up to its promises to keep the debt under control. Then Ron goes on to PREDICT THE FUTURE as he explains the dangers behind exploding deficits. So in essence, the Perry campaign is saying Ron Paul is bad because HE IS TOO CONSERVATIVE.

If they take away your freedom of speech, you can’t defend any of your rights

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Europe, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

Mark Steyn on the rapidly constricting “right” to free speech in most of the western world:

To be honest, I didn’t really think much about “freedom of speech” until I found myself the subject of three “hate speech” complaints in Canada in 2007. I mean I was philosophically in favor of it, and I’d been consistently opposed to the Dominion’s ghastly “human rights” commissions and their equivalents elsewhere my entire adult life, and from time to time when an especially choice example of politically correct enforcement came up I’d whack it around for a column or two.

But I don’t think I really understood how advanced the Left’s assault on this core Western liberty actually was. In 2008, shortly before my writing was put on trial for “flagrant Islamophobia” in British Columbia, several National Review readers e-mailed from the U.S. to query what the big deal was. C’mon, lighten up, what could some “human rights” pseudo-court do? And I replied that the statutory penalty under the British Columbia “Human Rights” Code was that Maclean’s, Canada’s biggest-selling news weekly, and by extension any other publication, would be forbidden henceforth to publish anything by me about Islam, Europe, terrorism, demography, welfare, multiculturalism, and various related subjects. And that this prohibition would last forever, and was deemed to have the force of a supreme-court decision. I would in effect be rendered unpublishable in the land of my birth. [. . .]

And what I found odd about this was that very few other people found it odd at all. Indeed, the Canadian establishment seems to think it entirely natural that the Canadian state should be in the business of lifetime publication bans, just as the Dutch establishment thinks it entirely natural that the Dutch state should put elected leaders of parliamentary opposition parties on trial for their political platforms, and the French establishment thinks it appropriate for the French state to put novelists on trial for sentiments expressed by fictional characters. Across almost all the Western world apart from America, the state grows ever more comfortable with micro-regulating public discourse—and, in fact, not-so-public discourse: Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, has been tried, been acquitted, had his acquittal overruled, and been convicted of “racism” for some remarks about Islam’s treatment of women made (so he thought) in private but taped and released to the world.

September 6, 2011

Is the freelancing sector the “new industrial revolution”?

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

Sara Horowitz, founder of Freelancers Union, presents an anecdote-heavy but data-poor view of the surge in freelancing as “the Industrial Revolution of our time”:

It’s been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-conomy, with the “e” standing for electronic, entrepreneurial, or perhaps eclectic. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We’re no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we’re part-time lawyers-cum-amateur photographers who write on the side.

Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients, learning to be marketing and accounting experts, and creating offices in bedrooms/coffee shops/coworking spaces. Independent workers abound. We call them freelancers, contractors, sole proprietors, consultants, temps, and the self-employed.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, many of them love it.

I’m in this category myself, as a self-employed technical writer. I buy my own tools, pay my own taxes (reminder to self: next tax installment due on the 15th), and — within reason — set my own working hours. Of course, my clients have a lot to say about when my working hours tend to be, so it’s more an extra degree of flexibility than it is total freedom. But it works well for me.

September 3, 2011

QotD: The American judicial system

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:26

Whatever one thinks about Conrad Black’s guilt or innocence, there is no doubt that he has proven his claim that America’s legal deck is stacked in prosecutors’ favour: Even before his conviction, he had to endure a genuinely Kafkaesque ordeal of assets being frozen and seized by the FBI, email and phone lines hacked, backroom deals with sleazy witnesses (David Radler, please call your office), and outrageous leveraging of blunderbuss statutes to generate dozens of charges on the basis of tangential procedural indiscretions. The very institution meant to protect innocent people from this machinery of state — the private legal sector — is an old-boys’ club whose members often seem just as concerned with seven-figure paydays as with keeping clients out of jail. The fact that Mr. Black happens to be a famous person makes the claims more credible because, as the author writes, if all this could happen to Conrad Black, it “could happen to anyone, and often does.”

Jonathan Kay, “Conrad Black and his new book: A man in full pay-back mode”, National Post, 2011-09-03

August 31, 2011

The “official” start of the Cold War: 5 September, 1945

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

George Jonas, in a review of Mark Steyn’s latest book, gives a thumbnail sketch of the real trigger event that started the Cold War:

Sixty-six years earlier, another writer put together a manuscript of sorts to let Western readers know they were headed for hell in a hand-basket. He wasn’t in Steyn’s league as a wordsmith, although he did write a non-fiction bestseller and win a Governor General’s Award for a novel called The Fall Of A Titan. But far from making the apocalypse amusing, Igor Gouzenko could make a slapstick comedy apocalyptic. No two writers were less alike, yet their work carried a similar message.

The Cold War began on a Wednesday, a few minutes after 8 p.m., on September 5, 1945. This was when a young, slight, nondescript man closed the door of an embassy building on Charlotte Street and walked out into the humid Ottawa evening. He looked a little bulky for a reason. He carried 109 documents under his shirt.

During August, 1945, while the atomic bombs were exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gouzenko had been discussing his defection with his wife Svetlana in their small apartment on Somerset Street. As a cipher clerk, Gouzenko knew a great deal about a Soviet spy ring operating through the office of GRU (military intelligence) Colonel Nikolai Zabotin. The aim of Zabotin’s spy ring was to secure atomic secrets. Gouzenko’s tour of duty in Ottawa was ending, and he feared that being privy to such information would reduce his chances of survival in Moscow. In self-defence, he triggered the Cold War.

The thing was damn hard to trigger. When it came to international intrigue, Canadians were wet behind the ears. Having just concluded a victorious war, they resisted the idea that they were at war again, this time with their former comrades-in-arms. Gouzenko knew that his tale might sound far-fetched, and carried documents with him for proof.

For two harrowing days, with his pregnant wife and their two-year-old son in tow, Gouzenko tried to convince incredulous Canadian journalists and Ministry of Justice officials that he was worthy of a hearing. Mackenzie King’s government couldn’t make up its mind about the defectors, and for a brief period actually considered returning them to the Soviets. Messengers bring bad tidings at their peril.

Gouzenko didn’t start the Cold War; he just warned us to do something, or get ready for Armageddon. So we did something, but 66 years later we’ve another Cassandra at the doorstep, telling us it wasn’t enough.

August 30, 2011

QotD: Casinos are a neon-decorated IRS

Filed under: Government, Humour, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

. . . no phenomenon of nature could possibly be as strange as the alternative reality one encounters entering Wendover, Nevada. In that physical regime, hotels and restaurants are connected to—and often concentric with—caverns with mirrored ceilings, walls, and columns, making it difficult to find your way across the room. Serried ranks of electronic slot machines are clung to by half-starved-looking wights — the cigarettes in their hands nothing but long cylinders of gray ash — worshipping runes that appear when they insert a coin and watch the lights and listen to musical notes that would make a Pac-Man fan start screaming, tearing his hair, and running for the roof with a rifle.

To be sure, there are other kinds of gambling going on. I saw a poker room, roulette wheels, and a genuine James Bond baccarat table. But they were truly lost in a great labyrinth of electronic slots. I was surprised not to see slot machines on a free wall of the men’s room.

I’d seen all of this before, mind you. I was in Las Vegas last year, and it was my second time. I first saw it only a couple of years after Bugsy Siegal did. And I gotta confess to youse guys, I just don’ geddit.

What I mean is, there are a number of points of view that various human beings have, which I am forced to accept purely intellectually. I know there are men who find other men sexually attractive, but I don’t really understand it. I know there are grownup people who seem to go into shock when they discover that their aged parents still enjoy sex — I think my mother would have lived longer if she’d had a boyfriend. And I know — but do not understand that folks like to hand their hard-earned money to casino owners who already have plenty of it.

Casinos are like a neon-decorated IRS.

L. Neil Smith, “The Past That Never Was — The Future That Will Never Be”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2011-08-28

Trivializing rape

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:23

Wendy McElroy points out how the underlying messages of the SlutWalkers have overwhelmed the original intent:

One message: It is fabulous for women to publicly flaunt their sexuality but an intolerable offense if men respond nonviolently. Wolf-whistles are taken as an attack. Disapproving or overly approving comments from men are an assault. But isn’t provoking a response the entire purpose of wearing fishnet stockings topped by a leather bustier?

Another message, as pointed out by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail: “Slutwalks are what you get when graduate students in feminist studies run out of things to do.” In other words, SlutWalks are an expression of privileged women who mistake a costume party for a political cause. While Iranian women fight for the right to pursue an education, North American feminists fight to reclaim pride in the word “slut.” SlutWalk is an extreme expression of mainstream feminism’s political impoverishment.

Yet SlutWalkers proclaim they are performing a political service by protesting the trivialization of rape. Nonsense. They are using the ill-considered words of one ignorant policeman as a reason to throw a street party.

I do not begrudge anyone having a good time but as a woman who has experienced rape, I object to the political agenda being attached to a costume party. I object to the posters and attitudes that vilify men as predators. I do so because I was attacked by one man, not by mankind, and when I was helped, it was by men. I object to the notion that women do not bear any responsibility for controlling their circumstances, such as attire. I object to rape being trivialized by associating it with sluttiness and making it part of a celebration.

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