Politics

[Glacier]

OMG! https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnis ... n-snc-case

[SouthSardiswx]

OMG! https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnis ... n-snc-case

That's insane Glace but l'm not surprised with Trudumbs handling of
SNC Lavalin.

[SouthSardiswx]

Interesting that Trudumb would not go along with U.S. sources it just seems odd.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudea ... -1.7001656

[Glacier]

398981723_10160669937896628_6989969460507352187_n.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMsqCWNCUc4

[SouthSardiswx]

398981723_10160669937896628_6989969460507352187_n.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMsqCWNCUc4

She always looked indigenous to me Glace, guess being adopted as an adult into a Cree family had something to do with it perhaps.

[Glacier]

She always looked indigenous to me Glace, guess being adopted as an adult into a Cree family had something to do with it perhaps.

According to her son, she dyed hair and put on makeup... Trudeau style... to make her self look indigenous.

398693991_10168099056160632_8652560120876364365_n.jpg

[SouthSardiswx]

According to her son, she dyed hair and put on makeup... Trudeau style... to make her self look indigenous.

398693991_10168099056160632_8652560120876364365_n.jpg

That's insane Glace but yah l can see that.

[AbbyJr]

Title: The Most Dangerous Canadian Internet Bill You've Never Heard Of Is a Step Closer to Becoming Law
Author: Michael Geist
Date: December 14th, 2023
Source: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/12/the ... oming-law/

After years of battles over Bills C-11 and C-18, few Canadians will have the appetite for yet another troubling Internet bill. But given a bill that envisions government-backed censorship, mandates age verification to use search engines or social media sites, and creates a framework for court-ordered website blocking, there is a need to pay attention. Bill S-210, or the Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act, was passed by the Senate in April after Senators were reluctant to reject a bill framed as protecting children from online harm. The same scenario appears to be playing out in the House of Commons, where yesterday a majority of the House voted for the bill at second reading, sending it to the Public Safety committee for review. The bill, which is the brainchild of Senator Julie Miville-Duchêne, is not a government bill. In fact, government ministers voted against it. Instead, the bill is backed by the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP with a smattering of votes from backbench Liberal MPs. Canadians can be forgiven for being confused that after months of championing Internet freedoms, raising fears of censorship, and expressing concern about CRTC overregulation of the Internet, Conservative MPs were quick to call out those who opposed the bill (the House sponsor is Conservative MP Karen Vecchio).

I appeared before the Senate committee that studied the bill in February 2022, where I argued that “by bringing together website blocking, face recognition technologies, and stunning overbreadth that would capture numerous mainstream services, the bill isn’t just a slippery slope, it is an avalanche.” As I did then, I should preface criticism of the bill by making it clear that underage access to inappropriate content is indeed a legitimate concern. I think the best way to deal with the issue includes education, digital skills, and parental oversight of Internet use including the use of personal filters or blocking tools if desired. Moreover, if there are Canadian-based sites that are violating the law in terms of the content they host, they should absolutely face investigation and potential charges.

However, Bill S-210 goes well beyond personal choices to limit underage access to sexually explicit material on Canadian sites. Instead, it envisions government-enforced global website liability for failure to block underage access, backed by website blocking and mandated age verification systems that are likely to include face recognition technologies. The government establishes this regulatory framework and is likely to task the CRTC with providing the necessary administration. While there are surely good intentions with the bill, the risks and potential harms it poses are significant.

The basic framework of Bill S-210 is that it creates an offence for any organization making available sexually explicit material to anyone under the age of 18 for commercial purposes. The penalty for doing so is $250,000 for the first offence and up to $500,000 for any subsequent offences. Organizations (broadly defined under the Criminal Code) can rely on three potential defences:

1. The organization instituted a “prescribed age-verification method” to limit access. It would be up to the government to determine what methods qualify with due regard for reliability and privacy. There is a major global business of vendors that sell these technologies and who are vocal proponents of this kind of legislation.

2. The organization can make the case that there is “legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts.”

3. The organization took steps required to limit access after having received a notification from the enforcement agency (likely the CRTC).

The enforcement of the bill is left to the designated regulatory agency, which can issue notifications of violations to websites and services. Those notices can include the steps the agency wants followed to bring the site into compliance. This literally means the government via its regulatory agency will dictate to sites how they must interact with users to ensure no underage access. If the site fails to act as instructed within 20 days, the regulator can apply for a court order mandating that Canadian ISPs block the site from their subscribers. The regulator would be required to identify which ISPs are subject to the blocking order.

The website blocking provisions are focused on limiting user access and can therefore be applied to websites anywhere in the world with Canadian ISPs required to ensure that the sites are rendered inaccessible. And what about the risk of overblocking? The bill not only envisions the possibility of blocking lawful content or limiting access to those over 18, it expressly permits it. Section 9(5) states that if the court determines that an order is needed, it may have the effect of preventing access to “material other than sexually explicit material made available by the organization” or limiting access to anyone, not just young people. This raises the prospect of full censorship of lawful content under court order based on notices from a government agency.

If that isn’t bad enough, there are two additional serious concerns. First, the bill is not limited to pornography sites. Rather, it applies to any site or service that makes sexually explicit materials available. This would presumably include search engines, social media sites such as Twitter, or chat forums such as Reddit, where access to explicit material is not hard to find. If the bill was limited solely to sites whose primary purpose is the commercial distribution of sexually explicit material, it might be more defensible. As it stands now, the overbroad approach leaves this bill vulnerable to constitutional challenge.

Second, consider the way sites are supposed to comply with the law, by establishing age verification systems. This effectively means that sites will require their users to register with commercial age verification systems in order to run a search or access some tweets. And the age verification systems raise real privacy concerns, including mandated face recognition as part of the verification process.

Senate private members bills rarely become law, but this bill is suddenly on the radar screen in a big way. The bill should not have come this far and should not be supported. Creating safeguards for underage access to inappropriate content is a laudable goal, but not at the cost of government-backed censorship, mandated face recognition, and age-approval requirements to use some of the most popular sites and services in the world.

[Abby_wx]

Absolute insanity. Typical "save the children" BS that isn't going to protect a single child, but will create a ton of headaches for everyone else. You would expect that level of censorship in China, not in Canada.

[SouthSardiswx]

Absolute insanity. Typical "save the children" BS that isn't going to protect a single child, but will create a ton of headaches for everyone else. You would expect that level of censorship in China, not in Canada.

Basically Trudumbs has flushed Canada down the shitter IMO.

[AbbyJr]

Basically Trudumbs has flushed Canada down the shitter IMO.

This bill wasn't even supported by the Liberals. It was the Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc that voted yes to move into the next stage.

To be honest, I'm quite concerned and shocked to see the Conservatives support it with such a majority. While at face value, one would expect them to support a bill restricting adult material. However, given how their recent campaign has been all about freedom and against censorship, I would have expected them to be very critical of this proposed legislation. It seems hypocritical that they would spend so much time and effort fighting Bill C-11 on the basis of it being a censorship bill, fighting the Covid mandates on the basis of privacy and freedom, fighting for parental rights when it comes to LGBTQ issues, and then show so much support for this bill, which has censorship and privacy concerns written all over it.

Since when was it the governments job to be the nanny in the house? That is the job of the parents. While I agree that minors should not be accessing adult material, we already have methods for parents to use to block it at the device level, which is far more effective then age verification mandates and ISP level filtering. But ultimately, no matter what methods you put in place, there is always a way around any blocking method. Therefore, the best solution is education, device level filtering, and most importantly, parental supervision. Government mandates are not the solution.

In addition, I'm very interested in how the government is expecting to enforce this legislation if it does become law. Since most adult sites are not registered and hosted in Canada, there would be jurisdiction issues. For example, a website located in another country would not be legally obligated to comply with Canadian law. Yet, this bill seeks to punish these websites for failing to follow rules that are outside of their own jurisdiction.

Further, there is no way to do online age verification without facing significant privacy risks. Facial recognition? Uploading government ID to some third party service? And somehow they think this perfectly reasonable and safe? They claim that the verification service would be required to delete the data associated with the user once the age is verified. Unfortunately, deleted data can be restored. It's also possible for hackers to intercept the data as the users are uploading it, before it even has a chance of being deleted. While it's perfectly reasonable to require an ID to enter an adult store, it's unreasonable to require it access certain websites online given the privacy and data leak risks associated with the internet. It's also completely unnecessary given the vast array of parental control filters that can be used to accomplish the same goal without all the privacy, censorship, and jurisdiction issues that arise with this proposed law.

In my opinion, those who drafted and support this bill have not adequately considered how the internet and jurisdiction works. They think they can mandate websites globally to enact Canadian government approved age verification despite most if not all of these sites not being located within the jurisdiction of the law itself. Not to mention, the law is written with the false assumption that online age verification is safe and effective when such an assertion has never been proven.

Hopefully this bill does not become law because if it does, it will set a very dangerous precedent for online censorship.

[VanCitySouth]

Rogers says it's raising prices: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers ... -1.7073376

Of particular interest to me is this section:

Rogers.PNG

I have a few questions for the Minister. I don't think I'm alone in that.

[PortKells]

Rogers says it's raising prices: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers ... -1.7073376

Of particular interest to me is this section:
Rogers.PNG


I have a few questions for the Minister. I don't think I'm alone in that.

The liberals might as well be called the neoliberals. They do nothing but help the monopolies.

[AbbyJr]

Title: Conservative government would compel porn websites to verify age of users: Poilievre
Author: Mickey Djuric
Date: February 21, 2024
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conser ... -1.7121219

A future Conservative government would change the law to require that porn websites verify the age of users to prevent minors from accessing the content, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre signalled on Wednesday.

When asked whether his government would require that porn websites verify the age of users, Poilievre gave a one-word answer: "Yes."

He didn't offer further explanation and his office quickly followed up with a statement asserting that the Tories don't believe in the imposition of a digital ID.

The Tories are sponsoring and supporting a Senate private member's bill that promises to require age verification for people to access pornography online.

Bill S-210 passed in the Senate in the spring and New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservative MPs voted to send it to a House of Commons committee for study. No such meetings have been scheduled yet.

The proposed law would compel websites to verify users' ages before allowing them to access sexually explicit content, and it would penalize sites that don't comply.

But it does not specify how that would be done.

Options could include the use of a digital government ID, as some U.S. states have legislated, or services that can estimate age based on a scan of a person's face.

Such suggestions have prompted widespread concern from privacy experts about their overarching impacts — from the risks associated with asking Canadians to share personal information with an external provider to the use of measures such as facial recognition technology.

Sebastian Skamski, a spokesperson for Poilievre, said shortly after the leader's remarks Wednesday that Conservatives do not support any measures that would allow the imposition of a digital ID or infringe on the privacy of adults and their freedom to access legal content online.

The bill making its way through Parliament was introduced by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene, an Independent Senators Group member.

Conservative Ontario MP Karen Vecchio is sponsoring the bill in the House of Commons.

In a speech to the Commons in November, Vecchio said "there should be no direct collection of identity documentation by the site publisher from the pornographic site, no age estimates based on the user's web browser history and no processing of biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying or authenticating a natural person."

The Conservatives have not proposed any alternatives for how porn sites could verify users' ages without such systems.

Some websites that feature adult content, alcohol or cannabis currently ask for a user's age to enter the website, but the sites do not verify the information and rely on an honour-system approach.

The Liberals were the only ones to vote against the bill in the House, saying it doesn't do enough to protect children and promising pending online harms legislation will offer a more comprehensive suite of policies on child safety.

The company that owns Pornhub recently told The Canadian Press that blocking access to Canadians is among the options it would consider if the Senate bill passes.

Similar laws requiring internet porn sites to verify a user's age have been passed in several U.S states. After Louisiana required that a government ID be used to access Pornhub, traffic took a nosedive.

The company is fighting the bill and argues any regulations that require sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information will put user safety in jeopardy.

An executive with Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, said it would prefer an approach that would verify a user's age through a device, such as their smart phone.

[SouthSardiswx]

Title: Conservative government would compel porn websites to verify age of users: Poilievre
Author: Mickey Djuric
Date: February 21, 2024
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conser ... -1.7121219

This is exactly why l dumped cable for the android box 200.00 bux for the year gets me every channel and then some.