Thank god for the Canadian Senate.
The Senate held up the Trudeau government’s obnoxious, anti-democratic Bill C-10 long enough that the legislation to regulate personal posts on the Internet failed to become law.
“Surveillance Society”
Timothy Denton: Ottawa’s new guide to internet control
The Guiding Principles are creepily totalitarian, and yet one imagines the authors of this document think of themselves as being great public benefactors
The new Broadcasting Act, Bill C-10, may have been stymied in the Senate, but the actual content of its policy objectives has just been released, in the form of Heritage Canada’s “Guiding Principles on Diversity of Content Online.” For a government intent on control, the Guiding Principles have several advantages: they are not legislated; they can be revised and adapted according to how technology or society evolves; and they have no legally binding force. They have only the force of the large platforms to back them — if they sign on, as they are enjoined to do.
Capitol Police to use Army surveillance system on Americans to ‘identify emerging threat’
The U.S. Capitol Police will begin fielding military surveillance equipment as part of sweeping security upgrades as the police force pivots towards becoming “an intelligence-based protective agency” following the Jan. 6 attack.
Defense Secretary Loyd Austin recently approved the Capitol Police’s request for eight Persistent Surveillance Systems Ground – Medium (PSSG-M) units. The system provides high-definition surveillance video and is enabled with night vision. The system does not include facial recognition capabilities, according to the Pentagon.
The Campaign Against ‘Extremism’ Looks Like an Attack on Speech
Some Facebook users have recently received warnings about “extremism” and offers of help for those with acquaintances attracted to “extremist” ideas. It’s part of an international push to discourage and restrict communications considered radical and hateful. While often couched in concern about the potential for violence, this effort looks increasingly like a scheme to narrow the boundaries of acceptable discussion and muzzle speech that makes the powers-that-be uncomfortable.
Chinese video gamers will have their faces scanned while playing after 10pm to ensure they are not children breaking government curfew rules
The regulations introduced both a curfew for children and also a cap on what young gamers could spend in-game transactions.
“I Have A Message For You”: NSA Leaks Tucker Carlson Emails To Journalists, Fox Host Claims In Update
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a bombshell broadcast that an NSA whistleblower had approached him with evidence that the National Security Agency has been spying on his communications, with the intent to leak his emails to the press and ‘take this show off the air.’
Today, Carlson told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that the emails have in fact been leaked to journalists – at least one of whom has contacted him for what we presume is an upcoming article on their contents.
h/t Marvin
That COVID-19 tracking app you were urged to download? It didn’t deliver — ‘far from it’
The federal government spent $20 million on a smartphone application designed to alert users to possible COVID-19 exposures, and new data obtained by The Canadian Press shows the results didn’t live up to expectations.
Ottawa’s COVID Alert app, introduced late last year in several provinces, uses Bluetooth to detect proximity to others who have installed the app on their mobile devices, and it notifies users when they’ve been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.
No one trusted this app, and rightly so.
Canada to Fine Citizens for Facebook Posts?
For western nations like the United States and Canada, free speech has always been one of our fundamental founding principles and one that has time and time again set us apart as a place where true freedom is valued and appreciated. But, as you know, the political left has increasingly pushed the limits of this, moving towards near authoritarian ways in the US.
Thankfully, here in the US, we have been able to keep that move at bay for the most part.
Canada, on the other hand, has not been so lucky as of late.
Liberal hate speech bill will put a chill on free speech
To compare much of social media to a swamp, a sewer, a cesspool or an old-fashioned outhouse is to miss the point.
There is without question an offputting stink to all those entities, enough to discourage people from hanging around any longer than essential. But mere nature lacks something at which online communications excel: the malevolence, the cruelty, the bitterness, the truthlessness and the all-encompassing anger that typifies so much of what gets channelled into cyber discourse in the guise of discussion, commentary, debate, opinion or simple free speech.
Google Building ‘Vaccine Passport’ Into Android
The new approach to vaccine passports, which are controversial and unpopular, is to call them by a different name. A rose by any other name might not smell as sweet and a vaccine passport by any other name would be less totalitarian.
Facebook’s Latest Warning to Users Is Creeping People Out
As part of their strategy to combat “extremism,” Facebook is issuing a new warning to users about “harmful” content an individual may have been exposed to. They’re also urging users to turn in others they suspect of being extremists.
h/t Mauser
Tucker and the NSA: Why Are You Surprised?
Carlson’s revelations about being spied on by the Biden administration are part of a well-established pattern of government abuse.
I’ll allow that this headline might miss the mark with many of our more regular readers, who are anything but surprised at the revelations coming out of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show this week.
But for the rest of you, it might be just what you needed to see.
NSA Response To Carlson Sparks Numerous Reactions: ‘This Is Either Poorly Drafted Or Something Worse’
The National Security Agency’s response to allegations that it is spying on Fox News host Tucker Carlson sparked a wide range of responses on Tuesday night with most people falling into one of two camps: Either they noted the carefully crafted way that the statement was constructed or they used the statement to claim that Carlson was lying.
Tucker Carlson reveals NSA Has been spying on him
NEW: Fox News host Tucker Carlson says a government whistleblower told his team that the NSA is spying on his team's electronic communications and is "planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air." pic.twitter.com/DqOf6jndFC
— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) June 29, 2021
h/t Mauser
Section 13 Rises from the Dead
The “free world” barely pretends to favor free speech these days. The triggered interns who infest the big publishing houses openly demand their employers pulp the latest manuscripts from J K Rowling and Jordan Peterson. The totalitarian wankers of the British police sit around the station all day monitoring Twitter for transphobic quips, which is far more congenial labor than getting off their flabby arses and catching criminals. The woke billionaires of social media boast openly of their success at “fortifying” the US election by memory-holing unhelpful content.