A nation of gatekeepers?
Dwayne Winseck | Columnist profile | E-mail
Should telecom network companies and Internet service providers function as arms of law enforcement and national security? Yes, according to the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (Bill C-51), a bill that was introduced in the last Parliament and set to be reintroduced in the new Government omnibus crime bill soon.
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The first telegraphs in this country linked Toronto and Montreal with Buffalo
and New York City in the 1840s; submarine cables after 1866 linked us further
into an even larger trans-Atlantic circuit of commerce, culture, diplomacy and
strategy between Ottawa, New York, London and Europe.
From 911 operators to the Distant Early Warning system in the 1950s, the fact that Canada’s communication networks have been intertwined with municipal emergency services and the military is the norm, not the exception. The DEW line was Canada and NATO’s electronic front line in the Cold War. Monopoly telcos from Bell to Sasktel and the predecessors of Telus were funded well, if not lavishly; Bell Northern Labs cut its teeth on leading edge technology, the military’s iron-fist behind the rise of Nortel before it collapsed in the great telecom crash of 2000.
All the while, gold-plated networks were built and along with the Scandinavians, we were the most connected people around and the envy of the world. National security, in other words, subsidized the transformation of communications from personal luxuries to among the necessities of the modern age.
The Internet is not a wild, wild west in need of civilizing, as French President Sarkozy told the gathered digerati before the G8 meetings a few weeks ago. The Criminal Code of Canada is used to fight child pornography, pedophilia, copyright infringement, hacking, identity fraud, espionage, hate speech and lots of other detestable stuff. It is not clear why we need a new Investigative Powers act at all.
Besides, in many instances, ISPs and telecom providers already co-operate with law enforcement officials. Project Cleanfeed, for instance, involves ISPs working hand-in-hand with police to identify and block problematic URLs, mostly for the purposes of blocking access to child pornography. I know people involved in this project, and it is nasty stuff indeed.
The RCMP works hand-in-hand with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the U.S. and with thirty similar agencies worldwide to discover and disable connections to websites aiding in the exchange of pirated and counterfeited goods. The end result is domain name seizures, websites that go dark and criminals prosecuted. Along the way, however, ISPs, search engines, Facebook, Paypal, Visa and Twitter have been roped into the battle against more dubious foes, such as Wikileaks – another “evil” lurking about the dark corners of cyberspace in the eyes of some folks in the law and order crowd.
The lines between crime and communication grow fuzzy indeed, and thus the great clash of security and censorship. One virtue of the Bill C-51 is that it will bring things that are already happening out into the open and make things more transparent.
But beyond these considerable problems, there’s more. First, there is no demonstrated need for a new law if the Criminal Code is working fine, as it seems to be in this instance.
Second, this will cost a lot, and we will pay for it. Since official policy is to let the market rip, this means that we won’t even get the benefit of gold-plated networks but rather the golden handcuffs that come along with a secretive network surveillance regime that is implemented and operated at the behest of the state, but carried out on the backs of private enterprise – telephone companies, ISPs, and search engines – and at the possible expense of people’s rights and liberties.
Third, gateways – which ISPs and search engines are – should not be gatekeepers. Full stop. Except, perhaps, if there is a warrant and just cause, but the last version of the bill contained no such provisions.
Finally, the anticipated new regime of network control and surveillance would not, on its own, be the straw that broke the camel’s back. However, it would be a heavy burden to carry alongside existing efforts to enroll ISPs and search engines in the copyright wars, the ISPs’ own moves to transform the Internet into a pay-per model through usage-based billing and bandwidth caps and the fact that all the major ISPs (except Telus) are already vertically integrated into a handful of sprawling telecom-media giants that seem intent on using them as a front line of defence for their television business.
Seen in the context of the copyright wars, usage-based billing and vertical integration, the Investigative Powers has the potential of posing a great threat to personal privacy in the name of security. Each measure on its own chips away at the ideals of an open Internet. If left to stand, the combined force of all four measures could transform the Internet into one of the most regulated media spaces ever known.
Dwayne Winseck is a communications professor at the School of Journalism
and Communication, Carleton University in Ottawa. Prof. Winseck been researching
and writing about media, telecoms and the Internet in one way or another for
nearly 20 years. You can read more comment on his blog, Mediamorphis. His column
will appear every second Tuesday.
From 911 operators to the Distant Early Warning system in the 1950s, the fact that Canada’s communication networks have been intertwined with municipal emergency services and the military is the norm, not the exception. The DEW line was Canada and NATO’s electronic front line in the Cold War. Monopoly telcos from Bell to Sasktel and the predecessors of Telus were funded well, if not lavishly; Bell Northern Labs cut its teeth on leading edge technology, the military’s iron-fist behind the rise of Nortel before it collapsed in the great telecom crash of 2000.
All the while, gold-plated networks were built and along with the Scandinavians, we were the most connected people around and the envy of the world. National security, in other words, subsidized the transformation of communications from personal luxuries to among the necessities of the modern age.
The Internet is not a wild, wild west in need of civilizing, as French President Sarkozy told the gathered digerati before the G8 meetings a few weeks ago. The Criminal Code of Canada is used to fight child pornography, pedophilia, copyright infringement, hacking, identity fraud, espionage, hate speech and lots of other detestable stuff. It is not clear why we need a new Investigative Powers act at all.
Besides, in many instances, ISPs and telecom providers already co-operate with law enforcement officials. Project Cleanfeed, for instance, involves ISPs working hand-in-hand with police to identify and block problematic URLs, mostly for the purposes of blocking access to child pornography. I know people involved in this project, and it is nasty stuff indeed.
The RCMP works hand-in-hand with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the U.S. and with thirty similar agencies worldwide to discover and disable connections to websites aiding in the exchange of pirated and counterfeited goods. The end result is domain name seizures, websites that go dark and criminals prosecuted. Along the way, however, ISPs, search engines, Facebook, Paypal, Visa and Twitter have been roped into the battle against more dubious foes, such as Wikileaks – another “evil” lurking about the dark corners of cyberspace in the eyes of some folks in the law and order crowd.
The lines between crime and communication grow fuzzy indeed, and thus the great clash of security and censorship. One virtue of the Bill C-51 is that it will bring things that are already happening out into the open and make things more transparent.
But beyond these considerable problems, there’s more. First, there is no demonstrated need for a new law if the Criminal Code is working fine, as it seems to be in this instance.
Second, this will cost a lot, and we will pay for it. Since official policy is to let the market rip, this means that we won’t even get the benefit of gold-plated networks but rather the golden handcuffs that come along with a secretive network surveillance regime that is implemented and operated at the behest of the state, but carried out on the backs of private enterprise – telephone companies, ISPs, and search engines – and at the possible expense of people’s rights and liberties.
Third, gateways – which ISPs and search engines are – should not be gatekeepers. Full stop. Except, perhaps, if there is a warrant and just cause, but the last version of the bill contained no such provisions.
Finally, the anticipated new regime of network control and surveillance would not, on its own, be the straw that broke the camel’s back. However, it would be a heavy burden to carry alongside existing efforts to enroll ISPs and search engines in the copyright wars, the ISPs’ own moves to transform the Internet into a pay-per model through usage-based billing and bandwidth caps and the fact that all the major ISPs (except Telus) are already vertically integrated into a handful of sprawling telecom-media giants that seem intent on using them as a front line of defence for their television business.
Seen in the context of the copyright wars, usage-based billing and vertical integration, the Investigative Powers has the potential of posing a great threat to personal privacy in the name of security. Each measure on its own chips away at the ideals of an open Internet. If left to stand, the combined force of all four measures could transform the Internet into one of the most regulated media spaces ever known.
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