CDN Police Powers

From Yahoo:
"Canada boosts police powers, alarms privacy watchdog"

A new law gives police stronger powers to track what Canadians do online, but raises concern from the privacy watchdog about "warrantless access to personal information." The Conservative government says the draft law it unveiled on Tuesday aims at hunting down pedophiles or other criminals by giving police, the country's spy agency and the Competition Bureau increased access to customer data from Internet service providers. Law enforcers will no longer need a warrant to ask internet providers to hand over "identifying information" such as names, addresses, email addresses, unlisted phone numbers and IP addresses. Ottawa says it is simply modernizing its crime-fighting tools and notes that that similar laws are already in place in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The government named the bill "protecting children from internet predators act", framing it as a new tool to end frustrating delays police face when they seek to track suspects' online activities. The opposition New Democrats and other critics say a warrant should be required, otherwise authorities can abuse their new powers and snoop on anyone without any oversight or justification. The opposition is vigorously fighting the bill, but the Conservatives have a majority in the House of Commons, so are likely to get the bill passed in one form or another.

^ It does seem a little extreme for the Canadians to say they want to protect children and yet they can use the new rules on things no related to children. I do see government officials abusing the new rules to settle old scores (the same way I am sure it has happened in the US.) There needs to be more "checks and balances" both in Canada and in other countries that have these kinds of rules on the books. It seems the world is becoming more a place where you are "guilty until you prove yourself innocent" instead of "innocent until proven guilty" that we based our whole society on in the past. ^

http://news.yahoo.com/canada-boosts-police-powers-alarms-privacy-watchdog-223111805.html