
Canada’s federal court rules intelligence service bulk data collection illegal - based2
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/in-scathing-ruling-federal-court-says-csis-bulk-data-collection-illegal/article32669448/
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pjc50
"But there is no apparent fallout from this for CSIS yet. While the spy agency
says it will stop analyzing the contentious data, there are no indications
that it will destroy the data."

It's not really illegal if there's no enforcement, is there?

~~~
adekok
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

... for me. Not for them, apparently.

If the people enforcing the law aren't required to know or follow it, why am I
required to?

~~~
DanBC
They're not claiming to be ignorant of the law. They're claiming they made
every effort to obey the law; they thought they were obeying the law. It turns
out they were wrong.

Many crimes require both actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind).

~~~
ENGNR
So if I take a law, and secretly reinterpet it beyond reason, then do my best
to prevent anyone from finding out my reinterpretation... then it's all good,
no criminal charges for me

~~~
MichaelBurge
As long as you can convince the prosecutor or jury you're not guilty, you can
shoot someone on the street in plain sight with video evidence and get off
free or without charges.

It's up to the prosecutor whether he'll be persuaded by your elaborate scheme.
I'm sure he's heard worse.

~~~
colejohnson66
> As long as you can convince the prosecutor or jury you're not guilty, you
> can shoot someone on the street in plain sight with video evidence and get
> off free or without charges.

For those who don't know, this is called jury nullification.

~~~
thaumasiotes
For the jury it is. For the prosecutor it's called prosecutorial discretion.

Being formally acquitted means you can't be charged later; this is not true of
just not being prosecuted in the first place.

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noodles23
Considering how hard it is to explain how Google Analytics works to the
standard business owner, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to obscure all manners
of data collection programs from oversight.

In times like this, the importance of civics education is highlighted. The
very idea that people in law enforcement think it's acceptable to treat judges
and the legal system with such contempt is scary. Even if you disagree with a
certain law or system, you still need to respect it as a public servant.

~~~
throwwit
There's precedent in pushing the envelope in law enforcement since Sir Robert
Peel (if you read up on it). It's not surprising an analogous methodology has
been promulgated. Hopefully a more appropriate solution is worked out.

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hbt
You'd have to be a fool to trust lawmakers or law enforcement with your data
and privacy by this point.

They will always find some loophole in the language. Illegal to collect but
not illegal to access what has been collected by allies (aka the Five Eyes).

Just encrypt everything, use VPNs and whatever you push in plain/text may as
well be public.

Trust open technologies you understand, not politicians.

~~~
chongli
_Trust open technologies you understand, not politicians._

How many people really understand these technologies? For anyone who lacks
either the time or the know-how to audit the source code: what do you suggest?
If it's not _" find the time and educate yourself"_ then does your statement
not revert to:

 _" Trust these technology experts instead of these politicians."_?

To which I'd respond: Why? Why is a technology expert more trustworthy than a
politician?

~~~
MrLeap
Well, a technology expert is - in aggregate - more trustworthy than a
politician because their incentives align with yours.

This isn't to say that every technology expert can be trusted. The hope is
that many eyes looking at the problem helps move the needle.

Politics might as well be the science of deception. My pithy opinion is that
nearly everyone is more trustworthy than a politician.

~~~
fulafel
Technology experts will be more often working against your interests than
politicians, because politicians will usually have some public interest motive
and voter accountability, technology experts often work for "ad tech" and
spooks.

~~~
AlexandrB
I'm not sure why this was downvoted, but it's right on. Government didn't give
us Facebook's or Google's pervasive data collection Facebook/Google's
"technology experts" did.

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sandworm101
For any non-Canadians reading this, understand that Canadians have a very
different relationship with CSIS than say Americans do with the NSA or Brits
with GCHQ. We have not seen the bulk use of this data for purposes of general
law enforcement. It isn't being used to nab drug dealers or child
pornographers. CSIS is rather oldschool in it's approach: intel assets are for
intel purposes, not law enforcement. At least that is what we have seen so
far. The trust has yet to be broken as it has elsewhere.

~~~
RRRA
Except they are on the same campus as CSEC and this happened (among other
things):
[http://www.cbc.ca/news2/pdf/airports_redacted.pdf](http://www.cbc.ca/news2/pdf/airports_redacted.pdf)

I'm pretty sure that CSEC dragnet-snooping on airports, including all
Canadians, doesn't magically disappear from CSIS storage.

Either way, the government is spying on its own citizens and trust is broken.

~~~
sandworm101
Nobody thinks they aren't doing the spying. Canadians just trust that the
spying is limited to the expected terrorism/cold war espionage/boarder
security stuff, that they aren't letting the RCMP trawl the data to discover
who is talking to whom. As recent news tells us, the RCMP have to resort to
their own means for that.

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formula1
So this seems to be more about the retention of data than it is about the
collection. Where the retention of all data is not as important as a select
few that pertain to national security. I'd love to play devils advocate here
and claim that the agency requires all the information or court oversight of a
spy agency is ludicrous. But I dont think any one branch should be judge jury
and executionor. I wonder how much of this is symbolic? I know here in the US
we are lucky to even hear about a segment of what happens. But I can certainly
argue that many questionable deeds are done in the interest of the american
citizens

~~~
adekok
> I'd love to play devils advocate here and claim that ... court oversight of
> a spy agency is ludicrous.

We could add rubber-stamp oversight:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/what-you-need-know-
abo...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/what-you-need-know-about-fisa-
court-and-how-it-needs-change)

That court approves essentially all requests.

Secret courts, secret laws, warrant-less searches. There's one set of rules
for the people in charge, and another set of rules for the people being
charged.

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fatdog
The thing nobody really talks about is that the agency in question is a
"domestic" security intelligence agency. It has no foreign intelligence
mandate (unless that's changed recently.)

Reporters call it "Canada's CIA," but it is mandated by the government in
canada to spy only within the country. They are not a police force and cannot
arrest their targets. Canada has a bunch of police intelligence agencies. It
is hard to see what democratic function a domestic spy agency plays. Maybe
there are good arguments for them.

------
brahmwg
Interesting timing for this post, given the lecture Snowden gave at McGill
earlier this week.

[https://youtu.be/4x8ZI0IaInE](https://youtu.be/4x8ZI0IaInE)

~~~
MidoAssran
Yeah it was a great talk! Thousands of students waited for hours on the McGill
campus to attend Snowden's talk -it's an important issue that a lot of people
care about.

------
riprowan
The only questions I have are: why is it taking so long for the legal system
to catch up to where we were 15 years ago and how will we ever keep
Constitutional protections ahead of accelerating technology?

~~~
mark_edward
People make these technologies for the government, and many private firms do
much of the work as contractors or by selling products as had been documented
in many Snowden leaks. In addition i doubt any of the employees who do this
are conscript. Simple venality and maybe a dash of patriotism suffices for us
to always lose this game.

Nobody has managed to roll back the arms merchants' profits and influence,
hell some of our governments (US, Canada) are the biggest arms dealers around.
I see no reason why we'd be able to hold back this monster (profiteering and
control through complex and often secret surveillance) when we can't hold back
profiteering and control through mind numbingly obvious stuff like bombers and
guns. Hell Trudeau talks a game about lgbt people and human rights and turns
around and sells arms to the KSA to help bomb Yemen into hell.

The military industrial complex won, don't see why the surveillance industrial
complex won't either.

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known
Govt will always find a work around in the pretext of patriotism :)

