
C-51 will undermine Canada’s businesses: Open letter from 60 business leaders - zawaideh
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/how-c-51-will-undermine-canadas-business-climate-an-open-letter-from-60-canadian-business-leaders
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ngoldbaum
For those of us not up to date on Canadian politics, does anyone want to
briefly explain what C-51 is?

~~~
joe_developer
C-51 is a proposed anti-terror law that gives "secret police" powers (the
ability for intelligence organizations to detain a suspect without charge for
up to a week) and broad eavesdropping and surveillance powers without
oversight (the traditional oversight body was dismantled a year ago).

~~~
IkmoIkmo
omfg... can we please have a body count in western countries proposing these
laws.

And can we then please put that into perspective? (e.g. compare it to traffic
casualties)

And then look at the price we're willing to pay (ridiculous amounts of
corrupting power without oversight that affects mostly innocent people)?

For example, let's take one of the countries with the gravest terrorist
threat: Israel. Its civilian deaths from any mortar attack from Gaza (let's
assume 100% terrorism) in the past 14 years? 30.

Now how many people die in traffic in Israel every year? Today about 260, in
2000 about 450, let's average that at 350.

Alright, so in 14 years, 30 civilian deaths from rocket terror attacks, and
about 5.000 people dead in traffic.

Now obviously, that's 30 and 5.000 to many, respectively. And if we can
prevent them, we should. But when these are the numbers for a country under
what is considered some of the greatest threats of terrorism, and still its
terrorism casualties pale in comparison with its traffic casualties... do we
really want to pay the price by implementing ridiculous anti-terror laws in a
place where it's much safer, and where thus this gap is much, much bigger,
like Canada?

I mean, let's look at Canada. Does anyone know some stats on e.g. loss of life
due to terror attacks in Canada for say the past 10 years? I know more than
2.000 people die in traffic every year. I can hardly find any substantial
casualties in Canadian terrorism history.

I'm familiar with a few shootings where one or two people died. Regular
homicide numbers (or e.g. traffic casualties) humble the stats. I remember in
the 80s, 30 years ago now, a plane was bombed, not in Canada, over Irish
airspace, but it had departed from Montreal so you could call it terrorism in
Canada in a way. But that was by a Sikh group who wanted to target India
(India Airways airplane going to India) rather than Canada, so you could also
argue it was terrorism concerning India. That was horrible in any case, over
300 people died. Other than that, it's been small-time as far as I know. A few
(fire) bombings without casualties, some marxist attacks, a soldier attacking
members of a political party. In fact I think the worst one (after the
aircraft) was an American soldier who killed 3 people.

Now of course I appreciate these casualties ought to stay insignificant. The
fact terrorism barely registers in stats in most OECD countries is a great
thing, and I agree we should keep it that way. But at what cost? We don't ban
alcohol or driving either, when they're our biggest threats. We don't shut
down factories when global warming will, at current pace, kill billions of
future people. I'm completely for fighting terrorism, but I also believe the
tools we employ have to be proportional. And this NSA type stuff, surveillance
without oversight, detaining without a charge, none of that is proportional
and it doesn't seem necessary, either. We have yet to hear of major terror
attacks that such programs prevented. Yet government is all too willing to
give up a great piece of modern society, a piece that makes these countries
great to live in.

Anyway that's just my two cents. Apologies for what is obviously a silly
comparison (traffic & terrorism casualties), and yes I appreciate terrorism is
more than a casualty number. But I'm trying to show here that our legislative
response is out of proportion and I hope people see that.

~~~
beagle3
While I generally agree with the gist of your things, neither body count nor
Israel is a good subject in any of these discussions.

Would you say polio vaccines in e.g. Canada are useless because there are zero
polio cases in Canada and have been for years?

The main claim of governments while making those rules is (generally) the same
one behind vaccinations: "If we didn't spend all that money / curtail all that
freedom / record all that communications - there would have been many
casualties", and it is this argument that should be addressed.

According to [0], The NSA was unable to point at a single success. If they did
have any, it is too sensitive to share, or they would have paraded it already
- but either way, the count is surely ridiculously small for the price paid.
AFAIK, Canadian and British intelligence has equally abysmal [public] record.

But Israel is different:

> For example, Israeli civilian deaths from any mortar attack from Gaza (let's
> assume 100% terrorism) in the past 14 years? 30.

This is the wrong number to look at, but let's look at it anyway, because the
discussion is relevant:

The reason this count is so low is _because_ Israel has spent so much effort
making it that low, continuously since inception. e.g. Israeli building code
requires a bomb shelter as part of every single building (older code), a bomb
proof core (last 25 years) and additionally public bomb shelters; That's been
going on for 70 years now. The most recent "Iron Dome" system uses
$50,000-$100,000 rockets to target $500-$1,000 incoming rockets (each with
rather small potential - say, to kill 10 people -- but of which there were
5,000-10,000 launched at Israel over 2014)

What would the death toll have been if Israel did not have these measures in
place? Arguably 10-50 times higher; this is much less of a hypothetical
discussion as the rockets were actually launched. But that's irrelevant to the
C-51 discussion, I think; what is relevant is that when Israelis discuss these
matters, they tend do disagree on their cost-benefit estimation (It cost us
this-and-this-liberty, but it saved us this-many-lives, but it cost the
palestinians that-many-lives and thus our humanity, but ....) and many
actually object to e.g. Iron Dome. But there's mostly factual data to consider
and debate. That is missing from the debate in other countries.

The number that does matter in this kind of discussion, I think is from [1] -
which is over 600 casualties between 2000 to 2014. Israel actually had a
serious suicide bombing problem back in the early 2000s, averaging about one
deadly attack per week. It was, effectively, solved by 2006, and you are
welcome to reach your own conclusion about how this was solved (HN is probably
the wrong place for this discussion ....). However, I will say this: I'm not
familiar with anyone who claims that this was solved by eroding the rights and
privacy of the Israeli public -- which for some reason appears to be the
preferred solution in just about every country (would probably have been in
Israel as well if there was anything left to erode ...)

It's almost as if all those domestic spying bills actually have more sinister
objectives. But we should all trust our governments to do the right things. /s

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-
bul...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-bulk-
metadata-surveillance-intelligence)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_att...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks)

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Generally agree with your points.

On the Iron Dome, it was launched in 2011. Interestingly, in the 10 years
before, 17 people died from rocket attacks from Gaza. It's often used to
explain the death toll difference between Israel and Palestine (not something
either of us mentioned) when it really was a relatively minor factor in
casualties before and after the dome. In fact, rocket attacks have always been
a relatively minor factor in casualties (despite being of course outright
frightening to live in a place where every year you find yourself in a bomb
shelter at some point). So I'm not sure that 10-50x higher is very probable
although it'd definitely be more.

I agree about the biggest threat being solved around 2006, the separation wall
is highly controversial (and I oppose it, in general), but it's been
absolutely effective and its benefit is as visible as its cost (unlike many
anti-terror laws whose benefits are much more vague).

> I'm not familiar with anyone who claims that this was solved by eroding the
> rights and privacy of the Israeli public -- which for some reason appears to
> be the preferred solution in just about every country

Agreed. Although here in the Netherlands our carriers recently stopped saving
telephone records on everyone after it appeared the judge said this wasn't
necessary anymore, which really surprised everyone haha. Wasn't a Dutch thing
btw, the European court of justice ruled the telecommunications retention law
invalid. There's some good things happening here and there.

------
habitue
I understand the reason the article is framed this way: "Suprise! Business
interests are on the same side as privacy advocates on this issue!" But if the
argument "this is bad for business" doesn't fly when someone wants to pollute,
why is it a persuasive argument when the shoe is on the other foot and
progressive interests are aligned with business interests?

The real reason this person doesn't support the C-51 is because it's nasty big
brother crap. Don't minimize the real reason by saying "There's a grown-up
reason I'm against the bill: it's bad for business". Privacy is valuable by
itself, whether or not it's good or bad for business.

~~~
slavik81
> But if the argument "this is bad for business" doesn't fly when someone
> wants to pollute

I think you'll find that it does, actually. As a country highly dependant on
extracting primary resources, Canada's quite used to making tradeoffs between
protecting the environment and making money.

~~~
habitue
Point taken. But I hope you'll agree that "it's bad for business" isn't a slam
dunk argument even in Canada. Think about it this way: if the alignment were
reversed, and this law was _good_ for business, do you think anyone would try
to fend off critics of C-51 by saying "But look how good for business it is!".

This asymmetry indicates the real reasons the law is good or bad lie
elsewhere.

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Rogerh91
Bill C-51 is a lowering of standards for what can be considered terrorism in
Canada. It extends the power to our domestic security agency to arrest people
who "may" commit terrorism rather than "will"\--what that means is a open
question. It also establishes more powers to quell "terrorist propaganda",
including the cited website takedown powers.

~~~
joe_developer
It's much broader than that, "(f) interference with critical infrastructure;"
which can be interpreted to mean First Nations protests that delay pipeline
construction. I heard from a representative of the BC Civil Liberties
Association that protestors have already been placed on no-fly lists.

~~~
hpyjshrvolu
It could also easily be interpreted to cover that kid accused of making too
many connections to the Canadian tax agency's servers back when the heartbleed
vulnerability was new.

Computer monkeying could suddenly be tarred as terrorism, in addition to
criminal nonsense; it was already hyperbole - I don't even know where to begin
on C-51.

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MichaelGG
This bill is idiotic. Some insane idiot goes and shoots up a building? Yeah,
anti-terrorism laws will stop that! Harper is a disgrace to Canadians, and the
immediate attention whoring he did after that little episode was embarrassing.

No laws, short of banning cars and inspecting everyone, everywhere, all the
time, is gonna stop people from driving cars into things or sneaking in a gun
and shooting people.

The only real antidote is to not have an abusive foreign policy like the US,
and to educate people in rationality and stop treating mystical beliefs as
something sacred. And even then, that isn't gonna really stop the really
disconnected-from-reality folks.

As a Canadian, I'm once again saddened by how far this government is falling.

~~~
istvan__
To be fair it is not specific to Canada, USA and Australia does the same, also
at some extent New Zealand started to walk to the wrong direction. I suspect
some influence from US friends.

~~~
happyscrappy
Apparently no country is responsible for its own actions, everything is the
fault of the Americans. That attitude reinforces US power.

~~~
badloginagain
Of course a country is responsible for its own actions, but no country flouts
American pressure lightly. Aligning a countries interest to America's is often
the lesser of all calculated evils.

~~~
happyscrappy
That may be true but absolving officials of responsibility only invites
further transgressions.

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jayvanguard
The mind boggles that Harper is trying to push this through in the wake of the
NSA scandal.

~~~
BrainInAJar
If the agency is doing something illegal, the obvious solution is to change
the law so it's no longer illegal. Progress!

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zingplex
It is a shame to sit here and be able to watch Canada's demise, for when we
pass these draconian laws that take away and restrict our freedoms, the
terrorists that the government is trying to protect against, have won.

~~~
twerquie
I've heard it said a thousand times, but it still bears repeating; terrorism
is impossible to defend against.

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vishaldpatel
I thought C-51 was defeated. Why is it back?

