You can sympathetically argue that when police try to expand their powers, it’s usually to make their jobs easier. But one of the ways of lightening the load they push for will often include expanding authority, their immediate ability to bend the spirit of the law to favour them over the existing rights of criminals — and, as a side effect, you. And the direct result of that is a reduction of your freedom, even as part of the mathematically staggering majority of innocents. In the worst scenarios, you’re also expected to pay for the handcuffs and say thanks for any abuse entailed, as we’ve seen so often in the United States in the last eight years, with its since-weakened but still-going-strong Patriot Act.

Last week, in our own country, the federal Tories resurrected a bad idea they actually attacked the Liberals for suggesting only a few years ago. Two new Conservative bills were proposed at the end of this session which, indeed, would not only open your personal communications to “warrantless” surveillance, but would quickly cost you more money as the government demands technology companies themselves pay for a new surveillance and data-storing infrastructure. Hm, wonder where those extra costs will end up?

The unnecessary bills are called the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act and the Technical Assistance in the 21st Century Act, two names you should get to know and fight like mad against if you don’t want to give up any more of your privacy “for no evidence-based reason whatsoever.” None.
When the 18 would-be terrorists ended up arrested around Toronto in 2006, Internet communications were crucial in the investigation. You might think that this is an argument to expand police powers, but look at what happened. Using the existing process of warrants within existing privacy protection, the RCMP got their job done. Existing laws requiring due process don’t seem to be stopping numerous international child-porn busts our cops are involved with either. Glad to hear it. So why the sudden need to work outside court supervision?

Getting anywhere near this slippery slope of potential abuse wasn’t a good idea when the Liberals tried to shove it through in 2006, and Stockwell Day even went so far as to promise that his party would never resort to forcing ISPs to hand over information without a warrant. On Friday, however, Stephen Harper’s tenuous government — to the surprise of Canadians everywhere — broke yet another Tory promise as Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan pushed for these bills which sidestep court oversight entirely.

Along with new ease for police tracking devices in cars and cell phones, of particular note is how only “some” ISP companies — i.e., those older than three years — will be required to install monitoring systems and keep records of all of their clients’ communications. To keep full records of every e-mail you and everyone you know send, every website you visit. The three-year rule was put in to give startup companies a financial break. But Shaw and Telus and the like, they’ll have to pay for the whole thing. Which, as much as I’d love to see fewer CGI animal commercials, is just fucking ridiculous and will hit us directly ... for what dire policing need again? Which pedophiles and terrorists are slipping through the cracks on technicalities? Because without even the basic consideration of these arguments, our Internet service costs will go up for the privilege of being spied on by the cops at their whim. Without court orders, they could legally probe wherever they like.

What’s really notable, though, is how this exemplifies the scared, bewildered Republican mindset of Harper’s boys who recently went on the attack against Ignatieff in TV ads for, you know, traveling the world and the implication of being faggily cosmopolitan. They fit so squarely with Newt Gingrich’s staggering untruth, “I am not a citizen of the world.” Line the attitudes up, observe the same message. So it’s really no surprise our Conservatives want their own mini Patriot Act too. But where Bush’s loyalists could cash in on 9/11 fear, exactly what justification for spying is Harper going to cook up?