Politics

Online surveillance bill opens door for Big Brother - Politics - CBC News.

"Essentially, [this law] says that government agents may enter an ISP when they wish, without a warrant, and demand to see absolutely everything — including all data anywhere on the network — and to copy it all. If that seems hard to believe, let's walk through it."

Vic Toews, Canadian Public Safety Minister, has pulled the GW Bush card in the war against privacy: "You either stand with us, or you stand with the child pornographers."

He denies saying this, but here's the video:

In response, the anonymous Twitter user Vikileaks30 has launched a campaign of revealing private details of Toews' own divorce case.

I won't repeat any of those tweets here, since I can't vouch for their truth.

Today, House of Commons staff handed out the "wrong" version of the new law allowing warrantless surveillance of internet traffic.  The error revealed the guts of Conservative communications strategy: accuse defenders of privacy of supporting child predators.

"The short title is listed as "Lawful Access Act." An hour later, House of Commons staff withdraw it and replace it with the identical bill, save a new short title. It's now the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.""

It's a strategy that backfired on then-opposition-leader, now Prime Minister, Harper when he accused PM Paul Martin of defending child molesters in the 2004 election.  Now that Harper has a majority government, it might be more useful for battering down the scattered opposition.

Open Media.ca has a petition against the new law, bill C-30. The law grants unprecedented powers to police, and forces ISP's to pay for surveillance technology.

Please circulate and sign this petition.

The government is about to push through a set of electronic surveillance laws that will invade your privacy and cost you money. The plan is to force every phone and Internet provider to allow "authorities" to collect the private information of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant.

This bizarre legislation will create Internet surveillance that is:

• Warrantless: A range of "authorities" will have the ability to access the private information of law-abiding Canadians and our families using wired Internet and mobile devices, without justification.
• Invasive: The laws leave our personal and financial information less secure and more susceptible to cybercrime.
• Costly: Internet services providers may be forced to install millions of dollars worth of spying technology and the cost will be passed down to YOU.

Hébert is one of Canada's most astute political writers.  Today she does a really good analysis of how arts funding, including public broadcast funding, lead indirectly to impact around the world and commercial box-office success.

The Conservative argument says that artists should give up and get a job if they can't sell their work from day one, and that government subsidies are for losers. This is disproved in Hébert's story about La Course: Destination Monde, a Radio-Canada show from the 90's that nurtured all kinds of successful filmmakers.

I was on Road Movies, the English-language knock-off of La Course.  It was non-competitive, and it only ran one season, but such is the permanent state of Anglo Canadian culture.  Nothing gets traction in the landslide of American product; in fact, I can't even find a good web link for the title of that show.  The funding ended after one year and the money for English-Canadian culture seems to have been sliding downwards ever since.

Quebec sustains its cultural industries with constant, full-spectrum support and a dedicated audience, and Harper's attempt to pull funding away from all but the most obviously vital parts of the culture industry should scare us all.

Canada News: Hébert: Radio-Canada’s days as talent incubator may be over - thestar.com.

After the screenings, we did live Skype chats so the audience could Q & A.  I spoke a lot about Final Cut Pro vs Adobe software and the future of independent video editing. Liz, for her part, talked about Second Life and the combination of joy and horror she feels in that phantasmagoric shopping mall.

Liz got to bed VERY late - the time difference is 4.5 hours - and a good time was had by all, at both ends of this giant country.

After ‘The Wire’ ended, actress Sonja Sohn couldn’t leave Baltimore’s troubled streets behind - The Washington Post.

So I'm starting to get into photography lately. Since video and stills are converging I might as well stop resisting...

Etsy featured my shots of Laura Treloar, a cool jeweler (of Specimental Design) with whom I work in her capacity as a high school art teacher... If the next paragraph doesn't make you feel lazy, all I can say is "yeesh!"

"Apart from creating things, what do you do?
Specimental keeps me as busy as a full-time job. I am a single mother to three small children, who are now 4, 6 and 7.  I am also a full-time high school art teacher here in Vancouver, Canada. I live in a 100-year-old house which is nearing the end of a five-and-a-half-year complete restoration of the interior and exterior. When I am not busy with any of these pursuits, I am often found vacuuming. It’s how I relax."

Featured Seller: Specimental | The Etsy Blog.

UBC and SFU welcome $1.7M Videomatica film collection « UBC Public Affairs.

An exceptional film collection valued at $1.7 million will be housed and preserved by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University.

Videomatica – a long-loved video rental store that opened in 1983 and specialized in rare and esoteric titles – is donating the bulk of 28,000 DVDs, 4,000 VHS titles and 900 Blu-rays to UBC. The collection will be housed at UBC Library with more than 5,000 duplicates available at UBC’s Dept. of Theatre and Film. SFU receives about 2,800 documentaries from the collection.

"It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant."

Rodney DeCroo - "War Torn Man" (video) • Click Hear • exclaim.ca.