You want a gun? Do you have a girlfriend/wife against whom you may wish to use it?
Are you or have you ever been treated for suicidal thoughts or depression?

Guns are dangerous.
To go about armed, in times of peace, is savage, barbarous, and is and ought to be, outlawed in all civilized counties, in populated areas – but not of course in that country, which has started by invasion two land wars in Asia in the past ten years, and has a proxy war now commencing in Pakistan.

And who but a mentally ill person or psycho would need a gun, in a 21st Century city?

Who but a mentally ill person or psycho would live in a 21st Century city?

It’s an American issue, like abortion: sought to be brought into the Canadian context by 1980′s era right-wingers envious of American right-wing’s dominance in the American “noosphere”….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

I use SSH and HTTPS extensively, and I absolutely do have expectation of privacy. The technological problems are reasonably solved at this point. Haven’t you bothered to learn PKI? Would you drive a car without understanding refueling and oil changes?

Any “lack of privacy” is caused by fascism and/or technical incompetence. It’s not a built-in, necessary part of the Intartubes.

Anonymity on the Internet is important to protect, since it encourages freedom of speech, the voicing of opinions that would otherwise be suppressed if authorities had unfettered access to identity information.

Despicable.

As to this wiretap bill: it’s unconstitutional on its face.

The fight for privacy is the same as the fight against p2p file sharing. There’s no way that copyright holders can stop sharing. They can fight it and slow it, but they can’t beat it. Likewise, the only thing that is private is what you keep in your mind. Anything else can or will be shared. What’s worse, eventually we’ll have mind-reading machines. Then there will be no privacy whatsoever.

Don’t get me wrong, I would very much like for there to be privacy. I’ve just come to the realization that it’s a lost cause. I think we are better off trying to think of ways to live in a world without privacy than trying to fight against the inevitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTqKQR3VQI8

I point out that if there were no laws outlawing the mere possession of Child Porn, there would be no information, of any type, which the mere possession of would ground criminal charges! Far less the expense and trouble of widespread and indiscriminate State surveillance of the internet!

I am convinced that that Law, outlawing the mere possession of child porn, was passed solely to gain police and government access to what otherwise would simply not be justifiably accessible to them, at all: what particular bits of information their citizens are viewing/sharing on the internet. The manufacture and distribution of these vile materials has ever been illegal: but the recent (1989) outlawing of its mere possession was and is a way to get the State’s (ie policeman’s)”foot in the door” – and the whole body is now following.

So how many well-paid fully-pensioned taxpayer-funded police officers are we paying full police salaries to, to sit in the dark and troll the net for who may be viewing “dirty pictures”? And what else are they remarking and noting (all in secret) about people’s web surfing?
Think their “political masters” could find any of that info useful in “governance”?

Does the mere fact that child porn exists in this world justify the removal of (or the installation of the tech means to quickly remove such) ALL personal privacy on the internet?

Removing the people’s expectation of privacy on the Net, by using people’s justified outrage at child pornography as its basis! – and were the mere possession of this material not illegal, you would not be subjected to regular press reports of people getting lengthy prison terms for looking at pictures and having dirty thoughts. That is, people would not be afraid of freely using the Internet. There is a chilling effect…

Using the Internet exposes people now to the risk of losing their liberty (eg prison for possession of drawings of underage sex – or even prose describing such!).

Prior to the outlawing of the possession of child porn – there was NO WAY TO BE IMPRISONED FOR THE MERE POSSESSION OF INFORMATION.

It’s not about protecting children-it’s about treating their citizens as children: under full surveillance at all times in the information realm – to prevent/subvert political developments which could otherwise occur. (IMHO, that’s the Gov’s real aim here – if they wanted to protect children, there are more cost-effective ways, eh?)
Shall this Governemnt-obtained info as to our internet use be open to the public? Will we all get to see what everyone else is viewing? Or is it only the neo-con “security” apparatus, now in full flower with the ongoing wars in Asia that the USA has started of late, which gets to “use” this data? To help to achieve their “aims”? How? For effective “targeting” of their “message”?

Welcome to Camp X-Ray, extended throughout the US/Canadian body politic. They want to know everything you do: you might have dirty thoughts!!
And not just about children….

The only problem is if your brain is stuck playing the theme to “Jeopardy” that day.

Without my ISP’s help, tracking my surfing may or may not be a trivial exercise – but that hardly removes my general expectation of privacy.

Indeed, unlike the USA, where the anti-abortion people are dead set against the recognition of any right to privacy at all, in Canada the right to privacy is built-in to our right to the security of the person, in our Constitution.They can get around this if certain conditions are met – but they cannot meet them in this case. The child-porn possession law barely survived Court scrutiny…

Summary: The Government can by its own action, laws and regulations make the internet a non-private space. But it is no part of their legitimate function to do so. And the child porn possession law is a legal ruse: otherwise, the Gov has zero right to shoulder surf ANYBODY – regardless of how private or otherwise that surfing may in reality be.

Bah. Our political parties are and have become mere window-dressing: America wants to war with the Muslims of Central Asia , and want our diplomatic cover, and our troops in that battle: and our freedoms have gotta go.