SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Encryption tools that keep your digital communications hidden from prying eyes are becoming more widespread, and Canadian police say they need a law that compels people to hand over their passwords so cops can access those communications.
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), a lobbying organization with membership from across the country, passed a resolution at its annual conference on Tuesday mandating that the group advocate for a law that would force people to provide their computer passwords to police with a judge's consent, CTV reported.
"To say this is deeply problematic is to understate the matter," said Micheal Vonn, policy director for the BC Civil Liberties Association. "We have all kinds of laws that do not compel people to incriminate themselves or even speak."
A law that compels people to give police access to their devices, which may contain messages, photos, and data that have nothing to do with any active criminal investigation, doesn't fit within Canada's current legal landscape and would be "tricky constitutionally," Vonn added.
"I'd question whether this proposal is constitutional," said Tamir Israel, a lawyer for the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa.
"It's rare to force people to help police investigate themselves, and for good reason," Israel continued. "It shifts the focus of criminal condemnation away from actual criminal activity and onto compliance. So if an individual legitimately objects to handing over their password, that alone makes them criminal."
[...] "This has been a standard component of what the chiefs of police do—they argue for laws that would make policing easier," Vonn said.
"But is it a good idea from a civil liberties perspective? No."
(Score: 2) by fnj on Sunday August 21 2016, @11:22PM
Eat shit, coppers. You can't "force" a free man to do anything against his will. You can pound William Wallace to jelly, tear his limbs off and pull his insides out, but his last word will still be FREEDOM! Sir Thomas More will be remembered and respected after the names of statist pigs through the ages are all forgotten and spit on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @12:50AM
Don't worry. They're working on ways to get around your free will, which is a fragile illusion at best. Soon it will be part of interrogations to inject designer drugs specifically meant to induce a specific kind of fugue state in which memory is not impaired but executive and higher cognitive functions completely shut down.
They have always been looking for a truth serum. They pretend that polygraph tests can detect lies, but it's an inside joke they all go along with. It's meant to firmly implant the idea into your subconscious that there could not possibly be an effective truth serum. They are learning more and more about consciousness and cognition with MRI and CT research. A lot of that research is proving a vast benefit and improving lives. Yet for every thing a human invents out of the purest of intentions, another human will find an evil use for it.
There are many kinds of drugs in trials. They tested LSD and marijuana hoping there was an easy truth drug. There is not. They've exhausted the diversity of artificial weed and now they're moving towards other substances such as bath salts. The other day, there was a story in the news about a kid who had been taking another one of these drugs that stabbed a couple sitting in their garage and was found eating the face of one of his victims. Let the data come in for a little while, cross it off the list, have a DEA crackdown, and work on the next one to make available. It's a new form of MKULTRA, and they do not care how many people die and how many lives they ruin.
If it cannot be had with drugs, then they will keep trying. When we have brain-computer interfaces, they will have that much more power at their disposal.
Eventually the research will find the exact pathways needed to be depressed or excited to completely shut down free will. Under the influence of the truth drug or hack they'll find eventually, the suspect will truthfully and openly answer any factual question asked without suspicion.
This is the future of the human race.
Your freedom is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Monday August 22 2016, @03:05AM
Yes; drugs, mind control, and torture can subvert free will, in the sense of breaking down the subject. But they can't make anyone a willing accomplice. The best they can do is make zombies, and even then, results are not guaranteed (really investigate what James Stockdale, John McCain, and others endured without yielding).
Magic truth serum is a fairy tale.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @03:12PM
MDMA is a surprisingly good truth serum, I've found.