Back in July, there were interesting reports coming out of Vancouver Canada where a price war was raging. Some suggested the Shaw move to charge a mere $9.95 per month for high speed internet, phone and TV was little more than an attempt to destroy a local fibre ISP. From the report at the time:

Canadian cable operator Shaw has dropped a bit of a pricing bomb on consumers and competitors in Vancouver. The operator is offering some unheard of deals, including 15Mbps service with a 100GB cap for $9.95 ($9.13 US), 200 channels of TV service (with 25 high-definition channels) for $9.95, or digital phone service with free installation, also for $9.95 a month. The catch? You have to live in an area served by Novus Entertainment, a Canadian fiber to the home operator that’s currently wiring Vancouver apartment buildings.

Novus offers symmetrical 10Mbps service for $37.50 a month (110GB cap), 30/10 Mbps service for $89.95 (200GB cap), or 50/10Mbps service for $179.95 (360GB cap). Given Novus’s small size of just 9,000 subscribers, Shaw can essentially give service away in Novus markets and just eat the losses.

Unfortunately, if you’re a Shaw customer in any other area, such amazing deals aren’t available to you. In fact, in some instances, you’re paying nearly $150 per month more.

At the time, Novus was unsurprisingly upset over this and launched a campaign saying that Shaw users from across the country should be allowed the same deal of ten bucks a month. It ultimately sparked a lawsuit in the B.C. Supreme Court as well as a complaint in the Competition Bureau.

Shaw had even sent “street teams” to the residents asking if they were Novus customers, and if they were, tell them about the Shaw deal.

The CBC is now reporting that Shaw has responded to the accusations of anti-competitive practises and sued Novus for defamation.

Calgary-based Shaw, which has more than two million customers, mostly in Western Canada, has fired back by filing a defamation lawsuit against Novus in B.C. Supreme Court.

Shaw president Peter Bissonnette said Novus is spreading misinformation. The offer isn’t just targeted at Novus customers but residents of West Vancouver in general, which is a “highly competitive” market.

“They’ve publicly stated in the past that they’re going to become the bane of the life of Shaw,” Bissonnette said. “True to their word, they’ve embarked on this defamation campaign.”

It’s clearly a sort of David and Goliath sort of situation. Shaw is one of the three large ISPs stretched across Canada while Novus is a smaller Vancouver based company. Already, North American markets have been notorious for monopoly-like problems in the ISP industry. Many Canadians were reminded of this problem when an OECD report ranked Canada as having the 3rd worst cellphone rates in the world only outranked by Spain (2) and the United States (1). Some have argued that Canada’s landmass is the biggest problem for these prices, but given that the United States has a smaller landmass and a higher population density and still outranked Canada, that left that particular argument in limbo.

It’ll be interesting if the OECD report plays any roll in this latest price war, but either way, it’s already gotten ugly between the two companies.

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The blogger that can easily be creditted for bringing us a large quantity of the developments in the case of Time Warner Cable and Embarq verses Greenlight Inc. is now noting that the senate bill, SB 1004 was sent to committee in a very similar fashion to that of it’s House bill counterpart, SB 2052 in less than 24 hours.

“The Revenue Committee has a reputation for taking a good look at bills that come its way. Assuming everyone is invited to the table,” Brian writes, “they should get an understanding of how important next-generation broadband is to our state’s future.”

He continues, “Historically speaking, they’ll start looking at it sometime this September and have a report prepared about a year from now. Meanwhile, North Carolinians and people all over the country will continue to see more and more how important true high speed is to our economic development. The landscape has changed in a good way over the past couple of years and it will continue to change while they do this study.”

He then, again, thanked all the people who supported the movement.

In essence, this does mean that Greenlight Inc. is going to live for a while at the absolute very least. The debate around this, though, has fuelled some debate along traditional lines in Americans. That being whether or not a government should set up a company and introduce it into a marketplace. Some say that market forces should be left alone without government intervention while others look at the ISP situation and say that hey, the ISPs in an untampered with market have failed their customers and it’s time to be allowed to take action. In essence, it can be seen as a liberal stance versus a conservative stance, but of course, that’s over-simplifying the debate given that there’s a lot of practicalities that such a viewpoint does not address such as the quality of service being provided in this case for one.

Still, for the most part, it’s a huge victory for those who have been trying to get a local ISP in the area. No doubt this latest development is another huge blow to the incumbent ISPs in the area given how hard they fought for these bills.

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Earlier this morning, we noted that major opposition was mounting to stop the “Level the Playing Field” legislation that was before North Carolinas lawmakers. Now, word is that the legislation was sent to committee for further study.

“Glad to report good news, folks. You did it. HB 1252 is going to a study committee. That means it will be adapted, at the very least,” writes Brian, who’s been following this story since the beginning, “before it would come back for a vote. It may not come back at all. Greenlight and all NC muni broadband projects are alive and well.”

He continues, “This is good news because it stops any forward progress of the bill for a while. If it gets out of the House Select Rural Broadband Committee (I think that’s the correct name) it would have to go through at least one more study committee (Revenue) before it made it back to square one.”

He then thanked all the supporters for the cause.

Still, one should note that the battle is not over. It’s not clear where the legislation will go. Would it come back in a way that is equally supportive of the incumbent ISPs or will it simply not surface ever again as was suggested? Still, this latest development is, no doubt, a major blow to Time Warner Cable and Embarq who have been lobbying to maintain their duopoly in the area.

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We’ve been following a very interesting story from two cities in North Carolina for a while now. In one city, the city of Wilson, the city government listened to complaints about slow broadband speeds. So the city then rolled out fibre optics in an effort to boost broadband speed. When the city approached the two local ISPs to offer the improved network infrastructure, Time Warner Cable and Embarq, the two ISPs refused. So, the government created Greenlight Inc. – a new ISP for the area. Once the ISPs caught wind of it, they lobbied the state of North Carolina to introduce legislation that would cripple or block the new company altogether. Shortly afterwards, city residents in the two cities that would get the new broadband started getting push polls over the phone by the ISPs. More recently, a major tech company threw their support to the opposition of the bills – the so-called “level the playing field” bills.

Later today, there will be a vote on the bills. Opponents of the legislation say that they will be there to witness the vote in action. Already, city officials have been shocked and angered when they found out that legislation like this had been tabled.

Salisbury (the other city in question) Mayor Susan Kluttz said that she was “floored” when she found out that legislation like this would even be considered in the first place. From the article:

“This is a bill written by Time Warner Cable and the Cable Association through their attorneys,” Salisbury City Manager David Treme said. He described it as a double-standard, anti-consumer and incumbent-protection bill.

The competition municipalities can provide through fiber-optic cable will lower prices for consumers, improve customer service, broaden choices, offer the service to everyone and spur economic development, Treme said Thursday.

“Plus, it will have instant accountability,” Kluttz added. Customers of a city cable utility would own the enterprise and have local people heading the operations and providing the service, the city officials said.

“This is a hometown business,” Treme said.

Kluttz added that Wilson and Salisbury have studied the broadband issue “for so long we know how dangerous this (the bill) is.”

Opposition isn’t just limited to one tech company and city officials. It seems that other major companies are joining the opposition crowd. In a joint letter to the North Carolina representatives (PDF), many major companies expressed their opposition to the bills in question.

We, the undersigned private-sector companies and trade associations urge you to oppose HB1252, the so-called “Level Playing Field Act.” HB1252 is “level” only in the sense that it will harm both the public and private sectors. It will thwart public broadband initiatives, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, and diminish quality of life in North Carolina. In particular, it will hurt the private sector by undermining public-private partnerships, hamstringing our ability to sell our goods and services, interfering with workforce development, and stifling creativity and innovation.

The United States is currently suffering through one of the most serious economic crises in decades. We also continue to lag behind the leading nations in per capita broadband adoption, access to high-capacity networks, cost per unit of bandwidth, and growth of new broadband users. To address these concerns, Congress and the Obama Administration have made more than $7 billion available to catalyze public and private efforts to accelerate deployment of broadband infrastructure and services. States can ill afford to enact measures like HB1252, which impair use of these broadband funds and the ability of the public and private sectors to work hand-in-hand to reverse these trends.

So who said that? Here’s the list of entities that opposed the legislation through that joint letter:

Alcatel-Lucent
American Public Power Association
Atlantic Engineering Group, Inc.
EDUCAUSE
Fiber to the Home Council
Google, Inc.
Intel Corporation
Utilities Telecom Council
Telecommunications Industry Association

That is quite the list to say the least. The vote that will happen later today should prove to be one of the most interesting votes. It could even set the tone on whether or not governments should set up their own ISP if the service is bad. Clearly there are those that are openly upset over slow broadband. One doesn’t have to look far for people complaining about slow US internet speeds online.

Since ISPs would have to actually compete in the US again if this becomes a country-wide phenomenon, one wonders if things like throttling and data caps mysteriously fades away. If one wants to really be optimistic, maybe one could go as far as to say that ISPs might actually start acting like their Swedish counterparts and defend their customers more rigorously.

Another point to make that might throw a wrench into the machine though. What if the ISPs in those areas just pack up and leave, leaving the one ISP to be the new monopoly? What’s to stop that ISP from engaging in similar practises to that of the private interests? One hopes that the better alternative winds up prevailing. After all, if the status quo is kept, would anything really change at all while other countries develop even better internet access thanks to heavy competition? One hopes that if the bills fail, the text-book case scenario prevails and that internet access improves from here.

[Cartoon link via BoingBoing]

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It’s a staple in every conspiracy theory against a mega corporation. A mega company that has overwhelming power in a set market place locking away any kind of innovation that would pose a threat to its business model. Right now, it’s happening with high speed internet.

For those that have missed this controversy, Daily Tech has a very nice round-up of the big controversy surrounding government initiated broadband. In a nutshell, a city in North Carolina got tired of slow internet for prices that have gone through the roof and getting even more expensive. So, the city took matters in their own hands and rolled out fibre optic cables throughout the city.

The service, currently named Greenlight Inc., approached the Time Warner Cable and Embarq, proposing they use the infrastructure for a more reliable and faster internet connection for a cheaper price. The big cable companies refused, so the government was left with all this infrastructure with no support from the big telecom companies. After doing some research, the government found out that the service would be extremely cheap to run and would give the government huge profits. So, they decided to run Greenlight Inc. themselves.

Unfortunately for Greenlight Inc., Embarq and Time Warner Cable found out about this and realized that they would be competing against an ISP that was faster, more reliable and cheaper. So, the ISPs went to the North Carolina state senate and lobbied for legislation that would effectively either cripple or ban the service all together.

Recently legislation was tabled in the state government. Senate bill 1004 and House Bill 1252 which are both dubbed “Level the playing field”. Unsurprisingly, the city is reacting to try and stop the legislation. Among other things, they started their own blog to raise awareness of the issue.

Now, it seems that there is a report on there that says that the big ISPs are using push polling to gain support of H1252 in the city.

“Phones are ringing in Wilson. There’s a new poll about HB 1252 that is apparently designed with leading questions about municipal broadband.” Writes Brian, the writer of the blog. He continues, “It includes questions that, as a friend put it, can’t possibly be answered correctly without siding with certain cable and or telco providers.”

Further from the blog posting:

I’m guessing a couple of the industry execs will use it this week to convince lawmakers that Wilson citizens don’t need their system.

The same poll, or a similar one, has also popped up in Salibury. This weekend, several people there reported getting phone polls that led them to the same conclusion about their new network. Salisbury is network now that is similar to Wilson’s.

One poll. Two cities. One intended result.

It seems that ISPs are working around the clock to maintain the status quo – and their monopolies.

Digg

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There’s been a long hard fought battle between civil rights activists and supporters of increased surveillance on the internet. At issue is the gathering of all information of internet users in Britain, which includes everything about phone conversations, e-mail, social network communications, and other online activities, and putting them into a centralized database for British police to browse through without a court order or warrant. British civil rights and digital rights activists warned that, among other things, this could be an unprecedented move toward total surveillance of British citizens at the expense of basic fundamental rights. Supporters claim that this would create a valuable new tool to stem the flow of terrorism, help find missing persons, reduce crime and stop paedophiles.

Today, there was a concession. According to British news site, The Guardian, the Home Office has, for now, backed off of plans to centralize all of the data flowing through ISPs and instead require ISPs to hold all this information for a period of 12 months. That is a plan that would cost British tax payers £2 Billion.

The move was greeted with applause by civil rights advocates. Liberty, a British civil rights group, posted a press release on the recent move.

“We applaud the Home Office climb-down on the super Big Brother database and thank the broad coalition of sensible voices who brought it about. It is a clear signal that the public interest in personal privacy can no longer be ignored. However, if companies are to be required to hold even more information than they do at present, concerns about access and use become even more important.” Said Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.

Chakrabarti added, “Let us look forward to this U-turn on communications data being followed by limiting DNA retention, dumping ID cards and a less callous approach to privacy protection more generally.”

In the midst of all this is the Home Office consultation. The online consultation says, “We want your opinion on how communications information should be collected and stored in order to prevent crime, and catch and prosecute criminals.”

“Communications data is the ‘who’, ‘where’, and ‘when’ information from mobile phone calls, texts, emails and instant messages. It can tell you who sent an email to whom but not what the content of that email was.”

According to a supplementary page, the consultation runs all the way up to July 20th. Information on sending your opinions in can be found there as well.

As Michael Geist is pointing out, if you’d like to talk about network neutrality to the CRTC, now is the time to do it, but you have until the 23rd to do it in.

The hearings are, of course, on network neutrality. Should an ISP have the power to prioritize the internet in Canada? Canadian ISPs have certainly been saying so for a long time now. In fact, early last year, they were claiming that the networks were completely overloaded and on the verge of a total breakdown due to overcapacity.

They were then asked to prove their claims and they weren’t exactly forthcoming about the actual details, only to ask that their word alone should be believed. Nevertheless, papers were produced and it ultimately undermined their arguments. The papers then showed that at peak hours, the network was running at up to 33% capacity. Not exactly the most convincing statistic that supports Bells argument.

This, of course, was all going on when wholesalers found out that their services was being throttled by Bell (since they resell bandwidth to their customers) So later on, Bell Canada tried to prove again that they were overloaded and ended up passing along another statistic which said that they had two instances where they were 8% congested. Another not-so convincing statistic.

So now, almost a whole year later, Canadian ISPs are arguing that they need to throttle certain high-bandwidth applications to keep their network stable. So after waiting until almost the last moment, they finally forked over the information (anonymously). The statistics, according to the CBC podcast Search Engine, showed that the rise in bandwidth consumption went down 45%. In other words, after having a history of showing that they haven’t really been that overcapacity, ISPs bandwidth consumption has slowed down its growth.

Net neutrality advocates were unsurprisingly happy about the new finding. SaveOurNet.ca had another highligh on the news:

According to the CBC, the figures reveal “annual growth in total traffic volume declined for two consecutive years from 2005-06 to 2007-08 for five of the seven ISPs.” This data significantly undermines arguments made by the ISPs that they need to manage networks in order to prevent congestion.

SaveOurNet.ca co-founder Steve Anderson had this to say today, “If traffic growth is slowing, then it is hard to imagine why the ISPs need to suddenly selectively throttle Internet traffic. The fact that ISPs are slowing access to Internet technologies that compete with their own services seems like more than just a coincidence”.
If you’re Canadian, and you support the views of SaveOurNet.ca, you can contact the CRTC and have your voice heard through their submission form. You can also find out more information through the CRTC public notice or you can find out more information through Michael Geists blog posting on the subject.

Yesterday, we highlighted a professor who called people at the EFA “Extremists” on Australian IT. Now, Electronic Frontier Australia has issued a response to what they consider, among other things, misrepresentations he published.

The EFA says that the filtering scheme is a “policy mess”, won’t protect children, will not be useful for law enforcement and is not exactly the most public move the governments ever made.

From the response:

Let’s humour our critics for a moment and don the cyber-libertarian hat. Are there also good reasons here to oppose filtering? There are of course many amongst EFA and those sympathetic to its work that do admire and cherish the open, anarchic free-wheeling nature of the Internet. It’s hard to deny this is part of what makes the net such an exciting and valuable medium for culture and entrepreneurship. Heavy-handed regulation could, in theory, damage this and make the Internet less useful for everyone.

On the other hand, the Government clearly has the right to legislate on content and networks in Australia. There could be many cases when government regulation and intervention could be positive for the net – bolstering our network capacity and ensuring fair competition in the market for network services come to mind. The outlawing of images online that depict actual child abuse is a good example of a content law that few would oppose, and is one that is actually enforceable and is gaining convictions. It would seem silly, then, to simply oppose all internet regulation as a matter of principle.

The EFA also says that there are home-based filters in existence today to help control what children see online. They also say that education and adult supervision are also options to help protect children in the first place. Additionally, they say that Hamilton is merely attacking a straw man.

It may be difficult for some to read what this professor has published in Australian IT without noting a certain amount of irony, but a he has essentially said that the internet doesn’t belong to people who have “Libertarian” beliefs. It does seem to highlight how heated the web filtering debate in Australia has become.

He starts out his article by saying that the internet filtering technology in Australia as proposed by the Australian government was to stop children from looking up porn on the internet. This may be news to a number of people who are watching the filtering debate unfold in Australia given that the first things we’ve heard out of the country’s government revolved around child pornography, not children watching pornography; that is, of course, if you take what the government says as fact of course.

He continues his piece saying the filtering debate is little more than filtering porn and how opponents are arguing that there is nothing wrong with children having free access to it. All this ignoring any hint that the debate has gone well beyond this into things like, “is it possible, let along right, to have these filters block all forms of p2p traffic?” or how do these filters plan on avoiding blocking legitimate sites like Wikipedia as has happened in England for instance.

Afterwards, he goes as far as to say that the people at Electronic Frontier Australia “represents the most extreme strand of internet libertarianism“ He uses porn as a red herring to support the internet filtering movement with the following:

Fortunately, we do not live in the type of society favoured by organisations like Electronic Frontiers Australia. We live in a democracy where citizens ask their governments to impose restrictions on certain types of content that are regarded as harmful to individuals or to the community more broadly.

He acknowledges that there are grey areas in the debate, but says that, for the most part, most kinds of content is either “black” or “white” and says this:

I have no in-principle objection to censoring the internet in the same way we censor other media, and I suspect most Australians would agree. Certainly, most parents of teenagers agree.

It almost seems as though he isn’t aware of the fact that the internet functions drastically different from other forms of media. Can a television be encrypted in a way to view something to avoid censors like an internet service? Not really. Does internet content largely reside in Australian control? Hardly. A far cry from what can be said about Australian television which can technologically be more heavily regulated.

To his credit, he cites the fact that filtering could degrade internet performance by 87%, but dismisses the statistic as scare-mongering, using an unsited statistic that another filter would degrade performance by 2%. Where he got this statistic is unclear. He also doesn’t deny that 1 in 12 sites would be mistakenly blocked which, in and of itself, is quite interesting.

He concludes with, “the most revealing words in the Get Up statement are “our internet”. The internet does not belong to the net libertarians, who seem to believe they inhabit a cyber-nation that is beyond normal forms of social regulation. The net belongs to all of us and, like other forms of communication, is subject to our collective decisions.“

This might be true if Get Up said, “My Internet”, but who does the internet belong to? It’s a neutral medium that anyone with a connection can contribute to. How can one entity set the standards for everyone on a medium such as the internet. Someones standards in China may be completely different to that of someones standards in Britain. Considering the fact that filters being proposed don’t really have an opt-out system, it’s mandatory for every citizen.

No one is saying that all filters are bad, but what many find offensive is the fact that these new government mandated filters will be used on everyones internet connection. It’s the lack of choice in the matter. With this in mind, the professor almost insinuates that users shouldn’t have a right to choose what they see online. There’s a huge difference between someone wanting to put filters on their computer and a government forcing everyone to use their filter – regardless of what is being filtered. How exactly to you call removing a freedom of choice democratic? It’s far easier to call that a dictatorship more than anything else.

A few days ago, Michael Geist highlighted news that the Canadian government was planning on introducing new surveillance legislation. The infamous lawful access would allow police to monitor online chat including e-mail and private conversations – a provision that rumours suggest would be repeated under the latest push for total e-surveillance – without a warrant. Later on that day, a report suggested that the bill wouldn’t actually be imminent.

In a time when the Canadian police have been under the gun (no pun intended) over fatal taser misuse, increasing the power of what the police can do, especially without court oversight, doesn’t seem like a real vote-winner for any governing party. Of course, this is by far not the only reason to be concerned over such legislation.

We’ve followed the privacy debate closely in part because of the possibility of the privacy debate and the copyright debate intersecting. In a number of instances, not only have the privacy debate and the copyright debate intersected, but also the file-sharing debate and the privacy debate. In this respect, Canada does have a pretty good vantage point when it comes to forecasting what would be expected in the privacy debate since the issues similar to that of lawful access (since the introduction of the Paul Martin governments surveillance legislation) has been brought up in a number of other countries. So, what happened in the other countries that Canada can learn from?

United States

First, one can easily look at the only country that shares a land border with Canada, the United States. In the United States, controversy erupted over the Department of Justice’s warrantless wiretapping program with AT&T. The news exploded ever since whistle blower Mark Klein submitted evidence to the Electronic Frontier Foundation that showed that there was a splitter in the main network that copied and stored traffic for investigation by the Department of Justice. It took a lawsuit to legally release information from those documents. When the courts started to look like they were going to rule against AT&T, the Bush administration intervened – introducing and passing the “Protect America Act” which gave the telecom giants legal immunity. It raised serious constitutional concerns and the legal implications of the warrantless wiretapping is still being felt today. Even in the country where the push for the so-called war on terror originated, there were serious questions being raised over violations of privacy with respect to the warrantless wiretapping program – some of which are still in the hands of the US court system.

Australia

Australians have found themselves debating whether or not it’s even a good idea to filter the internet. Never mind a police officer actively choosing to whether or not spy on a particular internet user, all Australians would find themselves subject to some form of picking and choosing what a user can view. Essentially speaking, one can view this as all users are potential criminals the second they even get an internet connection in the first place. The debate is best characterized as whether or not it is a good idea to filter out “inappropriate content”. The push for internet filters went so far as to try and filter file-sharing, but a studies have suggested that filtering file-sharing isn’t technologically feasible. If one were to suggest that it got as far as a few pointed opinions, they would be mistaken because of the large demonstrations to fight legislation that would filter the internet. Even Australian Internet Service Providers have rejected the moves to internet filtering. One of the arguments to come out of this particular debate was that it’s up to the government to not only protect it’s citizens, but to protect their citizens from future governments. Even if one were to trust the Australian government to only go after the “bad” content, what’s to stop future governments from filtering out political speech?

Britain

If there is any non-Asian first world countries that have developed a reputation for mass surveillance, it would be Britain. While it’s quite visible to see the pervasive CCTV camera system, there is also the Interception Modernization movement late last year which has been quite unpopular. This is combined with the hugely unpopular data retention policy (EPIC) (Specifically for the UK, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001)

A lot of the steam for the surveillance movement lost a lot of steam once Her Majesty’s Royal Commission lost the identities of 25 million people (Nearly half the population of Britain)

The British government also took the step to start a blacklist of websites and logging anyone who tried accessing the page in question. The controversy over such a measure hit new heights when British censors blocked Wikipedia

The move to put all this data on a centralized database, unsurprisingly after all of this, isn’t exactly making people celebrate on the streets either – and we haven’t even begun to describe the Phorm fiasco

Sweden

Ever since privacy issues in many other major countries became international news, the FRA/Lex Orwell legislation in Sweden ended up being drowned out on the international headlines. Still, the Swedish law story probably provided an excellent view on what happens when a government passes mass surveillance legislation from rumour to it ultimately passing the legislation. We reported on the initial stages of the legislation when it first became public knowledge that the legislation was coming. The law almost instantly became controversial because even though the law would spy on all traffic merely going in and out of the country, the way the internet is wired in Sweden, even a Swedish resident looking at a Swedish website would most likely have their traffic routed out of the country and back into the country again. Effectively, everyone in the country was being watched. Like many other places when the government pushes for mass surveillance, the movement to stop it was taken online in protest of the law; the website being stoppaFRAlagen (English version of the website). The administrators of ThePirateBay also joined calls to stop the Lex Orwell legislation.

The legislation, as we’ve said, ultimately passed, but not without an amount of drama. The legislation needed the support of the governing party, but if 4 people defected from the ranks to vote against it, the legislation would have been stopped. Only two managed to vote against it and one of the two that was thinking of voting against it, but voting for it was found crying on the steps of parliament. The moment inspired a picture known as “They Stood Up for Your Rights” with two Mps pictures lined up next to two empty picture frames.

Germany

Ground zero for the movement known as the “Freedom, Not Fear” campaign. The protests started in major cities across Germany aimed mainly at the data retention policy. The data retention policy would force ISPs to log all the movements of all internet users for a long period of time (a time that has since been changed around a number of times to several years at one point). The protests were largely successful and moved into an international movement (not just a Europe-wide movement) against general overbroadening of surveillance powers – much like what Canada is facing now.

India

India has typically been a quiet country when it comes to digital civil rights, but when surveillance legislation known as the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill 2006 made it’s way through the democratic process, serious questions were raised by Indian citizens. As the Wikipedia entry notes, many citizens of India, startlingly, had to find out about the law through Slashdot, rather than local media.

Overall

If there is anything all 6 examples have in common, is that the moves towards total internet surveillance sparked civil unrest – 5 of which were quite large. Canada currently has a minority government which means that if the opposition parties vote against any possible surveillance legislation, the law would be voted down. The Canadian government also has a precarious position of potentially falling at virtually any time, thus sparking an election. In any event, trying to push through legislation that would broaden surveillance powers won’t win very many votes. If you want to win over public approval, surveillance laws is one of the last things you’d want to touch. The surveillance legislation that Canada pushed for previously died on the order paper. Canada did launch a public consultation on the issue, and the response was widely negative towards the broadening of surveillance powers. Also, generally speaking, Canadians do treat their privacy rights seriously and they have stood up for these rights in the past. Even though technically speaking, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t directly reference privacy, many Canadians feel that they have the right to privacy. In any event, even thinking about new online surveillance laws that intercepts e-mails and telephone conversations is a really bad idea just based on what happened in other countries – let alone the conflicts with civil liberties and public opinion on the matter. If the government plans on expanding surveillance powers, there better be court oversight as well as other safeguards to protect Canadian citizens or else they’ll quite likely be greeted with protesters who will be more than happy to vote them out.