I'm not Canadian, but it seems similarly written to how laws in the US have been exploited to be used to spy on Americans. And despite not being Canadian, as an American I have a horse in this race, as the OP notes...

  | many of these rules appear geared toward global information sharing

I see a lot of people arguing that these bounds are reasonable so I want to make an argument from a different perspective:

  Investigative work *should* be difficult.

There is a strong imbalance of power between the government and the people. My little understanding of Canadian Law suggests that Canada, like the US, was influenced by Blackstone[0]. You may have heard his ratio (or the many variations of it)

  | It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

What Blackstone was arguing was about the legal variant of "failure modes" in engineering. Or you can view it as the impact of Type I (False Positive) and Type II (False Negative) errors. Most of us here are programmers so this should be natural thinking: when your program fails how do you want it to fail? Or think of it like with a locked door. Do you want the lock to fail open or closed? In a bank you probably want your safe to fail closed: the safe requires breaking into to access again. But in a public building you probably want it to fail open (so people can escape from a fire or some other emergency that is likely the reason for failure).

This frame of thinking is critical with laws too! When the law fails how do you want it to fail? So you need to think about that when evaluating this (or any other) law. When it is abused, how does it fail? Are you okay with that failure mode? How easy is it to be abused? Even if you believe your current government is unlikely to abuse it do you believe a future government might? (If you don't believe a future government might... look south...)

A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals. We generally have this philosophy because it is needed to keep a government in check. It doesn't matter if everyone involved has good intentions. We're programmers, this should be natural too! It doesn't matter if we have good intentions when designing a login page, you still have to think adversarially and about failure modes because good intentions are not enough to defend against those who wish to exploit it. Even if the number of exploiters is small the damage is usually large, right?

This framework of thinking is just as beneficial when thinking about laws as it is in the design of your programs. You can be in favor of the intent (spirit of the law), but you do have to question if the letter of the law is sufficient.

I wanted to explain this because I think it'll help facilitate these types of discussions. I think they often break down because people are interpreting from very different mental frameworks. Disagree with me if you want, but I hope making the mental framework explicit can at least improve your arguments :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

▲ oceanplexian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals.

I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened, and where it was eventually reigned in with extreme measures (Usually broad and indiscriminate capital punishment).

I know your comment is about fixing failure modes in the legal system, and I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty, but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism? Much worse things are waiting on the other end of the spectrum when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

▲ somenameforme 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think a practical argument against what you're saying here is simply that solving the mad max stuff doesn't require anything at all like this. The type of crime that's scary and impactful (e.g. terrorism is scary, but so extremely rare that it can't really be considered impactful) is generally trivial to bust.

▲ _heimdall 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you of the opinion that peoples' default state is a Mad Max-like existence?

The question isn't about idealism or the realistic possibility of said idealism. The question, in my opinion, is whether we can only succeed as a species if a small number of people are entrusted with creating and enforcing laws by force when necessary.

That isn't to say we never need some level of hierarchy or that laws, social norms, etc aren't important. Its to say that we need to keep a tight reign on it and only push authority and enforcement up the ladder when absolutely necessary.

It will end poorly if we continue down the road of larger and larger governments under the fear of Mad Max, and this idea many people have that "someone has to be in charge."

▲ protocolture 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

I see "High Trust Society" so much as a weird racist dogwhistle, but feel free to disabuse me of that notion.

I live in an extremely high crime area. Because cops abuse the law to keep their numbers up. If someone checked they would see that my local McDonalds car park is one of the biggest crime hotspots in the country because of administrative detections made on minor drug deals there.

It just so happens that my area is also where the government dumps migrants, refugees and poor people. Its also the case that they test welfare changes here.

I haven't had a single incident here in 6 years. We often forget to lock our doors. My wife takes my toddler walking around the neighborhood at night. I wave hello to the guy across the road who I have like 99% certainty is dealing drugs (Or just has a lot of friends with nice cars who visit to see how long it has been since he trimmed his lawn).

That said, if you turn on the tv 2 things are apparently happening. 1. We are under attack by hordes of immigrants tearing the country apart. 2. We are under attack by kids on ebikes mowing kids down in a rampage of terror.

Politicians, in order to be seen to be doing things, bring laws in to counter these threats. People bash their chests and demand more be done.

But the issue is that its just not happening. My suburb is great. The people are generally lovely, even those in meth related occupations.

When you complain about the trustiness of the society, consider that your lack of trust might actually be the problem? Nothing is necessarily going to break down because you didnt make your neighbors life worse by supporting another dumb as shit law. "Oh no crime is so rampant" buddy you need to get over yourself. Societies don't fail because of socially defined Crime they fail because people prioritise their perceived safety over everyones freedom.

> I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty

Exactly what you are defending.

>what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

Its at threat from the idealism that you can just pass one more law to fix society.

>don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

They come up with a bunch of dumbshit laws like the OP. Thats the result.

	▲	nobodywillobsrv 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Re: High trust society general means people are pointing to some implicit unwritten structures that stop something from happening. Collective notions of shame, actual networks of friends and families that reinforce correct behaviour or issue corrections. Think about simply how credit networks form and function. And why visiting a food truck or medieval travelling doctor for your vial of ointment is different from buying special products from a brick and mortar establishment. Basically if you or the network has a harder time back propagating defaults and bad credit in a way that prevents future bad outcomes then that is a loss of high trust. This isn't about race really unless you are operating at the level of some biological or genetic connection to behaviour ... But that is a pretty strange place to be as there a whole host of confounding factors that are much more obvious and believable and I cast serious doubt that even a motivated racist would ever credibly be able to do empirical studies showing causal links between any given genetic population cluster and the emergent societal behaviour. These are such high dimensional systems it just seems insane to even think one could measure this effect. The invisible substrate is the society unfortunately ... And we are all bad at writing it down and measuring it.

▲ godelski 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  > until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.

I don't think it's predicated on that. It's based on low trust of authority. Not necessarily even current authority. And low trust of authority is not equivalent to high trust in... honestly anything else.

  > You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened

These are regions known for high levels of authoritarianism, not democracy, not anarchy (I'm not advocating for anarchy btw). These regions often have both high levels of authoritarianism AND low levels of trust. Though places like China, Japan, Korea etc have high authoritarianism and high trust (China obviously much more than the other two).

  > but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

It's a good question and you're right that the results aren't great. But I don't think it's as bad as the failure modes of high authoritarian countries.

High authority + low trust + abuse gives you situations like we've seen in Russia, Iran, North Korea. These are pretty bad. The people have no faith in their governments and the governments are centered around enriching a few.

High authority + high trust + abuse is probably even worse though. That's how you get countries like Nazi German (and cults). The government is still centered around enriching a few but they create more stability by narrowing the targeting. Or rather by having a clearer scale where everyone isn't abused ad equally. (You could see the famous quotes by a famous US president about keeping the white population in check by making them believe that at least they're not black)

None of the outcomes are good but I think the authoritarian ones are much worse.

  > when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

But this is also different from what I'm talking about. You can have my framework and trust your government. If you carefully read you'll find that they are not mutually exclusive.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? That implies that the road to hell isn't paved just by evil people. It can be paved even by good well intentioned ones. Just like I suggested about when programming. We don't intend to create bugs or flaws (at least most of us don't), but they still exist. They still get created even when we're trying our hardest to not create them, right? But being aware that they happen unintentionally helps you make fewer of them, right? I'm suggesting something similar, but about governments.

	▲	trinsic2 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This and the previous post is well thought out, thank you for the clarity.

▲ mx7zysuj4xew 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"He who gives up a little freedom for security deserves neither"

▲

catlifeonmars 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The issue I have with this quote is that it implies that some people deserve freedom and others do not.

I think a better way to phrase it would be:

> he who gives up a little freedom for a little security ends up with neither

▲

crummy 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I never understood this quote. I happily gave up the freedom of driving without a seatbelt for security, what does that say about me?

	▲	kuerbel 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Exactly nothing because you can release the seat belt yourself. It's about giving up freedoms you might never get back, because it's not your decision anymore after giving them up.
	▲	godelski 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It's become more a shorthand for saying much more. Though the original context differs from how it is used today (common with many idioms). People do not generally believe a seat belt limits your liberty, but you're not exactly wrong either. But maybe in order to understand what they mean it's better to not play devil's advocate. So try an example like the NSA's mass surveillance. This was instituted under the pretext of keeping Americans safe. It was a temporary liberty people were willing to sacrifice for safety. But not only did find the pretext was wrong (no WMDs were found...) but we never were returned that liberty either, now were we? That's the meaning. Or what people use it to mean. But if you try to tear down any saying it's not going to be hard to. Natural languages utility isn't in their precision, it's their flexibility. If you want precision, well I for one am not going to take all the time necessary to write this in a formal language like math and I'd doubt you'd have the patience for it either (who would?). So let's operate in good faith instead. It's far more convenient and far less taxing
	▲	salawat an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The quote refers to a Faustian bargain offered by the Penn's. They'd bankroll securing a township, as long as the township gave up the ability to tax them. The quote points out that by giving up the liberty to tax, for short term protection, ultimately the township would end up having neither the freedom to tax to fund further defense, or long term security so might as well hold onto the ability to tax and just figure out the security issue. Moral: don't give up freedoms for temporary gains. It never balances out in the end.
	▲	protocolture 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You dont deserve either.

▲ gotwaz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People are let go off all the time. Not because of the law but because who needs the work of chasing and punishing every law breaker in the land. In your own workplace,family and friend circle, count how many times you have seen some one do something dumb(forget illegal) that has caused a loss or pain to some one else. And then count how many times you have done something about it.

▲ sundvor 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I use the speed chime in my Model 3 car to alert me if I'm more than 2 km/h over the posted speed limit, which it infers from its database with the autopilot camera providing overrides.

If I'm over that when passing a speed camera in Victoria, AUS, I'll be pinged with a decent fine to arrive shortly.

Imagine if instead of a chime I got fined every single time, everywhere? All this new monitoring makes it a bit like that, at an extreme. I don't want to live in such a society.