9 ms·

The canada trucker protests are not a great pro-privacy example. Given the weapons that were found at the border protest, and the subsequent prosecutions for t

The canada trucker protests are not a great pro-privacy example. Given the weapons that were found at the border protest, and the subsequent prosecutions for those possessing them (conspiracy to murder cops), any data requests seem to have served a legitimate purpose. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-charges-laid-court-appearance-bail-1.6352482 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-charge...

olalonde 4y ago
I think parent was referring to the large trucker protest in Ottawa where several privacy violations occurred (e.g. freezing bank accounts) despite the protests being mostly peaceful.
- deleted 4y ago
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- eldaisfish 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Would you describe the BLM protests as mostly peaceful?
    - tomkarho 4y ago
      Fiery but mostly peaceful. /s
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > despite the protests being mostly peaceful https://pressprogress.ca/it-was-violent-peoples-commission-report-shines-light-on-violence-harassment-and-hate-crimes-during-freedom-convoy/ https://pressprogress.ca/it-was-violent-peoples-commission-r...
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    Looks like it was as peaceful as other protests described as mostly peaceful that have happened over the last few years.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    Highly doubtful. It's a "citizens commission" which means a bunch of people decide whose reports to republish. Nothing even attempting to be truthful or bipartisan. The reports switch between describing attempted murder - trucks accelerating at pedestrians, etc - and crazy harassment like asking an asian man to do "a dragon dance" and then beating him with "blunt objects" when he refused, which didn't do any damage such that the police refused his report. > "The pastor recalled convoy supporters, some of whom routinely urinated on his church, even taking issue with a sign indicating the church was broadcasting its masses online due to provincial public health restrictions: “One of them pointed a fist towards me shouting ‘you should obey God instead of F-ing Trudeau’.”" Pointed a fist(?) and yelled a rude message about a politician. Oh, the harm! No photos of the urinators though - which supposedly kept happening. The only likely crime (likely a crime and likely happened) I spotted in their report was someone pushing a photographer's camera away. Annoying, and criminal, but totally unpunished at all rallies and protests. The police literally don't react to anything less than theft of a camera or punching the photographer.
username71 4y ago
[flagged]
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Lol. There was so much more to this. The cops had informants. They had undercover people. They were also chatting with the protest leadership about how a small number of dangerous people had "infiltrated" the protest movement. And, in the end, the cops seem to have been correct in their suspicions. The investigation isolated and arrested a very small number of people not for carrying weapons but for organizing to kill people. Few if any legitimate protesters were punished for anything. The events at Coutts seems to be a case of canada's police system working well in a unusual situation. From the article above: "Protest organizer Marco Van Huigenbos said the protest was "infiltrated by an extreme element" and a decision was made for the remaining group to roll out from Coutts on Tuesday morning."
  - username71 4y ago
    Cool story bro! Now demonstration is a fundamental right, and privacy is a fundamental right too. And no circumstance allows the police violating these rights, no matter how right wing they are, and how fuked up your brain is.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      Green, generic username... obviously a fluffy troll. Disengage and move on, folks. For the record, there's a reason the 5th Amendment exists and is replicated in other countries' legal systems.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  What are you even talking about? That is literally the same tactic used against leftists. That you think only the right wing in persecuted in this way is telling.
  - bigger_inside 4y ago
recuter 4y ago
> any data requests seem to have served a legitimate purpose Any and all?
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Yes. If the cops submitted a thousand data requests and 999 of them came back with nothing, but one of them prevented someone from gunning down people, then they are were justifiable requests. Anyone wanting to argue about cops overreaching and breaking rules should point to a situation where the cops didn't find anything horrible.
  - recuter 4y ago
    > Anyone wanting to argue about cops overreaching and breaking rules should point to a situation where the cops didn't find anything horrible. You just gave a hypothetical where 999 times out of 1000 that is the case. I remember a plot to blow up a bunch of buildings and behead the Canadian PM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ontario_terrorism_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ontario_terrorism_plot How carefully in your view should the muslim community in Canada be monitored? Edit: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Ffe%2F8f%2F72%2Ffe8f72666b9be3e6eb8c7e9ed2ef8069.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b9fb2f88c16ff24efbf8f10d553380aea1096583bf8b66d246e0e27bd8dd559f&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    I don't think an 0.1% success rate is at all valid, though I recognize it was a verbal flourish rather than a statistical claim. I am distinctly unsympathetic to the Canada trucker protest, but you're applying the logic of prison surveillance to regular society and that is a sure recipe for a bad outcome. If safety is this important to you, then you might be happier in an authoritarian country like Singapore or Saudi Arabia.
pessimizer 4y ago
If the potential for a few felony prosecutions for a few attempted crimes is your standard for abridging privacy, it was always a very low standard. People you aren't watching are always committing crimes, even more than people who are being watched. If the potential for any sort or level of crime creates a legitimate purpose, there's a legitimate purpose in surveilling everyone, at all times. That won't happen, though, it will be governments and corporations surveilling everyone else while remaining completely opaque themselves.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  A few felony convictions? This isn't stealing a car or passing a bad check. These guys are charged with conspiring to kill police officers. They were found bringing guns and tactical items to a remote protest location while chatting about using those guns to kill people. Even if the cops were violating people's rights, this is not the best situation to be arguing for civil liberties. There are anti-logging and anti-pipeline protests where canada's cops have used similar surveillance. Those are the better situations for winning civil liberties debates. The trucker protests are very much an uphill arguement.
  - themaninthedark 4y ago
    If you can't defend your rights in the worst case situation, then you will lose them. something something essential liberty for immediate security...
    - raverbashing 4y ago
      > something something essential liberty for immediate security... Something something quote taken out of context and repeated mindlessly
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Cops signed up for the job knowing they might get shot at. Avoiding a bad day at work isn't grounds for violating people's rights.
TeeMassive 4y ago
Criminals try to bring weapons accross the border all the time. Nothing in the article states that they were protesters or did what they did because of the protest except being at the border during the protests.
Dig1t 4y ago
Amongst the _thousands_ of peaceful, multi-racial, protesters they found 7 guys who simply possessed guns and one guy _uttered_ a threat. And that is the criteria you would use to silence all of them? That is a very low bar for censorship and doing away with privacy. The same standard is not being applied to the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” that we saw just a year prior.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  It wouldn’t be a first to purposefully send agitators to these protests to provide an excuse for police overstepping their boundaries.
orangepurple 4y ago
Clearly you have never heard of an agent provocateur
LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
If I show up to your event carrying a weapon without your knowledge, is it your fault or mine? If we treat it as your fault, haven't we found a perfect way to keep you from ever holding events?

olalonde 4y ago

I think parent was referring to the large trucker protest in Ottawa where several privacy violations occurred (e.g. freezing bank accounts) despite the protests being mostly peaceful.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eldaisfish 4y ago
[flagged]
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Would you describe the BLM protests as mostly peaceful?
  - tomkarho 4y ago
    Fiery but mostly peaceful. /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
barbazoo 4y ago
> despite the protests being mostly peaceful https://pressprogress.ca/it-was-violent-peoples-commission-report-shines-light-on-violence-harassment-and-hate-crimes-during-freedom-convoy/ https://pressprogress.ca/it-was-violent-peoples-commission-r...
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Looks like it was as peaceful as other protests described as mostly peaceful that have happened over the last few years.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  Highly doubtful. It's a "citizens commission" which means a bunch of people decide whose reports to republish. Nothing even attempting to be truthful or bipartisan. The reports switch between describing attempted murder - trucks accelerating at pedestrians, etc - and crazy harassment like asking an asian man to do "a dragon dance" and then beating him with "blunt objects" when he refused, which didn't do any damage such that the police refused his report. > "The pastor recalled convoy supporters, some of whom routinely urinated on his church, even taking issue with a sign indicating the church was broadcasting its masses online due to provincial public health restrictions: “One of them pointed a fist towards me shouting ‘you should obey God instead of F-ing Trudeau’.”" Pointed a fist(?) and yelled a rude message about a politician. Oh, the harm! No photos of the urinators though - which supposedly kept happening. The only likely crime (likely a crime and likely happened) I spotted in their report was someone pushing a photographer's camera away. Annoying, and criminal, but totally unpunished at all rallies and protests. The police literally don't react to anything less than theft of a camera or punching the photographer.

username71 4y ago

[flagged]

sandworm101 4y ago
Lol. There was so much more to this. The cops had informants. They had undercover people. They were also chatting with the protest leadership about how a small number of dangerous people had "infiltrated" the protest movement. And, in the end, the cops seem to have been correct in their suspicions. The investigation isolated and arrested a very small number of people not for carrying weapons but for organizing to kill people. Few if any legitimate protesters were punished for anything. The events at Coutts seems to be a case of canada's police system working well in a unusual situation. From the article above: "Protest organizer Marco Van Huigenbos said the protest was "infiltrated by an extreme element" and a decision was made for the remaining group to roll out from Coutts on Tuesday morning."
- username71 4y ago
  Cool story bro! Now demonstration is a fundamental right, and privacy is a fundamental right too. And no circumstance allows the police violating these rights, no matter how right wing they are, and how fuked up your brain is.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Green, generic username... obviously a fluffy troll. Disengage and move on, folks. For the record, there's a reason the 5th Amendment exists and is replicated in other countries' legal systems.
miguelazo 4y ago
What are you even talking about? That is literally the same tactic used against leftists. That you think only the right wing in persecuted in this way is telling.
- bigger_inside 4y ago

recuter 4y ago

> any data requests seem to have served a legitimate purpose Any and all?

sandworm101 4y ago
Yes. If the cops submitted a thousand data requests and 999 of them came back with nothing, but one of them prevented someone from gunning down people, then they are were justifiable requests. Anyone wanting to argue about cops overreaching and breaking rules should point to a situation where the cops didn't find anything horrible.
- recuter 4y ago
  > Anyone wanting to argue about cops overreaching and breaking rules should point to a situation where the cops didn't find anything horrible. You just gave a hypothetical where 999 times out of 1000 that is the case. I remember a plot to blow up a bunch of buildings and behead the Canadian PM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ontario_terrorism_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ontario_terrorism_plot How carefully in your view should the muslim community in Canada be monitored? Edit: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Ffe%2F8f%2F72%2Ffe8f72666b9be3e6eb8c7e9ed2ef8069.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=b9fb2f88c16ff24efbf8f10d553380aea1096583bf8b66d246e0e27bd8dd559f&ipo=images https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I don't think an 0.1% success rate is at all valid, though I recognize it was a verbal flourish rather than a statistical claim. I am distinctly unsympathetic to the Canada trucker protest, but you're applying the logic of prison surveillance to regular society and that is a sure recipe for a bad outcome. If safety is this important to you, then you might be happier in an authoritarian country like Singapore or Saudi Arabia.

pessimizer 4y ago

If the potential for a few felony prosecutions for a few attempted crimes is your standard for abridging privacy, it was always a very low standard. People you aren't watching are always committing crimes, even more than people who are being watched. If the potential for any sort or level of crime creates a legitimate purpose, there's a legitimate purpose in surveilling everyone, at all times. That won't happen, though, it will be governments and corporations surveilling everyone else while remaining completely opaque themselves.

sandworm101 4y ago
A few felony convictions? This isn't stealing a car or passing a bad check. These guys are charged with conspiring to kill police officers. They were found bringing guns and tactical items to a remote protest location while chatting about using those guns to kill people. Even if the cops were violating people's rights, this is not the best situation to be arguing for civil liberties. There are anti-logging and anti-pipeline protests where canada's cops have used similar surveillance. Those are the better situations for winning civil liberties debates. The trucker protests are very much an uphill arguement.
- themaninthedark 4y ago
  If you can't defend your rights in the worst case situation, then you will lose them. something something essential liberty for immediate security...
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    > something something essential liberty for immediate security... Something something quote taken out of context and repeated mindlessly
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Cops signed up for the job knowing they might get shot at. Avoiding a bad day at work isn't grounds for violating people's rights.

TeeMassive 4y ago

Criminals try to bring weapons accross the border all the time. Nothing in the article states that they were protesters or did what they did because of the protest except being at the border during the protests.

Dig1t 4y ago

Amongst the _thousands_ of peaceful, multi-racial, protesters they found 7 guys who simply possessed guns and one guy _uttered_ a threat. And that is the criteria you would use to silence all of them? That is a very low bar for censorship and doing away with privacy. The same standard is not being applied to the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” that we saw just a year prior.

tinus_hn 4y ago
It wouldn’t be a first to purposefully send agitators to these protests to provide an excuse for police overstepping their boundaries.

orangepurple 4y ago

Clearly you have never heard of an agent provocateur

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago

If I show up to your event carrying a weapon without your knowledge, is it your fault or mine? If we treat it as your fault, haven't we found a perfect way to keep you from ever holding events?