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If You Have Nothing to Hide, You Have Nothing To Fear
Ah, the mating call of the armchair fascist. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear! You’re either with us or you’re against us!” An all or nothing plea-to-irrational-emotion to swing the debate onto your own grounds. It’s all a load of garbage, but that doesn’t stop people from falling for it. Every time.
The problem as it stands now, is that Canadians don’t just have to deal with John Badopinions in his living room, yelling at the news man on TV that “the country has gone to hell” because of a bunch of “frou-frou, soft-on-crime, liberal pinkos” actually think protecting basic human rights and human dignity means “pandering to the criminals.” No. John Badopinions lives and works in the Halls of Power. He makes the rules now. This is what you wanted, Canada. Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
If you recall our show a few weeks ago, in the twilight of the SOPA/PIPA outrage, we had Dr. Michael Geist on to discuss Bill C-11, which is essentially the Canadian version of the much maligned (for very, very good reasons) Stop Online Piracy Act. Bill C-11 would treat average Canadians as criminals in order to protect very wealthy, very powerful and very influential media companies from some 15 year old kid in his bedroom.
This is the new criminal. Billy Torrent, pimply-faced and bleary-eyed at 2 AM, downloading the newest episode of some anime or another that he could get on DVD, if only his folks upped his allowance.
Hey, the Conservatives said they’d get tough on crime, and ya gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette (In this metaphor, the eggs are people who are not guilty of any crimes whatsoever and the omelette is the prison system).
So C-11 is awful.
But poised to be pushed through the House, as Harper remakes the country in his own image is another bill, called C-30, or the disgustingly saccharine and patronizingly named Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. Really? Really? God, why not just call it the “Maple Syrup and Hockey For Everyone Because We’re All A Big Happy Family Act”? What, did “Letting The RCMP Spy On You Whenever They Want Just Because We Said It’s Totally Okay And Also We’re Going To Frame The Debate As ‘Think Of The Children’ In Order To Make Our Opponents Look Like Pedophiles Act” not fit into your tweet, Vic Toews?
[You] can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.
-Vic Towes, Public Safety Minister of Canada
So that’s it. That’s the dichotomy. You either support warrantless surveillance of your every move or you support child porn.
You either support the ability for police to get all your personal info: your phone number, your address, your IP address, anything, from your ISP, without a warrant, or you support child porn.
That faint clapping sound you hear is our good friend John Badopinions cheering the government on, bellowing “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” from the tree-tops in an attempt to attract a mate. “Way to stick it to those perverts, Vic! I don’t commit crimes, so this has nothing to do with me. I have literally nothing to hide.“
And thus, we come all the way to the top of the roller coaster. Have you enjoyed the ride so far? I wanted this to be fun; a bit of a different experience from my usual blog submissions. Are you ready? Here’s the drop. (You ARE tall enough to be on this ride, yes? I hope so!)
EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO HIDE. IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU A CRIMINAL TO ADMIT THAT.
Here, I’m going to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer them all honestly in the comments:
1. What is your address?
2. Where do you work?
3. How much money did you make last year?
4. How often do you have sex with your significant other?
5. When was the last time you got something for free at a restaurant because your server forgot to put it on the bill and you didn’t correct them?
6. What’s your primary e-mail address?
7. What’s your mother’s maiden name?
8. What are the names of every website with which you’ve registered a private account?
9. Can I go through your mail?
10. What school do your kids go to? And when is their recess, usually?
Rest assured, I do not intend to do anything nefarious with this information. On the contrary, I’m going to use it to make you safer. But you need to willfully submit this information to me. If you don’t answer the questions to my satisfaction, though, or if you don’t answer some at all, I’m going to assume you’re hiding something. And since you’re hiding it, it means you’re afraid. And if you’re afraid, after I just said I want to protect you, you must be the very kind of person I’d be protecting you from! I will now contact the authorities and send them after you. See how it works?
Keep in mind, that I’m actually asking you up front, which makes my invasion of your privacy optional, even if I’m twisting your arm. Bill C-30 wants to move in with you and isn’t even going to take you out to dinner first.
-Ted.
Social Media and Jack Layton
Are you on Klout? I enjoy following it to see how my number changes over time as I experiment on Twitter and Facebook (my Klout is higher than Phil’s by the way). Those are the two social networks I’ve connected to Klout, but there are 10 networks in all that Klout will measure for you. It all started with Twitter, but it’s really grown in the last several months. We talked about that on one of our past episodes.
We also talked about social media and politics back in May. As you know, Canada had a federal election on May 2nd of this year, and Twitter played a major role.
We’ll no doubt discuss these things for the provincial election in October here in Ontario, but that’s a post for another day.
I want to say, that on the federal political level in this country, there has been a very interesting development on Klout regarding the late NDP leader Jack Layton.
Back during the election campaign, Layton made a lot of waves during the English language leader’s debate (#db8 if you remember that night!) for using the phrase “hash tag fail” in one of his comments. The word “bling” in reference to gang lifestyle also quickly became a trending tweet that night. His Klout, at the time, was not quite as high as Stephen Harper, who, if I remember correctly, was second behind Michael Ignatieff (but only by a point or two) but in the last month, that really shifted.
A lot of people really liked Jack Layton, and when he tweeted his then final tweets in July, his Klout score jumped a full 10 points. One of the things I found interesting was that Stephen Harper’s Twitter account ALSO exhibited a significant jump on that same date.
Your support and well wishes are so appreciated. Thank you. I will fight this – and beat it.
Everything settled down for a time, and then Monday we learned the news that Jack Layton had lost his battle with cancer and passed away. His Klout score increased another two points and, again, so did Stephen Harper’s! In fact, all of the federal leaders and interim leaders’ Klout scores increased as they tweeted their condolences to the friends and family of Mr. Layton.
The Prime Minister has certainly taken to social media in the past few months. His Facebook page has over 60,000 likes and he has 163,000 followers on Twitter, more than any other Canadian politician.
But still, Klout considers Jack Layton the more influential person. At least it has in the last month.
And not only that! Social media has played a very large role in the remembrance of Jack Layton as well! There have been Facebook groups galore. Campaigns to leave porch lights on, memorials, candlelight vigil events all over the country and even a petition to have the CN Tower lit up in NDP Orange on the date of his funeral. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of tweets, and the thousands of pictures and videos that have been shared in the last 48 hours. This man’s passing has created a mini revolution online.
I don’t think we’ll see this level of social interaction regarding a political figure in Canada again for a long time.
-Ted.
