If You Drink and Drive, You Should Forget About Driving Ever Again!

February 20th, 2010 Thomasso

Last night while I was heading home from work, I was passed on the road by a rather rude driver who was just in too much of a rush that everyone on the road was in his way, so he tail-gated, honked his horn and swerved contently to get around you. Finally he passed me going towards Fort Langley on Glover Road, just pasted the 232nd Street turn-off to highway #1. I kept to my lane, gave him some extra room so he could at least have some space to make his manoeuvre before he had a head on collision with the on coming traffic, and then he was gone.

After I got home, I decided to do a little shopping. I hopped back in the truck and headed off to Walnut-Grove, where “low and behold” there was that same rude driver again, stopped by the police getting a breathalyser test. The officer has his stash of beer cans on top of his car, and I could see the look on the driver’s face as he was lead to the police car when I drove by.

I am somewhat perplexed that after all the TV commercials and anti-driving ads, that people still think it is wise to drive while having a few drinks? I mean honestly, you are endangering all the people around you when you are driving intoxicated. You are not in full control of your faculties–even though “you” think so. And with the beefed up laws that we have now, with costly fines and a possible criminal record, not to mention the loss of your driver’s license, you would wonder that people would think twice about getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and driving off after having a few belts.

I hope that the system has done its job and has taken one more inconsiderate driver off the road. If anyone wants to argue with me on this one, then I will start with by saying this is a safety issue from all aspects. Unsafe drivers need-not-drive.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Social Justice | No Comments »

The Sue-ability Scale

February 5th, 2010 Thomasso

Lawyers, you may not want to read this, this might be a tough pill to swallow? These are my personal thoughts based on my personal experiences with Civil Court.

Justice is a weird thing. I have studied it to death and it still leaves me scratching my head wondering, asking why-and the answers become as vague as following a white car in the middle of a snowstorm. I have found that justice in Canada is only for those who are rich, or are very clever. That in most cases if you are being sued in civil court, it is better not to participate than it is to waste your time with the process of jurisprudences; and flip side to this, if you are rich, you are an easy target than compared to someone who is poor and homeless. Seriously, of the five people in my life that I have brought to the halls of justice, only one took the pledge and participated. The other four knew the system well enough not to bother, and I found it (almost) impossible to seek my claim, costs, damages and compensation. In fact, the one time that I was the respondent, it was easer to go on with my life than it was to play the game. To this day, the company that I had an agreement with is still out the initial $72.00, but they are also out on their costs too, so it pays not to bother with Canadian Justice if you have nothing to loose. Was it worth my time to show up—I’m still evaluating that?

I now know that there is a scale that the professionals follow when they go out on suing expeditions. They automatically drop anyone who has no money; who is renting; earning a low wage; has no bank account; has little or no identification, i.e., drivers license or birth certificate; uses aliases and moves around a lot. However, for the poor there is this thing called Small Claims Court, or the Pauper’s Court as it is called in my circles, but you still need to pay to use it though. When I studied Medieval legal systems of European cultures, Small Claims Court to me has a reminiscent quality of early continental European courts where the jurist is free to adjust, amend, vary and control all aspects of the hearing and decisions—although you can appeal in today’s court. One day I was helping a friend fight for his money from a debtor, and once it was our turn, the sitting judge read the Statement of Claim, then threw up his arm up with the documents in hand and said, “You expect to me rule on this? I think you should go back and talk to this person and make the effort on collecting your money before you go into my court.” Perhaps it was because we were not wearing $900.00 suites at the time? I’m still in awe to this day about that?

If you do have something to loose like a house, wages, assets, or your respondent has too, then going to court is the way to go. I have also seen the dual effects of court at play many times as the monetary and psychological costs play their toll and all parties. The trouble is, court is not a guaranteed bet. Just when you thought you had the full force of the law on your side, you are hit with a sucker-punch and your case falls like a house of cards. In one case of mine, I filed for a garnishment of wages and the respondent’s employer decided not to cooperate. The business told me that he does not work in their department any more. I found myself having to take extraordinary measures to track down who this person really worked for before I could I proceed with the action. This involved two days of driving by this guy’s work every ten minutes searching for what door he came out of. Then once I saw him walking out to go home, I went into the building and had to do some quick lurking. I asked one of the managers that I was looking for my “friend.” When I confirmed that that was the respondent’s employer, I then went to the manager’s office to serve the garnishment order. I received two out of the five payment to fulfil the debt, but then they stopped as the guy quit his job and moved elsewhere. I just recovered only my court costs in that case. Was it worth it? At least I got to play the psych-game with him.

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Social Justice | No Comments »

I Applaud the BC Court of Appeal’s decision on Insite

January 16th, 2010 Thomasso

One of the greatest contradictions of Canada’s “sheepish” war on drugs as been the connection between the cost of health to our healthcare system and the battle to regulate what the State thinks is good or bad for its citizens. The criminalization of drugs is a recent phenomenon that is just over a hundred years old, and was born out of attacking specific marginal and ethnic groups. Canada has a very deep cultural love affair with illegal narcotics, and none could be more so than with marijuana. But for whatever stance you choose in your ideology, albeit the left or right, the drug culture in Canada isn’t going to go away any time soon, and we have to deal with that.

Insite was born out of long term thinking and the concept of rehabilitation; in other words, having a safe place to be that offers hope is a better approach than by pushing it underground and letting the long term effects eat away at our society. The logic behind Insite is simple: safety and hope. The people who use the facility are addicted to drugs, and are at the bottom of the social ladder. Further criminalization is not going to “fix” them, but rather push them deeper into marginalization.

The nay-sayers seems to start off with the line, “If you prohibit drugs and the use of it, then that will fix the problem… .”

I argue that the nay-sayer, has not found the root cause of the problem, but has only made it even worse than the act of using the drugs in the first place. The nay-sayer needs to ask why that person has chosen to take the drugs in the first place. However, it is easer to criminalize something than to fix it—well, that seems to be Canada’s current model. But to become homeless and drug dependant means that that person has issues that go beyond the act of taking drugs. Then you reach a point where you have no where to go, you become vulnerable, and as a result you become more visible. From Hitler to Harper, the right-wing thinking is to invoke prohibition against specific marginal groups that do not appeal to middle and upper class standards, and to simply criminalize something that does not adhere to those standards seems to be the answer.

What insite does is to give these people the chance to use clean needles to inject themselves with in hopes of stopping the practice of sharing needles. The AIDS epidemic, and many other diseases too, has a direct correlation with this group of people with the sharing of needles, so it would make sense to offer clean needles than to deal with growing numbers of AIDS victims. Safety too is an issue with Insite because if that user needs further treatment, or decides to move towards kicking their habit, then there are people right there on site to offer that help. When the user is in the facility there are staff on hand that can promptly offer help if that person is in distress. I think it is far better than having someone injecting drugs in some back alley in the middle of Vancouver.

I totally agree with the British Columbia Court of Appeal on their decision to keep the jurisdiction of Instie with British Columbia’s authority, and thus allowing the facility to stay open without Federal interference. The Federal government should stop wasting our tax money on fighting this. Remember that the majority of Canadians did not vote for Harper!

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Law and Order, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

Post New Years Disorder

January 4th, 2010 Thomasso

Now that everyone is nicely in debt, suffering from the flu, and ready to get back to work, I now must take a step back and see the world that I am part of and ask myself why people do what they do, especially pondering the question of why is everyone so pissed off this time of year? Since the new year has started I have noticed a shift in the people around me, and more so from those who I work with, but this also applies to some of my friends too. However, I think there is more to it than meets the eye?

We just got off of two long weekends in a row with two paid statutory holidays. We went through, for most cultures, the most festive season in the calender; of course, I am the exception as I don’t celebrate the Christian, Jewish or Muslim traditions, but the Season of Tom (sic), which is 365 days per year–I am not a lemming. I enjoy everyday and treat everyday like it is New Years. So most people gave each other gifts and had fun with family and friends, and I am sure it was time well spent, but what happened afterwords, when it is time to go back and renew the year, the week, and continue on with our jobs?

So why does everyone seem so pissed off? Is it becuase the party is over? Hum? No, I think it goes deeper than that?

I think part of the answer is in the frustration that times are leaner, and becuase of the tight economic era that we now live in, people are “taking it out” on the first person that they encounter becuase they are frustrated with themselves . People have over spent. As the cost of living shoots upwards, so does the cost of giving in the monetary sense. So far since I have come back to work I have heard nothing but complaining about how in debt everyone is, and how expensive things are getting. Also, the labourers seem unwilling to motivate themselves as one person put it, “How can I work for this much when it now costs me more to do the job in the first place…” When they complain, the management resorts to apathy towards them. When they come to me, they act sometimes so vulgar and pathetic that I tune them out too.

Take for example the “Coughing More-On.” Today while I was setting everything up to start my day, this one guy comes in coughing and hacking his lunges out becuase he is in the full throws of the flu. First, he shows up at work so sick that he could pass out from coughing so much.  He then starts coughing without covering his mouth. He told me that If he caught it, then it should get it passed around also so he can “give it back” to whom ever he caught it from down the line. Stupendous logic here, eh? I know for someone with AIDS, there is a section in the Criminal Code of Canada that deals with that, and under the Infectious Diseases and Control Act, there are provisions for dealing with those people, but there ought to be something in there to the flu too, especially on the job. But I ask this question, because he is sick, does that mean he must make everyone else around him sick too?

So money and health seem to be the first casualties of the new year. This does not surprise me? I heard on CBC Radio One that the stats on consumer spending surveyed by the Bank of Montreal says that Canadians are confident about the economy. First, a Bank telling us that we are happy with the economy – now that is a joke. But it also says that if the Banks are happy with the way we are spending, and unemployment is still increasing, than that only leave debt as the only logical answer to this social phenomenon. Throw in some flu germs and you now have the recipe for Post New Years Disorder.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Social Justice, Social economics | 3 Comments »

To Cast the Net Beyond the Fringe and Say the Hell With it!

December 19th, 2009 Thomasso

I got mad at my ISP last night. Every time I tried to upload a movie file to my website, it either timed out, or it took two hours to go through the upload process. I gave up. I heard that the University Library was open until 10:30pm week days, and 10:00pm during the weekends, so I hopped in the truck and drove to the Surrey campus. The Langley campus was closed.

In the mean time I was having troubles with some other web sites also – so naturally I assumed that it was the fault of my ISP. When I tried to download a web page, it would time-out. It was not a good night to go surfing on the net.

When I got to the University Library, the first thing I did was fired up my lap top and connected through Wi-Fi. Once connected, things seemed a little faster, but when I tried to connect to my web site, the same things happened–hardly any connectivity. This told me that it was not my IPS, but my web provider!

Some other students in the computer lab old me that most of the kids are off from school as of Friday, and that it might be possible that most of them are on-line textting each other, clogging up the net. I thought about that, and figured that this might be the cause. The only thing that didn’t add up was I only had a few web sites that I went to which were slow or not working, so I doubted that it could be the on-line kids? I managed to up load everything I needed to, and then I went home.

This morning I checked to see if the connection rate was still slow, or shut down, and when I logged on, there was a notice posted on the server page. It said that they had service interruptions over the last 24 hours, and that now every was back to normal. I then went to the server’s blog and read that they had some vandalism on their server-farm, and that someone tried to take some equipment. They said that their local law enforcement officials caught the person and they noted that none of the equipment was taken. Cost in damages, however, was about $5,000.00 US.

I started thinking about this today, about how fragile our network really is. I remembered in my class on terrorism from last summer, studying about how important our information network is in today’s world, and asking the question would we be crippled from having no network? Although it would not indirectly harm us if the entire Intranet collapsed becuase of terrorists, but it would certainly hurt us over a longer period. By collapse, I mean no web browsing, email and VIOP, possibly cell-phone and land-line phone service too. I know most Banking and some forms of commerce would stop, but most businesses would manage to keep on operating.

On a humorous note, I wondered how many people would go through Intranet withdraw, if the idea of Internet Addiction really exists? Would I be one of those people? After all, I do spend a hideous amount of time sitting in front my keyboard and monitor, and hlaf that time connected to the internet. I treat emails like they were phone calls for goodness sakes. Does this mean I’m sick–I have an addiction that affects my social life, if their is such a thing as a social life?

Nope-things are all good. I have network connection and life goes on. My ISP are doing their job and I can sympathise with my web provider about their misfortune. Once again I am happy.

Posted in Blog Problems, General, Humour, Photographs, Social Justice | No Comments »

I Got a Question?

November 22nd, 2009 Thomasso

Like the old saying goes,” there’s no such thing as a dumb question, only a dumb answer,” and it rang oh so loudly last Wednesday when I was attending a Criminology seminar on youth crime in the Fraser Valley. This has been gnawing at me for the last three days, so I’m finally going to put it out in the open so I can analyse more closely, and perhaps let anyone else weigh in on it?

It happened when a young mother stopped a presenter in the middle of his presentation on community responsibilities and she started to ask a very basic question. The woman was polite and very straight forward and to the point. She asked why law enforcement authorities enforce different standards of enforcement on different people, and why the police seem to show no standard of treating everyone the same.  The presenter told her that her question had no relevance to his presentation. This really shocked me, and I thought why a professional would allow such a question to go unanswered, especially in a public forum. Later, when I asked him why he said what he said, he replied saying that all the presenters were under time restraints. That being said, the Q & A period ran well over 45 minutes.

I did talk to the woman myself, and she seemed untouched by all of this. I tried to answer her question, but she seemed to draw a blank face and told me that she already knew the answers to her questions, but wanted the officials to say it. She herself is someone who has had run-ins with the law from her past and said that if places like the City of Surrey, BC want to clean up Gangs, then they really need to focus on giving kids something to do that they find interesting, like sports, mechanics and various other activities. She then laughed and said, “Do everything opposite that Gordon Campbell is doing… .”

I remember in grade school when I asked a question to my Grade five teacher, why we had to eat our lunches in the classroom instead of outside, she told me to go to the detention room for the rest of the day. Now that I look back, that person should of had her teaching certificate revoked and promptly fired for such a display of arrogance. Talking out of line, as she put it when talking to my parents was far from the truth of what really happened. But as justice would have it, back in 2001 I discovered that she did in fact lost her job as a teacher and is currently defending herself from litigation of an assault charge that took place in 1982 with one of her former students. In Canada we have a problem with corporal punishment in our schools – hitting someone is an assault no matter who you are.  Again I say, “there is no such thing a dumb questions, but only a dumb answer.” And added to that, “what comes around, goes around.”

You can see I love colloquialisms and adages.

So remember that when someone asks you a question, no matter how absurd you think it is, you should at least take the moral high ground and answer it to the best of your ability. Even saying “I don’t know,” is a good thing to do if you can’t answer it.

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, Law, Social Justice | No Comments »

Counting Madness – Self-Righteous Resistors

November 21st, 2009 Thomasso

Human nature seems to be built upon some very basic principles like survival for food and shelter, natural selection and achieving the most for less under any circumstances, to mention a few. You will have those who by chance stumbled upon great wealth, or managed to screw enough people so that they are now the dominate forces in their societies. On the other hand you will have those who tried but never found their American Dream, and could never have had the “luck” to reach their dreams. To add some theory to this, I turn to the work of Email Durkheim and Robert K. Merton, who came up with the idea that when you have a breakdown of social norms, and when your personal control and environment breaks down, people then go into a state of “normlessness,” where they exhibit anyone of the following categories called modes of adaptation: conforming, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion (Williams & McShane: 2004).

When I first heard that we were going to start our annual inventory early this year, I was not the least bit worried because we now have the smaller work force (since the recession started), and our inventories  are so little compared to this time 2008 that counting on our part would take less than an afternoon. We were given about one weeks notice to prepare and start out counts. I had posted the information and started personally telling each worker as they came in what was going to be required of them for this year’s inventory count. A series of emails were sent, and some of the higher volume technicians were given phone calls to aid them with there procedures. With a lot less to count and fewer categories of inventory as compared to last year, I figured that this was going to be a flawless count.

As the numbers started roll in on Friday, I started making calls to the employees who I had already foreseen as being problematic and assisted them – like a mother wiping a child’s bib, holding their hands, reiterating what was needed from them, reassure them – just to get the job done. But no matter how much one tries, or prepares, there are going to be those who just can’t get it on the right track, and they continually fall by the wayside.

The majority of the employees are in the category of conforming. They know that these events take place and they offer their full unquestioned obedience to get the job done. Next are the innovation people who see this as an opportunity to do maintenance and clean-ups, while they sort out their equipment and inventory. They see that they have time offered to them for this and they take on a multitasking approach to it. Then we have a couple of workers who are the ritualist’s, who see this as a another job routine, and they blindly go through the motion of counting and sorting, but only putting in the minimum effort and time to get through it. Lastly, there are the dreaded rebellious types who, although they only represent less than two percent of the workforce, they cause ninety percent of the headaches.

Make no mistake that I am comparing criminological theory to the workplace. There are just too many similarities among these two groups to let this go unnoticed.

The inventory was completed, and done on time, but I ended up spending an eleven hour day trying to keep everything together, but still, I had to do some of it from home due to some stragglers being so late, and one not submitting until midnight. The last four hour stretch of Friday was spent talking on the phone, endlessly going over the inventory procedure until I notice that I was loosing my voice.

Source:

Williams & McShane (2004). Criminological theory. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Social Justice, Social economics | No Comments »

Letter to the Gammers: Don’t Over Spend Our Money!

November 7th, 2009 Thomasso

It looks like I’m a writer now. I mean, I’m writing for the general public on what I think are important issues, doing this for the sake of telling the world my thoughts. And yes, I’m doing it as a volunteer, and for some possible bonus marks for one of my classes. I thought that with all the hype going on with Vancouver this coming winter, a more sober look is needed with the Games. I think I lay out my concerns quite nicely here.

Current Opposition to the Olympic Games: Costs to the Taxpayer.

The media, such as CBC Radio in Vancouver, is busy with the 2010 Olympic
hype, but it is also allowing some voices to be heard who are in
opposition to it, mainly from the perspective of its costs and the
amount of taxes needed to pay for it. The Games could not have come a
worse time as the waning effects of the 2008 global meltdown are still
fresh in everyone minds. The worry is that with unemployment, market
uncertainty and huge government deficits growing, the Games may drive
government debt to unseen, or even unnecessary, levels never experienced
before.
Perhaps the greatest sense of opposition to the Olympic Games
are the cost associated with them such as the cost for the security and
policing, before and during the Games, which some estimates put them in
at over a billion dollars, according to CBC Radio in Vancouver on
November 2, 2009. With such a huge price tag, the government is
surely forced to dig deep into its pockets to pay for this. Ultimately
it is the taxpayer who will pay for this. This debt is going to be paid
through taxation, increases in the cost of services, user fees and
licensing, or met with reductions in government programs, but more than
likely all of these methods will be deployed at once to spread the
burden.
Added to this is the global down turn which is still gripping
the U.S., and is seriously effecting certain industries such as forestry
and tourism, areas of the economy that are vital to most of British
Columbia, according to CBC News. With unemployment still significantly
high in some regions of the province, the tax base is still weak causing
local governments to compound their debt loads to meet these
obligation.
The fear is that the money generated from the Olympic Games may
not be enough to balance the books and cover all the expenses that were
put into it after the event has finished. Based on information gathered
from past Games, almost all of these events have left past host cities
with debt that has either caused them to make drastic tax increases to
pay it down, or has stayed on the books for decades creating huge
deficits. An example of this is the thirty plus years that it took to
pay the $1.5 billion debt for the Olympic stadium in Montreal back in
1976, which CBC News announced back on December 19, 2006.
This then could be the greatest form of opposition to the games
from the perspective of those who live in British Columbia. Most would
welcome the Olympics, but for the property owners, workers and other
stakeholders, the burden of paying high taxes and leaving debt that
could be passed on to our grandchildren does raise some flags. Should we
be more prudent with our spending for what is essentially a two week
long party? The gamble here is that will the spin offs that are promised
by the Olympic Games be worth the risks that will give Vancouver and the
rest of the province a return on its investment.

Thomasso (Criminology)

This should, although I have not being told it has gone through final approval yet, be printed in the student paper at the University. I had some reservation about writing this becuase I know how much people really want the Games at their front door. I wanted to spell out that there is a down side, especially when the promised profits don’t appear, that we will being paying a huge prices as taxpayers to this debt. Am I anti-games? No, I’m a realist.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Social Justice, Social economics, University classes | 1 Comment »

Such a Foolish Waste of Life Taken Around Someone Else’s Personal Pleasure

September 19th, 2009 Thomasso

Warning: this post contains graphic and disturbing language.

It was about 6:00pm back on Thursday, September 17, 2009, that I was going to my evening class. I was nervous and excited all at the some time because this was the first week of the new semester, and I was anticipating a hard and gruelling course, especially because it is a third year science class. I was driving from HY10, heading up on 128 Street towards 72 Avenue in Surrey, where the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Campus is located. Along 128 Street there was water-main construction taking place, so the road was full of obstacles and uneven surfaces that made driving on it very slow going.

With the road full of construction, traffic was continuously backed up, but it came to a complete standstill just before the turn off into the campus parking lot before 72 Avenue. I could see flashing and strobing lights ahead, and the sounds of several sirens racing towards the intersection of 128 Street and 72 Avenue.  As I got closer, just before I was going to turn left I saw a green garbage can with its contents strewn across the road. Then I saw the tipped-over bench by the bus stop and clumps of freshly dug up grass and soil spread along the edge of the road, and then what looked like a suitcase full of clothes laying in the middle of the road. But tucked back up into some bushes and trees was the front of the dark coloured sports car pointing towards the road. The vehicle had somehow made a 180 degree turn when it slid off the road.

I pulled into the campus parking lot and parked when I saw a friend of mine who was walking from the scene of the accident less than 30 metres away, so I asked him what he saw.  He said that he saw a man whose legs were completely severed from his body, and lots of blood. He described how he could see the bone of one of the legs and stated how still the man was as he laid on the ground. My friend was in shock from seeing this.

As for the young person who was in the car, my friend said “we were going to make sure the guy in the car was not going to run from the accident,” His car would not start, but he stayed inside it anyway.

I went to my class which started at 7:00pm, and everyone was talking about the accident. It was a few minutes later before it was known that what had happened was due to a street race, and one of drivers lost control and hit a man at the bus stop. One of the students in my class said she gave her statement to police because she saw the whole accident take place, and told of a yellow car that was racing along side the dark blue car just before it had sped out of control.

I am outraged as is everyone else I had talked to about this. I have had a day to think about what I had seen, and I have come to the conclusion that I am outraged about it. When I heard about it on the news the next day at work, I could not believe that it was in fact a street race, and that a elderly man sitting at a bus stop is hanging onto his life a result of it. What a stupid waste.

This is no doubt a selfless act of someone who at the expense of innocent bystanders was willing to endanger those around him for his personal enjoyment and adrenalin rush. In this light I see the vehicle as a weapon, and when misused like this it has the potential to kill because the user has taken it means beyond what its intended uses are. If the vehicle was being used under normal circumstance, such as normal speeds and driving operations, then this light would be different.

The worry is that our laws may not give the driver, if found guilty, what the public would consider proper sentencing and punishment for his crimes. Because a man maybe killed, he is reportedly clinging to life in the hospital at the time of this writing, then nothing less than a charge of (vehicular) manslaughter must be given. As it stands now, a charge of attempted manslaughter maybe the direction the Crown should move on this, either way a life sentence. I will be paying close attention to this to see what the RCMP are going to charge the driver with, and how the judge will rule on this when sentencing takes place. I think the public gaze will be very critical about this as the wheels of justice start to turn.

Posted in Criminal Law, Criminology, General, Law, Social Justice | 2 Comments »

The Telephone Cops for the Internet

September 14th, 2009 Thomasso

Yesterday I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine about the new set of Internet laws that the Canadian government is poised to set into reading this Fall in Ottawa, (Investigative Powers for the 21st Century (IP21C) Act). I think for the average Canadian, most would react the same way as my friend did, in outrage that Big brother is about to be given another set of tools that will erode our privacy even further, but not really giving thought as to what the actual ramifications would be. But I like to think that both sides of the coin should be represented, but that can be hard to do when only one side does not want to listen. So, I’m going to post about.

Today I watched an online presentation that was offered by the department of Criminology from Boston University, the centre of North American Criminology, where I saw some opinions of the many governments who are finding the World Wide Web a network of security issues that they would like to control. The web has become a huge security issue for most countries. Among most criminal violations, crimes committed on the Internet are almost never caught. Police are powerless with this new technology, and rightfully so as most countries’ laws have not caught up to it. Especially when the net knows no borders.

Talking about my friend’s ideas. This is what I like to call the American contradiction, when the same person claims that they want privacy, and want to be protected from the boogie man at the some time. It is like paying no taxes, and having one of the largest military budgets on Earth: There is give and take, but you can’t talk from both sides of your mouth. Like my friend, he says that no one should have the right to peek into what people are doing on the Internet without common legal tools such as warrants and seizures of equipment, done through a court order, issued by a judge. The problem for police is the speed and stealth of which criminals work at when committing internet crimes. A clever computer geek can reasonably hide their tracks over the internet, but if police could tap into all ISPs and monitor all networks, then catching criminals would be several times easer.

Am I supporting the new piece of legislation that is about to be read in Parliament? In some respects, yes. I see a need by government to adopt a more realistic set of tools to deal with Internet crimes. Sure, But this with where me and my friend agree on—should this be a blanket law that would allow the police to truly become big brother, and through monitoring, watch every move that its citizens are doing every second of every day? Then I have to draw the line and say not 100 percent of the time. I still believe that “just cause” should be a major of the equation. So I’m going to do some more research on this topic and see what I can come up with. In the mean time, here are some links to read:

The Western Standard – Government of Canada moves to monitor Internet users.

Canada proposes new powers to police Internet.

No Appologies – Harper Conservatives expantion of Police Powers Conserns Freedom Advocates.

Posted in Criminal Law, Criminology, General, Law, Social Justice | No Comments »