Feb 172012
 

Even if you don’t call yourself a writer you’ve written. An essay, a poem, a tweet or a status update on Facebook, maybe a comment or two in reply to one.  And everything is stored online for practically the world to see – with or without privacy settings that make it impossible for your mother to find you.

A hot topic these days is the Canadian C-11 law, also know as the “lawful access” bill or most recently “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act”, similar to SOPA – Stop Online Piracy Act – in the US that was recently voted against. Unfortunately, unlike America, we somehow voted in one person in charge of this who has all the power, knows it and, in my opinion, abuses it to his maniacal demise.

Child predators should never get away with what they do, no predator should but especially those who prey on the perfectly innocent. I agree 100% in catching them however you can but for one “man” to take the rights away from all of those “below” him to do so is a decision that everyone is questioning.

It’s somewhat true – those of us who are innocent and do little online besides watching others make fools of themselves on social media sites shouldn’t be afraid of what the government may soon be doing while we surf. Especially with social media, blogs and such being so popular we are in the public’s eye making ourselves known to whoever stumbles upon what we want to express. Done respectfully and intelligently without rash judgement or uninformed misgivings we do have nothing to worry about – except that we are being led by someone who can make decisions all on his own and doesn’t listen to the country.

Our freedom of information is being compromised by people we put in power and, in the case of Canada, who seems to read very little (based on an experiment conducted by our own Canadian author Yann Martel).

As opposition fights back saying the new bill will lead to an infringement of the privacy of Canadians, as it will allow police to build a detailed profile of people, including law-abiding citizens, using their digital footprint — without any judicial oversight, requiring Internet providers to hand over their customers information without a court order.

Big Brother season indefinite anyone?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading,

Sarah Butland
author of Sending You Sammy, Brain Tales – Volume One and Arm Farm

PS: Please tell your local MP that the CBC is important for Canadians and deserves to have support by sending them a letter through this site: http://act.friends.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=33&ea.campaign.id=13688.

  One Response to “We All Have Readers”

  1. I totally agree – predators should be dealt with according to their crime and I can think of a few things I’d like to do to such people. However, though I too have little to hide for anyone, I’d hate to think I’m being ‘profiled’ in any way. Talk about over reaching and paranoia, not to mention just exactly who is doing all this? Does that make them the next predator?

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