BELL'S MOVE TO MONITOR US AN OMINOUS PORTENT

Fears Of Corporate Information Fishing Arise As Internet Providers
Take Steps To Monitor Users' Online Activity

We should be concerned about the erosion of our civil liberties in
the post-9/11 world and the very real Big Brother-style monitoring of
our Internet activities.

The Canadian Bar Association has long argued lawmakers went too far
in the wake of the World Trade Centre strikes and did not build in
enough checks when they gave law-enforcement agencies greater powers
ostensibly to combat terrorism.

Still, when Canada's largest Internet service provider, Bell
Sympatico, amends its service agreement with customers to create an
environment of institutionalized cyberspying on behalf of the
government, we're entering a whole other realm.

Bell three weeks ago told its customers it's reserving the right to
monitor, collect and on request provide to police a list of every
site you visit and every keystroke you type while connected.

Other ISPs have or are expected to follow suit.

Civil rights and privacy activists are concerned because they see
this as a signal Ottawa is planning to introduce legislation that
goes even further than the offensive Liberal bill, the Modernization
of Investigative Techniques Act, which died with the old government.

Brian Tabor, president of the Canadian Bar Association, last week
wrote to cabinet decrying Bell's move as an ominous portent.

The association, which represents about 36,000 members of the
country's academic and professional legal community, is especially
concerned about lawyer-client communications that move over the Net.

Solicitor-client privilege is considered a cornerstone of our legal
system and is obviously at risk.

"This seems to be introducing a corporate or industry content
monitoring scheme, without the necessity of prior authorization or
oversight," Tabor wrote.

"The current initiative by ISPs appears significantly more intrusive
than the previous legislative proposal."

The Halifax lawyer said the bar wants assurance from Ottawa this kind
of information-fishing won't be done without a court order.

That's one of the nuances here -- private companies can often do
things without being subjected to scrutiny and public oversight the
government can't.

That's why the Bush administration uses civilian contractors for work
it doesn't want subjected to accountability laws that apply to the
military or government agencies.

I have always agreed with the bar association that Ottawa delegated
too much power to law-enforcement and national security agencies
without enough oversight in the name of keeping us safe.

Forget about the constitutional abuses of Dubya and Co. south of the
border -- our own agencies are using these badly drafted laws to
avoid scrutiny, trample on citizens' rights and cover up misconduct.

Even Shirley Heafey, former head of the RCMP Commission for Public
Complaints, has beaten the drum since stepping down last October that
we're headed down a very nasty road.

We've got police and their agents blithely breaking laws with impunity.

We've got people who have been held in jail in Canada for years
without trial or disclosure.

We've got more secret proceedings under way in this country than you
can count. In most cases, there is no way for reporters to even learn
what is happening save by accident.

When pressed on misbehaviour, the regular official stance is to
stonewall and deny, deny, deny.

Or better yet, as they do down in Washington, D.C., officialdom
self-righteously insinuates the media are being disloyal and giving
succor to the enemy by raising such issues.

In this particular case, during discussions about the new cyber-space
law, officials characterized the proposals as simply updating current
investigative powers to recognize technological realities.

Instead, we are seeing signs that the measures will have much broader
scope and potentially much more profound impact on Canadians' privacy.

Like the bar association, I do not believe these measures are necessary.

Worse, they mock accountability and obscure what should be in a
democracy transparent -- the working of justice and government.

After watching Prime Minister Stephen Harper cozy up with the
president, however, I suspect such concerns will get short shrift.

After all, as the law-and-order set likes to say, if you have nothing
to hide, you have nothing to worry about.