Ottawa’s new cyberbullying bill goes beyond the issue at hand
In the wake of several high-profile teen suicides stemming from Internet harassment and cyberbullying, online behaviour has come to the forefront of public consciousness and has prompted an unprecedented call for a resolution from citizens and governments alike.
The deaths of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, among others, have led provinces to enact their own cyberbullying laws, Ottawa to offer funding for anti-bullying programs and more than one national awareness campaign about the impact that words and photos posted online can have on teenagers.
The federal government announced on Wednesday that it would propose several amendments to the Criminal Code to strengthen the ability of police and judges to address cyberbullying, but there was some immediate concern the issue would be used as a smokescreen to pass more controversial online surveillance measures.
Justice Minister Peter MacKay tried to dispose of those notions, saying the focus of the bill is entirely on cyberbullying.
“This legislation is very specific in its intent,” he told reporters. “It’s intended to help deter the type of distribution of information and images that we feel are tantamount of the harassment, the intimidation, the slander, the type of sections that already exist in the criminal code (for offline interactions).”
He later told Postmedia News that the bill would in fact address areas of the Criminal Code less directly related. “We’ve taken the opportunity to modernize Criminal Code sections vis-a-vis communication broadly,” he said.
There is some question about why the “Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act,” promoted as entirely focused on cyberbullying, would address organized crime, terrorism and cable theft. Such sections of the bill, focused on ordering and extending warrants, read very similar to part of a controversial sweeping online crime bill rejected last year.
Even a background document on the cyberbullying bill seems to split the recommendations into two parts – one focused on the task at hand and the other seemingly focused on extending and modernizing investigative powers.
In terms of specifically addressing cyberbullying, the bill would create a new offence, making it illegal to distribute intimate images without consent and allow a judge to order the removal of such an image from the Internet.
Judges would also be given the authority to ban a convicted person from using the Internet for a period of time, seize any computers and mobile devices used in the crime and sentence the guilty party to five years in jail.
On the “strengthening the system” side of the coin, the cyberbullying bill would also give police new tools to investigate crimes on the Internet, including the ability to stop service providers from deleting information, not to mention streamline the process of obtaining warrants for online searches.
These are similar to key tenets in the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act” that was introduced last year but ultimately failed to pass. That bill received significant scrutiny for the effect it would have of public privacy. It was also criticized for its name – internet predators were not actually addressed anywhere in the body of the bill.
And then-Justice Minister Vic Toews suggested that people either had to "either stand with us or with the child pornographers" when it came to supporting the bill.
NDP justice critic Francoise Boivin has said she will carefully compare the “Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act”to the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.”
With cyberbullying being such a hot-button issue in Canada at the moment, it would be difficult to stand against such a bill, especially since many of the recommendations address cyberbullying so well. But the back end of the bill is worth considering on its own.
Is this a case of “standing with the government or standing with the cyberbullies?”
Yahoo News Canada - Latest News & Headlines
In the wake of several high-profile teen suicides stemming from Internet harassment and cyberbullying, online behaviour has come to the forefront of public consciousness and has prompted an unprecedented call for a resolution from citizens and governments alike.
The deaths of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, among others, have led provinces to enact their own cyberbullying laws, Ottawa to offer funding for anti-bullying programs and more than one national awareness campaign about the impact that words and photos posted online can have on teenagers.
The federal government announced on Wednesday that it would propose several amendments to the Criminal Code to strengthen the ability of police and judges to address cyberbullying, but there was some immediate concern the issue would be used as a smokescreen to pass more controversial online surveillance measures.
Justice Minister Peter MacKay tried to dispose of those notions, saying the focus of the bill is entirely on cyberbullying.
“This legislation is very specific in its intent,” he told reporters. “It’s intended to help deter the type of distribution of information and images that we feel are tantamount of the harassment, the intimidation, the slander, the type of sections that already exist in the criminal code (for offline interactions).”
He later told Postmedia News that the bill would in fact address areas of the Criminal Code less directly related. “We’ve taken the opportunity to modernize Criminal Code sections vis-a-vis communication broadly,” he said.
There is some question about why the “Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act,” promoted as entirely focused on cyberbullying, would address organized crime, terrorism and cable theft. Such sections of the bill, focused on ordering and extending warrants, read very similar to part of a controversial sweeping online crime bill rejected last year.
Even a background document on the cyberbullying bill seems to split the recommendations into two parts – one focused on the task at hand and the other seemingly focused on extending and modernizing investigative powers.
In terms of specifically addressing cyberbullying, the bill would create a new offence, making it illegal to distribute intimate images without consent and allow a judge to order the removal of such an image from the Internet.
Judges would also be given the authority to ban a convicted person from using the Internet for a period of time, seize any computers and mobile devices used in the crime and sentence the guilty party to five years in jail.
On the “strengthening the system” side of the coin, the cyberbullying bill would also give police new tools to investigate crimes on the Internet, including the ability to stop service providers from deleting information, not to mention streamline the process of obtaining warrants for online searches.
These are similar to key tenets in the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act” that was introduced last year but ultimately failed to pass. That bill received significant scrutiny for the effect it would have of public privacy. It was also criticized for its name – internet predators were not actually addressed anywhere in the body of the bill.
And then-Justice Minister Vic Toews suggested that people either had to "either stand with us or with the child pornographers" when it came to supporting the bill.
NDP justice critic Francoise Boivin has said she will carefully compare the “Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act”to the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.”
With cyberbullying being such a hot-button issue in Canada at the moment, it would be difficult to stand against such a bill, especially since many of the recommendations address cyberbullying so well. But the back end of the bill is worth considering on its own.
Is this a case of “standing with the government or standing with the cyberbullies?”
Yahoo News Canada - Latest News & Headlines
