News

Ontario Court Orders Website To Disclose Identity of Anonymous Posters

An Ontario court has ordered the owners of the FreeDominion.ca to disclose all personal information on eight anonymous posters to the chat site.  The required information includes email and IP addresses.  The case arises from a lawsuit launched by Richard Warman, the anti-hate fighter, against the site and the posters.  The court focused heavily on the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, which contain a strong duty of disclosure on litigants. 

The discussion includes a review of many key Internet privacy cases, including the CRIA file sharing litigation (which the court distinguishes on the basis of different court rules) and the Irwin Toy case (which emphasized the importance of protecting anonymity, but which the court tries to distinguish on the basis of the newness of the issue at the time).  The court also looks at the string of recent cases involving child pornography cases and ISP disclosure of customer information, concluding that "the court's most recent pronouncement on this is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy."

According to the defendants in the case, they are unsure if they have the resources to appeal.  This particular decision feels like a judge anxious to order to disclosure, despite the weight of authority that provides some measure of privacy protection for anonymous posters.  Indeed, the public policy issue is characterized as "we are dealing with an anti-hate speech advocate and Defendants whose website is so controversial that it is blocked to employees of the Ontario Public Service."  Leaving aside the fact that sites blocked to employees of the Ontario Public Service is not much of a threshold (Facebook is blocked to the OPS), the public policy issue is not the merits of the particular website.  Rather, it is the privacy and free speech rights of the posters to that site.

Protection for anonymous postings is certainly not an absolute, but a high threshold that requires prima facie evidence supporting the plaintiff's claim is critical to ensuring that a proper balance is struck between the rights of a plaintiff (whether in a defamation or copyright case) and the privacy and free speech rights of the poster.  I cannot comment on the postings themselves (and I recognize that Warman has been a frequent target online) but I fear that the high threshold seems to have been abandoned here, with the court all-too-eager to dismiss the privacy considerations associated with mandated disclosure by not engaging in an analysis as to whether the evidentiary standard was met.

58 Comments

  1. Is THIS site collecting IP addresses? Can’t find privacy policy
    Important quote:

    “This ruling means a number of things. Most importantly it means that anyone can gain access to a Canadian forum owner’s confidential records on its members simply by filing a lawsuit (that could later be dropped) against the forum operator. No forum operater in Canada, and no Canadian blogger who allows the public to post on his blog, can now safely keep any information at all about a website’s members.

    We highly recommend that Canadian forum operators and bloggers expunge all such records from their files and stop collecting any information that could endanger the anonymity of their posters.”

    What is the privacy policy of this site?

  2. George Orwell says:

    This is not a well reasoned decision. It concludes, without any basis, that there is no need to make out even a prima facie case and there is virtually no discussion of the underlying cause of action.(para. 23)

    If there’s an appeal, and there should be, let’s hope CIPPIC and others intervene.

    BTW, even Warman can’t do much to stop hate and hate speech at the end of the day. But he’s sure doing a helluva good job undercutting freedom of expression.

  3. it’s not actually blocked
    I’m an OPS employee, and the site most certainly isn’t blocked here… not sure what they’re talking about.

  4. bigcitylib says:

    bigcitylib
    Michael,

    The comments are almost certainly defamatory, being allegations regurgitated from a number of white supremacist sites and pretty thoroughly debunked (but still repeated by the anonymous posters).

  5. Shaking my head says:

    Well, there you have it. Warman shouldn’t have to prove a prima facie case to get this information because “bigcitylib” thinks the comments are “almost certainly” defamatory. While we’re at it, maybe BCL could just rule on the case. Why bother with all this pesky “justice” stuff?

  6. Response to Bigcitylib
    I haven’t seen the comments though I recognize that Warman has been subjected to some truly vile commentary. My problem with the decision is that the court conducted no analysis of the evidence presented and instead chose to create a very low bar for disclosure of personal information. As I note in my posting, anonymity is not an absolute and if Warman was able to present a prima facie case then the law clearly permits disclosure. In this instance, the court didn’t conduct that analysis and I fear that the decision will be used in many other cases to compel disclosure without fully accounting for the privacy interests of the posters.

    MG

  7. bias
    The judge in the case read into his decision evidence that was not presented in the case. (anti-hate activist, OPS)

    The judge is a member of the board of a Jewish Community Center where Warman had spoken about his fight against anti-semitism. I don’t know what the laws are in Canada, but in the US this apprehension of bias would be more than enough to have the judgement overturned.

    The judge should have recused himself.

  8. bigcitylib says:

    A summary of FDs defense can be found here:

    http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=111344

    Part of it runs:

    “This motion is a first in Canada so there are no precedents to rely on. Both parties have agreed that this is a novel point of law, which changes things in many ways. The most important aspect of this novel point is that it will likely be cited as a precedent so it is vitally important to all Canadians that the precedent is in favour of freedom and privacy.”

    …which seems to be patent nonsense.

  9. how much of a prima facie would needed?
    I’m interested to hear how much of a burden it would have been in such a case to make a prima facie case that exposure was justified? That is, if I were to say that “X is a child molester” in your comments, Michael, you presumably could be sued for the republication and compelled to supply what information you have about my identity. It would seem to me, however, that it would be a little bit odd to allow a case to proceed against you for the republication (which seems less culpable) but to install barriers to protect me, who has defamed.

    Or, to put the matter another way, how much more would be required than is already in the statement of claim?

  10. A regular dumb person says:

    I’m just a part of the dumb public
    This is about the 4th time I read about Mr. Warman. If he is truely fighting white-supremist and neo-nazi groups, then so be it. All the power to him.

    But I’m just a dumb regular person who gets lost reading the legal voodoo mumbo jumbo.

    I didn’t read any of the forum posts that started this mess. All I read were the links presented.

    What I found troubling was what the judge said in the PDF (Paraphrased):
    Section 33: “The site is so controversial that it blocks Ontario public service workers”

    Give me a break. What does that have to do with anything at all? Even Bell Canada blocks certain IP’s from access to their own forum on Bell Canada’s website!

    What does paragraph 33 have to do with anything?

    Seems like another case of a judge not knowing his bum from his elbow in the internet age.

    Lesson:
    Do not buy a Canadian domain
    Get an American friend to buy a .com on your behalf
    Get an American friend to put it up on an american server. Keep it out of Canada.

    When people come knocking, let them deal with the american speech and privacy laws which are stronger than our own here.

    Thats basically what I got out of this who thing.

    Canadians = losers. Tnanks judge!

  11. aaa@aaa.com
    bigcitlib said,

    “…which seems to be patent nonsense.”

    The judge in this case refers to BMG Canada vs. John Doe (2004) which states that an agreement between an ISP and a customer is one that gives the customer a reasonable expectation of privacy, but that it will not protect them from “the application of either civil or criminal liability”. Where is the liability here? No guilt has been proven here…no prima facie given, so the “application of either civil or criminal liability” isn’t valid due to the fact that no liability has been set forth other than a spurious accusation.

    What is society coming to that people are trying to prosecute other people for what they say on the INTERNET? By visiting a website you CHOOSE to read the contents of it. If I buy a book thats full of hate speech, can I justly sue the author for what I have read? Please, can all the liberals and other flunkies who want a new Ministry of Information (a la China) please move to North Korea and apply for jobs to be Head Censor there?

  12. A regular dumb person says:

    Any chance?
    Any chance of CIPPIC being involved in this?

  13. Justlikethissite says:

    So any comment I post can be supoena’ed
    Don’t believe for a second that running a server and domain in the US is going to protect you. The DMCA there made sure of that. You can make all sorts of stuff disappear from encyclopedia dramatica (a site that posts all sorts of hate material) with a well worded takedown.

    ED is hosted and its domain registry hidden behind anonymous proxy registration, however they are still required to deliver it to the actual holder.

  14. If Hitler or Stalin were back and you knew what they were going to do, would you argue that their freedom of expression comes first? The law is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.

  15. That’s why I host overseas
    I’m really learning to hate Ottawa and Ontario, with all these hyper-conservative abuses. I host all of my sites overseas, far from any Canadian or US legislator’s grasp. We’re a peaceful country, but we value our freedom and if these transgressions continue escalating toward fascist policies, these crooked judges and leaders will eventually learn that we Canadians still have some fight in us. When playing nice stops working, we’ll start playing dirty.

  16. regular dummy says:

    From my understanding this is a defamation case. NOT a hate case. Similar to another Canadian site p2pnet.net and their case of an anonymous comment.

    So we can all leave the “hate” issue aside.

  17. How about kiddy porn?
    How many people here would be screaming for privacy if the posters in question had posted child porn on the forum? THAT’S the problem. If you can expect to grab the identity of anonymous forum users because you suspect that they posses or distributed indecent images, then you have already accepted that there are certain conditions under which forum users’ expectation of anonymity can be violated. The question then becomes one of what are the extents of those circumstances? Death threats? Suicide threats? Hate speech? Badmouthing the rich and powerful? Talking about Tibet?

    If you wish persecute kiddy porn viewers, but give everyone else the freedom of anonymous Internet usage, then you really have to carefully define and codify into law what Internet behavior renders one’s right to Internet anonymity void. For example, at what age of the subject of an image should the image be considered suitable for revoking an Internet user’s anonymity? 18? 16? 20? What condition of dress or undress of the subject of the image triggers legal action? Fully nude, or bathing suit? what is the minimum percentage of skin coverage that an image can depict before it hits the threshold of criminal activity?

    Finally, what about the laws in the place of residence of the poster? Perhaps it is legal in the poster’s place of residence to post the content that they posted. Is it then justice to expose them to possible retribution? Let’s consider a different example: It is against the law to argue for granting Tibet independence for people in China. Readers here may have no problem with this, but it is considered a fairly serious crime in China… far more serious, in fact, than posession of images of children in swimsuits. Should they expect an ISP to turn over the identity of a forum poster chatting about Tibetan independence, as you would expect them to turn over the identity of a forum poster uploading images considered obscene in your jurisdiction?

    It is very likely that ALL people posting here are fine with revoking an Internet user’s anonymity under specific circumstances. It should be kept in mind that defining those circumstances in non-trivial. If you really ARE for freedom of anonymity on the Internet, then you must also support the freedom of anonymity of kiddy porn posters. If you support ANY abridgement of that freedom, then you can’t really complain when the Chinese government demands the identity from ISPs of individuals there committing serious violations by communicating forbidden images or ideas.

    How much freedom is too much? How much is not enough? Can there be differences of opinion, or is your’s the only one that counts?

    Just some points to ponder while you argue for and against anonymity.

  18. Simple Solution says:

    Post a message on your site welcome page stating you support privacy.
    Just say privacy is something that is part of your site.

    That way you DO have an expectation of privacy.

    Then it becomes a question of whether the law allows authorities to snoop.

  19. Dear Bubba says:

    @bubba
    I only read the first line of your comment above. That’s it.

    There are laws about “child porn”.

    This isn’t a child porn issue.

    Better luck next time…

  20. Dear “Dear Bubba”
    Please read the whole thing.

    There are laws about a great many things.

    There are laws against hate speech. There are laws about libel and slander. There are laws about fraud and deception in advertising. There are laws about making threats. There are laws about sedition. There are laws about inciting violence.

    The question is: Which laws trump an individual’s expectation of privacy on the Internet? I would say that this is a “slippery slope” issue, but I am pretty sure that we are well down that slope by now.

  21. Private Canadian Citizen says:

    Help protect our privacy
    Michael, I read your commnets on the CBC web site and agree that this is a travisty of justice. When an individual can just make a claim in court to be able to access personal information our privacy rights are at risk. Apparently these individuals will not be able to fight this so if you truly believe that our rights are threatened here then perhaps you could defend us all and pro bono this all the way to the supreme court if need be because if it becomes a precedent then we will all be at risk of disclosure for any un-substatiated claim made by soemone in order to expose our privacy. Please help us all and defend this great contry of ours.

  22. Use Tor
    If you use a nifty freeware anonymizing program called Tor they are SOL as far as the IP goes. TRY to prove someone else didn’t log into the account and post that. PROVE someone specific even owns the account and the credentials weren’t forged. Assuming the worst (you used your ISP’s provided E-Mail to sign up for the forum)..

    http://www.torproject.org/

    I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing Forum Stickies “How to anonymize your IP.” popping up on Canadian based forums.

    “Theoretically” It’s a step in the wrong direction for privacy.
    It MIGHT catch a few stupid people but not much will change except for sites collecting less personal information.

  23. Justlikethissite says:

    Expect to start seeing canadian forums that log to dev/null

    Yes we need to log IP’s to prevent abuse, but if you believe in free anonymous speech you better just stop logging ip’s and resort to other methods to prevent abuse.

    Oh and Tor doesn’t solve the problem since it still requires accessing the site in the first place. That initial DNS lookup already says you visited the site. Unless you do all your web visiting behind Tor and anonymous DNS relays, you are still being tracked. Then your ISP thinks you are doing P2P file sharing and starts randomly losing packets.

  24. bigcitylib says:

    “Yes we need to log IP’s to prevent abuse, but if you believe in free anonymous speech you better just stop logging ip’s and resort to other methods to prevent abuse.”

    By this you mean free anonymous slander?

  25. sites MAY NOT KEEP records if they TRULY WANT to protect
    The most important quote from the original site is:


    This ruling means a number of things. Most importantly it means that anyone can gain access to a Canadian forum owner’s confidential records on its members simply by filing a lawsuit (that could later be dropped) against the forum operator. No forum operater in Canada, and no Canadian blogger who allows the public to post on his blog, can now safely keep any information at all about a website’s members. We highly recommend that Canadian forum operators and bloggers expunge all such records from their files and stop collecting any information that could endanger the anonymity of their posters.

    In short, sites MAY NOT KEEP records if they TRULY WANT to protect the anonymity of their posters. Anything else is asking for a subpoena to come.

  26. Users, protect yourselves!
    As for the USERS, here are some tips for you

    * Read EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense site https://ssd.eff.org/ (USA, but many things relevant to Canada and other countries)
    * Evaluate your risk
    * Use Tor (see above) with Privoxy so that the DNS lookups are done through Tor too
    * Prefer the forums that do not require registration / do not collect data
    * If a forum does require registration, do not give your e-mail. Instead, give them a disposable e-mail address from a service that does not require you to provide your e-mail address (e.g. mailinator, spam dot la)
    * And treat governments for what they really are: are skilled and well funded adversaries who tap their resources from you in form of taxes and other shit so that they can screw you as many times as they want. C-61, IPRED, Section 92A and Internet censorship initiative in Australia are the most recent examples.

    “Don’t believe them. Don’t fear them. Don’t ask anything of them.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  27. Justlikethissite: isn’t DNS performed by your ISP?
    ie: You request from your ISP the address, it checks if it has a recent IP address for that site, if not, it goes to the relevant authority and eventually gets back to you?

    There is NO communication between yourself and the other end is there?

    Re the P2P stuff, that’s another issue, and something to take up with your ISP.

  28. If you are posting links to web forums
    If you are posting links to web forums or blog comments, consider posting the HTTPS versions instead of HTTP version so that the ISPs can’t sniff which page was visited by those who clicked on the link and systems that censor users from visiting specific URLs cannot censor yours. For example,

    https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Police_raid_home_of_Wikileaks.de_domain_owner_over_censorship_lists

    Another benefit is that the target site does not get to know where the visitor came from. If instead of Google result page you post Scroogle HTTPS results page and the users click links on that result page, the target sites don’t know that the visitor came from Scroogle or Google and don’t know what they were looking for.

  29. Robert Trifts says:

    Lawyer
    Michael, the context of these Reasons is not at all clear. Mr. Justice Kershman describes that “the issue in the case” is about whether or not the ISP must disclose the identities of eight anonymous posters to a website. The Reasons are later described as “Reasons for Judgment”. Did he actually mean that? Is that *the* issue in the case – or was this simply a peripheral evidentiary issue in a motion for a further and better affidavit of documents?

    That is not a small point; it is, to the contrary, a HUGE point.

    Ordinarily, a court does not order “Reasons for Judgment” in a motion, unless it is dispositive of all of the issues in the case. A mere motion leads to what is described in our courts as an “Endorsement” or, less typically, to “Reasons for Decision”. It does not lead to “Reasons for Judgment”. To those who are not lawyers, the resolution of a procedural motion is merely one stop along the road to an eventual trial of the substantive issues in dispute. A motion does not dispose of the issues in the action. The description of the court document on the backpage may simply be an error, but it’s curious, especaily given the fact that the John Does are named as defendants.

    My concern is that the substantive dispute in the case may well be all about disclosing the identity of these individuals. If that is, in fact, what the relief sought “in this case” was all about – than this is not and never was a Simplified Rules case. It was not a case that is exclusively about money, real property or personal property in accordance with Rule 76.02. Accordingly, it ought to have been commenced under the ordinary procedure and Justice Wilkins Reasons for Decision in Irwin Toy clearly apply and were binding on Justice Kershman. To be clear to non-lawyers, If this case was, in essence, an action for a bill of discovery in disguise, than it was not ever eligible to be conducted under the Simplified Rules and the motion judge’s reliance upon Rule 76 in his Reasons was clearly wrong.

    Obviously, the context of the pleadings and the relief sought by the plaintiff in the case is critical to such a purposive analysis.

    However, if this case was more than an action for discovery, and it was a bona fide Simplified Rules action, then the disclosure of the list of witnesses in Schedule “D” and their IP addresses as documents disclosed in Schedule “A” to the affidavit of documents would ordinarily protect those individuals from being sued in other proceedings under the deemed undertaking rule. That provides a measure of protection to anyone reading this who is concerned they will be sued should their names be disclosed through such tactics in the future.

    As appears from the title of proceedings, however, those persons are named as individual defendants in the action. The deemed undertaking in Rule 30.1 would not apply to shelter them as they are already parties to the proceeding. Again – what relief does the plaintiff in this action claim?

    Whatever the case, I am very interested to know more of the details here as the usefulness of employing a simple Schedule “D” requirement to an affidavit of documents in a Simplified Rules case would appear to sidestep the nature of a prima facie case required in a case for a bill of discovery. It clearly circumvents the test for it with an appalling easy bit of stick-handling. That would be, to put it mildly, an important innovation in the law of “John Doe” cases and in suing third parties for nominal relief in order to obtain information necessary for judgment enforcement purposes.

    In my view, the result in the motion you have brought to public attention was not simply about a reasonable expectation of privacy Michael. It has a far more sweeping impact. While I know the privacy aspect of the decision is what is important in your public law practice, the questions I have raised above have a broader impact on civil litigation and judgment enforcement, generally. I would appreciate finding out more about the nature of the pleadings as mentioned above ( I’m now asking for the third time!).

    Regards,

  30. Many “secure login” forms are NOT really secure
    Many sites are using “secure login”, for example your webmail provider or your social networking site. However, there is a catch. Your username and password is submitted securely over HTTPS, but the form was loaded with a regular insecure HTTP. This gives an opportunity to man in the middle attacks where the attacker ALTERS the form before sending it to your browser. For example, the attacker may cause the form to send the password to the attacker’s site, or to send it insecurely over HTTP to the original site. In both cases, the information you submit will be intercepted by the attacker.

    The only way to counter this attack is NOT TO USE forms that arrived over insecure HTTP. You have to TYPE the HTTPS site instead of the HTTP site so that the form gets loaded over HTTPS.

    For example, go to https://www.facebook.com/ to log in to Facebook.

    After you log in, it will revert to the unencrypted HTTP, but at least you know that the login form that came from Facebook was not altered in any way and your password was not sent to

    Gmail supports it too (also change it in the Gmail Account Settings once you are logged in).

    Not all sites allow to load the login form over HTTPS, and this is very unfortunate. For example, there is a bank that does not provide a dedicated secure URL and redirects you to HTTP site after you type the HTTPS version of bank’s home page.

  31. Justlikethissite says:

    Take into account that people who operate forums are not lawyers, and may take the request for discovery/undertaking at face value, without legal council.

    Examples being DMCA take down notices with the request for contact information, but sent to the Canadian forum with no members that have legal experience.

    re: Anonymity,
    “Use Tor (see above) with Privoxy so that the DNS lookups are done through Tor too ”
    This is what I was alluding to earlier, but your average Joe wouldn’t know how to set this up. It’s for geeks.

    Your average forum poster, troll, or 6 year old, will post whatever they they emotionally feel is appropriate at the time, and without being a “registered member” not be able to delete or take back the offending post. Then there are sites like ED that love to archive the fallout from slander trolling. If it was all done under pseudo-name, you can’t even use the DMCA to get rid of it.

    Expect to see new forums for free speech to pop-up that track nothing. Everytime something misguided like the event in this story happens, it just drives things further underground. Eventually only foolish get caught, while leaving the criminal level offenders untouched.

  32. Wow – I’m concerned
    I run a small forum and it pretty small, I had one lawyer already send me some hate mail. I just removed the offending material and nothing came of. But it’s scary, wonder if it’s really worth it?

    Glenn
    http://www.CanadiansTalk.ca

  33. Just wow - this is canada! says:

    he did not like what someone said
    This suit is about some words this guy did not like. Someone called him a censor because he has brought most of the section 13 complaints before the CHRC. So a judge has now given permission to have these people identified even though the case has not been made against any of them.

    Be careful how you reply to my comment here, I may use this precendent used against you.

    When you make a comment on the internet anonymously, do you not have an expectation of privacy? I did till now. Now everything is changed for Canadians as far as the internet goes.

  34. move your site out of Canada
    Would business and government get interested in this if thousands of site owners and bloggers moved there sites to servers out of country?

    What you gonna do when warmans come after your site?

    Do you have the money to fight in court?

  35. “The judge is a member of the board of a Jewish Community Center where Warman had spoken about his fight against anti-semitism. I don’t know what the laws are in Canada, but in the US this apprehension of bias would be more than enough to have the judgement overturned.”

    You are speaking absolute nonsense, and I hope to God you are not a lawyer yourself. Serving as a board member of an organization where a prominent person has spoken is in no way an apprehension of anything.

    “What is society coming to that people are trying to prosecute other people for what they say on the INTERNET?”

    Because hate speech and uttering threats are illegal, and (this doesn’t involve ‘prosecution’ but you seem to have misunderstood) libels and slanders are torts by which people may take action for damages. This has been understood for a very long time.

  36. RadicalFix says:

    An easy fix.
    How do we balance the need for good men to speak freely (and thus anonymously) with the need to stop bad men from speaking illegally?

    Easy. Make SAYING stuff legal.

    Defamation? Perfectly legal. But won’t that hurt people? Not if everyone KNOWS it’s legal. Then a reader must actually weigh the chances of the info being correct–defamatory comments will be taken for exactly what they are: rants.

    Child porn? Perfectly legal. But won’t that hurt kids? No, child abuse would still be illegal. But viewing it shouldn’t be. (And supply doesn’t dry up by punishing users, as per every drug ever.) Th way, you wouldn’t have stupid ideas like outlawing cartoons and self-portraits.

    But won’t criminals thrive and law enforcement suffer? Yes!

    I’D RATHER WALK AMONG CRIMINALS THAN BE TREATED AS ONE. Monitoring my speech is presuming guilt.

  37. Time to stop talking and start shooting!

  38. Would this work?
    This needs to be challenged – I wonder what would happen if the owner of a site put up a notice on their site saying:

    “Dear posters, I only log IP addresses for the length of a session – once the session dies (usually within 15 minutes or so after you leave the site) the IP is not logged – so you CAN have a complete expectation of privacy if you post here.”

    How could any court then suggest that any poster who posted anonymously did not have the expectation of privacy? I cannot see how.

    If the law is interpreted properly (meaning the interpretation keeps with the spirit of the law) I really don’t see how..(obviously though IANAL).

  39. yosamity sam says:

    Cahoots
    seems to me this warman guy and that judge are in cahoots

  40. Warman
    The record shows that Warman is not an “anti-hate” campaigner but actually someone who has joined several neo-Nazi organizations and posted racist and bigoted comments himself. He’s essentially a self-aggrandizing narcissistic egomaniac and a threat to our fundamental rights — in the words of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.

    I personally think that he’s a weirdo, too.

  41. Freedoms are eroding
    This case is very, very important and the ruling is a danger to our freedoms… or, rather, it aims to strip us of the little bits we have left… for now. And, it normalizes the practice of filing one suit for ‘a’ in order to force a disclosure of ‘b’, which was the aim from the start….

    Is that not an abuse of our justice system? Does it not demonstrate a contempt for our judicial system?

    But, Canada is not an island… this sort of thing (in all kinds of different shades) is happening in mush of the formerly ‘free world’!

    Lots of countries now have list of websites which are ‘illegal’ and ‘banned’, but the lists themselves are super secret. The techie volunteer for WikiLeaks.de had his house raided and computer confiscates (and some police procedures were not followed, according to WikiLeaks’ press-realease on it).

    His crime? WikiLeaks.de linked to the Danish ‘black list’…

    The aim? To snoop for information…and to intimidate!

    And just look at what is happening in Australia, New Zealand, UK ….

    This is simply unacceptable!

    While the techies’ first instinct to out-hack and out-gadget the law enforcers is admirable (and we may HAVE TO rely on it, for a time), the very fact that we would HAVE TO do it is just plain wrong.

    The problem is with the laws – and how our judiciary is twisting the intent of our laws through their application, in order to further erode our rights.

    The solution?

    Techies and ‘free speechers’ of the world have to unite (sic), compare notes and begin to work to fix what has been broken. Because this attack upon the openness of the internet is a global phenomenon, we must not only work on correcting the problems in our national laws, we must work globally to de-normalize internet censorship and government snooping in name of ‘regulating’.

    This is just the beginning of the war…

    Aside: Judges are trusted to evaluate people based on their actions, not their PR… By describing a member of a white supremacist organization, who has (at an HRC hearing) been shown to have posted regularly extremely hateful, racist and sexist comments, as ‘an anti-hate fighter’, this judge has demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to evaluate Mr. Warman based on his actions. Does this not demonstrate that this judge is either incompetent or corrupt – or that he has simply pre-judged the case, before he has been presented all the evidence?

  42. Apprehension of bias
    The Canadian standard is that of the reasonable man. what would an informed person, viewing the matter realistically and practically and having thought the matter through conclude?

    A Jewish Judge + crusader against anti-semitism + crusader spoke at judge’s community center + judge’s ruling that follows no established precedent + judge reading into his decision evidence not before the court + decision favorable to the crusader against anti-semitism = apprehension of bias.

    To the reasonable man.

  43. Stephen Pate says:

    nobody but I do all the work around here
    The key is you must disclose what the courts request and you cannot destroy evidence. Evidence is the record but only to the extent there is an aprehension of a) criminal activity or b) civil lawsuit. If the site destroys all record of ip and email addresses as a matter of policy, and not selectively, the site owners have nothing to provide the courts. This can backfire if the site receives information about criminal activity. Does it change it’s policy on the apprehension of criminality and what bias does that introduce? I love the obfuscating reply from “lawyer” above. priceless.

  44. PetFoodz.Info says:

    Scary Thought For CDN Webmasters
    This sounds scary.. It’s almost like a warning for CDN webmasters.. Hopefully an appeal is filed..

  45. The LS from SK says:

    Tybalt said:

    “The judge is a member of the board of a Jewish Community Center where Warman had spoken about his fight against anti-semitism. I don’t know what the laws are in Canada, but in the US this apprehension of bias would be more than enough to have the judgement overturned.”

    You are speaking absolute nonsense, and I hope to God you are not a lawyer yourself. Serving as a board member of an organization where a prominent person has spoken is in no way an apprehension of anything.

    “What is society coming to that people are trying to prosecute other people for what they say on the INTERNET?”

    Because hate speech and uttering threats are illegal, and (this doesn’t involve ‘prosecution’ but you seem to have misunderstood) libels and slanders are torts by which people may take action for damages. This has been understood for a very long time.

  46. The LS from SK says:

    oops – must have added a link or something not allowed or screwed up the response.

    What I had said was that in a case where the complainant is present at a gathering the same judge is at and may have picked up information or suggestions un or knowingly imparted – the judge should have excused himself just on perception alone and that/then he then becomes the judge on a case involving the same person later.

    The fact that the complainant has received awards and recognition from the CJC and in many of his 13.1 cases the CJC and BB are “intervenors” only add to the suspicion of bias.

    The most recent CHRT decision where the same complainant was chastized should alone have been enough reason to introduce caution. Any conviction/finding/ruling under similar circumstances in the UK would have been considered UNSAFE.

    If the tactics described in that decision apply, then there should be reasonable doubt that he himself was not one of the posters on FD and/or had not altered articles on other sites to enhance his case?

    The Internet is dangerous enough for bloggers/researchers without others using it for purposes of lawfare or SLAPP suits.

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