Canadian Election Law Prompts Web Site

[Greg Baker]

Gregory Baker wrote:
Never submitting anything before regarding encryption of rights of individuals to
your group I nevertheless follow the debates that are provided by yourselves.I
noticed last month that someone; I forget who mentioned in passing, that the laws
of Canada are more flexible than Europe regarding personal liberties. The 'Ol Bill'
heer is far more authoritarian than the British 'Bill'. I read this for anyones
interest regarding posting political information.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/story/4081.html

Gregory Baker RCA.

Canadian Election Law Prompts Web Site
                     Battle

                     by Ashley Craddock
                     5:02am  27.May.97.PDT Online privacy advocates are vowing
                     to fight enforcement of a Canadian election law that has
                     been used to force the removal of a Green Party Web
                     site that did not carry the name of its sponsor.

                     Electronic Frontier Canada said late last week that it
                     plans to go to court in the case of an Ottawa man,
                     Krishna Bera, who became the target of the national
                     election board after he posted an anonymously
                     sponsored site called Vote Green.

                     Earlier this month, Elections Canada told Bera to either
                     identify the sponsor behind Vote Green, take it down, or
                     face a possible C$1,000 fine or a year in jail. Krishna
                     took down the site, but some 25-plus mirror sites have
                     popped up webwide since the original disappeared.

                     The law under which the board acted says, "Every
                     person who sponsors or conducts advertising without
                     identifying the name of the sponsor and indicating that it
                     was authorized by that sponsor is guilty of an offense."

                     At stake, says David Jones, president and co-founder of
                     Electronic Frontier Canada, is Canadian citizens' right to
                     anonymous political speech. "People shouldn't be put in
                     the position of either staying silent on political issues or
                     identifying themselves and taking their lumps," Jones
                     said. "There's a substantial amount of mischief caused
                     by allowing governments to control political discourse."

                     But others say the question becomes more complex
                     when one moves from the need for anonymity in private
                     or potentially dangerous communications to the need for
                     anonymity in political debate - especially when that
                     debate takes the form of advertising.

                     "People need to know who's funding public figures so
                     they can judge who's influencing them," said Paul
                     Hendrie, communications director for the Center for
                     Responsive Politics, which tracks federal campaign
                     spending in the United States. "Otherwise politicians
                     can just go out and sell their votes and no one's ever the
                     wiser."

                     Jones, however, insists that the question is not one of
                     cash-driven corruption but of the danger of airing
                     unpopular political views.

                     "We've got no beef with political parties being controlled
                     this way, but we think this law misses its target when it
                     uses the phrase 'every person,'" he said. "Krishna Bera
                     is not a political party that needs to be watched; he's an
                     individual who should be allowed to say what he
                     believes."

                     For his part, Bera insists that the Vote Green site is not
                     an advertisement and should therefore not be subject to
                     disclosure laws.

                     "That's where you get into the issue of judging and
                     labeling content," he said. "I say it's political speech;
                     they say it's an ad. Who's going to decide?"