Bone-Chilling Reality of Oppressive Brutality and an Assault on Freedom of Speech

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In 1982, Liberal leader and then Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, repatrioted the Canadian Constitution and signed into existance the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unlike the Charter's predecessor, the Bill of Rights, signed into existance by the Conservatives, under the leadership of John Diefenbaker, was entrenched.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;

b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

d) freedom of association.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

The United States of America was founded on the principle of freedom and liberty because the people who made up the original thirteen states wanted to escape the oppressive nature of the English monarchy, where there was only a King and the parliament, which had no teeth, and the nobility, which had rights from the Magna Carta of 1215. The nation didn't grant freedom and liberty to its lowest citizens.

The American Revolution in 1776 resulted in the American colonies superceding English control and becoming a nation in their own right. Many lawmakers were there, including the man who would be the first president of the newly established United States.

When the people spoke, they included this as their constitutional preamble:



...of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In the years following, Amendments were added to the original articles of the constition, the first being: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Constitution of the United States of America

Now, before the Senate is a treaty. It is one that is going to sneak through the Senate. It would require the US to enforce laws in its nation against otherwise legal activities regarding the internet, should the activity be considered illegal in another nation.

The World's Worst Internet Laws Sneaking Through the Senate

The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries' 'cybercrime" laws - even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdiction's requests to log their users' behavior without due process, or compensation.

The treaty came into force last year on the international front, but not in the US, where it needs to be ratified by Congress first. So far, ratification has been blocked thanks to a "hold" placed by conservative lawmakers. But Republican senators this week are now being heavily pressured by the administration to drop their objections, and let it fly.

Convention on Cybercrime, Budapest, 23.XI.2001

To make laws governing the use of the internet in one's nation, provided that it doesn't spill over international borders, even if oppressive, as long as it leaves another nation's internet use unaffected, it's fine. But, should a law supercede international borders when it contravenes a basic right to freedom of speech that a nation holds dearly, a nation's core laws should override that international law by default.

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