Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability
riskybiznews.substack.com> 10. The Canada Revenue Agency has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site. We have used sophisticated encryption technology and incorporated other procedures to protect your personal information at all times. However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. In the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsible for any damages you may experience as a result
I am not a lawyer, but I would be surprised if this holds water, legally speaking. Imagine going to an amusement park and signing a waiver that the park takes no responsibility for your injuries. If you climb aboard a rollercoaster that hasn't seen any maintenance in 20 years and you get decapitated, I'm pretty sure the park is still legally responsible. Getting someone to sign something that says "we did our due diligence" doesn't make it true.
> If you climb aboard a rollercoaster that hasn't seen any maintenance in 20 years and you get decapitated, I'm pretty sure the park is still legally responsible
> "any script, robot, spider, Web crawler, screen scraper, automated query program or other automated device or any manual process to monitor or copy the content contained in any online services"
But the CRA already anticipated this and explicitly disallowed headless clients
> ...or any manual process to monitor or copy the content contained in any online services"
So, not allowed to use Ctrl+C on their website?
You're not allowed to write things down on a notebook using a pencil.
Or monitor them.
Not a Canadian, but this just seems like a chicken running around with its head cut off [1]. A one-legged duck swimming in a circle.
Why does a government want to protect itself from hacking liability via ToS in the first place. Couldn't they, you know, just pass a law saying they're not liable?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
Legal structures and especially state or state sponsored entities in Canada work much differently than in the US.
The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations.
This state sponsored vertical integration enables abuse of authority in cases like https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/xa9j3x/church_...
Whereas here in the US I know many people that mix and match between different states DOLs and DORs for a variety of reasons, and your not going to get stuck with the same stubborn employee who can control every facet of your ability to identify yourself and also legally drive a vehicle on the road.
The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too, I'm glad they are banned in Washington and Oregon. Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.
> Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.
I’m pretty sure Canadian DUI checkpoints are limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) unless something else is offered/observed.
Supreme Court basically agreed that they are warrantless and detainments without reasonable suspicion, but considered them acceptable for the purposes of preventing drunk driving so that’s all the carve out it for. See R vs Mellenthin here: https://torontodui.com/knowledge-centre/everything-you-need-...
(Worth noting that Canada’s constitution is basically toilet paper for a lot of things because a judge (or politician!) can override a lot of it)
> limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) unless something else is offered/observed.
Which in effect means that they are unlimited. They make wide use of drug detecting dogs. If a drug dog indicates you might have contraband, that allows further intervention. It is widely known that drug dogs can , worst case, be trained to hit when a hit is not present. Best case they have a bond with their handlers that tells them that the handler wants there to be a hit, whether the handler consciously conveys that or not. This increases the odds that there will be a hit.
Drug dogs are basically a override-the-law get you into jail free card, and any system that allows them as evidence of probable cause basically does not require probable cause.
No, in effect this is not an unlimited power. Just ask any Canadian criminal law lawyer what they do all day.
I don’t know about K9 units, but I’ve never seen one anywhere in Canada, except maybe at an airport once.
They brought a bunch of police dogs into my Canadian high school for a 'random' search.
I saw the principal come into the class I was in and point out a specific kid that she wanted searched.
The distrust of authority that I learned from that experience is without a doubt the greatest lesson I ever got in high school.
That is for sure suboptimal, but it is not necessarily representative of most Canadians’ experiences.
Why does that matter? The point is that it can happen and it's normal enough that the principal just did it and the police just followed up, no questions asked no eyebrows batted. That it's hidden enough is worse, not better for Canada, if it was outrageous there would be outrage and everyone would know - but nobody cares.
It matters because more than zero bad things happen to people in every single country, so we have no choice but to rely on statistics to get a sense for what countries are like and how to compare them. It's this sense of what countries are like in general, statistically, that allows us to say anything intelligent about things like this.
to bat one's eyebrow
This is representative of my experience.
> Drug dogs are basically a override-the-law get you into jail free card, and any system that allows them as evidence of probable cause basically does not require probable cause.
Police dogs manufacturing search warrants is more of an American problem than a Canadian problem.
You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada. The letter of the law matters way less than how the law is implemented in practice. Public culture, legal culture, political culture, and policing culture all play into this.
The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
One of the biggest problems is Canada is the assumption of country wide immunity from systemic issues because "it's worse in the States". This prevents lots of real change from happening and allows lots of really bad laws to exist.
I am Canadian, living in Canada and I really hate this. We constantly compare ourselves to the States. Why can't we compare to a country more with aspiring to? Like one of the Nordics?
Canada is bigger, way more diverse, has way more population, and is structurally, historically, and culturally similar to the US.
And speaking as someone who has lived or worked in a couple of those countries: it ain't all rainbows and cupcakes.
Denmark ain't exactly crazy about foreigners, plus there was just an article here about how ruthless they are with data surveillance. There isn't a huge market, jobs are tight, and "tall poppy syndrome" is a thing -- which is a problem for the HN wannabe-tech-mogul crowd. They're not the most open people -- kind, nice, polite -- but also closed off; its not easy to make friends. They're not crazy about immigrants, and there is very much a "for us, by us" mentality; high immigration in Sweden is, like in much of Europe, not popular with large segments of the population.
Outside of some cultural artifacts like Rugbrod or the Copenhagen obsession with fermenting every kind of food, there isn't much you can't get in Canada. Slightly less fat, slightly better dressed, and the English was often better.
> Denmark ain't exactly crazy about foreigners
7.5% of people in Denmark are foreign born, which isn’t as high as Canada’s 23%, but isn’t that far from the USA’s 13%.
> You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada. The letter of the law matters way less than how the law is implemented in practice. Public culture, legal culture, political culture, and policing culture all play into this.
In Canada the government unilaterally suspended the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) in the 70's for mailbox bombings. It was later revealed that the feds were behind these [0]. They did it again to shut down peaceful demonstrations against covid restrictions, where the protesters setup a bouncy castle close to the parliament. So I'm not sure about having more rights "in practice".
> The right to bear arms is enshrined in the constitution, yet there's no shortage of people who have been executed for 'reaching for an (often imaginary) gun' during a 'routine traffic stop' that, oddly enough, predominantly targets minorities...
Well, in Canada minorities found out the hard way what happens when only the cops (and criminals) have guns [1]. Not sure either of those are better.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...
Just three summers ago, the government spent a bit over a month, regularly gassing, brutalizing, and beating peaceful protestors in my town. And it didn't even need to unilaterally suspend the constitution to do so.
It didn't seem like anyone needed to suspend the constitution to firebomb a neighbourhood in Philadelphia in 1985, either. 250 completely uninvolved people were left homeless by that. Go back a bit further in time, and discover that both countries were perfectly fine with running internment camps.
It frankly doesn't matter what the law says. What matters is how it is applied in practice.
PS. The constitution was suspended not for the mailbox bombings, but during the October crisis, when a cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered by a secessionist terrorist group. You did a sleight of hand on unaware readers by portmanteauing the two events together.
Also, the CORAF (the 'constitution') was only adopted in '82, a decade after the crisis.
And to that I say the perpetrators should be held accountable and prosecuted. The fact that it wasn't is a completely different issue.
They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution". You can't build a truly free country without the rule of law.
> The fact that it wasn't is a completely different issue.
The War Measures Act was invoked in October 1970, replaced with the Public Order act in November 1970, which expired in April 1971.
The fed-created bombing attempt was in 1974. Unless the RCMP has a time machine, I don't think the invocation of the WMA or the POA can be blamed on Robert Samson.
> They should certainly not be able to avoid prosecutions because "woops we decided that, on that particular day we'll just ignore the constitution".
The US has invoked martial law 68 times in its history, 29 of them for a labour[1] dispute (The WMA has only been invoked three times, and the Emergencies act, which references the trucker case has only been involved once).
The mechanism for just deciding to ignore the constitution is very similar in both countries[2], but one of them has invoked it a lot more frequently. And, as mentioned a few posts above, government repression doesn't even need any invocation of such acts.
[1] With that frequency, it should be pretty clear as to who the government sees as its real enemy.
[2] In the US, the 2007 National Defense Authorization act even gave this power directly, and unilaterally, to the President, but it did get overturned in 2008. Now, it's largely in the unilateral hands of state governors.
> The fed-created bombing attempt was in 1974. Unless the RCMP has a time machine, I don't think the invocation of the WMA or the POA can be blamed on Robert Samson.
They were caught in 1974. That doesn't mean (and Samson's testimony corroborated that) they didn't plant bombs or fake threats before. Ted Bundy wasn't caught the first time he murdered someone.
> but it did get overturned in 2008.
Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
Do you also think they kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, which is what precipitated the use of the WMA? How far down does this conspiracy theory go, exactly? Are we just going to, without any evidence, blame everything on the RCMP boogieman?
> Thankfully, some still read the constitution.
Did you miss the second part of this equation, where martial law is still a thing, it can still be declared by state governors, and will happily suspend your rights?
The only thing that happened in the lead-up to 2007 and again in 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
That's the other problem with 'reading the US constitution'. It's not exactly clear on the subject of when it can be set aside. The 68 invocations of martial law make it crystal-clear that it can be set aside, and does get set aside whenever someone feels like it [1]. But you're not going to find a single word in the constitution that explains why, who, and in what circumstances it can be set aside.
At least the CORAF is clear as on the subject of what it takes to set it aside - an Act of Parliament, and which parts of it can be set aside (Sections 2, 7-15 - pretty much all the important bits, aside from elections, and language rights).
> Do you also think they kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, which is what precipitated the use of the WMA?
They apparently got a confession from the alleged murderer (of course, one might question a confession obtained while the suspect's constitutional rights were suspended) but couldn't even place him at the scene of the murder.
And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
> How far down does this conspiracy theory go, exactly?
People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
> The only thing that happened in 2007 and 2008 was a change to who can declare it.
As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
> They apparently got a confession from the alleged murderer (of course, one might question a confession obtained while the suspect's constitutional rights were suspended) but couldn't even place him at the scene of the murder.
> And let's be honest, once you admit to planting evidence, there's not a lot of credibility left...
The most likely and obvious conclusion of this is that they got the wrong guy for the murder, not that they killed him.
> People said the same thing about the lab leak hypothesis back in 2020.
'People' also say smoking doesn't cause cancer, marijuana causes reefer madness, and that Bigfoot is real. 'People' believe and say all sorts of stupid things. You're going to need a better argument.
> As with any law, let's see if it stands the test of courts.
The application of martial law in the US has already stood the test of 68 invocations. How many more invocations are you going to need before you are convinced of the basic fact that the US constitution can and has been suspended during states of emergency?
And you're pointing fingers at Canada for invoking the WMA three times, and the Emergencies act once? [1]
This is a completely ridiculous double standard. Please open your eyes.
[1] When the Canadian CORAF has explicit, clear provisions for when those kinds of acts can be invoked, and by whom?
> The most likely and obvious conclusion of this is that they got the wrong guy for the murder, not that they killed him.
"No, your honor, we planted evidence on a different black man. No this one we really did find evidence. Just trust us".
Good thing that courts usually don't operate on one side saying 'just trust us', and everyone going home.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all you have is... Well, not even any circumstantial evidence, it's just conjecture. Just 'they could have done it, so they did it!'.
Just because things may not have turned out one way doesn't mean that you can come in and insist that they actually turned out a different, particular way - without anything to support it. And then base the rest of your argument on that.
(This is also a complete tangent.)
The biggest problem in Canada is that whole "notwithstanding" backdoor in the Charter. And it's not even a hypothetical concern, given how it's been used in e.g. Quebec.
> You might have more rights on paper in the US, but in many respects, you have more of them in practice in Canada.
Generally speaking in the US, the rights you have in practice (as opposed to on paper) are determined by how wealthy you are. Much like how we have the best health care in the world if you're wealthy, but the worst (among wealthy nations) if you aren't.
"Drug dogs"
Fun fact: Most police "drug dogs" you see in public are actually normal dogs, because "drug dogs" are quite expensive and can only be put to service for a limited time (and they stress out with lots of noise and people). But if the people think the dog is a drug dog, then their reaction is often telling enough.
(but I don't know, if they do this in canada to get the "allows further intervention", but this is usually a grey area anyway)
Where do you get this from? The training of a drug dog would be one of the first things challenged in a criminal drug case and would terminal to establishing probable cause.
My information is EU (germany) based and was a general remark, not specific to those traffic controls (and whatever specific rules they have).
Here what matters in court is, have drugs been found. If the cops think someone looks suspicious enough, they can search him. And if drugs were found, than this is all that matters in court, because obviously the cops were right with their suspicion if something was found. I don't see how that evidence could be challenged in court?
(No one said, that the dog is a drug dog. People just assume it and the police uses that assumption)
>Here what matters in court is, have drugs been found. If the cops think someone looks suspicious enough, they can search him. And if drugs were found, than this is all that matters in court,
That is entirely incorrect. German law follows a similar structure to the United States regarding the admissibility of evidence that was collected improperly. Evidence obtained in violation of the law, particularly by infringement of the privacy of the home or person, may be excluded from the trial if the violation is deemed to have a significant impact on the reliability of the evidence. The standard of probable cause in German law is known as "concrete indications of a specific criminal offense" (konkrete Anhaltspunkte für eine bestimmte Straftat). It requires officials to have concrete indications that a specific criminal offense has been committed or is about to be committed before they can conduct a search or seizure.
Yes, that is wrong "than this is all that matters in court". There are some exceptions though, like with tax evasion, then illegal evidence was excepted, but in general you are right.
Still, in case of the dog: it would be interesting, if there was a case about it, as I am very sure of the practice in reality.
Police will do, what works and with what they can get away. Most people will just comply when the police tells them to open their pockets (note that they don't have to articulate it as an order, the same if police comes to your door without a warrant and they ask if they can come in) assuming the police has the right. (and drug addicts usually do not have a lawer).
I don't know if it would hold up in court as a justification for searching, that a person looked nervous because of a police dog as the person just could have fear of dogs in general, so they likely would avoid it.
(Also, if you happen to live within 30 km of a nation border like me, then police (Zoll) can search pockets and cars all the time without concrete indications. So they could use this tactic without problems, but I have never seen the Zoll doing it, but the normal police in the cities)
> The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too, I'm glad they are banned in Washington and Oregon. Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.
I was just wondering about these (in the US) the other day. When I was growing up, I seem to remember them being a thing and going through them as a passenger but in 20+ years of driving, including on NYE/July 4 and late at night, I've never come across one.
Are there still states doing these?
I see them every year on NYE when I'm in LA and even some random weekends in Oakland
Saw one in South Florida on multiple nights during Super Bowl weekend.
The US has CBP checks on roads, doesn’t it?
And DUI checks, and 'random' stops where the officer in question didn't like the cut of your jib, smelled pot in the car, and would love to know where you're going.
America's a big place, there's a very wide range of things that law enforcement do in it.
Only in states that permit CBP to operate inland checkpoints. California banned the practice a few decades ago, you can see where the CBP used to operate checkpoints between San Diego and Los Angeles as you drive north along the freeway.
Yes, but very limited. They are only allowed to ask "are you a US citizen", and walk a dog around the car. I've never had one take more than 60 seconds in either AZ or CA.
I'm a tall middle aged middle class white man and I had no issue with any police check in my life either.
I think there are demographics that have different experiences than mine, especially when there's a dog involved (who can provide any excuse necessary:)
I don't believe police at checkpoints in Canada are walking dogs around the car or asking whether we're citizens or not, it's just a matter of whether or not someone's had drinks, I'm fine with it
> I've never had one take more than 60 seconds
In Australia I've been stopped many dozens of times for a "random breath test" where they stop every car and make you blow into the device to check blood alcohol.
I've never had one take more than 30 seconds.
As a Canadian, in Australia, I was surprised by the random breath test. That is not allowed at check stops in Canada unless there is another reason to suspect you have been drinking (smell of alcohol, slurring words, that sort of thing).
I refuse to comply with those.
Louisiana (New Orleans at least)
> The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance
No, this is only true for the most basic plans (called Autoplan). For anything beyond this, eg third-party liability, collision, comprehensive, etc., you can buy private insurance or go with ICBC for those plans too if you want.
But that basic insurance is extremely overpriced compared to similar insurances in other countries, and it is mandatory so you have to pay it.
If it's overpriced (relative to payouts) and the funds get returned to the population at large (through public services and mitigation of indirect damage caused by drivers) then that sounds like a very effective way to get drivers to pay for their externalized costs (in a way that other countries' privatized, profit-limited insurance schemes doesn't afford).
I lived in BC 10 years ago, and the notion that ICBC is extremely overpriced for no good reason seemed to be the prevailing and rather strongly held belief cutting across the political spectrum there.
I'll grant you that this is anecdata, but if there are any public opinion polls demonstrating that ICBC is doing what it's doing with an actual consent of the governed, I'd love to see them.
(Elections don't satisfy this because people effectively vote on many different issues as a batch, so a few hot-button issues can dominate everything else in practice, making it impossible to interpret the outcome as a mandate for a particular policy unless it was one of those hot-button issues.)
What is overpriced for an insurance? people pay their fees and get damage compensation in case of a successful claim. So an insurance can be overpriced if the compensation is way lower than the fees on average (administrative overhead or extracted profit from the insurance provider) and then of course you can hold the opinion that the insurance's coverage is too hight, which also leads to higher fees to begin with.
Anyway, you can pretty sure simply analyse this with the business data.
If you make a poll you'll just poll for the public sentiment. And frankly "the tax is too damn high" can be heard everywhere pretty much regardless of the taxes.
The issue with ICBC is that you are forced to do business with them no matter how you feel about their business practices or how much they are charging. ICBC can change their pricing completely from year to year and there is nothing you can do about it if you need to keep driving your car. This is not even an exaggeration, a few years ago ICBC did adjust their rates such that some people were suddenly paying thousands more per year despite having no claim history, They have since changed the fee structure since then but it is a bit scary when your premiums go from $2000 per year to $5000 or more.
I have lived in BC a couple of times in my life. The popular perception that it is overpriced is definitely a thing. To add my anecdatum, ICBC was more expensive than other jurisdictions that I have lived in, but not outrageously so. Is it overpriced? Possibly. Is it extremely overpriced? I am inclined to think not.
That’s similar to my experience. For the couple claims I’ve had, the process has been flawless with ICBC. Not so for my extended family in Ontario.
> then that sounds like a very effective way to get drivers to pay for their externalized costs
It is a start. But there is one guarantee, driver hate paying for what they use.
You don't need to compare to other countries; there's a big difference simply compared to other provinces. Here's my own anecdata: I lived in Ontario where insurance was easy. A variety of private companies offered competitive rates, and I renewed every year by simply phoning my insurer or broker and giving them my credit card number.
When I moved to BC, my rate didn't change by much. But the rest of the experience got worse. For starters you had to go into an office for everything. In my case, it took a few times to get it right. They screwed up my license and insurance twice - things like name, address, etc. (In one case a field in their database was blank that a future agent said shouldn't have been possible not to populate... go figure).
Next they gave me incorrect information. They tried to tell me I had to buy an extra add-on for my liability coverage to carry over when driving in the US - which is dead wrong if you actually read the policy. I got into a 40-minute argument that wound up being me vs. every single employee in the office (they all wandered over to see what was going on). In the end we all called ICBC-central together - it took two escalations to finally get someone who knew what they were talking about who could authoritatively confirm I was correct and all the agents in the office were wrong. They were all stunned; the one I was dealing with said "Wow, I've been selling that package to everybody who comes in and nearly none of them need it!"
Years later I tried to make a comprehensive claim for ~$7k worth of damage related to a freak weather event. The ICBC-central agent said "don't even bother to file a claim, it won't be covered". Some time later I was chatting with my old Ontario broker who said it was a no-brainer and would have been 100% covered under my old plan. (In retrospect I should have sent in the claim anyway and put up a fight... but I just didn't have the time - was doing lucrative consulting, and it made more financial sense to spend the time on billable hours than wasting it on that).
Over the years they've made many more mistakes and generally drive me nuts. At least compared to the two different companies I used for insurance during the years I spent in Ontario. Again anecdotally, most of my neighbours haven't any good things to say about them either.
One silver lining of the pandemic is it finally forced ICBC to put a process in place for doing renewals over a combination of phone and email. Still not as convenient as in Ontario, but at least it's an improvement.
I still fail to understand why BC thinks they need their own government-run insurance provider. This is a solved problem in the rest of the world.
My experience has been the opposite. I’m generally happier here with auto insurance than I was in Ontario.
Regarding the ICBC add-on for US liability… aren’t all ICBC policies exclusively sold by independent brokers? If true then wouldn’t that have been an independent broker who was mistaken and ICBC proper cleared it up?
Yes that's true, but since then I've had the same discussion with other brokers, although they weren't as adamant. The basic terms around this seem widely misunderstood (at least from my own experience).
But, does it?
> mitigation of indirect damage caused by drivers
But, private insurance covers that.
> through public services
Examples?
Edit: Of course, this is downvoted. Can't question the god that is the govt.
> The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too, I'm glad they are banned in Washington and Oregon. Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.
There has been a lot of pushback to DUIs. I did a poli-sci BA thesis on it. Essentially its one of the few times they make exception to constitutional rights, and assume guilt without due process.
A fairly deep explanation of what I'm talking about, and why states like WA gave up on it:
"Wild" meaning, the police can still impound your car at their discretion if you blow below not just the legal limit of 0.08, but below the warning limit of 0.05, or even 0!
No shortage of drugs that can make someone a terrible driver.
Many drivers are worse alcohol-free than a legally drunk good driver.
Focussing on one cause of bad driving (lots of alcohol) is a weak approach to road safety.
This is a weak argument against checkstops. If you're a worse driver without alchohol or other relevant impairments then you shouldn't be driving either. I can't see road signs very-well without corrective lenses, so I don't, and I wouldn't pass a test without them. If you need alchohol to be a good enough driver, you probably won't pass the test sober, or we should have better tests. Moving cars are killing machines unless you're driving them well. I've been stopped at checkpoints and support them. They're scary, but driving is a priviledge and you shouldn't fuck around with it.
They're also not a solution to road safety, they just address one category. Overall road safety comes from a complete reversal of car-dependance along with improvements to road design.
Or a mobile device. Any time of day, I would estimate at least 50% of drivers are glancing down and using phones while driving. Even cops.
In my area, cops are worse: They often have a full-blown laptop mounted on the dashboard next to them that always to be demanding more of their attention than the road.
I clicked
> https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/xa9j3x/church_
to get
> Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/nottheonion.
You can't see the underlying link? It's visible on old.reddit.com: https://www.richmond-news.com/highlights/church-of-the-flyin....
Nope, on new reddit the link isn't clickable. I actually didn't know this was a feature of old.reddit, TIL!
Gotta love the overzealous powermods of Reddit...
making the internet a more diverse and inclusive place; by deleting content? ok
>Gotta love the overzealous powermods of Reddit...
If you think that about reddit mods, I can only imagine how you feel about HN.
The post title is all what's remaining. It says:
> Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's ICBC pirate hat fight deepens
> Legal structures and especially state or state sponsored entities in Canada work much differently than in the US. The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations. This state sponsored vertical integration enables abuse of authority
It's impressive to see how omnipresent the government is everyday life in Canada, often via these state sponsored entities with bizarre ties to the government.
Alcohol sales are handled by government-owned stores (because it takes the government's unique expertise to run a liquor store?). Dairy products are subject to production quotas administered by the government, and excess production has to be destroyed (it is illegal to compete and lower your prices!). Car insurance is done through the state run monopoly so you can't shop around for rates. Health is handled by a single player, so you have no say in which providers you are assigned to (if you get one at all, they can deny coverage with year long wait times but you are still on the hook for the tax bill!). The country's largest broadcaster is state owned and operated, with journalists on government payroll reporting on... the government! Say the right thing and you might even land yourself a cushy government job [0]
Your comment is full of exaggerations and factual errors. For liquor, every province is different. Some have government owned liquor shops while others have independent stores. Some have a combination.
Government run car insurance only exists in two or three provinces. It’s the exception, not the rule.
The CBC is not “on government payroll”. It’s run independently but government funded. If you’ve got significant evidence of political parties interfering in the CBC’s reporting I’d love to hear it.
I’m not sure why you singled out Canadas first black, female, Governor General as being a problem. The GG’s role is a ceremonial, public facing, non-political role that perfectly suits someone well known who’s adept at public speaking. She’s not even the first former journalist to get the posting. Others were famous astronauts, military heroes or business leaders.
While there’s some truth in what you say (health care is in a real pickle, the dairy board is just bizarre) the rest is textbook right-wing propaganda.
What was the reddit post about?
It is now:
Hey u/misanthrope2327, thanks for contributing to r/nottheonion. Unfortunately, your post was removed as it violates our rules:
Rule 2 - Sorry, but this story isn't oniony.
How are they wild? It's about a 5-second chat with an officer and off you go. They used to hand out coupon books.
Also curious about this, "wild" is not a word I would have used for the checkpoints they set up. They've been doing it for nearly 40 years and yet our civil liberties are still intact.
As an observer of the process, they definitely have an impact. You can see people spot the checkpoint and then peel off to the nearest onramp / off-street where they then get picked up by the special checkpoint designed to ask some questions of people willing to cross medians to avoid a standard checkpoint.
> The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too
Not just BC. ON, too.
Canada wide since DUIs are criminal code (ie: federal) offences.
> Imagine going to an amusement park and signing a waiver that the park takes no responsibility for your injuries. If you climb aboard a rollercoaster that hasn't seen any maintenance in 20 years and you get decapitated, I'm pretty sure the park is still legally responsible
I don't know Canadian law, just for fun this is my understanding of it under US laws which are likely similar although Canada usually has more consumer protections.
You generally can't waive negligence. Those waivers can be useful for things like a trampoline park - someone lands on their ankle wrong and injurs it, the waiver deals with assumption of the risk - landing incorrectly is a reasonable risk due to the nature of the event. However if a net was missing and you hit the concrete floor - that would be under negligence of the premises owner.
My guess (not a lawyer just guessing) is that if they followed all best practices and someone bruteforced an RSA 2048 key which is currently understood to not be (reasonably) possible - that might be covered? However if they left a S3 bucket open without a password, that would be under negligence?
> My guess (not a lawyer just guessing) is that if they followed all best practices and someone bruteforced an RSA 2048 key which is currently understood to not be (reasonably) possible - that might be covered? However if they left a S3 bucket open without a password, that would be under negligence?
Not a lawyer either, but to me, since users have no means to protect themselves against a backend breach, it seems like it would inherently be the fault of the business.
My chosen parallel would be owning a dog. Owning a dog has some inherent risk, because even if you take all precautions, there's always a chance it gets off it's leash or breaks out of the yard and bites someone. "I had a fence" shouldn't free you from liability; the fence was insufficient because someone still got bit. The only way to be free of that small risk is to not own a dog.
I view data the same way. Storing sensitive data comes with an inherent risk that it will be compromised. By asking for and keeping that data, companies assume the risk of that data being breached, and any resulting damage. If that risk is unacceptable, don't ask for or keep the data. Or find some way to make it so the data can't cause damage even if it's stolen (e.g. by using some kind of public tax ID).
The standard with dog bites is “reasonable precautions” to prevent them, thus a good fence that failed because it was hit by a meteor could be a perfectly reasonable defense. People don’t build structures with rocks falling from the sky in mind. On the other hand a fence the dog can open or climb over is not, which of course depends on the dog.
I suspect the same would be considered for computer security. Hacker News and a Bank have very different bars for what’s reasonable.
36 states and DC have strict liability for dog bites. For most the only exceptions are if the person was trespassing when they were bitten, if they were provoking the dog, or it's a police/military dog doing its job. Some of those states have carve outs where they only have liability for expenses if they didn't know the dog was dangerous (I'm presuming that means no emotional/punitive damages).
Doesn't matter what precautions the person took, if the dog gets out and bites another person, they're liable in most states.
Interesting, my state is not on that list.
But that 36 state list includes many exceptions. Provocation is an exception in the majority of those 36 states, and trespassing is almost universally an exception. Nebraska excludes harm cases when the dog is being playful etc.
Genuine question, would you not be held responsible in the US if a meteor hit your fence allowing your dog to get out and bite someone? I know that it was unpreventable but isn’t it still your dog and your responsibility?
You can be sued for anything but I suspect in this case the “Act of God” clause would come into pay and insurance would (or wouldn’t) cover it.
Eg if you had a known dangerous dog that had bitten twelve babies before but you didn’t destroy it, you’re up the creek even if it got out because of the meteor.
But if the dog only but because it’s tail got singed by the meteor, you’d probably be ok.
Nothing is absolutely guaranteed in the US legal system, but as I understand it it’s not legally your responsibility.
In the same way you may generally be responsible if you rear end someone, but if it was caused by someone rear ending you then that’s not your fault. That may seem obvious, but if someone stoped several car lengths back to lower the risk of someone getting hit if you’re rear ended. Thus the standard is reasonable precautions rather than requiring people to do absolutely anything possible.
On top of this, I don’t see how a contract that you are compelled to agree to in order to do your taxes could be seen as one that you’ve willingly entered.
Using the My Account web site is not required to do your taxes. You can file by mail AND electronically with Netfile without using it at all. Src: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...
That being said, My Account is a useful, albeit very flawed online tool.
What happens if you don't agree to the TOS? Pretty sure that means you can't do your taxes, and you'd get in pretty hot water as a result. To me, that implies that the Canadian government is forcing you to agree to this TOS, which further reduces its legal defensibility.
You can file electronically without ever touching My Account. All you need is some info from your previous year's Notice of Assessment.
Src: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...
You can still mail in paper forms.
And the bad boys and girls can still hack CRA and if they defraud you using the data they stole is CRA still liable in spite of your paper-based filing?
You will have to prove a lot of "facts" to win that lawsuit. Especially since your social number(s), email, phone, whatsapp, etc are all public info already.
Recall a few years ago an uneducated hacker ("script kiddie") got part way into a CRA website and they took the whole website down for a week. (The attacker was caught, and prosecuted iirc.)
But they might still "email" any reassessment or whatever to your account if you setup paperless beforehand..
Generally the CRA will only email a notice that there is a new message waiting for you on their site; you have to log in to their site to access the message. As far as security practices go, I won't complain about that.
Yeah, thats why I had email in quotes. Could have been more clear I guess. Still a problem that you need to accept their TOS to see if they decided you owe money.
No, you don't have to have any electronic account with the CRA, you can file by paper, and they write you back by paper, and you can pay by cheque, or get your refund by cheque.
What's interesting to me is that they provide assertions about themselves in the TOS. How is any user going to verify those statements?
And what if those statements are proven false in a breach!
If you pay attention to ToS's, you'll find companies are increasingly trying to pull stunts like this. The CRA's terms are objectionable, yet sadly benign compared to other reprehensible terms I've seen gating the web. Lawyers are copying each other's tactics and propogating dark patterns that I doubt will stand the test of litigation (but will cost some poor sap a lot of money and time to get there). Indemnity clauses are another one (no, I'm not going to reimburse you for damage if my account gets hacked through no fault of my own).
When I encounter clearly dodgy terms like this I often contact the organization and tell them I do not accept the given clause. Sometimes they say 'stop using our service' (rarely enforced) but most often they simply don't respond.
Someone at CRA with authority to fix this might perk up if thousands of Canadians start emailing them about it, report it to MP's, the Privacy Commissioner and other ombudsmen, etc.
Yeah like you say this isn’t a new phenomenon. In some cases they even try to shield themselves with legislation.
For example let’s look at Ireland.
[0] Ireland tries to exclude itself from GDPR https://www.thejournal.ie/data-protection-bill-2018-3853647-...
[1] Entire health system compromised and possibly majority of PHI data exfiltrated https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/publications/conti-cyber-att...
[2] Irish health service only begins notifications to confirmed affected individuals a year later https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/media/pressrel/hse-begi...
[3] selective punishment of companies whose data is breached eg google https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/dpc-sued-google-rtb-compla... vs meta https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/news-media/data-protection-...
Laws unevenly applied make a mockery of justice.
Re: [0]
My understanding is that member states (and perhaps all sovereigns) are not required to comply with GDPR unless they explicitly choose to.
Yes somewhat correct. That is for operations of critical public services such as civil registries. This was several steps beyond that. There was other reporting on this as well.
Also noteworthy is that compared to leading commercial websites (Amazon, Facebook, etc.), the Canada Revenue Agency website: Responds an order of magnitude slower (like 3000 ms vs. 300 ms), and has maintenance downtime hours (instead of being up 24/7).
> However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations.
They conveniently ignore the fact that HTTPS is pervasive and that you can reasonably carry private conversations on a public network. And why don't they have a disclaimer for the fact that the telephone network is public and the mail network is public?
Revenue Canada's website is slow and often down for maintenance, but at least I find it much easier to find what I'm looking for than on Amazon. It's actually one of the better user experiences I have online, and much easier than tax filing was in the US. But that response time ensures I'll never get addicted to doom-scrolling my tax records, to be sure.
By comparison with the province of BC's web services, anything provided by the federal government looks straight out of science fiction. For example: https://www.corporateonline.gov.bc.ca/ ... have fun!
99% of the CRA website traffic is now Mar/Apr the site is slammed by probably 20 million of the 38 million of us who adults pay taxes.
In first few the years following the 2000/2001 dotcom crash the Swedish Tax Agency realized they had a golden opportunity to move away from expensive and fickle consultants to a competent in-house team of long-term employed developers. They pulled it off really well. The effect is still visible - web services are well designed in a simple and efficient way and generally just work.
I think now (and the next year or two) might be a suitable time to pull a similar move.
Canadians would throw a fit about it though. Government employees earning over 100K triggers a lot of people.
I’ve often thought that exempting government employees from paying tax would be a decent way to slip them some extra income.
For good reason. I live in Ottawa and interact with a good many government workers that aren't shy about how little work they do. I'm not convinced increasing comp is going to somehow motivate these folks into greater productivity.
Raising the bar in the public sector is a complex topic: there are jokes about lazy public workers all over the (western?) world. There's no competition and the goals aren't as clear as profit VS loss.
But if you refuse to have competitive wages, no competent software engineer will want to work in government. Then you get some contractor job from a consulting company and good luck with that: many are happy to send a handful of junior developrts to fill their multi million contracts, with their seniors hopping in just enough time to justify the billing.
Plenty of private sector ones too. I am not doing work at any of my jobs (I am overemployed) today.
Increased comp isn't to motivate current people. It is so you aren't only hiring people at the level of skill and motivation as the current people.
You can say the same for any institutional web site. Sure CRA is slower than Google, but so is 99% of the sites in the internet. Is access speed really the top concern when you're interacting with the site? Unless you're an accountant, you're probably logging in all of twice a year, once to file and once to review the final result.
Personally i would rather my tax money be spent elsewhere than latency optimizing a website that i have to use once a year.
The maintenance hours thing is unconsiable though. Sometimes i want to know how much tfsa room i have on sunday evening.
Rest assured, it will have cost way more than a comparable commercial website. Poor performance is not a cost savings measure.
> Sometimes i want to know how much tfsa room i have on sunday evening
Which you wouldn't want to check with the CRA either, because the information is often incomplete and updated annually at best.
The CRA even advises that whatever numbers they give you are essentially fugazi, and you should keep your own records because if you make a mistake they will obliterate you with fines.
One of the mottos of the Canadian government is: if you make a mistake because we gave you the wrong information, it is still your fault and you will give us money.
Personal experience, once received a notification from CRA to the effect: "6 months ago we refunded you incorrectly, you owe us, oh by the way we're also charging you a penalty for our mistake.". The amount was not inconsequential but not a problem to remedy. The insult was "we made a mistake and we are punishing you for it".
Fortunately, contracts in Quebec are dependent of the Civil Code. Terms of service match the definition of a contract. I am eager to see if such practices by any level of government will pass the test of tribunals and current jurisprudence.
Excerpts : 1458 Every person has a duty to honour his contractual undertakings. Where he fails in this duty, he is liable for any bodily, moral or material injury he causes to the other contracting party and is bound to make reparation for the injury; neither he nor the other party may in such a case avoid the rules governing contractual liability by opting for rules that would be more favourable to them.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
1474 A person may not exclude or limit his liability for material injury caused to another through an intentional or gross fault; a gross fault is a fault which shows gross recklessness, gross carelessness or gross negligence. He may not in any way exclude or limit his liability for bodily or moral injury caused to another.
1475 A notice, whether posted or not, stipulating the exclusion or limitation of the obligation to make reparation for injury resulting from the nonperformance of a contractual obligation has effect, with respect to the creditor, only if the party who invokes the notice proves that the other party was aware of its existence at the time the contract was formed.
1476 A person may not by way of a notice exclude or limit his obligation to make reparation with respect to third persons; such a notice may, however, constitute disclosure of a danger
1477 The assumption of risk by the victim, although it may be considered imprudent having regard to the circumstances, does not entail renunciation of his remedy against the author of the injury.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
IANAL... but...
I don't think that the CRA is subject to Quebec law, and believe that the CRA may exercise sovereign immunity, though I'm not sure that it has done so in the past.
That's where 3149 would come in. Maybe even 3150 if you have "ID theft" insurance.
3149. Québec authorities also have jurisdiction to hear an action based on a consumer contract or a contract of employment if the consumer or worker has his domicile or residence in Québec; the waiver of such jurisdiction by the consumer or worker may not be set up against him.
3150. Québec authorities also have jurisdiction to hear an action based on a contract of insurance where the holder, the insured or the beneficiary of the contract is domiciled or resident in Québec, the contract covers an insurable interest situated in Québec or the loss took place in Québec.
https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/CCQ-1991?l...
Why would the TOS of a site operated by a national government agency qualify as a “consumer contract or a contract of employment”? And why would a provincial law constrain the actions of the federal government?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramountcy_(Canada)
As GP noted, sovereign immunity might be relevant here.
Thankfully , the Civil Code also contains definitions for contracts So here we are dealing with an contract of adhesion (terms being imposed by CRA).
Here's an interesting case that may enlighten, however it was approached as a consumer contract because it was not onerous. https://www.canlii.org/en/qc/qccs/doc/2011/2011qccs1506/2011...
How onerous is it to be forced to use CRA online services ? Are the taxes you pay considered onerous ? Are the CRA TOS considered an adhesion contract ?
This should really be tested by by the justice system rather than enthusiasts on a discussion forum. However, since we're all governed by such laws, it's never a loss to spend time on learning about them, especially physics.
1378. A contract is an agreement of wills by which one or several persons obligate themselves to one or several other persons to perform a prestation. Contracts may be divided into contracts of adhesion and contracts by mutual agreement, synallagmatic and unilateral contracts, onerous and gratuitous contracts, commutative and aleatory contracts, and contracts of instantaneous performance or of successive performance; they may also be consumer contracts.
1379. A contract of adhesion is a contract in which the essential stipulations were imposed or drawn up by one of the parties, on his behalf or upon his instructions, and were not negotiable. Any contract that is not a contract of adhesion is a contract by mutual agreement.
1384. A consumer contract is a contract whose field of application is delimited by legislation respecting consumer protection whereby one of the parties, being a natural person, the consumer, acquires, leases, borrows or obtains in any other manner, for personal, family or domestic purposes, property or services from the other party, who offers such property or services as part of an enterprise which he carries on.
People in Quebec deal with Revenue Quebec for both provincial and federal taxes, the CRA website won’t affect them.
I'm fairly confident that we deal with both here. They are totally separate entities and they don't even talk to each other. We get 2x the papers (R1 and T4), and we file separately with each. It's possible to get a refund cheque from one and still owe the the other.
But forget the CRA, ask me about how mine and many other peoples drivers licenses were suspended for weeks because the SAAQ totally fucked a software migration.
That's just not true. Federal taxes are filed with the CRA for QC citizens.
We have to fill 2 tax reports.
- Provincial: Revenu Quebec
- Federal: CRA
This government is so shoddily ran (leaving individual party politics aside) - Canadians aren't holding their government accountable. They're too busy trying to survive inflation and the knock-on effects it continues to cause, while distracting themselves with media that tells them "it's okay" and "it's not that bad"
Other boondoggled IT projects brought to you by the Canadian government include the Phoenix federal government paysystem - which coming up on a decade now, some federal employees _still_ aren't getting paid correctly, and the ArriveCan app - which is their hastily created, bug-filled app for pre-entry customs processing checklists that had accessibility problems for the disabled which have likely still been ignored, among other issues.
Between this and the very dodgy reactions from government officials (or lack thereof) to the recent news of foreign influence in our politics and elections processes from China, I would say this country has had its core emptied out and replaced with a nougat center of tasty corporate corruption and money laundering goodness.
The attitude seems to be "Not enough money to create and maintain a system that respects the privacy of our citizens, but we'll just legalese our responsibility away because we can and we're the government so _there_! We're like a silicon valley company, just try to sue us!"
At least we know that tax companies in the states are lobbying to make it harder to file taxes with the US government - the Canadian government just makes it more difficult by themselves!
I for one would like our government to be as responsible as possible when it comes to handling our data - ideally having as little of it as possible, only the required amounts to interact with me as minimally as possible - instead of having it all available in a portal that can be easily compromised and hacked judging from previous leaks/breaches in the linked article.
you should consider donating to the Canadian constitution foundation (https://www.youtube.com/@theCCF) then or something like them because our constitution actually does have a decent protections for separation of power between provinces and the federal government and getting that back to what is actually in the constitutional documents (as opposed to what has been twisted by decades of bad decisions to favor the federal government) would go a long way in creating the kind of competitive multi-polar environment that keeps America strong vs the uni-polar corrupted junk that Canada has increasingly become.
I would argue that a lot of our constitutional separation of powers between provincial and federal governments is antiquated and causes more harm than good today (this is particularly true in education and healthcare).
I would argue that the unipolar nature of Canada driven by the federal government's usurpation of provincial powers is causing us far more harm than any harm caused by provinces exercising their constitutional rights. What we have now is a weird system where almost all the power resides in Ontario and Quebec, with an extremely weird Faustian bargain of payoffs and bribes to Quebec (primarily financed by the other provinces) to keep them engaged in keeping the power center out east, concentrating a majority of the extractive parts of business (banking, head offices) and government there, which is causing major stagnation and loss of productivity in Canada. We need to get to a more multipolar setup so that when the east decides to do something insane it does much less damage over the time period they are pulling their heads out of their arses (this is basically what keeps America so strong but because they are already multipolar you can replace "the east" with New Yorkers, Californians, Illinoisians, Floridians, etc) and our constitution should have set us up for being exactly this. What happened instead is the federal government manufactured a bunch of rights they don't have and made us all worse off.
Thanks, I'll definitely take a look!
I asked my father - a lawyer in Spain - about these kind of terms, and he explained to me that the vast majority of noticeboards that claim no liability are total BS (at least in Spain, and talking about the kind that are on a wall, not signed/agreed ones). I still think it's highly relevant for this case; a contract implies agreement AND benefits for both parties, so if you cannot legally avoid agreeing to this contract it must be invalid.
The specific example was a paid garage that claimed no liability for any break-ins, any issue with the cars, etc etc. but he explained that if you are paying for a private parking, there are some expectations to the law and you cannot notice-board out of those. They are mainly a deterrent for people who are unaware of the law or these things, or made by a hapless manager.
Exactly.
In the US, there are a lot of gravel trucks that say something like
"Stay back 200 feet. Not responsible for broken windshields"
But the truth is: every vehicle on the road is responsible for not dropping stuff on the road. Especially dangerous stuff. Is it difficult in the case of gravel trucks - sure. But that doesn't matter.
This is so typical of the Canadian government.
The effectivly FORCE you to use this site as they try to cut costs and reduce "call in" support.
Then, they create a ToS which absolves them of all responsibility if they are hacked?
I would be willing to bet that if any Canadian business tried this the government would crack down and state it not permitted.
The government has a tendency of "do as i say not as i do".
Any Canadian can tell you that for the most part government IT is utter garbage.
<cough>arrive-can</cough><cough>Phoenix</cough>
....
> The government has a tendency of "do as i say not as i do".
Well that’s the value proposition of government, right? A monopoly on violence in exchange for a set of rules leading to a stable society.
A set of rules that also applies equally to the government itself is one thing. But "do as I say, not as I do" is not that.
That’s the “monopoly on violence“. The government isn’t equal. They hold the monopoly on violence, until they get so far out of line that the people take it back. The only open question is how to prevent that from happening.
CRA is almost a separate entity from other federal departments, so it behaves like a private business than a government department. They aren’t even at the behest of the treasury board.
The CRA is its own department, like any other department. It is structured and operates just like any other government department as opposed to a private business.
They are not at the behest of the Treasury Board because the Treasury Board is a committee, not an administration or agency. The board has no executive authority whatsoever and exists to give advice to Cabinet rather than to perform or execute a duty. However, the individual members of the Treasury Board do have the ability to order the CRA, principally the Minister of National Revenue, who sits on the Treasury Board, is the executive of the CRA.
Perhaps you're thinking of the Bank of Canada, which is an actual corporation and operates in a semi-independent manner from Parliament, although technically Parliament has full oversight and authority over it.
I recommend you look up the purpose of Treasury Board. They are the corporate treasurer of GoC. All expenditure requests go through them and if insufficiently justified then Treasury rejects them. And the requesting department/division/establishment must resubmit. It even applies to CF/DND too.
(In some countries/companies this function is called the comptroller or the controller.)
I think you have a some what confused understanding of what the various roles and duties of these government bodies are. Whatever the purpose of the Treasury Board is (which you do not seem to fully understand since they are not a corporate treasurer), it has nothing to do with whether the CRA operates as a corporation. Furthermore, the CRA is not subservient to any other federal department as it is its own department chaired by the Minister of National Revenue.
Canada does have government bodies that are corporations, as I said the Bank of Canada is one of them, Canada Post is another. The full list can be found here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services...
The CRA is no where on that list.
Here's a bit of a challenge for you to help you clarify your understanding of this. Find one single semi-authoritative source that refers to the CRA as a corporation or describes the operation of the CRA as being like that of a corporation. I'll even take an informal source.
You won't find any, since no one describes the CRA as a corporation and doing so is just confusing. You made it up, and given that Canada does have bodies that operate as corporations, you shouldn't be surprised that making something up like this will elicit disagreement.
For one reason or another, collective agreements are signed directly between the CRA and employee unions. Collective agreements for other departments are signed with the Treasury Board. No other federal department with civilian jurisdiction holds this kind of exceptionalism.
Even the Canadian Coast Guard collective agreement is signed with the TBS.
I think these minor variations in corporate structure (or whatever you want to call it) embolden certain departments to go their own way, and forget their place in the whole of society.
See also the Canadian Mint copyrighting the penny.
(1) http://www.ipbrief.net/2012/09/20/a-cents-of-pride-royal-can...
Canadian here. Thank you for sharing your Terms of Service. I don't agree to them. Thus, I wish to opt out of your Tax Revenue Collection Service. M'kay?
You don't need a computer to file your taxes. Paper kits are provided by CRA and declarations can be submitted on paper by mail. Potential use cases being technology illiteracy, access to reliable internet connections just to name a few .
https://www.canada.ca/fr/agence-revenu/services/formulaires-...
I'll go out on a limb here ... tell me if you disagree ... that if you file your taxes on paper, all that personal information will be quickly scanned and available in a database. The database of the site in question.
I say this because the My Account service allows a Canadian to check their balance, payments, credits, filing status, etc. It's there for anyone, ready to go, with whatever information the CRA has stocked it with. Your information, even if it started out on paper. It's pretty inconceivable that the CRA could function if the paper filings didn't soon end up in the same database as the e-filings.
Anyways, then at that point, your paper personal data is sitting right there behind the login of that same CRA site we're talking about. For your future convenience. Or leaking. Or hacking. And then we're back to ... "in the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsible for any damages you may experience as a result."
I follow you train of thought and I'm wondering where the loophole would be. I mean if you file on paper you don't use the My Account service. How would the agreement acceptance occur ? Maybe the TOS could be interpreted as "being the holder of a canadian SIN, CRA gives you access to My Account".
In return for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) giving you access to My Account, you agree to abide by the following terms and conditions of use for this and all future uses of My Account:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/...
Ha brutal. Yes, the CRA has effectively given access to My Account to all SIN holders so the burden is on us all to know about these T&C! Lolsigh.
This seems to be a recent change. It wasn't there last year: http://web.archive.org/web/20220418211009/https://www.canada...
This wouldn't be such an issue, but the Canadian government wants to shut down any offices or public interactions with people and force everyone to online services to interact with basic government functions like paying your taxes.
1.Sue CRA. 2.Win. 3.??? 4.CRA pays, taxes go up for everyone to make up for it.
Do government agencies generally have that kind of liability in the first place?
No, normally the government in Canada can be sued for this sort of thing.
not exactly the same thing, but this is a $500,000 class action lawsuit for losing a USB Key containing patient data:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/05/28/durham_region_he...
The expectation is that the government protect your privacy or pay if they fail to do so.. as with any private data.
But the government is financed by taxpayers, so the taxpayers will end up being the payers of any fines the government is liable for. It's circular.
Only if all taxpayers get an equal settlement. And even then perhaps that money would have been spent on another group: “sorry no fighter jets this year money went privacy lawsuits”. So some taxpayers could come out ahead in the event of privacy lawsuits.
I didn't say that all taxpayers would come out equivalently. I said taxpayers would pay.
I am not a lawyer, but if it's provable that your data was stolen, why wouldn't a citizen be able to take an entity to court for what would be reason precautions and protections around their data?
If you can show that they didn't have audits, protections against their DB, etc. then I can imagine they'd be as liable as a private entity.
But as is mentioned, this is all but demanded of Canadians to use this service, and yet the government is absolving itself of liability.
Due to the principle of sovereign immunity. A government can only be sued if it explicitly has granted permission, otherwise the government is immune from civil action.
I doubt anyone gets fired or fined for making ToS that would never hold up in a court. The opposite seems true though: any legal department will write N things even if half of them aren't enforceable because it doesn't hurt (more than being ridiculed on HN, or by a court).
Not sure what would be the best way of getting rid of "legal fluff" though. I imagine it costs quite a lot to society to have to sift through pages of meaningless legal text in order to find important (actually valid) legal statements.
This is the reason I think that for any of those ToS if it turns out that any provision in them is unenforceable it should be that the whole ToS automatically becomes unenforceable.
That would be brilliant. Lawyers would have to scour employment contracts, various risk waivers and so on, to try to find the problems. In the end, they'd all fit on post-its because only the most obvious things would be on them.
If you're forced to sign a contract and don't get to negotiate the terms, and it tries to do unusual things like that, it can be... pretty hard to enforce.
This will end badly when they do get hacked and people will suffer for it. I get that you don't want to be on the ball for it, but you're better of spending on annual security audits and ensuring any raised concerns are addressed in a reasonable time frame vs getting a few lawyers together to write something that says even if we "somehow" got hacked, we will not be liable we tried not to!
Nobody expects to be hacked until it happens.
Oftentimes it's not even a hack. Many years ago the national student loan lender in Canada lost a hard drive containing seven years' loan details, leading to a class action suit.[1]
[1]: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/progr...
They do the same thing in tenancy documents in some countries.
Basically an excuse to have the worst security and not be liable.
I don't know if it would hold if actual negligence was shown.
Certainly having a government agency able to force you to accept ToS like you'd see in the private sector is absurd since it lets the government skirt its own laws.
Feels like a "could the government do that" standard would be a good one to apply to any ToS when figuring out whether it's enforceable. Or maybe this is just more evidence that ToS should be generally and universally ruled unenforceable.
I guess Solar powered Game Boy would make for less attractive title.https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnXDxp9pmUk/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M...
Wonder if the IRS will try this soon or if the zero trust architecture they're implementing will come fast enough
Can't every site do this then? Seems like a good move considering just how big of a target large sites are.
om.07