5 Feet of Fury

Canadian judge becomes international embarrassment

It’s bad enough that our Defense Minister is scolding a late night comic for mocking our dangerously obsolete military equipment rather than, like, buying our army some new equipment.

But here’s where some of our government taxpayer money goes: into rulings like the one against my co-defendants at Free Dominion.

In a separate case just decided against them, a Canadian judge has pretty much destroyed the whole notion of anonymity and privacy on the web.

I sent this story to Ed Morrissey at HotAir before I left for a family funeral, and he rightly mocks the judge’s decision, based on the dubious fact that FreeDominion “is so controversial that it is blocked to employees of the Ontario Public Service.” (snort.)

That’s the threshold for privacy in Canada?  Anyone styling themselves as an “anti-hate speech advocate” can raid the records of a web community he doesn’t like? 

Note also the circular reasoning here employed by Judge Stanley Kersham.  If the government sees fit to block a website from its employees at some level, then it’s permissible to strip them of their rights to privacy and speech at any point. (…)

In essence, Kersham just allowed a participant on neo-Nazi discussion forums to raid Free Dominion’s business records.

Once again, people who aren’t as smart as you and I are running the country and telling us how we can live, paying themselves generous salaries using our tax dollars.