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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

> Why would it makes sense to remove that process, while introducing an incredible opaque decision-making process in its place

For all the Canadian railing against Trump, this is an authoritarian play as much as many of Trump's actions.

Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example. Australia's lax control over entities able to access ISP metadata as another.

The problem is that it enables Trump further by allowing him to point at their decisions as similar examples to his own, as justification. I'm only using Trump since he seems to be the one willing to push boundaries the furthest, so if supposedly "more democratic" leaders are pushing such boundaries, then Trump will... Trump them.

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I agree that it's an authoritarian play, completely. That doesn't mean I think we have an authoritarian government, but I do see the nature of the bill as authoritarian. Ideas like this should be unwelcome in Canada, period.

I was opposed to freezing bank accounts during the trucker convoys, even though I was opposed to how the convoys were performing their protests. These kinds of measures—and capabilities of governments in general—are anti-democracy in nature and in my opinion, should be rejected by everyone who values democracy.

I'm all for keeping dangerous people offline. I'm all for protecting fellow Canadians from online dangers. We can find better ways to do this, though. I'm very disappointed that such poor judgement is being used by our current government.

The worst part is that seemingly no one gets to know what the cause of the ban is, and there are so few checks or balances before the decision is acted on. It's absolutely bizarre.

> Unfortunately this seems to be a growing, hypocritical trend around the world. EU's Chat Control as another example.

It's not hypocritical, there's no such thing as an absolute right to freedom of speech in the EU like there is in the US. Chat Control is widely opposed in the EU and I don't agree with it, but it's not hypocritical nor inconsistent with how the EU treats freedom of expression.

Here are the limitations placed on freedom of expression by the European Convention on Human Rights:

> The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

You won't find those conditions in the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution.

'Course it's hypocritical. What is quickly condemned as "bad" in a foreign context is often not held to the same standard when it appears within Europe.

That's not true, most of those condemnations come from the European parliament which also regularly condemns those practices within Europe:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230505IP...

https://www.unwantedwitness.org/european-parliament-condemns...

The problem is that the European commission loves surveillance and suppressing free speech and they hold the actual real power in the EU.

This particular type of authoritarianism is primarily from the left in the west. The EU, the UK, Canada, it is the political left implementing these policies, often using them to censor right wing views (e.g., Objecting to immigration gets labelled racist -> justified censorship. Objecting to trans women in women only spaces gets labelled as hateful -> justified censorship, etc...).

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