[caylus]

If anything this reinforces the author's point about the dangers of lack of transparency of "digital jail". How do we know that statement is true? It's hard to hide who has been jailed (though "disappearances" come close), whereas we have no choice but to take the word of the entity which we have granted unchecked power that it has not abused that power.

There's also plenty of wiggle room in their statement - they said they froze the accounts of "influencers" and people they "suspect" committed illegal acts. If it turns out they did in fact freeze someone who just donated, they didn't technically lie if they can fit them into one of those vague groups.

[nathanaldensr]

It is utterly amazing to me that despite all of human history being filled with stories of egregious human rights violations, lies, and propaganda coming from governments all across the political spectrum and world that people still trot out the "look, read this official information. This is proof!" excuse. How many more examples do we need before the opposite is assumed?

[josephg]

Eh. With 7.8 billion people on this planet, there is so much going on that you can find examples to support any narrative.

Want examples to show governments tend toward corruption? Easy. Want examples showing governments working well? Sure! Examples showing citizens exercising power? Yep. Examples showing citizens being crushed under the heel of their government? We have that too! Black people being killed by police? Sure! White people being killed by police? That happens too! How about police getting attacked by civilians? Google has you covered.

> How many more examples do we need

If you go looking for examples to support your narrative, you'll always find them. We need data and analysis. And no, the plural of anecdote isn't data.

[bryanrasmussen]

Don't forget: The plural of anecdote is data http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-i...

[ghostpepper]

I feel like if this actually happened to any one of the protestors, that person would be all over social media publicizing this. So far, to my knowledge, that has not happened.

[cced]

Unless of course they were banned for spreading false or misleading information.

[adriand]

> It is utterly amazing to me that despite all of human history being filled with stories of egregious human rights violations, lies, and propaganda coming from governments all across the political spectrum and world that people still trot out the "look, read this official information. This is proof!" excuse.

Shouldn't we be talking about what actually happened, though, instead of buying into a false narrative that is being intentionally pushed by people with an agenda? I agree that freezing the bank account of a student in Halifax because they made a small donation to the convoy protest would be an abuse of power. But since that's not what happened, despite the fact that various people with a beef with Canada/Trudeau/liberals/etc. are claiming it did, what exactly are we debating here?

We know that, after a period of weeks and after economic losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the government has gone after the principal people organizing and financing the blockades and occupations. They have used force and arrested some of them. They have frozen the accounts of others. We can argue about whether or not those actions constitute "egregious human rights violations", because then we're arguing about actual facts and actual decisions, not strawmen.

[throwaway_fbfh]

We are arguing that government is lying as it has done over and over and 1000 * over and that it did freeze accounts of random donors. Maybe they call them influencers lol because they have a IM account and 100 followers

[ladallada]

It's hard to argue without proofs. We can argue so many things when we go the route of conspiracy.

The Canadian government isn't known to have lied over and over a thousand times over as far as I know.

Yes the government has had scandals, here's a list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_scandals_i...

So I won't say they can't, but I also like OP think arguing in these hypothetical is a waste of energy.

We could argue that the process needs to be transparent, make the list public for example. In fact, maybe it is, might be one of these: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

I also feel logically, I don't see a motivate, small donors would only be cause for political complications. Logically it would make sense for them to restrict it to the people actually blocking roads with their trucks and to big donors financing large sums of money.

[beardedetim]

Where else should we go to but the official information? I agree it's not great and as faulty as humans so where can I find information about these things that is great and not faulty?

[tshaddox]

> If anything this reinforces the author's point about the dangers of lack of transparency of "digital jail". How do we know that statement is true?

If a crucial part of your argument is the epistemological claim that we obviously can't trust anyone who presents evidence or arguments that we don't like because they could be lying, then there's clearly no way of having a reasoned discussion.

[caylus]

My claim is that when evaluating when an authority's actions were reasonable, we should lend little to no credence to statements by that same authority claiming the actions were reasonable, especially when it is impossible to verify even who exactly was targeted, let alone why.

As a contrasting case, if a police department arrested some people during a protest and released a statement about why, a journalist could verify that against the public records and even follow along the criminal proceedings. How can we verify claims made by the RCMP about their extrajudicial actions?

[noitpmeder]

But that's not what happened? The authority did not come out and say "we did this and we were right to do so!", they came out and said "this did not happen".

[ladallada]

Do we know there's no public records in this case?

I think there might be, the banks aren't in individually being contacted, I'm pretty sure they would have been added to one of the public sanction lists here: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

[hluska]

In this case, the statement was backed up by an ADM in front of a parliamentary committee. If she lied, someone will be able to show proof of that. At minimum, it would end her career.

Why assume she lied until there is proof?

[AmericanChopper]

The claim isn’t that broad. The democratic model of society has never trusted executive government to dispense justice unilaterally. Having due process and an open system of courts is a mandatory feature of the democratic society, and when a government decides to suspend those safeguards, that governments own commentary about how little harm it’s decisions are causing do not have any credibility.

[defaultname]

Not a single charter right has been overridden. Every act undertaken under the EA is on the official record (available to the opposition parties). Parliament can revoke or partially revoke any component of the EA at any juncture. Then it has a followup discussion/analysis phase built in.

Let's be clear -- there is no silencing component to this act. If someone has unfairly seen their accounts frozen, do a tell-all sad tale to every media outlet you can find. Rant on twitter. Share those Facebook pages. There are plenty of outlets that would love it. There are political parties who would make this their battle cry, using it to seal their own ascension.

But there isn't a single case. Not one. No sad tales. Now accounts have been frozen -- we know that for sure -- but the people whose accounts have been frozen have been organizers and direct participants. People who knew what was coming and had literally weeks of warning to stop or face consequences. There isn't a lot of sympathy there. But the poor waitress in some small town who gave $20...boy, that story will give this country a new government.

Yet...where is it?

[MrStonedOne]

Being able to audit the government requires being able to know what the government is doing, not just what the government says it's doing.

[chrissnell]

This is indeed a problem. We have major news outlets who function as propaganda mouthpieces of regimes. They're happy to carry the water for the regime and declare "nothing to see here!" and these days, they often do it with a "fact check". For the unsophisticated reader, this is very effective.

[makeitdouble]

I have a hard time following this discussion because people are throwing around pretty dramatic statements without pause.

> It's hard to hide who has been jailed

None of the “influencers” we talk about are jailed. Nor does having your money frozen mean “jail”. It sure can be really bad and not without consequences, but even fully IRL we wouldn’t describe someone having all his possessions taken as jailed.

Then govs have been freezing account under many pretenses for decades, except we now have a chance to get the affected people to come forward and explain they’re getting shafted. That wouldn’t happen a few decades ago, there was no way the local news would touch a story about some random peeps getting frozen under a terrorist charge for instance. Do you really think it’s worse now for activists than decades ago ?