Wherever I look these days, there’s talk about Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. This bill, in fact, picks up where a previous Liberal government left off (which makes the Liberals look positively ridiculous now that they’re railing against the bill as if they were perfectly innocent in all this). The bill, and the resulting law, would give police tremendous “snooping powers”, allowing them to identify the user of an IP address, track his or her browsing history, etc. without so much as a warrant.

Public Safety minister Vic Toews made a tactical error when he countered criticism from the opposition by saying that opponents of the bill are in cahoots with pedophiles. That comment was certainly over the top; not everyone looking to shield his or her privacy is necessarily trying to hide illicit or illegal activity.

Be that as it may, I think those attacking the Harper government over Bill C-30 are making a mountain out of a molehill. Haven’t we all given up on our online privacy already? Is any one of us really still anonymous and “private” today?

It’s actually quite easy to track and identify someone online, and I have absolutely no issue with the police doing just that, even without a warrant, if it means that they can catch bad guys (pedophiles, spammers or anyone committing criminal acts online, including criminal libel).

Personally, I have always found outrage at such privacy issues to be anything but genuine. Many of those who complain about Facebook or similar companies that supposedly violate users’ privacy are usually the same ones who will post every single detail of their personal lives online, including pictures or precise GPS coordinates of their whereabouts. People have had their houses broken into after telling the world that they were out shopping or off to a restaurant. Any wannabe burglars simply have to monitor the social media chatter these days, and voilà.

If I wanted to protect my privacy online, frankly, I’d have to stay off the grid entirely. Sadly, this is not an option for most of us. But I think I’m doing better than most. To begin with, I don’t announce my current location through the virtual bullhorns of the social media like FourSquare. When I’m at a store or restaurant, I don’t share that information with the rest of the world in real time (I may do so after the fact, for example, if I think the shop or restaurant deserves a bit of extra PR). Only the other people physically (not virtually) present in the establishment know I’m there – lo and behold, not everyone there recognizes me from my online column or from TV. So, my privacy is very much intact.

What may cause me some concern, however, is the sharing of personal information for commercial purposes. The police can access my files at any time; I have nothing to hide. But a company should ask my permission first – or allow me to share in its profits.

To be precise: I don’t mind the sharing of such information per se, but the fact that a company makes money off of me without asking for my permission or, more importantly, sharing its profits with me. After all, if a company wants to use my person, or persona, for commercial purposes, it should have to pay for that privilege in some shape or form, don’t you think?

Just recently, I discovered a new feature in my Amazon (Kindle e-reader) profile. Under newspaper subscriptions, Amazon now informs the user that his or her name and address information (taken directly from the credit card on file) are shared with newspaper publishers. While the user can edit this so as to disallow further sharing, it requires the user’s active input first, because Amazon shares that information by default. Amazon must have been doing that all along, but never bothered to inform users about this until recently. Shame.

Apple, by contrast, shares some of its profits with users in a manner of speaking. When signing up for a subscription, the user is asked for permission to share personal information with the publisher of the newspaper or magazine, and in return the user gets another week added to his or her subscription free of charge. Kudos.

Blatant disrespect for consumer (rather than privacy) rights should upset us. But the police or other authorities merely doing their job of finding criminals don’t bother me one bit.

My only hope, and concern, is that the technology to be deployed, should Bill C-30 become law, should be such that it not slow down Internet speeds or otherwise wreak havoc with people’s bandwidth.

Anti-virus and/or firewall software always tends to slow down PCs (but not a Mac – ha!), which is why I kind of expect that the “snooping technology” spawned by this law might do the same to the Internet in general. The last thing (law-abiding) Internet users want or need is a sluggish Internet connection.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, I sure hope I am, but if there’s one real concern about Bill C-30, it’s that, but not the so-called “privacy issue”.