Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC) is a Canadian on-line civil rights organization founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remain protected as new computing, communications, and information technologies are introduced into Canadian society.
EFC was founded in January, 1994 and later became incorporated under the Canada Corporations Act as a Federal non-profit corporation. The letters patent was submitted December 29, 1994, and recorded on January 18, 1995. EFC is not formally affiliated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is based in San Francisco, although it shares many of their goals about which the groups communicate from time to time. EFC is focused on issues directly affecting Canadians, whereas the EFF has a clear American focus.
Briefly, EFC's mandate is to conduct research into issues and promote public awareness in Canada regarding the application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to new computer, communication, and information technologies, such as the Internet. The aim is protect freedom of expression and the right to privacy in cyberspace.
Recent activity has included a submission to the Canadian government concerning the Internet Service Provider wiretapping legislation reforms known as the Lawful Access proposals, and intervention in the BMG Canada Inc. and others v. Doe and others file-sharing case, where an Ontario Court refused to allow the Canadian Recording Industry Association and several major record labels from obtaining the subscriber information of ISP customers alleged to have been infringing copyright.
The EFC appears to have been inactive since 2004 (based on the last updates to their website). They may have been replaced by Online Rights Canada.
Famous quotes containing the words electronic, frontier and/or canada:
“Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)