Happened in Canada not even that long ago, and many people cheered about that too.

I’m curious about the specifics here. Could you provide a link or summarize? Thank you kindly :)

They froze the accounts of people at the protests without due process, and passed legislation to let them to it to anyone who supported them "directly or indirectly". i.e. carte blanche to send anyone into digital/financial exile with no recourse.

they repealed it soon after (I think), but the door is open for them or any other government to do it again.

Seizing funds suspected to be linked to criminal activity during investigations (before any charges) is nothing new. Those who are being targeted today had no complaints 20 years ago when similar clauses where written into anti-terror/anti-terror-funding laws

The problem isn't seizing donations, it's freezing the entire bank accounts of people connected to donations.

The only time I've heard investigators seizing specific amounts is when the money is cash. To my knowledge, access to all bank accounts belonging to a suspect is frozen as a matter of routine: feds don't wire out the $92,464.27 suspected to be related to fraud and leave the suspect with the balance.

To be clear, I'm not saying ots not a problem - it absolutely is[1]. However, it is not new.

1. It gives undue leverage for plea deals, and leaves suspect unable to pay for legal representation.

Providing material support can be a crime.

It might not be obviously illegal, but those bank accounts are frozen because the owners of the bank accounts are being investigated just as if they had been sending money to Al-Qaeda.

At least legally it all boils down to how the groups that received these donations are classified. Of course politically things are more complicated, but applying the same rules in different situations is why people where so concerned about this type of legislation in the first place.

> Providing material support can be a crime.

Yes, and? That's not a reason to freeze the account.

Of course that is reason to freeze the account, much like you would seize a gun from a gun owner who is suspected to have committed a crime with that gun.

It's more like seizing every other gun they own too. But also the average person needs their guns to get groceries and pay the electric bill. And they need guns to get a lawyer...

We also throw people in jail before trial which can make it quite difficult to pay the electric bill.

Yes, multiple things are bad.

We shouldn't do that for people that aren't much of a flight risk.

As a matter of procedure, people are detained while determining if they are a flight risk.

Many frozen accounts may similarly be unfrozen before trial, but determining if that’s reasonable takes time.

There was due process. My understanding was because of the 1 week state of emergency they were explicitly allowed to do this. There were court orders ahead of time.

Declaring a state of emergency is a way of saying "due process has been suspended", calling that itself due process is a bit too charitable imo

If there were court orders (i.e. the judicial system was given the opportunity to say no), what else would you call this?

The power of the state is large. It is reined in by some of its own components, but it is foolish to imagine that in a society that is not explicitly anarchist that it would somehow be limited in the way you seem to imagine.

What company wants to "throw kill switches to Russia" ?

They are being told to do it (or heavily implied that they will be told to do it very soon if they don't do it beforehand).

It's not that I don't see the risk of companies "doing the same thing to anyone they want", it's just that this is not the same as is happening w.r.t the Russian attack on Ukraine.