Slashdot Mirror
Canadian ISPs Could Take On Big Brother Role
QGambit writes: "C|Net is reporting that the Canadian Government is considering a proposal that would force ISPs to keep logs of web browsing for up to 6 months, allow police to get search warrants allowing them to find 'hidden electronic and digital devices' and ban the possession of computer viruses.
Canada and the U.S. have both endorsed this proposal, contained in a cybercrime treaty of the Council of Europe. Both countries are non-voting members of the Council.
George Radwanski, Canada's privacy commissioner has not yet commented on the proposal."
How do you stop non-techies from going "Oh, somebody loves me! I'll just read this message... OHNOS MY HARDDRIVE!"?
- Peter
I'm pretty sure the majority of people who are "in possession" of computer virii would rather not be, if only windows would stop executing them.
In all seriousness, though, how can you ban the possession of something that can be pretty much invisibly placed in your property?
So, here's the question. Why do they need to keep logs of web page accesses?
Such an initiative would likely be subject to a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so much so that it would likely not be introduced in the first place. Endorsing a foreign initiative is not the same as legislating a domestic one, and I think Canadians believe that sufficient personal freedom has been traded for security. Besides, like this would stop evildoers who know how to surf untraceably.
We really need to get all this control out of the hands of Governments and their Fascist Corporate puppets.
Freenet, or something, needs to happen. They need to move data around under a network of VPNs with something like ssh. We need to turn the common carrier infrastructure into nothing more than cryptograhpic noise carrying.
We are keeping Internet logs.
(We are at war with Eurasia.)
We have always kept Internet logs.
(We have always been at war with Eurasia.)
Ignorance Is Strength? Maybe.
But who is made the stronger through ignorance?
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Well, dammit, if they want to violate my privacy on the Turnpike and at the airport, they may as well do something to eliminate spam, too.
Its bad enough that our Prime Minister doesn't know when it is time to go.
Now he's going to cluster fuck the entire country...
Not another PM from Quebec, or who fucks up both French and English... and is a lawyer to boot.
Dear PM.... FUCK OFF AND DIE!
THe storage for these worthless privacy invading logs they wish to keep for every single user? Surly not the gov't because of course they just tax people more in lieu of the costs. Whats the deal. If you are enforcing a requirement, you should reimburse those for expenses incurred in brining every ISP into compliance with this. Certainly weren't any laws like this reqiring 1,000,000 monkeys with 1,000,000 typewriters to record all data before computers. Oh the ease with which technology allows us to do everyday tasks.
"Hollowpoints: When you care enough to send the very best."
and ban the possession of computer viruses.
So no more Windows?
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to we
Canadian police agent: Sir, I found something very disturbing in this person's web history!
Canadian detective: Alright let me see it...
Canadian police agent: One second, here it is...
Canadian detective: My god what is that! is that man tearing open his own a.....
Canadian police agent: he followed this link from a site known as Slashdot.org sir!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
It could be a good idea for tracking down all those little script kiddies and real hackers that are out there to do harm, intentional or unintentional. But I know most of us don't want the RCMP being able to look and see what we have been doing on the web, especially if it relates to porn. Cause that is the only thing that is embarrassing. If they had a filter, of some magical sort, that would filter out all the porn transfers and keep everything else in the log, most of us would be ok with them keeping records of our internet use. Porn consumption is something everyone does and doesn't want anyone else to find out about. I know I have nothing else to hide but porn.
two can be as bad as one, it's the loneliest number since the number one
I guess it's pretty obvious, I need to set up as many old crufty computers as I can on my home network, and set them to relentlessly spider across the whole damn web. A few automated processes on a 3 megabit pipe ought to generate some pretty nifty monthly logs.
If the goverment is gonna search through my web-surfing logs, they're gonna at least have a hell of a hard time finding anything incriminating among all that pr0n! Nosy bastards, that'll teach them. If I feel particularly vicious I'll set one or two to recursively spider through Celine Dion's website. They'll go blind before they hit any good stuff.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
This was the same government that thought it would be a good idea for the CRTC to regulate all Canadian websites, enforcing "Canadian" content and to be bi-lingual.
Now our lame duck PM / Dictator thinks that data retention is a good thing? When will Canadians wake up and realize that this PM needs to go now... To retire, before he truly becomes cynial.
NAPMFQ Not Another PM from Quebec.
Tournament Management Online &
Something has always struck me sinister with Canada. . .
.
.Fox. . .Dion. . .the horror.
Canada sinister. .
I knew it.
Shatner. .
link to proposal
Keep pushing people down every way you can think of. It all makes for good TV.
If the discussion draft were to become law, it would outlaw the possession of computer viruses, authorize police to order Internet providers to retain logs of all Web browsing for up to six months, and permit police to obtain a search warrant allowing them to find "hidden electronic and digital devices" that a suspect might be concealing.
Oh no! My BE-300 might become illgeal (and not for the valid reason of Casio shipping it with Windows CE 3.0.)
Seriously though, I doubt that any action will come of this in Canadian government. Speaking as a Canadian, hardly anything gets done nationally - if anything, the provincial government takes on a liberal or extremist form and enforces/creates what they want to.
Arguing that more and more communications take place in electronic form, Canadian officials say such laws are necessary to fight terrorism and combat even run-of-the-mill crimes.
I can say that monitoring gas stations for criminals is necessary, as the majority of criminals use cars. Besides, other things are necessary to fight terrorism and crimes, including proper funding for education and other non-invasive things.
The article does point out some truth; Canadian use of wireless and mobile electronics is significant and any database or cyberpolice created would kill anonimity. However, I feel that the average user (here, at least) is aware of the fragility of their situation, both with issues such as this (to 'prevent terrorism') and others, such as the DMCA and RIAA.
do politicians think that this wont take all kinds of resouces, computer storage isn't infinite, i dont even want to venture a guess how much data passes over my 3mb cable line every day, to log all ym traffic for six months would probably take storage measured in terabytes, how can they force companies to spend proabbly upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, unless they plan on using cd-rs w/ lots of rebates or something...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You never know what might be useful. If nothing else, than in the propaganda battle that is so much a part of the US system of "justice".
The boilerplate goes something like this...
was arrested today for doing "bad things". Records indicate his computer was used to visit site's containing Kiddie Porn, depictions of violence, and raceism.
Guilty, or not, is fired from his job and will find it most difficult to get another, his house is burned, he is beaten, his car is trashed, he will fail background checks, etc., etc.
It doesn't matter if they guy was doing research, or his kids were doing a term paper and happened on death camps photos that showed images of naked children. The above statement remains true enough to be printed and broadcast on CNN as if it were God's own word.
My sense from CNN is the tactic is employed at least 3-4 times a month. But, CNN is only the tip of the iceburg, local news is more than enough to utterly destroy most people's lives.
Any more "why" type questions I can help you with?
1) What does having sex in a canoe and drinking American beer have in common?
They are both fucking close to water
2) How do you describe Canadian history in one sentence?
We spent 200 years chasing beavers and tail!
NAPMFQ
Tournament Management Online &
Sorry guys but the correct term is "big sibling".
"CNN is reporting that the Canadian Government is considering a proposal that would force all convenience stores, transportation departments, department stores, ATM vendors, banks, owners of parking lots, institutions of public education, government offices, operators of sporting events, mass transit operators, and others to keep video tapes of the activities of others for up to 6 months, allow police to get search warrants allowing them to find 'bad things' and ban the possession of 'bad things.' Canada and the U.S. have both endorsed this proposal."
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
It's wierd, but I actually know George Radwanski's son. He runs a political commentary weblog/site here that is fairly popular with government type people.
One thing I love about Canada, it's so small, you end up getting to know everybody.. and that's no joke.
I'm a Canadian and that's da troof. :-\
man that really sucks ehh?
Wouldn't the law require the government to reimburse companies for the storage and equipment costs associated with such a mandate? I remember reading something once that the government could borrow or utilize property under certain circumstances and, in doing so, the government is required to provide compensation. I don't see how the same rule wouldn't apply to a circumstance merely because it involves technology.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Arguing that more and more communications take place in electronic form, Canadian officials say such laws are necessary to fight terrorism and combat even run-of-the-mill crimes.
Isn't it great how taking away basic rights can be justified by "We're doing it to stop terrorism." I don't see how taking away the rights of millions of people (and pissing alot of them off) will STOP terrorism. I do see how it could lead to more terrorism, by people from within the country.
If the discussion draft were to become law, it would outlaw the possession of computer viruses, authorize police to order Internet providers to retain logs of all Web browsing for up to six months, and permit police to obtain a search warrant allowing them to find "hidden electronic and digital devices" that a suspect might be concealing.
How do you even enforce that? How will they know if I poses a virus or not? How do you tell the difference between posessing a virus and being infected by one? If they have logs of all web browsing for up to six months what does that include? I'm pretty sure that the police need to ask the ISP for the logging to start on a particular user (they can't keep 6 months logs for everyone's web usage), but what would count as web usage? Will they be able to log my FTP usage and see all the unencrypted passwords?
I'd call this uneconomical. I've seen the records for one user for one year, and they take up megabytes of space for just that user. I can imagine a business with hundreds of customers, or even thousands. Furthermore, the ease of avoiding detection definitely makes this useless. Who cares if the feds have millions of packets labelled with the destination proxy.dude-on-a-t3.ca I'd also say that "possession of a computer virus" is a terrible thing to make a crime. Guess what? I possessed a computer virus on an old unpatched server until Norton caught it this morning! I didn't even put it there.
On that note, does anybody know if there's a canadian version of slashdot? Not necessarily the same thing, but some tech site which chronicles tech rights and such in Canada? Reading about the states is truly depressing, but I can do something in Canada.
It's been a long time.
...Imagine what people from opposing parties think!
The problem with your comment is that the number of moderators offended by "this stupid country" outnumbers the number of moderators agreeing to "Quebec should get out" about 7-to-1.
...well, at least I'm glad I don't live in Canada. It would be a nightmare as a sysadmin to have to maintain the system that would log all that. A few SANs would be easily filled up in a week of browing in any major metropolitan area. Are they going to require the ISPs do blind logging, as in.. will ISPs that host ISPs have to log what that ISP goes through?
The man at the top will hate life.
+1, Interesting
Would crap like this happen if we didn't keep getting dumbfuck PM's from Quebec?
This sounds like a cheap Canadian remake of 1984. Now all we need are some talking barnyard animals, and we would have Animal Farm too.
Some Canadians are more Equal than others.
Bill Gates took my pants, and I thank him for it.
As surprising as it can be for our friendly southern neighbours, this consultation isn't simply a formality for an already decided soon-to-become law. They put out this document as a point of departure for discussion on modernising Canada's laws with regard to the recent advances in telecommunications. This isn't the official stance of the government, it's a "well, we'd like to achieve such-and-such, and here's a possible way we could do it, waddayathink?" And here comes the really shocking part, they *really* do care about what we think.
/. that everything is going to hell in a hand basket, open your favourite mail reader and write to la-al@justice.gc.ca telling them why this proposal is a bad idea *and* what we should be doing instead.
Admittedly, I've never participated in a Department of Justice consultation before, but I've been quite active in the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) public proceedings regarding the telecommunication industry (phone companies) and boy, did that restore my faith in the democratic institutions of Canada. What struck me as the most insane (in a good way) was that our voice as simple citizens was treated with the same importance as was BCE's (Bell Canada Enterprises) President! Several of my comments were even highlighted by the commission in it's final regulation proposal documents.
So don't panic, don't wine on
That's what I'm gonna do. Will you?
-Earthling
"I'm sorry, I had to; the irony was just too thick."
As an admin (like so many of you) for a small to medium sized regional ISP, I'd like to throw out some numbers here to give some people the idea of why ISPs monitoring users for very long is generally massively irritating to try to manage. For e-mail tracking (as merely my humble example), let's look in our example at an SMTP (not even counting POP, here) server which processes about 60k messages per day. We don't use unusually verbose logging, and we generally keep 24 hours of logs on rotation. Each 24 hours varies from about 120-200 MB. Okay, the math is easy enough to do. Let's monitor all e-mail transactions for 6 months (using the more conservative 120 MB figure): 120 x 7 x 4 x 6 = about 20.2 GB. That's not too bad in terms of our MP3 and DivX collections, but text logs? Yuck! I don't want to keep 20 gigs of logs on my server! If anyone comes to me (from an authority of some sort) and asks for logs that old, I have no problems givng them the explanation, "Sorry, we rotated them out. Buy me a new SCSI hard disk and pay us for the time to install it on our box, then we'll talk about old logs."
No, by definition "the Gov't" doesn't pay for anything, ever. You do.
Anyway, they can require companies to do just about anything. It is a political matter. If the ISP's pay enough in bribes, the law may include various "incentives". If ISP's are too fragmented to pull a common front, too bad so sad, they pay whatever it takes to comply with the Regs.
In this case the Feds would neither borrow, nor utilize, equipment. The "mearly" require information be produced on demand. How that's done is up to the Company.
Funny how the laws intended to limit the abuse of power by Government have proven so totally and completely impotent. Oh well. Hope "the children" enjoy their not-so-guilded cage.
So now I have a virus on my computer and I have to go to jail? Honest, your Honor I just double clicked in outlook and next thing I knew there were 4 Mounties breaking down my door!
I am seriously concerned about the state of affairs everywhere. Noone would have ever even thought about doing this before 9/11. Every time something like this pops up, they say it's for my own safety? To protect me from terrorists that may use the internet as a tool to send messages to each other? That is utter bullshit. EVERYONE IS NOT A TERRORIST OR A CRIMINAL!! Whatever happened to "considered innocent until proven guilty"? Is everyone in Canada a suspect for a crime now? Everyone who has an internet connection should be worried about what type of precedent this sets. Even though I recognize that the events of 9/11 and other terrorism acts are truly atrocious, I cannot help but think that simple civil liberties are being abandoned for the sake of "safety".
What good is safety if I have no freedom to enjoy it?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I'm sorry for saying "wow, I'm so glad I am living in Canada when I see all the stupidity that Bush and his corporate cartel is pulling...." Seems like I should have kept my mouth shut.
Still, I'm surprised at this... I never thought I'd see this coming HERE in canada. Our prime minister is a Wanna-be, acts like one, and about everyone with common sense in Canada is often ashamed of him when he's doing public display. He wanted Canada to follow the war on afghanistan with united states to be in Bush's good will, just like that little guy trying to hang with the school's bully, while I understand this behaviour (and it was funny because our military here is such a joke. Not the soldiers themselves, but the vehicles are such a mess and almost a shame to drive/fly), ANYWAYS, that type of following is understandable (and for those who opposed, it's stille excusable in some perspective)
but if that kind of blattantly syping CRAP goes through, we might as well adopt the US dollar, adopt US legislation, give them 1/2 of our land in return to clear our debt and let them dump their waste here, and while at it, let them clear-cut our forrests so that there are no more Wood disputes with crazy duty taxes at the borders. I won't feel like I am in Canada anymore, sheesh... I can't beleive that only European countries are not dumb enough to be dictated by a few people and especially from other countries... Not that I hate the US, but I sure wouldn't want to live there as long as Bush is running the Country, I'd rather have a monkey with a water pistol as a president, than a monkey with a uzi.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
While I agree that this is definitely double-plus ungood, this has to make the front of national newspapers (in US and Canada) and be an issue that makes the evening news before anyone can even think of putting up a fight.
Big brother help us if this eavesdropping prevents a terrorist act or, more topical (and I don't mean to sound callous), another little girl from being abducted and murdered. There will be no going back there, since it WILL make the news with the wrong spin.
1b) What does having sex in a desert and drinking Canadian beer have in common?
They are both fucking far from water
Look at the knee jerk terrorism laws that were suggested after 9/11. Once the MPs looked at them seriously, cooler heads prevailed nothing happened. Same shit all over again.
As for the Charter of Rights,this law would easily be shot down in court on a number of counts including:Any law that infringes on this even a little will get thrown out by the courts the first time the police come hunting for a search warrant. The fact that the ISPs are not stupid means they will not be willing to shell out the cash for an infrastructute of a law that would collapse on the first court challenge.
Just won't happen.
Why not search the appartments and computers of criminals?
Or monitor the computer of a criminal.
As such a bulk monitoring capability is scary.
Having looked at the document on the Department of Justice's web site, it seems to me that the C|Net report exaggerates more than a little bit.
:)
The document isn't itself a proposal, it's a "Consultation Document," and has as its purpose to guide the modernization of Canada's Criminal Code, with respect to "lawful access" to electronic information. There are laws that are explicit about what the authorities have to do to be allowed to search my home and seize documents, for example; this document is directed towards coming up with similar laws for dealing with electronic property, which currently isn't so explicitly covered in the Criminal Code. The document lists many of the issues involved, and raises the questions that result, such as how long should an ISP be expected to preserve data when ordered to do so (i.e., not by default), and such as how the Criminal Code should cover interception of e-mail.
The only thing really proposed is this: "that all service providers (wireless, wireline and Internet) be required to ensure that their systems have the technical capability to provide lawful access to law enforcement and national security agencies." That's it; the rest of the document deals with how this should be implemented.
There. That should keep CSIS (Canada's version of the CIA) from putting me at the top of their "must eavesdrop" list. At least for a while.
Assuming that most coders who would be asked to do sucha despicable thing such as this, here are a few options:
1) Write it badly and/or ineffectually. Who'd know? They're all suits!
2) Backdoor it all to hell.. ala Ken Thompson's C compiler follies. Pass r00t access about globally via IRC. Render it all useless.
3) Share it with all your hacker buddies, via snail-mail.. (no radar)
I think it utterly impossible that these boobs can find enough skillful lackeys to carry these mandates out without creating a situation far more dire than the one they're fearful of.
Rebel! Don't collaborate!
They can't do this without US!
Don't be a Traitor!
Be a PATRIOT!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I'd better go and download all those documentation on how to crack and phreak now! Cuz if I go there after this law passes (assuming it does), I'm screwed!
Sorry for the grammatical irregularities. :)
I should have previewed more carefully.
You should get my drift
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
How come as we plow through the 21st century, we go from "terrorists" to "evil-doers" and from "crime" to "bad things"?
Someone bring back the 1998 internet...
SecondPageMedia - Wha
I doubt that many ISPs have any way, right now, of monitoring actual
web pages visited. We supply dns lookup for our customers, so we can
see who's looking for www.goatsie.a.nl, but we can't stop you from
spreading your dns requests among multiple servers. Once you have the
IP address resolved for a site, actual traffic is handled by the powerful
25-MHz '486 in the Lucent Portmaster, so it couldn't log anything.
Resistance to this logging by the public could be by replacing the bursty
occasional traffic caused by web surfers with a continuous stream of random
page fetches, from which you extract the one you're really looking for.
This would hide what you're really after, but would bring the Internet to
its knees. Sort of like a DOS attack on the entire network. I think the
power that x million users could wield can thwart surveillance.
I'd like to have the contract to sell them all the storage to hold 6 months of logs for every ISP.
...is to keep an infected program zipped or in a disk backup. You can plead ignorance to possession and the authorities would have to prove your malice.
Canadian officials say such laws are necessary to fight terrorism and combat even run-of-the-mill crimes.
Okay, so why exactly is it now easier to get a student visa or an immigration? Oh I guess that doesn't count, because they'll be bringing in some money.
If they're so concerned about our security, why have they yet to sign the Kyoto protocol?
Apparently, ripping us off from our money is not enough, they also need to control us.
Just wait until I publish ALL scientology documents
on this web site.
Then we will see what the Canadian government does
to slashdot.
happy clamming !!!
So now I can't even write viruses for my own amusement even if I have no intent to infect the world with them ?
I think I'd better get used to the idea that nothing I want to do is legal and concentrate on evading detection rather than staying legal.
Honestly, laws just fuck me off so badly. Who is some idiot lawyer/judge/politician to tell me I can't "posess" viruses ? Fuck them all- fuck them up their stupid asses.
graspee
What these stupid law-makers never seem to get is that you could easily click on for example I disguised link on /. and be taken to a site where there is goatsex, or pr0n of a dubious nature, or any goddam webpage you like could have the complete source code for a virus hidden in a comment in it, so you'd never realise, but it would go in your cache and be on your hard drive. Oooh, watcha gonna do now ?
You can't blame people for what is on their hard drives- you just can't. It's stupid.
graspee
Forgive me for being dense, but what the hell are they talking about here?
My pacemaker is hidden and electronic and digital but I don't see why these bastards need to go hunting for it.
Seriously, though. What are they looking for?
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
I hate to have to say it, and I am sure the sentiment has already been expressed but this time we really can...
well, and the US and europe...
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
Would this make the wearing of a T-Shirt, with say the source code for the "concept" Macro Virus printed on it illegal in Canada?
Get a clue folks in the U.S. !
This *is* big brother watching.
This is absolute bullshit. Instead of spending valid efforts on prevention of whatever,
they want to be able to sift through *past history* for alleged criminal acts to then prosecute said criminals.
Well, when times are slow, and things are quiet, you will be watched.
See J. Edgar Hoover.
It may be Canada tomorrow, but down the road, the goal is to remove all of your freedoms in the U.S.
The line will be "that's how it's done elsewhere".
This is all one huge conspiracy for global domination, don't fall for it!
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Can someone point out how this would be different than requiring the phone companies to keep 6 months of recordings of your home phone?
I think if it were looked at that way, people would realize how stupid and wrong this is. Why don't we start wearing embedded tracking devices and keep logs on that too?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
1) Referring to every bit of government monitoring as "Big Brother" is starting to get on my nerves. 1984 was an okay book and a mediocre movie and a bitchin' Apple commercial, but did we need to make it a part of our EVERYDAY language?
2) and more importantly, can we discuss each of these issues of government monitoring separately rather than flapping our arms and screeching the fear-inducing incantation of "Big Brother!" every time?
There is good monitoring and there is bad; there are sensible policies and foolish ones, necessary and unecessary. But by attaching emotionally charged words to a policy like "Third Reich" and "Big Brother" and "Hitleriffic" we kill any sensible debate, like every time we think about starting a war someone screams "it'll be the next Vietnam" without offering sensible reasons why it will or will not be similar to that conflict.
So put all that aside and simply ask: what are the benefits of this monitoring vs. what are the losses of privacy. Is it worth it? Either it is or it isn't; but no need to bring emotion into it.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
"crimes get solved, missing people's last movements can be determined, terrorists located," ...
...
...
...
ISP employees get paid off, battered women get located by abusive husbands, children kidnapped by non-custodial parents, victims tracked by their stalkers,
All sorts of "good things"... yeah, right.
"Don't assume that everyone in power is corrupt"
Don't assume that everyone in power now will always remain in power (even if they do), or that there will never be a corrupt person in power, ever. The Clinton presidency "borrowed" a huge number of confidential FBI files. Adolph Hitler was democratically elected, and one of the first things he did was confiscate privately owned firearms using registration information that was not collected for the purposes of government confiscation.
"If you're clever enough to surf anonymously"
It's not the stupid bad guys we need to worry about.
-- Terry
Geez, sure want to help to help my government fight those bad old terrorists, because THERE'S ONE IN THE PANTRY RIGHT NOW!!! No, wait, that was a movie, Signs, and it wasn't a terrorist, it was a space alien.
I guess I can afford a portion of a large drive to help my government fight the space aliens... I mean, terrorists. And will certainly be only too pleased to go back to administering the server via telnet when they tell me I can't use ssh because it's making it too hard for them to confirm that I am indeed a good, helpful citizen, and not one of those space aliens they're trying to stop.
Big brother is watching you. ( o ) ( o )
Err, no wait, those are breasts.
Based on your arguments:
All programs are a form of discrete mathematics, and mathematics is in my books an artform. The freedom and creativity involved in writing a program is infinite and the people who right viruses can be very crafty.
I will say:
All biological agents are a form of DNA/RNA sequences, and all the possible DNA/RNA sequences is in my books an artform. The freedom and creativity involved in manipulating a DNA sequence is infiniute and the people who create biological agents can be creafy.
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
_khl
I am Canadian, I have a old p166 (winblows 98) that is no longer used or even booted but upon last check had 168 viruses. Which I never cleaned because I didn't have time.
And it will stay that way because I am a LAZY ASSHOLE
I don't understand this one, more computers are infected with viruses than people getting caught with pot. The courts are going to be fuller than ever.
Im sick of all these slashdot posts about PROPOSED laws. Now theres nothing wrong with reporting proposals but after reading the comments in this thread its obvious to me that the majority of slashdot readers are idiots.
Just because a document is created (it hasnt even been proposed yet!) doesnt mean it will EVER get even CLOSE to being law.
And for all those canada bashing yankees in the trolls. Clearly something like this could not become law in canada. Theres too many checks and balances in place as well as the fact that canada is run by the liberal party at the moment. For the most part the liberal government is AGAINST expanding police forces.
Lets talk about what the hell the americans are doing. The patriot act ALREADY allows this to happen to any american WITHOUT WARRANT. Now you think canadas bad because someone excercised their right to free speech and wrote down some anti-privacy ideas. But just think THERE IS A MUCH MORE FAR REACHING ACT ALREADY LAW IN THE US!!!!
The patriot act shreds your constiution... least canada still believes in its charter of rights and freedoms (for the most part).
In canada information on the internet is treated the same as a phone conversation and there are very serious limitations to police wiretapping in canada. So much so that its nearly never used.
Now go out get a life and learn the difference between some screwballs unreviewed biased oppinions and what really is law in canada!
After reading the article it is obvious that news.com's Declan McCullagh didn't read the discussion draft either.
As has been asked here already, how is this different from the phone company keeping recordings of private phone calls? I'll tell you, it's an order of magnitude worse. Web browsing isn't even a conversation. It's like recording which magazine articles one reads and which ads one looks at. The because-we-can philosophy is no excuse to treat web browsing any differently from any other form of reading. The practice of recording surfing habits at the ISP level may very well provide crime-fighting information, but the inhibiting effects of this level of surveillance could harm society far more than any bomb could.
Western governments may turn out to be Osama bin Laden's most effective weapon.
If you caught spreading a computer virus, the candian government would cram you in a jail with 11 other annoying "big house"-mates, put you on canadian televion for 24 hours a day, and the last person to get anally violated would get $500,000.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
How hard do you think it would be for a bored sysadmin to check out what the users are up to?
How hard do you think it would be for the 14 year old down the street to hack the isp servers and check out what you're up to?
Many Canadian ISP's aren't as secure as they should be. Heck that goes for most of the ISP's in the world but thats another story now isn't it?
Any idea on if this could be stopped via HTTPS?
Well then thank God for pr0n. It's a sad comment on North American society that it's only the makers of commercial sleaze who are willing to stand up for our rights. You're right about it, most people wouldn't give a shit about restrictions on privacy or free speech if it wasn't for dirty little secrets. And the porn industry knows it, and laughs all the way to the bank. The sex industries have been at the forefront of free expression and privacy battles mostly because they directly concern their profits. But at least somebody's trying to draw a line in the sand. It's just too bad so few are willing to draw such lines on the principles involved, which are far more important than your (admittedly important) right to look at goatse man in the privacy of your own home, or to buy a lap dance....
What exactly is defined as a virus? If taken in the most liberal way its any program that crashes or takes down your computer right? Well what about people who suck at programming that manage to take down the whole computer? Hell i could write a txt file with deltree C:\windows, name it autoexec.bat and boom instant virus.
At any rate, in about an hour I gave the local MIS guys a fix and had them running around the offices, and had it announced on the intercom NOT to click the stupid thing... The AV sites were still down.
So my actions described above should be ILLEGAL?!?! I procured a copy of a destructive piece of code, and worse, I kept it.
So, later, I wanted to check the security of my company, and got permission to do so from my boss. I downloaded L0phtCrack for checking the passwords on the NT server from a known hacker site that catered in programs this treaty would make ILLEGAL (www.l0pht.com, now legit, cleaned up, and charging higher prices at www.atstake.com). I also downloaded some random Unix password cracker for our unix server at another hacker site that MUST BE SHUTDOWN according to this treaty. And lo and behold, while my actions here *were* sanctioned by the treaty, the people I got the programs from would have been thrown in jail - for proving that about 20% of the people in my company used their girlfriend's or wives names as passwords and a strict password policy needed to be put in place.
So, I know, the US signing a treaty has very little bearing on whether the US actually ratifies it and creates the laws to support it. BUT... that's how the DMCA got started.... this one should be killed early. Write your congressman.
I write code.
Well if you think that the government is going to help you pay for the new equipment you are going to be for one big dissapointment. My father as a doctor and a owner of a medical office must maintain something like 3 - 5 years of files on his patients in paper form. This is reguardless if the patient is dead, moved, changed doctors, changed insurance, etc. His company had to resort to buying a separate house just to store the files "just in case" they are requested by the government or insurance agencies.
Nobody can use the Sharpe case as an example where the Charter dismantled an oppressive law. On the contrary, works of the imagination, drawings, writings etc, are still illegal under the law, and can result in harrassment, charges and convictions. The question becomes one of whether or not the work is defensible as artwork.
A Charter that allows people to be arrested for drawings or writings is worthless.
But, anyway, to return to the point - Fundamental Justice - Can you think of a better definition than the one I laid out? Frankly, there is nothing fundamental about it. It's voodoo.
_khl
the Canadian government also banned the possession of the human flu virus, after an independent study found that the economic losses due to the flu virus are a staggering $10 billion per year. People found carrying a flu virus in public are now required to pass it on to the authorities, or may face a week of house-arrest.
In other news, Terrence Philip, a manager for a well-known Canadian company was arrested yesterday. He was accused of possessing a dangerous computer virus.
Philip claims that he didn't know about the virus and his computer was merely infected by it.
"Bullshit, ", said officer Barbrady, who've searched the offender's machine, "his box was full of this stuff - nobody keeps so many viruses without wanting to do evil things with them".
this story sucks
How do you stop non-techies from going "Oh, somebody loves me! I'll just read this message... OHNOS MY HARDDRIVE!"?
I'm guessing that in the future Windows virii could be a reason for companies to consider making the switch to Linux, especially in areas such as general office work/internet workstations. OpenOffice, KDE and Mozilla have evolved to a point where this would be possible.
Unfortunately, this is highly unlikely in engineering/graphics departments and will take slightly more work. To use an example, at AMD, we have a lot of internal custom code based on VC++, MASM, SwiftForth and Topspeed C++/Clarion. Porting these applications over to Linux would take more time than it would be worth, so the engineering department is quite literally stuck with Windows 98/2000.
2DUP * ;
If you browse using your ISP's proxy servers, there are log files generated that can be retained. But I never do that. If you're going direct to the web, I don't think there are any logs generated, unless your ISP logs every packet. So I don't see how they can retain them.
I live in a meritocracy - my productivity is turned into a numeric value by way of a complex market system which allows my fellow citizens to rate my usefulness. In this way, the most enlightened in my country (company directors, the MPAA/RIAA, Disney etc.) get the most 'merits' which they can then spend on the appropriate politicians to ensure that the best laws are passed for me and my fellow citizens.
I love my capitalist meritocracy, a government by the (morally) rich, of the (again, morally) rich and for the (last time, morally) rich.
..."how would the data both be recorded by and kept secure FROM the ISP?"
Short answer: it wouldn't.
There have been several instances, not well publicized for obvious reasons, where soon-to-be-former (8-)) ISP empoyees have sold mail server logs to SPAM'mers to obtain sender and recipient email addresses.
If the data is available, it's available. Even a crypto FS can be defeated (copy raw data, write zeros to file, read file, thereby retrieving the ciphertext pad, XOR - or whatever operation - the pad vs. the data, boom: cleartext back again, write data back to raw file: evidence of hack erased).
-- Terry
Sure, you can probably arrest a paedophile or two by monitoring his emails, but drug dealers and organised crime in general will be the first people to move to encrypting *all* their emails. Which is something even techies cannot do all the time. Why, you may ask. Well, it's simple: most e-mail users out there has no clue whatsoever about using encryption. When would Outlook Express, Mozilla Mail and Eudora have standard built-in OpenPGP encryption... (yes, I know plugins are available) Encrypt your mail today!
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Look at the knee jerk terrorism laws that were suggested after 9/11. Once the MPs looked at them seriously, cooler heads prevailed nothing happened. Same shit all over again.
Wrongo, boyo. C-36 and C-44 passed. C-42 was withdrawn in April, but our version of the USA PATRIOT Act was C-36.
I also suggest you read up on C-24, proposed in March 2001, passed in December.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
"Companies would be responsible for paying the costs of buying new equipment."
This is what galls me the most I think. Not only are our governments proposing that detailed records be kept on us (right down to how many times we go to the bathroom per day it seems sometimes) but we as consumers of services or tax payers will ultimatly have the cost handed to us. BTW CIA/FBI/NSA yesterday it was 3 times. I had bran for breakfast.
What constitutes an ISP? A reseller of bandwidth? How do you decide who keeps logs of what? For instance, should Sprintlink and MCI (the two feeds for my ISP) track all web traffic consumed by said ISP? Okay, should my ISP track all web traffic consumed by my static IP and domain? Simply stated: what if I'm a smaller ISP? Wouldn't that mean I would be the party required to do the logging? And what if my logs are... incomplete?
"Oh no... he found the
Didn't see this posted, but may have missed it -
Anyone considering that this could be used, in the future, to search for such 'hidden electronic and digital devices' as machines without DRM hardware?
Its time for war...
If you ban having viruses, and I dont mean getting them cause your stupid or careless but I mean collecting them how can companies like Mcaffee or Symantec survive.
They only find new viruses cause people send them to them when suspected. If people cant keep them to do this how will they find them, unless they write them themselves.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Bullshit. My father, likewise, must keep medical records for six years, but it only fills up a toolshed. What was far more fun was the time it took to feed the old ones to the shredder, a task I used to do every six months or so.
Your number is one! One! One! One!
My question is, how do they track the browsing info to YOU? I get a different ip address each time I log in. How are they gonna know who had what IP address on March 13th 2004 at 7pm when they accessed the site "NAZI hairdressers and their plan to destroy the world"?
"I moved here from Canada and they think I'm slow.. eh" -Obscure Simpsons Reference
Well, it seems to me that US and Canada are not only nonvoting, but also not-very-democratic members :)
Actually, I have a bad feeling about a future of the Internet. In general. :(
Less is more !
You back up that server regularly, right? As long as you include the logs in those backups, you're fine. You can just restore the backup somewhere else, and let the authorities look at them there. This is probably a better idea than letting them log onto your mail server (w/the rights to mess w/the logs) anyway.
Seriously, why does the internet need any laws at all? I can't hurt anyone via the internet, and hurting someone else was suppose to be the only reason for laws in the first place.
Big deal if someone has a virus, it's just text. Are we going to start banning books as well? Fahrenheit 451 here we come. Viruses don't do enough serious damage to make them criminal, well not until someone figures out how to write the Good Times virus anyway.
The internet was the perfect utopia until the governments got involved. I think that there should be no laws enforced on the internet because quite frankly there is no need for them!
Wouldn't this kinda kill the C@P public internet access program of which a little while ago Ottawa was so proud? Have they become appalled at their own success? Did the rumoured sighting of Atta at my local C@P site make them reconsider public access and want a way to kill the things in one swoop? Or are they just going to demand three pieces of federal ID to use C@P? Hm.
First, if this is something else they're trying to use 9/11 as an example for... It won't do a bit of good. "Oh, there's one of the terrorists getting out of his car..." Six months after the fact, you can't stop the crime, and they've had six months to flee the country. Yes, maybe it'll catch a criminal or two, but I think actively trying to stop crime is more important than watching it happen six months in the past.
Another issue is the sheer amount of space ~180 days of logs could take up. Let's take the example of a camera... A really good time-lapse camera might be able to squeeze 24 hours onto a single tape. But now rather than having a couple tapes and rotating them, you now need 180 tapes, and somewhere to store them. Storing the URL of every file I access could grow really quickly. And if they're investigating truly illegal use, the URLs might not even work six months later. So are they now going to save local copies of all the pages I visit? I have 3 Mbps. In 8 seconds, I could get 3 MB of space. My entire neighborhood could fill up a few terabytes real quick. This is going to add massive costs to ISPs, and a lot of them seem to be in financial trouble anyway.
On a side note, if I advocated that the US Postal Service photocopy every envelope you send/receive (I won't even say that they open it), I don't think even the most conservative people would consider this a good idea. But why is it different if it's on the Internet?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Now this will give even Canadians a reason to Blame Canada!
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
No, the government wouldn't have to pay for it. You're thinking of the takings clause in the Bill of Rights but that only applies when the government actually takes something of value. The Supreme Court has recently ruled that regulations and laws, even when they impair the value of property or a business, doesn't constitute a taking. In that case, the government prevented someone from building on property he owned because there were already environmental restrictions in the area that prevented development. A federal court in CA ruled that even when there weren't previous restrictions, the government could prevent a person from developing property without it being considered a taking. A closer analogy would be the case where the government makes industries install polution controls for the public benefit.
Let's assume that this legislation goes forward, how exactly can you implement such logging and who is going to pay for implementation?
Let's assume that ISPs block all traffic on port 80 and 443 then force everyone to use a proxy server which stores logs for 6 months.
Is this the intent of the legislation?
If so, all "terrorists" need to do is move their webservers to ports other than 80 and 443 to get around the blocking and logging? Currently there are around 65000 other ports to choose from.
Is it just me or is this just stupid legislation?
without any friends.
I haven't even ad a SINGLE SirCam virus!
This is all part of an elaborate ruse to see whether the populace is intrested in a possible Loverboy reunion (with opening act Triumph!)
This brings up a really good point. The example of doctors having to keep medical records is quite different. For one thing, my medical records are a lot more important than the record of my visits to /., espn.com, cyclingnews.com, cnet.com, etc. Second, there are some pretty big ISPs in the U.S. that would throw some pretty serious lobbying money against something like this. ATTBI changes my IP number on what seems like an hourly basis. What an amazing pain in the ass to go back, figure out all of the various IP numbers I've been assigned over the last six months, and then to reconstruct my browsing history based on those IP numbers. Now multiply that by however many users ATTBI has and you get the picture. It would be more than a minor burden on ATTBI, AOL, etc. to keep this kind of stuff around for that long.
And more to the point, what does it tell you? The signal to noise ratio would be unbelievable.
This is not technically feasable.
A day+half worth of packet header logs of 15-20 mbit of data takes about 80 gigs. They want to store packet payload data, on a faster link.
no.
Good thing i keep all my virii on CD :D, lol, but on a serieus note, whoever theught if this is screwed,,, but knowing the c'dn government, it could pass :S, for future refernce... does anyone know how much satilite internet (provided by say an african or japaniese company) would cost??
Reece,
Now, if I were a big hardware company CEO, and had a few friends in politics, somewhere in the Department of Justice, or Industry Canada, then I would suggest that idea to those friends, along with some reward $$$ once it's put in place. It seems only another way to fill the pockets of a few.
Worse, they will probably introduce the software to do all that monitoring, and make it the only legally allowable software to be used by ISP's (to fill the pockets of a few others in the process).
When such technologically absurd ideas take shape somewhere in the head of a moron government offical, then you can only wonder who's pockets they're trying to fill that time. I mean, THERE HAS to be another reason than the one they're feeding us, no?
PS: No no, I do not suffer from schizophrenic paranoia. But there *has* to be something behind that idea.
The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC
Say, someone idiotic (n00bish) buys a pc... they immediately get some klez after adding all their "buddies" to their list... Technically, even though they were unwilling, they are in possession of a virus...
But, because of how klez works, he'll be sending his buddies klez as other people, and these other people will be assumed as having a virus which they dont...
Then the cops accuse the person who was LISTED as the sender as "destroying evidence" even though that person never had evidence in the first place...
Welcome to the police state of Canada.
Roland Piquepaille and slashd
get over it.