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Canadian ISP Shoulder Surfing
1nfamous writes "Canada's Largest ISP, Bell Sympatico, has informed its customers that it intends to 'monitor or investigate content or your use of your service provider's networks and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request.' The new customer service agreement is effective June 15, 2006."
The chief difference between Canada and America? At least the Canadians get fair warning.
Clearly, the Canadian government is going to have to work on that...after all, we can't tip our hand to the terrorists, right? These things must be kept secret, because unless they're explicitly informed, the terrorists will have no reason to believe their internet access is being tracked, just as they had no reason to believe that their phone calls may have been bugged and their financial records traced, that is, until the meddling fourth estate decided to educate them, much to the peril of all freedom-lovers.
(Sorry....my sarcasm button was stuck there for a while...)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's time to start encrypting everything. Just one question...anyone out there familiar with the current legality of crypto in Canada?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I wonder how long before people start being bothered by this kind of behaviour?
And I don't mean us, but the majority of sheeple...
Will it be too late then?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Yep, yet another reason I am glad I left Sympatico ages ago.
First the MSN merger, then the Usenet removal, now this.
In a sane world, the Internet's HTTPS:HTTP ratio would be skyrocketing. Does anyone have trend graphs?
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make install -not war
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/02_06_01_01_
They're simply NOT allowed to do this without a warrant if you refuse to consent to it. Simply send them an email stating that you do not consent to their unlawful search, and cc the privacy commissioner.
If they say "these are our TOS, don't like it, leave" - that's not good enough. Their contract is a contract of adhesion, and as such, unconscionable and onerous clauses can be struck from it. Certainly claiming a right to violate PIPEDA is one such clause.
doesn't canada have very strict internet privacy laws.
if they snoop and give it away to anyone in violation of those laws class action suits will follow.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
if I screw this up...but I remember something from a few years back where a court ruled that logging IMs was equal to recording a phone conversation and could be help under the same notification laws. This is typically not a problem in the states since most, all but 12, require single party notification, so since I know I am recording the conversation it is legal.
Now, if courts did uphold that monitoring and logging IMs, and presumably other means of electronic communication, is covered under the call recording notification laws, would this not create a dilemma for the ISP that is monitoring (and presumably logging) network traffic of users, which would include IMs and e-mai, when their users begin to communicate with individuals from the states who live in one of those 12 states that require both parties to consent?
I am fairly certain on the court ruling I mentioned, I even jokingly added a warning to people in my status message, but I am not sure if this ruling was ever contested or of my full interpretation of the law that follows.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
That's easy to say when you live in an area where ISPs compete for subscribers, but I live in the 9th largest city in the US, but I still only get one choice. If I decided that my ISP didn't live up to the info disclosure standard set by me, I just can't cut ties with them and go with someone else. You either live with the fact that you're being tracked, or life without access.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I would like to see the false positives and true negatives that result from these arrests. That is, I would like to see a two by two matrix such that:
Breakdown of arrests from statute blahThe bottom left square & upper right square would give you an idea of:
- The effectiveness of this statute or law.
- The error rate.
- How prone it is to being abused.
- An attempt at quantifying how much life, liberty and pursuit of happiness we have wrongfully intruded upon.
- Do you need more laws & procedures to catch the lower left block?
For other countries (like China) where the trial system may not be present, I would like to see them publish trials online and in print from the unadulterated viewpoint of the prosecutor and the defendant in regards to each of these statutes. Hell, I'd be interested in skimming those daily for every country! I think that if countries were more open about their success rates & their law enforcement convictions, we'd be in much better states to criticize them. More importantly, the criticism could be warranted and productive.My work here is dung.
I think that anyone who thinks they have any privacy on the net is fooling themselves. Sympatico are announcing that they are going to do this monitoring, but no doubt they could know what traffic went in and out of a particular IP address within the hour if they needed to do so. While a lot of people think that net privacy is a sacred cow, this is just sheer fantasy. There hasn't been a government on this planet that didn't regulate or make provision to monitor communications and really that is what the internet is at it's heart.
Bad people do exist on the net and use its power for their own ends. This has always been the case. Especially in the black and white areas we all can agree are bad, like using the net to lure kids. The dicey part is who gets to decide what is "bad" in the grey areas and that has also always been the case. It ain't going away.
Unfortunately, the privacy act has a number of exceptions. If the government asks for information as part of a criminal investigation, or if they say that it's related to national security, then no warrent or subpoena is required.
Basically, you have very little privacy protection against the government.
Is it possible to force my DHCP to churn addresses? I figure that if they ("they" being the MAFIAA and the US govt...even in Canada thanks to the fine work of Beverly Oda and Stephen Harper) want data, let's give them plenty.
Well, I was exaggerating to make a joke -- heck, that's the basis of most humor. Do I honestly think the United States is a fascist nation? Of course not. I wouldn't be able to write this if it was. But some of what has been happening recently is worrisome to me, because it isn't just the government, but corporations invading our privacy in the name of "making sure we comply with laws". It is very reminiscent of Minority Report's "Precrime", except here we don't use telepaths, we use speculation and innuendo.
I'm a little confused by your question, though; I'd say quite a few people I know would say they're aware their ISP and phone records can be obtained, because it was just all over the news. Is it happening to everyone? No. But the fact that it can, and the government thinks this is okay, is what frightens me. If your parents lived in Cuba for 40 years, they probably understand that the mentality of "we're going to spy on everyone, and if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" is one aspect of how fascism looks in its infancy.
Done! I'm in Canada and almost all my traffic coming in/out of my DSL line is encrypted. SSH tunnels are your friend :)
I started doing this since my ISP's wholesaler was using transparent proxy caches that would actually strip ads from websites and then insert their own in their place. I bitched loudly over that one and they removed me from the proxy list but it was enough to make me take control of my surfing via a SSH tunnel to the servers I operate. The bonus is I can also access content supposed to be only available in the US (like www.sho.com or the ABC online Lost episodes).
My ISP has since switched wholesalers to a more sane variety but I still keep the tunnels going.
I just called to cancel my Sympatico account. It will be disconnected tomorrow morning before 8:00. The alternative, Rogers, used a heavy advertising campaign bragging "No cap, now or ever" to lure customers to their new 5Mb service, then proceeded to implement a 60GB cap a few months later. We cancelled that too. There is apparently no non-evil ISP in my area.
And the reason they're doing it is rather obvious - the parent company (Bell Globealmedia) want to try to "enhance" their other properties:
- They're the #1 porn distributor in North America via their pay-per-view services - they're hoping that if people get scared about surfing the net for pr0n (OMG THEY'RE WATCHING ME !!!), people will turn to their ppv service;
- They are losing market share in the ppv movie downloads, not just to bittorrent, but to the cable companies, who now let you "rent" a movie for a day through the net; if they can put a chill on torrent distribution, that's possibly more ppv (though more likely not - the selection through ppv is still crap - 500 channels and nothing on);
No wonder Bell has replaces the cable co as the utility everyone loves to hate.Now with Rogers High-Speed Internet you get the follow features! 3 Months at a "special" introductory price! Free Installition Faster speeds than dial up, and Bell DSL and now with 50% less spying! . . On a personal note they also don't constantly call you trying to sign you up for garbage and rip-off deals. My hate knows no bounds for Bell. I finally got fed up with them and canceled my landline. These days with a bit of ingenuity you don't have to promote the old monopolies that really don't give a shit about you as a customer because they don't have to. Various Cell companies and Cable companins can fullfil the same role now (though many cable companies are only marginally better).
The way you look at the world changes when you grow up like that. I could see the truth that most Americans never think of. I knew who the next likely enemy was after the cold war ended. I knew our intelligence agencies were ill equipped to fight the new threat (And still aren't.) I knew that just about the entire world likes to hate America. I knew it was only a matter of time before there was a major terrorist attack in the USA. I know that it's only a matter of time before there'll be another one.
Most Americans seem to have become complacent again. They'd rather live in ignorance, and they like to think that the government is proetecting them. They keep telling themselves that. "Oh it'll be all right, the government is protecting us." Ask someone who knows what the government's been up to, though, and you'll find that it's more by luck than by skill than we haven't had a big successful attack since 9/11. I don't care what your politics are, the level of incompetence displayed at all levels and on all sides should disgust you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It may not be long before North Americans are using encrypting proxies in China to gain access to content on the 'web. (Okay, we'd likely use South American or European servers, but hey that's not as controversial, is it?)
I might have to investigate going back to the cable companies for my broadband access.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Bell will be monitoring not just Sympatico customers but all network traffic on all Bell's lines.
This article was only regarding Sympatico's new user agreement & yes since it's the Sympatico
user agreement one could assume only Sympatico customers will be monitored.
But this isn't the case read the 3rd paragraph again closely.
monitor or investigate content or your use of your service provider's networks
That's rather useless when you need an in-service procedure.
Additionally, a lot of them are taking patients from the US, who can't afford American rates.
Funny. I see plenty of Canadians coming to the U.S. for treatment they can't get in a timely fashion in Canada.
As for American rates, they are dirt cheap when compared to the taxes one has to pay in Canada for service that is not forthcoming. Then again, I'm looking at things from the perspective of a homeowner with a stay-at-home spouse. In the U.S. I can (a) file my taxes jointly with my wife, and (b) deduct my mortgage interest. This means that my income tax burden is about 1/3 what it would be in Canada. Plenty to pay for gold-plated health insurance if my employer didn't already provide it (which has no lifetime cap in our case). That insurance costs about US$14,000 a year for the family. I paid more than the equivalent in extra tax for similar work in Canada that paid about 20% less.
The practical upshot of all this is that my standard of living is much higher than it would be in Canada, and when my son needed a tonsillectomy, he got it within three days.
So you'd rather go to a system where the #1 cause of personal bankruptcies is medical bills? And where most of those who do file for bankruptcy (74%) HAD insurance?
Sure. I'd rather be bankrupt than dead. But you're relying on a misleading statistic. Very few actually go bankrupt for any reason -- and it's gotten harder to file personal bankruptcy in recent years. Medical bills are one of the few available reasons left. So, that statistic isn't unusual.
Here's what else I find better in the U.S.:
1. My kid is not berrated by her teacher for bringing a former Texas elementary school yearbook in for "show and tell" because "it was showing off that she lived outside Canada."
2. If my kid is assaulted at school, the perp is arrested instead of my kid being told to "fit in".
3. When I seek to hire a kid to mow my lawn, I am not derided by my neighbors are "bourgois" for spending money on such an "extravagance".
4. I get receipts in stores instead of having to ask for them and getting threats of being arrested for doing so -- the asking being a "public nuisance". (Of course, leaving without a receipt runs the risk of being charged with shoplifting).
5. I get the healthcare I need, when I need it. Last year I was sent from a doctor's office straight to a hospital for surgery for cellulitis of the elbow the next day. A relative in Canada sent me a medical handout about "dealing with the pain of cellulitis" upon hearing of my plight. She was stunned that I was out of the hospital after my surgery (and feeling much better) before her mail arrived.
6... I could go on, but you get the idea.
and you find OUR system "evil and disgusting"?
A system which prevents people from spending their own money to save their own lives on their own schedule is, IMHO, evil and disgusting, yes.
I was once in a doughnut shop in Markham, ON, complaining a bit louder than I perhaps should to my friend about the state of welfare "freeloading". A welfare worker overheard me and interrupted us. I expected her to denounce everything I was saying. Ty my surprise, she agreed with me! She reported that at least 75% of her "clients" were freeloaders who went so far as to consider her "stupid" for actually working for a living!
I want no part of that.
My parents came to Canada with nothing after WWII after agreeing to work in designated areas (my father a farm hand, my mother a maid). There was no
You could've hired me.