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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?
____
~ |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.
>to disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request Which Gov.? The Canadian of US?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
start your encryptors.
In a sane world, the Internet's HTTPS:HTTP ratio would be skyrocketing. Does anyone have trend graphs?
--
make install -not war
If you are a capitalist and believe in "the magic of the marketplace", you have to believe that this trend will eventually result in ISPs who advertise the opposite: that they don't snoop, that they dump any logs within hours or minutes, and so forth. That is, if they are allowed to do so by law.
I believe most problems of this type can be self correcting with market forces. If I don't like having my ISP spying on me, I'll choose another ISP. If enough people literally don't care, (like me), then this ISP will stay in business.
Of course, the point is moot... All ISPs cache data to a certain extent. And all governments can strong-arm or bribe companies... It's just that this particular ISP is being honest and saying, "Yea, we'll hand your stats over."
So much for "sympathy"....they need to change their name from "Bell Sympatico" to "Bell Antipatico"
But then again...it is a Bell company....after the AT&T thing, I expect nothing less.
See, there's the difference between America and Canada.
We make sure that the customer's don't know when we're spying on them.
The new customer service agreement is effective June 15, 2006.
Retroactive by 13 days? Isn't that just a kick in the face. Sure, you can cancel right now, but then they'll just look through that data out of spite. After all, you're no longer a customer and they no longer have to abide by their privacy policy.
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."
I can only imagine how they formulated such a modern concept:
What's the next step?
This is bad news for Canada. Here in the United States, we have strict privacy laws which protect us from such intrusive "techniques"
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
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.
Bob: Hi, I'm Bob Mackenzie, this is my Big Brother Doug.
Doug: How's it going eh?
Bob: Not good, eh. Cuz, we still haven't gotten our two-four for findin' that mouse in the beer bottle yet, have we?
Doug: No, eh. It was like, the thing that is in Bottle 101 is the worst thing in the world.
Bob: But didn't we make Strange Brew in 1983, not 1984, which was like, one year later eh?
Doug: Oh, take off!
At least they had the decency to let you know it was going on....I'm just curious as to what they plan to do with this information? To quote the article -
' 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."...A spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said no decision has been made on the bill, known as the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act. But she noted that Day has spoken to telecom industry officials and legal experts about bringing it forward as early as the fall session.'
This means Sympatico users are agreeing to disclose to the government whatever Bell feels like disclosing! No mention has been made of getting a warrant,etc....to prove that this should be carried out for a specific reason. There's no real mention of disclosure criteria.
On a side-note - Stockwell Day is a bit of a dingleberry - a creationist who believes the earth was created 5000 years ago....the sharp swing to the right has begun in Canada....looks like the terrorists are winning when our freedoms start to get whittled away, bit by bit....
To help you surf the web without being spyed on I recommend installing Tor then installing FoxyProxy.
Tor takes care of the proxy encryption, and FoxyProxy lets you use all those proxies while you surf.
Invaluable for the privacy conscious, or rather anyone living in the 21st century.
Meet new people, and kill them.
Stating that you will disclose information that is required by law is obvious. But disclosing information that you are not allowed to disclose and do not have to disclose, makes no sense. I can see no benefit to the company. What gives?
Wow, Stuff like this makes me so glad that I'm an American where we aren't subject to this kind of wholesale violation of our privacy.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Unfortunately 99.99% of internet users have no clue about encryption, they have never heard of PGP, probably don't know when they are even viewing an https page. The mass bumbles along in ignorance and any attempt to educate them is blocked by an enourmous inertia of apathy.
It would take several years of media coverage about invasion of privacy and some high profile cases before the masses would rise from their slumber and do something about Bell Sympatico. It's the same as what the US government (and the UK government) are doing to strip away freedom in the name of security.
It's sad but true, if you understand the issues you are in a tiny minority. Don't expect and change anytime soon.
while sco {
wget -O
}
All hail Big Beaver.
- - - "Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers."
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.
We always used to joke about spies listening in on our coversations 20 years ago. We all knew that the gov did wiretaps and listened in on our communications from time to time. But only the loons really thought that "average joe" was being spied on. We honesly didn't worry about it.
Well, now it's too late. Total Information Awareness is upon us and all of our communications by phone/cell/computer are being listened in on and filtered through. There really is nowhere go but downhill. You watch. Within 5 years all foreigners visiting the US will have to have GPS enabled chip implants. Within 10 all prisoners will have them. Within 15 it will be a Felony for any US citizen to remove/disable their chip implant. Anyone want to join me while I go live in cave somewhere?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
My turn:
I'd rather have the government sneak into my house while I'm on vacation than have my family whisked away to a detention camp and killed.
Don't justify the bad with the worse.
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.
Many people are suggesting "Just go through a proxy". My question, seriously, how do you trust a proxy? How can you be sure that it's not just a honeypot, looking for "security concious" people, then logging every single thing they do? Sure, we can examine the client-side setup to see what's going on, but do we have any clue what's happening at the proxy end? What's to stop them from copying every single link and byte that goes through the proxy for future evaluation?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
look.ca offers a high speed service that does not use phone lines (dsl). It uses microwave towers and requires line of sight and a small antenna. This is kind of a secret as most people I tell either don't know about it or believe it's out of business. It's not. Being wireless it's not effected by power outages, I know as I've surfed during the last few. I just plug the modem and my laptop into a UPS. In a traceroute to my co-lo server I don't see any bell routers just a few owned by look then the big pipe. If you are lucky enough to be in view of one of the towers (one is on the CN Tower which should cover a lot of Toronto) They also offer TV and a higher speed, fixed IP service.
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.
You can use any of these DSL providers. Vote with your dollars people.
Truecrypt has an option to hide an encrypted volume within the random-ish data of another. You have a different password for each, and they suggest leaving sensitive-looking stuff in the outer one. See, I showed you what was there, can I go home now?
Where does your SSH tunnel go to? Someplace down the
line it needs to emerge unencrypted (assuming you aren't just surfing to
your own remote server(s)).
So what do you suggest? We get rid of the Conservatives, and put the Liberals back in, who would never do anything like this?
You do realize that it was the Liberals who first proposed this, and the only reason it didn't pass under their watch was that they couldn't ram it through before they self-destructed, right?
I've posted before on here, and I'll say it again:
All political parties suck. They're all a bunch of elitist bastards who'll tear away at your rights for their own pork-barrelling ends, and write their own laws to put themselves in the right.
The Liberals suck. The Conservatives suck. The NDP sucks. The Green Party sucks. Our local city council sucks.
THEY ALL SUCK!
Take that and report it to the government, you Sympatico assholes, because I'm quite OK with my opinion of politics being well known. When the government stops trying to fuck over it's own citizens, who are the only reason said government even exists, then maybe I'll change my opinion.
While you're at it, why don't you give a bunch of money to a private lobby group that runs mental institutions. They must think we're all insane in some way, and should be put away. I'd tend to agree with them, because all you fucking assholes keep getting votes!
Where the hell is a "NO" on the ballot when you need one?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Don't let the ISP see what you are up to. anoNet (http://anonet.org) is an anonymous encrypted IP network which can protect those Canadians from their ISP. Setup takes two minutes. Just install OpenVPN and double click on the config file on the website. Pretty easy eh?
Both of your assumptions are likely to be proven false.
Although the current Conservative government is a minory government, they have been reading/swaying public opinion rather well and some of their other recent announcements have been met with everything from total apathy to considerable support.
For example, hot on the tails of the filing of the $30,000,000 MySpace lawsuit (14-year-old girl assaulted by 19-year-old boy she met online), the Canadian government announced that it intends to raise the age of consent in Canada "to protect 14 year old girls from adult predators". The local talk/news radio stations started doing polling and found out that about 97% of respondents were in favour of a revised law. The thing that makes this interesting isn't the law - it was part of the election platform - but the fact that they waited until there was a high-profile case in the media to lubricate its entry into the House. If not for the high-profile MySpace lawsuit then the bill would have received higher scrutiny and people would be less afraid to point out its shortcomings. As it is now, anyone who objects to the new law is painted as coddling pedophiles...
The fact that the police arrested terrorists in Toronto should prove that a new surveillance law isn't required, but instead it simply scared people into thinking that trading liberty for security is a good idea, the same way 9/11 did in the USA.
Conservative politicians use FUD to push their anti-liberty, legislated morality agendas on people on both sides of the Canada/USA border.