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Canadian Arrested Over Plans to Test G20 Security
epiphani writes "Byron Sonne, of Toronto, was arrested today by a task force of around 50 police officers associated with the G20 summit taking place this week. An independent contractor, IT security specialist and private investigator, he had notable ties to the Toronto technology and security communities. According to friends and associates, he had been purchasing goods online and speaking with security groups about building devices to collect unencrypted police broadcasts and relay them through Twitter, as well as other activities designed to test the security of the G20 summit. By all accounts, it would appear that Mr. Sonne had no actual malicious intent. In Canada, the summit has been garnering significant press for the cost and invasive nature of the security measures taken." "By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives, and intimidation.
Here in Canada that translates to a rusty fork, vinegar and baking soda, and not saying 'please'.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
It's been awhile since I got my Canadian Ham license, but I seem to remember learning that it was illegal to rebroadcast, (or talk about, publish, whatever) anything that you heard on the airwaves. I.e. cop, fire, air control, taxi, etc chatter.
Innocent or malicious, the guy was an idiot. How would he ensure nobody with malicious intent took advantage of what he did?
I'm glad this prick was arrested.
It doesn't matter if he had malicious intent or not. The police had no way of knowing for sure what his real goals were. He appeared to be gearing up to do something naughty, and they caught on and stopped him.
All they knew was that some lone wolf out there not associated with the government was trying to crack through G20 security, for *whatever* reason.
Oblig. car analogy: If I was arrested trying to break into someone's car, would the police let me go if I told them I was just moving it so the nice chap who owns it doesn't get towed for parking in a fire lane?
Listening to unencrypted public safety comms won't get you busted (in most places) but:
"Friends say Sonne had talked about sending messages with trigger words or buying up fertilizer during the summit to test security measures."
What a stupid thing to do but they got wind of it didn't they? I'd say he has his answer - security, at least the intelligence component of it, is pretty decent.
Friends say Sonne had talked about sending messages with trigger words or buying up fertilizer during the summit to test security measures.
This is a meeting of some of the most powerful people in the world, bringing fertilizer to "test security. This isn't about scanning. It's about possibly building a fucking bomb.
I heard about this guy on the news yesterday.
While I don't know the details on what all is is alleged to have done -- he did set a goal to deliberately try to see if they would detect his behavior. He was planning on sending emails with words that would get him flagged by any hypothetical electronic searches they were running, and generally trying to look suspicious to see if they've noticed him. All in the name of seeing what kind of security they had in place, and how well it works.
He may well be completely innocent, a crack-pot, or just some misguided hacker who thinks it's his job to "take on the man". But, it's kind of like trying to get the bull to chase you -- you might not like it when he does. I'm pretty sure they've made trying to identify/breach their security procedures illegal.
The geek and hacker in me applauds such a balsy move. The pragmatist in me thinks he might have tried just a little too hard to get noticed. I mean, antagonizing an already skittish security apparatus ... not the smartest move you can make. :-P
I'm looking to actually hearing more facts as they become available.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No, recording is not illegal either. The law only makes an offence of intercepting communications that were intentionally obfuscated (even if the method was easily broken.)
I Guess it costs a "Buck O' Five" there aswell....
Also, not updating his facebook with a better, less sullen and crazy looking photo. Before I ever do something like that, I'm going to get a photo of me like playing with kittens or something. Let 'em run that on the news. Not "American Gothic minus the Daughter..."
and since I'm a narcissistic American... I will.
That was what I felt too. It's like testing the security of your house by posting an add on craigslist telling people when I'm leaving, and when I'll be back. Not really a good idea, epsecially since every 100th craigslist reader has a brain, and that one guy might be a robber who would bring a pair of cable cutters to drop the phone / power lines.
Even if security WAS good enough, damage still occurs to the house. The "telcom integrity" gets degraded... the cost of repairing that can be high... lastly a bump key,a rock, or a swift kick, and a masked smash and grab is still possible w/or w/o security.
I think doing that to a major summit is not just irresponsible, there is no way someone in his field can claim they couldn't see the consequences, meaning it can only be formulated w/ malicious intenet. There is no good reason to "test" it's security unless you were hired to do so, and still you wouldn't do it this way.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Enough said!
'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
It's pretty ridiculous, I know.
"By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives and intimidation.
Can't you be charged with just about anything a police officer deems necessary to bring you into the station, but you aren't guilty of any of them until proven so? I thought that's how it worked but clearly I'm mistaken.
Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?
Hello sir/madame, are the owner of this establishment?
I must say this is a fine operation you run here. However, I believe your security seems to be lacking. What's to stop an armed man, such as myself carrying these concealed sidearms, from wreaking havoc on your customers and property? Hacking your wi-fi to access and broadcast transaction data to twitter was also a cake walk. Did you honestly think I couldn't get past such simple passwords? Also, I think you could of easily prevented me from rigging your exits with explosives, made from cheap fertilizer I bought and are set to blow should anyone try to escape.
Therefore, I would like to offer you my security consulting services. I think my demonstration speaks for itself but here are some references.
Need to use the phone? Oh I guess its just to call my references.
That's strange, I don't think any of them had numbers that start with 911...
*Scene*
Test passed, I guess.
http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/summit-survivor/2010/05/26/833-million-security-bill-for-g20-and-g8-called-insane/
http://www.torontosun.com/news/torontoandgta/2009/12/17/12184191-sun.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/11/summit-traffic.html
So, Toronto police gets $12,000 bonus per each 6000 staff for 3 days work - works out to $170/h if they work 72h shift (not possible), $350/h for 12h shifts.
Where is the remaining $800 million? Who knows?
"There are 5,567 officers and 2,056 civilian employees. Salaries and premium pay total $848 million. "
Works out to $111,242 per person for *3 day* meeting... I'd love to get paid $1500-$3000/h from your tax dollars too!
Did he have an agreement with the G20 meeting organizers to test their security? You don't get to "test" people's security against their will.
...or else it will look like that $1B in security was wasted Can't have that.
If he, and enough other people, did this there would be a lot of resources being tied up running down these "tests". This may allow a real threat to slip in and people be killed because all the resources are tied up. It is along the same line as to why it is illegal to call in a false fire report. The real fire across town burns while the truck is responding to the false call. Sorry but "I was just testing the response time" is not a valid excuse.
i suppose it would depend on if they signed a waiver, and how good your lawyer is.
"By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives and intimidation.
Can't you be charged with just about anything a police officer deems necessary to bring you into the station, but you aren't guilty of any of them until proven so? I thought that's how it worked but clearly I'm mistaken.
No, it doesn't work like that. That only applies to sentencing someone of a crime. But someone says "By all accounts, he is a saint!" you can say "Not by all accounts, as some claim that he has committed a crime" even if he hasn't been proven guilty yet. It's actually quite a simple concept to grasp.
Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?
Depends. You don't have to pay for murder. Now, you might have committed other crime (such as gross negligence or the like) and need to pay for that. It is kinda like with drunken driving: The act of knowingly risking the lives of others due to selfish reasons is in itself crime.
That would be manslaughter.
Extraway argelay oubleday oubleday easeplay.
I don't know about Canada, but in the US, just making stuff up so you can be hauled in can get the police charged with False Arrest.
You didn't end up murdering them. You ended up manslaughtering them. The difference is precisely intent.
http://www.enotes.com/forensic-science/murder-vs-manslaughter
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Can or will? There's a little bit of a difference there...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_G-20_London_Summit#Security_operation
"The security operation, Operation Glencoe headed by Commander Bob Broadhurst, was projected to cost £7.2 million. Six police forces were used during the operation: the Metropolitan Police, the City of London Police, British Transport Police and the forces of Essex Police, Sussex Police and Bedfordshire Police. Furthermore some units from the Ministry of Defence Police have been used. It is the highest security expenditure in British history"
Enough said.
There is overpayment, there is waste (see $2 billion spent over *10 YEARS* for the long gun registry), and there is outright fraud. This is definitely the latter.
IF the toronto police force paid their 6000 people $12,000 bonuses+salary for this, that's a "small chunk" of money. That leaves 1000 people with $800,000 - $1 million *each*. WTF???
Canada's waste and corruption scandals are dwarfed by this. This is beyond unacceptable.
It's actually quite a simple concept to grasp.
Well yes, when you put it in the literal sense like that, but perhaps we have different ideas of the words "Accounts", because I imagine someone who has an "account" on it has some evidence to support their claim. I mean, by the logic you're implying I could say "You are not by all accounts innocent of raping and murdering a 14 year old girl." Perhaps you've heard that line before and see where I'm going with it, you can say it right back and thus we've completed invalidated any use of the word account.
Basically what I'm boiling down to is I'd need to see the evidence of the charges before really taking them into consideration on whether they have any grounds at all. I've dealt with few enough police officers to know that they don't all interpret/enforce the law the same way.
Googling his name and filtering out (as best I can) the plethora of reprints of this article, it looks like the "explosives" were deliberate acquisition of ingredients to see what it would take to provoke a response. I guess he found out.
As far as "weapons" was concerned, I don't know enough about Canadian law -- what is and is not classed as a "weapon" -- to speculate. But his linkedin says he's a licensed private investigator, and in many areas where it's otherwise impossible, a valid PI license sometimes allows a person to carry concealed. So, he could have legally owned a firearm.
I suspect that to a certain extent this is another example of the "kitchen sink" approach to high-profile arrests, and some of these charges will be dropped in plea negotiations.
Or, I dunno, he could really be a nut. But I don't think so. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Nah, they'll just tack on a "resisting arrest" charge and then drop the original charge. Tadah, they're holding you for a legit reason, even if they had to bounce you off a wall to get you to start resisting.
In the US, that is manslaughter, and possibly reckless endangerment, the first a misdemeanor.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?
Depends on how the statute is written. Murder requires 'malice aforethought', which is missing in an accident. Manslaughter generally doesn't depend on malice (or aforethought), although negligence is often taken into account.
I think this is like trespassing: it only matters if you intended to be there (or were unreasonably negligent), not if you intended to cause harm. Intending to cause harm would simply be an additional charge, yet the trespassing charge would still stick regardless of malice.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
He acts suspicious and gets caught, just as he did.
He convinces the police it was just a "test". They laugh and go away.
He continues and security ignores him as he is just "testing".
He does commit a terrorist attack which get through because the police were ignoring him since that was his objective in the first place.
Would you want to be the head of security to try to explain this?
Hmmm
I wish it was the same over here in the UK, alas in reality, it tends to be that the police will arrest people for non arrestable offences (eg taking photos of uniformed police officers on duty) and then will make something up if they cannot find a legitimate reason to press charges, usually it involves "resisting arrest"...
So he wanted to test security and was caught. Sounds like his test worked great. He should be very please with himself. When he gets out he should test US government security by pulling a gun during on the POTUS during a speech.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
In Texas, you can carry rifles while you protest outside a Republican state convention where Laura Bush is speaking and no one questions you.
Interesting contrast.
Here are a couple of links.
This guy had a theory, that a person acting very suspiciously may not be noticed by government intelligence agencies in a timely manner during an international gathering of heads.
To test his theory, he began taking suspicious actions in an attempt to get noticed. One would assume that the longer his suspicious acts went unnoticed, the more suspicious acts he partook in.
Eventually, his actions were noticed and he was detained.
The conclusion of his test will be in the summary of what suspicious actions he managed to take BEFORE he was detained.
It sure seems like the goal all along was to get caught. The question was to determine the amount of suspicious actions he could take prior to being caught.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Telling people beforehand is supposed to be insurance when you are not committing an illegal act. Imagine being caught with surveillance equipment at the G20 without having public disclosure to fall back upon.
Anyhow, this is beginning to smell like a festering mess of Godwinity.
Ever since the APEC summit in Australia, police have been extra careful about Canadians trying to sneak in: The Chaser APEC pranks.
can.
It almost* never happens.
-nB
* almost qualifier: never say never (though in this case I've never seen it).
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...the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives and intimidation...
Because no one has ever been arrested on false charges before.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
How about 50 people to arrest one person because of it. I figured one RCMP dealing with an upset Mule would be enough.
IT HAD BETTER BE THE BEST FUCKING SECURITY EVER.
Over a billion dollars. A billion fucking dollars. Canadian. Citizen's. Dollars. (Our exchange rate is about par.) That's .1% of our GDP and .25% of our national debt. Think about that.
It's a four-day event. That's $300 Million a day, or 12.5 Million an hour, or 208 thousand dollars a minute. (3.5 thousand PER SECOND.)
I'm all for making sure that we've got a secure event, but for that they could have bought an Aircraft Carrier and parked it in the middle of Lake Superior and had an impenetrable fortress. Okay, so some of the G20 don't like the cramped quarters on a military vessel. They could have rented a cruise ship and hauled in, let's say Halifax and VDQ (Canadian Patrol Frigates, our ships-of-the-line) for security. (Or Montreal if they wanted to show off the new Cyclones) If someone else (like POTUS) wanted more security, they could task a Nimitz to accompany the group for the duration. The same with anyone else -- you want more security, bring in a warship.
No "Conservative" ever gets to talk about adscam ever again. EVER. FUCKING. AGAIN.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Many hackers seem to have this ethos of "If I CAN do it then it is ok for me to do." If they can break in to a system, it is ok for them to do in their mind. They figure the person who owns it should have secured it better. Something tells me they would not be nearly so amused if I applied the same thing to their house. "Oh hey! Ya I've been sleeping on your couch watching TV. Well it was really your problem after all, your lock wasn't very good, I picked it easily and your alarm was defeated by just cutting the power and battery cable in it. Don't get made at ME, if you don't want me here YOU should have secured your house better!"
I think hacker types need to remember basic kindergarten etiquette: Don't touch what isn't your without asking first. If you want to learn how to break in to computers that is wonderful, but do it on your own. Don't go and try to get in to other's stuff.
Same shit here.
How can we obtain information on who got the contracts and the services they provided? It seems like it should fall under freedom of information laws.
Arrested with 3 gas cans, an axe handle, baseball bat, sticks, a chainsaw, a crossbow, and various other items in his trunk.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
This is beyond unacceptable.
Yeah, okay.. So now... what?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I feel no sympathy here. There are many world leaders attending and their security forces don't fuck around. There are very real threats to these people. So you go and test them, perhaps you find the answer is "Yep, security is good." Don't be surprised if the other part of the answer is "And we are going to arrest you."
The G20 is just a ploy to allow the little nations not cool enough to be in the G8 think they're something special.
The G8 doesn't actually discuss anything important with them at the conference, or really listen to anything they say.
Our leaders will go behind their wooden curtain next week in Muskoka and deal with the real problems, like who'll host next year, and what type of food will be served.
Given that world leaders are attending, their security forces are likely helping out not only on the physical side, but on the intelligence side as well. In and of themselves they usually have good intelligence support, but also some of them are backed by the best in the world. The USSS gets intelligence backing from the NSA and CIA. The Russian FPS is the old Ninth Directorate of the KGB, and you can bet they are still backed by the SVR (formerly the First Chief Directorate) and whatever they call the Sixteenth Directorate (signals intelligence) these days.
So it isn't like you are just playing with local cops for something like this. While they are still a major part of security over all, keeping order int eh city and such, there are some extremely heavy hitters dealing with the conference itself. I'm quite sure if they notice a potential problem, they'll let the local police know.
So even if you think the local cops and the RCMP are stupid (hint: they aren't) you are dealing with a much higher level of intelligence gathering for something like this.
No it can't. That may be so in whatever state you are in, but not in Washington, Florida, Kentucky or California (though California may have changed recently- I haven't lived there steadily in several years).
An event like this involves more than three days in execution. There are months of planning involved. That costs money. Resources are tied up in advance of the event. That costs money. I would like to see an itemized accounting for this event.
Arrested with 3 gas cans, an axe handle, baseball bat, sticks, a chainsaw, a crossbow, and various other items in his trunk.
Those items sound like something a person would bring if they were going camping. It's hard to get firewood without a chainsaw, some fuel for that chainsaw, and an axe. (Well it was an axe handle but the axe head could have worked loose or was broken off.) The sticks could have been for starting the campfire. The baseball bat could be for, you know, playing baseball. The crossbow could either be used for more idle amusement, as in some target practice, or for use against animals for protection or food.
When I go camping I tend to bring things much more deadly, such as rifles and knives. But this is Canada we're talking about. A rifle would be completely out of the question so people have to fall back to a less effective means to protect themselves, such as a crossbow.
"The law is the law -- it hasn't changed under these circumstances," he said.
"But quite clearly if an individual comes down into the area, is engaged in protest activity and is carrying things that could be used as a weapon, that matter's going to be investigated by the police and those items can be removed from that individual in the interests of maintaining a safe environment for everybody."
So anything that could be used as a weapon? "I'm sorry sir, you cannot bring that picket sign into this area as it could be used as a weapon. Also, you will need to leave your belts and shoelaces behind. Can't allow you to go strangling people."
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Thanks, you basically summed up my feelings on the matter.
The only reason this guy has gotten arrested is because he saw this insanity and wondered "how effective is it really" and proceeded to tell everyone he knew (and a whole bunch of people he didn't know) that he planned to test the security of the thing.
.
No "Conservative" ever gets to talk about adscam ever again.
I am so glad I quit being a Conservative years back, when they promised to never ever ever ever tax income trusts. And then they did, about 6 months after the elections, and my eyes were opened, and I said "Oh. All politicians are lying, cheating bastards." So when MP James Moore, a Conservative, decided to deride copyright reformers as "radical extremists" who "don't have any interest in reforming copyright" and have "babyish views" of it, I wasn't surprised any more than when other Conservatives decided to spend a billion dollars on G20 security.
My point is, every single person in office can be expected to be a lying, cheating bastard. So I think you're right; no Tory gets to complain about adscam or Liberal waste as the height of calumny. They've treated their term in office like it was a race to outspend and outlie the Liberals, and despite the difficulty of the goal, they've achieved it. By the same token, however, the Liberals, who set the bar for the Tories to pass, don't get to complain about this, either. The Bloc Quebecois, who spend all their time extorting similar volumes of cash from the rest of Canada by threatening to disrupt the ruling party's voter base, don't get to complain about it. No party has any right to complain about other parties' wasteful spending, because every party spends criminally while in power. So if one party's crimes prevent them from complaining about another party's crimes, Parliament Hill would get really quiet.
I think, instead, maybe we ought to object to wasteful government spending no matter what party we object to, belong to, or support. I think we ought to object to wasteful spending because it harms Canadians, and not to score points for our favoured party. So I decry the Conservatives spending $1B, and I decry the Conservatives for implementing the GST in the Mulrouney years, and I decry the Liberals for implementing the NEP that destroyed two provinces' economies for a decade, and I decry the Liberals for adscam. There's plenty of blame to go around and no reason to single out a certain party's sins, or assume the other parties are any better.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
We have officially reached insane levels of polarization in the reporting of this event. Law claims he is basically a terrorist, but claim that he is an independent researcher seeing how well our tax dollars are being spent holds water, and gives the police a very good reason to lie.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
So anything that could be used as a weapon?
Yep. They would still have to prove he intended to use those items as weapons, but anything at all can become a weapon when it comes to charging someone.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Unlike Americans, most Canadians have had some level of military training, and have easy access to explosives and hunting rifles - in point of fact, Canadians have twice as many guns per person than Americans do, they just don't use them to kill people in civilian life.
Thus, it's not that unusual for any Canadian to have both experience and training in these things.
That said, it's more likely CSIS or the RCMP are trying to justify their budgets and just plain hate Canadians legal rights to privacy as enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
(caveat - I used to be on the other side of riots when I was in the Canadian Army)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think there is some kind of law to prevent wrongful arrest so that a cop can't just make up some ridiculous charge and throw you in the slammer
And tens of police raided the guy's house, arrested him - and apparently later, his girlfriend - and charged them both with very specific crimes, including possession of weapons & explosives.
Do you think the police just sit around the squad room all day and go, "Joe, check me out. Why don't we... drive up to a random house in Toronto, kick the door in, arrest the guy on trumped up charges, get the story splashed in newspapers around the world, and then have a beer and laugh about it?"
He and his girlfriend are being charged with very specific crimes; Given the intensity of the media coverage surrounding the G20, the level of outrage over the security spending, and the fact that so many people were involved in the raid and arrest, I think it's far more likely that there is something *actually illegal* going on here. Think of the black eye to Canada (and especially their law enforcement), if this were shown to be trumped up charges over a guy with a cell phone, a can of gas in his garage, and a couple walkie talkies? They'd be laughed at as a bunch of Keystone Kops for years over this.
Your scenario, where it's just a bunch of crooked cops looking to railroad some guy for a crime he didn't commit, while no doubt appealing to the "IANAL, but I play one on Slashdot!" crowd, simply doesn't pass the test of logic. It would require dozens, perhaps hundreds, of law enforcement and judiciary personnel to be corrupt to the point of downright evil in order for that to happen. Is it *possible*? Sure, just about anything is. But it's not *likely* that that many people would wake up and, in the midst of Canada being in an international press spotlight, decide to ruin someone's life just for the fun of it.
Perhaps it's a misunderstanding, and the guy bought a bunch of weapons and bomb-making materials "just to see if anybody would notice." Well, guess what? They noticed, and now the justice system is responding in exactly the way it should to somebody who legitimately appears to be a threat to public safety.
Cryptography is classified as munitions. Trying to export the wrong stuff without a license is like trying to export a tank or a missile.
This is false. While they were considered as munitions under Clinton's Executive Order 13026 crypto was put under much weaker commercial controls. See http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=1996_register&docid=fr19no96-98.pdf
....by all accounts, "Inflamed (1156277)" showed no malicious intent....
THL phish sticks
This post makes me wish there wasn't a max 5 on the mod points. This should be way up there.
AccountKiller
Our government has gone insane..
In other news today.. Our "Heritage Minister" said that people who oppose their new DMCA anti-circumvention legislation are radical extremists.
Any day now, we'll wake up and the Stephen Harper nightmare will be over.
Arrested by "a task force of around 50 police officers"?
Can you picture a force of 50 officers coming to arrest one person? The need for "security" has become so overdone since 911 it's beyond ridiculous. 50 officers is not a "task force". It's a fucking ARMY. No bloody wonder that Canada has spent over a BILLION DOLLARS on security for the G20 summit. What an incredible waste.
Of course it happens. Do a simple google search for "false arrest" with your state or province name, and you'll find lawyers who advertise as specialists in this type of case. They wouldn't be offering the services if it wasn't helping to pay their bills.
In the United States at least, the real issue is whether or not the claim of "false arrest" shows a violation of "clearly established law". Law enforcement officials are granted qualified immunity against "false arrest" claims, with the qualifier being that no such violation occurs.
In the link provided above, an example of false arrest is outlined, Sorrell v. McGuigan (4th Cir. 2002). The plaintiff was arrested for possession of a weapon, when the law clearly exempted the type of knife he was carrying. The officer thought the knife constituted a weapon, and so arrested him. Because the knife wasn't considered a weapon under the law, and the man hadn't broken any law, he sued for false arrest, and the officer's qualified immunity was denied, and that denial has been upheld on appeal.
I'm not certain of the details of the law in Canada, but I'm certain that they have false arrest provisions as well, and I've no doubt that a massive suit will be brought against anybody with a hand in the G20 security effort if there's even a shred of hope that the guy's being arrested & held on completely trumped up charges.
"You are free of all charges but marked potentially dangerous to the event. A police officer (a security expert) will accompany you at all times until after the summit, and will report all your moves. Do not avoid said officer nor try to conceal your activity from them. You are welcome to continue testing the security like you did so far, in fact we specifically request you to do so. Of course, if any of your routes appears to have a chance to succeed, we will stop you, but you will suffer no consequences. After all, what good is finding security flaws for if they are not reported to the maintainer and given a chance to be patched? So keep poking at our security, please, just don't keep us in the dark about what you find, and don't be surprised if you trigger some traps and alarms we set up."
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
His whole point is that we could get the desired security for a whole lot less money if we didn't put it smack in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the country.
We could have held it on a military base, or on a cruise ship, or in a 5-star hunting lodge up north. All of those would have been way cheaper.
Heck...they could have *built* a 5-star hunting lodge up north for the event, and then given it to a local community to operate for profit afterwards.
The reason the man was arrested is because, without obtaining proper authority he decided to do the equivalent of make bomb jokes at the goddamn airport. it was there job to find potential threats and they found one, the man painted a target on himself and, because that's what security is supposed to do, they nabbed him. That being said, I think 50+ officers is overdoing it, and the security for the G20 was overkill. The man should face charges of 'mischief' or otherwise, be given a slap on the wrist, and everyone should make a big deal about it. They have to scare off people like him, the ones who want to dick around with security(for good intentions or bad). It causes a huge waste everyone's time and resources.
All this is is an example. They can' get a false flag, so they have to set an example because they can't let all that money go to waste without cracking down on something new.
Legally a cop can charge you with just about anything.
And legally you can sue him if the charges are egregiously false.
Likewise, you can inform the public that their police officers are wasting enormous amounts of public money charging people falsely. Eventually, that will get the entire police force changed into one that doesn't do that any more.
At least in a democracy. Which this one (and Canada) still is, at least until people start whining about how oppressive the government is instead of participating in it, because it's them oppressing themselves until they do.
I still have moderator points, but I haven't found '-1 Wrong and somewhat clueless' or '-1 Too stupid for a troll' option, so I'll just elaborate.
Your statement about the argument being bullshit is bullshit.
Just like in case of BP not spending the necessary money and not securing the Gulf of Mexico properly and now paying tens of billions for it + all that oil in the water, imagine if a representative of any country got hurt or killed, what that would do to the image of the country.
First of all, the accident happened with BP was the first of all due to lack of government regulation, does abbreviation MMS ring any bells? and greedy corporations being greedy and all. BP thing was entirely preventable and should not have happened at all, that's why everyone is pissed at them, and the billions it will pay will probably not cover all the damage anyway.
Sort of like that luge accident during the Vancouver Olympics that was totally avoidable had the organizers put some soft barriers, like nets in front of those metal posts that the poor 20y.o. Georgian dude killed himself against.
Allocating more money on the problem does not mean that the soft barriers would have been installed anyway, there's always multiple things to spend money on.
Should it be a billion or half of that or 2 billion, I don't know, but what is known is that a failure in this sort of thing would cost magnitudes more than this money spent.
The biggest problem here, as the parent pointed out, is that why the hell did the meeting had to take place in Toronto with government pointlessly spending garbles while paralyzing a major city and giving its inhabitance an impression of living in a police state? I'm not even evaluating a cost of failure in security, but it's efficacy and how it would have been much better for everyone if Stephen Harper would feel the need to compensate for the perception of the size of his penis, which now I have reason to assume is a quite a bit below average.
And what's up with that artificial lake?
Anyway even if I agreed with the whole point that these summits are in some way promoting Canada, I don't think being a pointless show-off and then letting taxpayers foot the bill gives the right message.
Hey, aren't you conservative libertarians are supposed to be for limited government and fiscal responsibility?
You'd be guilty of manslaughter or negligent homicide, not murder. Murder requires intent. Manslaughter/negligent homicide only requires a willful disregard for life/criminal negligence.
Actually, your argument is far more spurious. Allow me to poke some holes in it. First, you have not countered any of my claims. You have put forth two unrelated points and hope that an oil spill caused by recklessness and a luge accident caused by poor design somehow justify spending a billion dollars on security.
What is the cost of security for these dignitaries at home? Do they spend $3500 every second (cumulatively, of course) on their security? The fencing is $1500 per metre. (or yard, for the Americans out there.) To put that into perspective, they could have built the fence out of Plasma TVs. However, unlike the Panasonic I've got in my living room, it's going to be dismantled and scrapped once everyone goes home.
Canada doesn't have assassinations, we don't have terrorist acts, and we don't have any justification whatsoever for this much expense.
Who is moving to hurt these dignitaries? What plots exist? What's the intelligence chatter? Is anyone behind anything?
No.
All we have from the CPC's talking heads -- many of whom are actually paid to astroturf and argue online about how AWESOME the CPC is and how great a job our PM is doing -- is "imagine what would happen if someone got hurt".
That's it: "Shut the fuck up and let Harper spend your money the way he sees fit."
That's a little interesting, as our Industry Minister has poured... let's look this up... $50 million into his own riding in order to boost his re-election chances and claimed that rework dozens of kilometers away from the summit was "required work for the summit".
As for Nodar Kumaritashvili, whoever designed the track should have been facing criminal charges or at the very least sanctions from APEG-BC. I'm astonished that it didn't happen.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
How much time in advance did the Canadians have to put this together in, was it enough to build a hotel or whatever? Besides, it is irrelevant what you build if you still have to secure it, and securing a totally new structure from scratch is probably much more difficult than an existing one.
I don't really know what went into the 1 Billion, I am interested to see, but to put a blank statement that the fraud perpetrated by the former government is the same thing as spending a billion or whatever on security for a meeting for a bunch of world-leaders, their stuff, to make it all work... it's not a fair comparison.
Whether there was any money wasted or not on this event (and government always wastes money) does NOT change the fact of the liberals' government behavior.
You can't handle the truth.
Another useful measure: the federal deficit in Canada is expected to be ~$60 billion this year, meaning the security of this conference accounts for about 1.7% of it.
Of course, the greatest irony is that several countries at the conference, including Canada, are strong advocates winding down stimulus funding and tackling the fiscal deficits that have built up in most of the G8 countries. When it comes time to cut the costs of useful things in order to do that (e.g., healthcare, education, infrastructure, defense, whatever), please remember that we could have saved ~$1 billion in security costs *alone* by not hosting the G20/G8. That doesn't begin to cover all the other costs and the costs for all the attending nations. They should have started by just having a fricking video conference call/
"We need to cut the costs of government" [while we spend >$1 billion to host a conference where we can say how important that is] Brilliant! Next they'll be cutting our chocolate rations for the good of the War in Eastasia.
Every G8/G20 leader that attends this financial boondoggle while saying they need to tackle government deficits back home needs a good, swift kick in the butt. But I suppose I shouldn't publicly express my outrage lest someone in the security system think that it is a genuine threat rather than political commentary by a concerned citizen.
I agree with you, and the lying bastards from all parties waste money all the time -- this is just grieviously wasteful.
The conservatives spent hundreds of millions on Clement's riding and then forced the rest of us to spend double the costs on G8 / G20 because they had to keep G8 in his riding to cover the infrastructure costs. The airport sure is shiny and new, but too bad none of the G? are going to land there.
But hey, you're right, spending $500 million to get an Apple fanboi re-elected is totally not fraud or a violation of the Elections act.
By the way, I do not vote Lieberal (Fiberal?). You're the one who keeps voting for a party who wants to have unlimited government funding, no accountability to the citizens, and control over your body, your marriage, and your Internet. That's not libertarian. That's fascist.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
They could have bought every dignitary 20 new 3D plasma TVs, a 3D camera, and held it electronically.
They could have even kept the TVs. I would have been okay with that.
Wait -- is our financial future being worked out by people who don't know how to set up a conference call?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Godwin invoked I believe.
You can't handle the truth.
You'd know that security is relative to economic 3 way scale
The Monetary cost of providing it
against the dysfunction it creates
and the value of what you are protectiong.
The standard, you can have good, cheap, or fast, pick any 2. You'll never find a good quality, fast car for cheap. (sorry /. I had too).
The main thing though is you test in test systems... you don't test in production (unless it's a last resort, but it's highly frowned upon). Do this during a drill, not when real lives are at stake. This wasn't a security audit, this was a security exposition. An audit keeps things in a report, not expose intimate details to the world...
Security is ALLWAYS through obscurity at least a little bit. It'd be like taking a windows box, you open your IP address to the world and see who can get in after disclosing exactly what software / services you use too.
Now you just paid all this money for fancy schmancy security, then you want to also expose any potential flaws to the public, still expect security, and all for the same price?
I think maybe you just didn't see it the same way I did...
Or maybe you have a house at 1313 mockingbird lane in Beverly Hills CA, 90210 with a specific alarm package,
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Canada doesn't have assassinations,...
Pierre Laporte
we don't have terrorist acts,......
All 329 passengers perished aboard Air India flight 182 would beg to differ.
2 out of the Toronto 18 have been released on bail and is currently in Toronto.
It's like challenging a bully more than anything else. The press over here has made a parade over this summit and have been talking for weeks now about security and showing clips of random people on the street being asked for drivers licenses (which by law they do not have to provide as well they might not even have one). Now someone is going to try to publicly out all this hoopla on twitter? That's going to get some kind of reaction. If they can spin it where they believe he is a terrorist of some sort (if he is or not) now having a cup of fertilizer can potentially "explode" and becomes a charge of explosives. Of course the article has almost no details and I myself have no more then they do so we have to wait and see. I have to admit watching all this security theater going on in the new if this guy only did end up sending some random police talk over twitter it would make them look just as stupid as charging him before the fact for explosives and having nothing but bad gas.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
...[T]hey could have bought an Aircraft Carrier and parked it in the middle of Lake Superior and had an impenetrable fortress.
This suggestion is probably illegal because of the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817.
imagine if a representative of any country got hurt or killed, what that would do to the image of the country.
Depends on which representative. I think some of those other countries might as well pay Canada for something to "happen" to their leaders ~
The question that should be asked in the first place - why the hell do 20 people (they're still people, not Cthulhu-sized monstrosities, despite the fact that they're G20 leaders) need to meet in person in a highly publicized event in a middle of a large city just to discuss some matters, no matter how important? I'd bet most of the bill - which doesn't even account for major inconveniences to the locals - is due to that alone.
Just give them a cruise ship with an armed escort, and be done with it already. They don't need these kinds of meetings.
Think of the black eye to Canada (and especially their law enforcement), if this were shown to be trumped up charges over a guy with a cell phone, a can of gas in his garage, and a couple walkie talkies? They'd be laughed at as a bunch of Keystone Kops for years over this.
Just because -we- realize this doesn't mean the canadian law enforcement realizes this. They might have arrested him to shut him up, meanwhile patting themselves on the back for thinking up their brilliant idea of charging him with something rather than just beating him up.
As an American who lived under 8 years of Bush and company I can certainly sympathize with your feelings about gross overspending and mismanagement of money.
As an American who has lived under a little over 2 years of Obama... I'm cautiously optimistic on the whole "keeping his campaign promises" thing. One of these days on my vacation I'm going to have to read through the entire Obameter.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Harper has been learning from the Bush years and US Republicans it seems. This is a good attempt to ensure all of their corporate "supporters" get paid back for previous election support before the "Conservatives" get kicked out on their ass in the next vote of non-confidence. Its either criminal behaviour or gross miss-management by Harper's government, take your pick - because nothing on earth can possibly justify this big an expenditure for a 4 day event.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I found the stories associated with that incident.
This is the "OMG it's a bomb" story.
This is the follow-up with the truth. He would have been safer saying it was a water electrolyzer.
He was charged. The charges were dropped, but the school still fucked with him over it. You'd think an institution of higher learning would be able to understand what he was trying to do. {sigh}
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Actually, in those four words you've managed to fail at history, political science, and the Internet.
The political spectrum shows socialism on the left-hand side and fascism on the right. Fascism is not restricted to 1930s-1940s Germany. Rather, it is when the state enforces its will upon your own and individuals get little or no freedom. It's in the first paragraph on Wikipedia, for crying out loud. For example, adding restrictions on abortion, gay marriage, and copyright legislation are all fascist moves. (Yeah, I know, one of these things are not like the others.)
Godwin's law requires a direct comparison of someone or something to Nazi Germany or Hitler. You could, I suppose, also Godwin a discussion by invoking alternate Axis figures, for example Himmler, Mussolini, or by a stretch Hirohito.
Merely stating the fact that a behaviour pattern is fascist is not directly comparing anything to Nazis. There's no comparing the murder of 12 million civilians to the mishandling of citizen dollars. That's ridiculous and it shows a serious lack of political insight on your part. I can only assume that you're deliberately putting on a character, as logical flaws that deep should not exist in nature.
Also, none of the participants in the argument can call "Godwin" as that itself Godwins the thread, which means that either party can simply end the discussion by claiming Godwinning on the part of the other party.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
You are absolutely correct, sir. Thank you for the correction.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Well, first of all, thanks for being civil, that really helps to get your point across.
Also as one of the people replying in the same thread pointed out, comparing BP disaster and G20 meeting is a false dichotomy, if you don't see it let me spell it out -- one is ecological disaster and the other is federal government are just being assholes, if anything G20 meeting reminds me of Mulroney farewell tour.
But since we are talking about BP, your argument is complete bullshit BP is liable, but it's a corporation it has a limited liability, government can sue them only for so much and you can't just jail and shoot people, there's this thing called constitution (both in US and in Canada) that prevents government doing exactly that, there's also pension funds across whole europe that invested in BP and whole lot other reasons; is it enough to say why BP shouldn't just be arbitrary put on a pike?
Also in your fluffy libertarian world with weak (read small) government anyone is supposed to prevent corporations influencing it?
Liberal fraud and G20 meetings are both examples of government waste, I don't really see how you can miss this.
What do you mean by 'play with your moderator points'?
Uh, they actually did that. The G8 is up in Huntsville, and new buildings were constructed for that purpose. IIRC, I read that the G20 was originally supposed to be up there as well, but Huntsville isn't large enough to house all the delegations.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
I was suggesting that for a small fraction of the cost, an amazing SL-like videoconferencing system could be built. Top notch graphics, professionally made avatars for world leaders, real-time mo-cap with optical facial expression capture, high-def voice, multicasted HD video streams for the media, whatever you can imagine, all for under the cost of a summer blockbuster movie. And it could be absolutely secure (definitely no physical danger to world leaders) and would prevent a lot of unnecessary air traffic (more eco-friendly).
But I guess that's not fucktarded enough for the storyline of the dystopian sci-fi novel we're all apparently stuck in.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Why on Earth did this get modded as "Troll"?
I suppose the PTB wouldn't keep on lying if it didn't work so incredibly well.
-FL
Wrong arrest.
Ahhh. The desciption seemed to fit. Thanks for the correction.
So anything that could be used as a weapon?
Yep. They would still have to prove he intended to use those items as weapons, but anything at all can become a weapon when it comes to charging someone.
I AM going camping tomorrow. Going almost all the way to Canada to do it. Thankfully, not exiting the U.S., else I'd be in trouble with all my "weapons." :-)
When I go camping I tend to bring things much more deadly, such as rifles and knives. But this is Canada we're talking about. A rifle would be completely out of the question so people have to fall back to a less effective means to protect themselves, such as a crossbow.
Why would a rifle be out of the question? If you want to protect yourself from a grizzly, a cross bow is not a very good option. And of course lots of people combine camping and hunting.
Owning a rifle is quite legal as long as you also have a firearms acquisition certificate, meaning you took a short course on safely handling a firearm. (Actually I think the law is that it is illegal to sell a firearm to someone unless they can show you the F.A.C.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I think the idea of being in public and letting the public know is to keep it above the table even though the talks are closed. It also allows a platform for certain things to be said depending on how convenient or proper it may be.
If you found out that 20 leaders from the largest economies around the world met at some secrete location, the conspiracy radar would be going off like crazy. All this limited openness does is allows what little trust in government around the world there is, to remain.
It would be interesting for a group to host an axe handle rally where everyone shows up with blocks of hickory and makes axe handles. They could get 2000 or more people to walk in with wooden logs and walk out with axe handled just to overwhelm the police for stupid things like this.
If a guy going about his day can be arrested in Canada for possessing things that aren't illegal to posses- even when all possessed together, then I think they need a lesson in how bad of an idea that really is.
I think the idea of being in public and letting the public know is to keep it above the table even though the talks are closed.
I don't know. I'm also "the public", and I don't see how I'm better off in the slightest with all this. Furthermore, I don't see a problem with telling the people that they meet to discuss specific things, but why would we care where that happens?
I'm sure we all want our political leaders to not overspend on what is essentially bling - especially when one of the central points of the talk is fiscal austerity! Instead, this whole thing just reeks of a deliberate show of grandeur. The figure of $1B was announced in advance and widely publicized by now, so none of those attending can claim ignorance as to how much their little tea party is going to cost, and I can't believe they don't understand how it will be taken by the citizens - who are, in the end, the ones footing the bill. So is is really ignorance to such an extreme length, or an intentional gesture of "fuck you, know your place" to us all?
If you found out that 20 leaders from the largest economies around the world met at some secrete location, the conspiracy radar would be going off like crazy.
As far as conspiracy theorists are concerned, G20 has been a front for Illuminati/ZOG/aliens/whatever for as long as it exists - and the same applies to pretty much any international organization of influence, so nothing new there. Since their meetings are closed as needed, there's more than enough fuel for all those theories.
If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?
By every definition of murder I know, you can't "end up" murdering someone. Murder implies malicious intent, and usually planning as well.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
There is a very big difference between "killing" someone and "murdering" someone, and few people seem to know the difference.
None of whom is you, apparently.
The difference? Murder is the /unlawful/ killing of someone.
No, murder "is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent (or malice aforethought), and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter)." (Source, emphasis mine)
Murder is a type of unlawful killing, but not just any unlawful killing.
Boot note: The bible actually says "Thou shall not murder." Killing is actually just fine, you just have to do it lawfully. This is what allows religious nutters to take over planes and fly them in to buildings while simultaneously not considering their actions to be hypocritical.
Partly correct: "Based on an in depth analysis of the original Hebrew, Bible scholar Dr. Joel M. Hoffman concludes that "kill" is too broad but "murder" is too narrow to reflect tirtsah.[61] The Hebrew refers to all illegal killing, so it includes what is commonly called "murder" in English, but "manslaughter" as well. It did not refer to legal killing, such as in war or in sanctioned retribution." (Source)
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
No "Conservative" ever gets to talk about adscam ever again.
... So I think you're right; no Tory gets to complain about adscam or Liberal waste as the height of calumny. They've treated their term in office like it was a race to outspend and outlie the Liberals, and despite the difficulty of the goal, they've achieved it.
So what else is new? I live in the US, where conservative and liberal are not parties but ideological categories, but replace Tory with Republican and lower-case conservative and liberal, and your statement applies perfectly to our country going back thirty years or more.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I am a conservative (from point of view of Canadian politics), I mean I never vote liberal or ndp or any other garbage, I vote libertarian or conservative and that's that.
So you're trying to make yourself more credible by pointing out how closed-minded you are?
Your argument is bullshit.
...and showing that your best argument is an ad hominem?
So SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.
...and that you're egregiously immature even by /. standards?
Well, I think you've made your point.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Canada doesn't have assassinations, we don't have terrorist acts, and we don't have any justification whatsoever for this much expense.
...yet.
Just wait 'til the terrorists find out the Canadian G20 summits have the lowest security spending (in the hypothetical world where they do it your way), then see what happens.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Those examples are from 40 and 25 years ago, and I'd argue that spending this much on security theatre hardly makes anyone that much safer. There's still plenty of unprotected infrastructure and crowded public places out there waiting to be 'terrorized'. Maybe the spending could be considered justified since it'll likely ensure that important world leaders survive, but the reality of terrorism is that you don't have to deal the assassination-blow to the highest value targets to be effective.
Imagine how bad it would look if, despite spending this much, the leaders, safe in their well-secured citadel, looked out to see a bomb go off on the other side of the city. Tragic deaths aside, it'd be a public relations (and likely diplomatic) disaster for the hosts. The very nature of terrorism allows the terrorist to get attention and grief their enemies regardless of the level of security measures applied. It's not possible to lock down the entire universe. If one place is well defended, attack somewhere else. Guerilla warfare 101.
8 years... The location of the G8 rotates among the members.
Sorry bud, the "privileged elite" are just as much part of "the public" as you or me or anybody else. They may have "above average" wealth and power, but that doesn't exempt them from being part of "the public." Lots of non-privileged worker drones who have very pedestrian, decidedly middle class lives would also be affected by an attack or a bomb on those "privileged elites."
Unless they're so damn crafty that they've read Poe's "Purloined Letter," in which hiding in plain sight is an amazingly effective tactic! And let's not forget that this is the same Slashdot "IANAL but I play one" crowd that absolutely was certain Hans Reiser was simply being persecuted for "being odd," and Terry Childs was some sort of folk hero for refusing to hand over passwords to "unauthorized personnel" who were, in fact, quite authorized.
The guy - without any requests for it, or coordination, apparently, with the police & other security forces - decided he'd take it on himself to "see how good" the security was by doing suspicious things. Well, he got caught doing suspicious things that appeared to be illegal, and has now been arrested, and will be given a hearing in court. That'll be his chance to explain away everything and show how flimsy the evidence is - if it is. Until that point, the police did exactly what they should have - prevented him from being able to carry out what he appeared to be planning. He didn't tell police "Hey, I'll be testing security," they didn't ask him, "Hey would you test security?" So what do you want them to do? Sit there while he kills a bunch of diplomats?
Yeah, because we here on Slashdot are miles above the intellect of every detective, lawyer, judge, politician, analyst, and security consultant who has anything to do with the G20 security.
The overwhelming sentiment here at the time of their respective arrests was that Hans Reiser wasn't guilty, and Terry Childs was "just doing his job!", too.
No, it's like publicly stating that you intend to do suspicious things in order to "test the security" of a meeting of very powerful, very influential world leaders, and doing everything in your power to do "suspicious things," and then claiming that you're shocked - SHOCKED - that those cops proved to be quite capable at detecting the threat you posed, and containing it.
You're right, we'll wait and see. My money's on the simple fact that not everybody in this security effort is the dimwitted moron people here are assuming them to be, and they realize that arresting someone on transparent charges just because "we felt like it" is something that nobody's going to live down for a very, very, very, very long time if that's in fact what happened.
Just give them a cruise ship with an armed escort, and be done with it already.
I like the idea. Just for comparison, we should see what a few of the G20 navies would claim as the cost to use a carrier group for a four or five days.
Of course, the image of the G20 leaders meeting in a floating fortress might send a "we're under siege" message to the public, but at least the security arrangements would be simpler.
The fraud they've committed to organize this meeting is peanuts compared to the numerous frauds they have planned DURING the meeting.
There's a reason people protest the G20. It's yet another CFR / Bilderberg type of gig where a handful of crooked lying bastards discuss exactly how and how hard they are going to fuck us during the following year.
Me, I wish some of those security guards would take advantage of the situation and turn against their employers. Fuck unicorns, let the fascists eat lead.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's G8 followed by G20 in the same country.
You can't handle the truth.
While I admire your spirit, you are only part of "the public". So you not seeing the value of something isn't really the big picture here. In fact, there is probably lots of people just like you, I'm one of them. However, I know enough people who would be terribly frightened if world leaders were meeting in secrete spots. Maybe it's a hold over from some scifi movie or the cold war, but nothing good could happen in their minds.
Besides, one thing I learned a long time ago, if you give the appearance of no improprieties happening, then less people will accuse you of them. Regardless of anything, this public appearance is a shell that follows that line.
One Billion Dollars isn't really all that much when you break it down per representative. Most G20 countries have operating budgets or GDP's in the trillions of dollars, and you have to remember that this is Canada where everything is more expensive then in the US. If all 20 countries send representatives, it's about 500 million a piece. Now considering that they will send more then their top figurehead (lets assume 2 each), that's about 250 million per party. Now Obama is supposed to be there for 3 days so assuming the others will be too, that's about 83.5 million per day per state head. This still seems like a lot, but you can then break it down with their aids included and such and it doesn't seem all that much considering the increased security threat from a target created by all the leaders being in one spot at the same time.
ON the practical levels though, we have been able to transmit signatures for several decades now but we still see leaders from both countries get together to sign treaties and trade deals. That's because tradition has been that way forever, the people tend to like it, and politics tends to stay as close to the same as possible as long as they can keep their power. It's not ignorance or a fuck you, it's just the way it was so it's still the way it is.
Sure there are conspiracies now. But only the wackos and idiots fall for them. How many sane and otherwise intelligent people would fall for them if it was done in secrete. That would be quite a bit. Oh and BTW, I know conspiracies are believed by intelligent people, some conspiracies are so close to the truth it's not funny. Otherwise intelligent people is meant to mean they aren't the ones ignoring facts to keep the conspiracy alive. Or that's just what they want you to think.
It's as patently absurd an excuse as those people who justify looking at child porn by claiming to be "hunting it down to report to the police" (incidentally, I never hear in those cases that the people arrested have previously reported X incidents of offending material that they've found in the past, they're always incredibly unfortunate to be discovered on their first attempt). If you're planning on helping out the police, the first thing you should do is speak to the police. The chances are they will tell you that they have everything under control and thanks, but they don't need your assistance.
If you really think there are big holes in the security, report it to their superiors or contact someone in the government about your concerns. If they agree and if they think your insight is worthwhile, they might even hire you as an official security consultant to test their security. The fact is, most people who claim they're only testing security are either Walter Mitty characters living out some deluded fantasy, or else they're people with bad intentions seeking to cover them up with a shield of ineptitude.
I know we tend to want to support the plucky underdog, and some guy "testing the security" of a political event such as this is awfully similar to the plucky hacker "testing the defences" of the Military's computers, but really, even if you have the very best of intentions, if you put yourself in a situation where you mirror the actions of the "bad" guys without the explicit consent of the "good" guys, don't be surprised when the "good" guys treat you like a "bad" guy. As you said, he'll get his day in court to argue his point (but the courts tend to frown on vigilantes just as much as the police), but really if his actions were merely to test security and he did so fully aware of and ready to accept the risks inherent, he should be happy he got caught and happy to take whatever punishment is meted out (as this both proves that security is better than expected and acts as a deterrent).
If I take a gun and walk around the streets popping heads like pumpkins, can I claim to be an independent researcher testing the police response to gun crime? At the very least the guy's a vigilante taking the law into his own hands (I'm sure the G20 have very expensive agencies testing their security, and you won't hear about those agencies because they're very good at their job and aren't busy dumping reports of security flaws onto a public forum where real bad guys can easily access them), at worst he's a terrorist. Either way he gets to have his day in court and plead the lesser offence and have his actions judged by a jury of his peers. What reasonable alternative do you suggest, leave him be and see what happens?
I'd guess the venue is as much about schmoozing the media as anything else - make them traipse out into the middle of nowhere (and probably end up sleeping in camper vans if they're lucky, since the politicos have the only accommodation in the area) and you're not going to get favourable news reports. Of course there's also the logistics of getting all these diplomats safely from international airports out to the middle of nowhere and back, although hiring a fleet of helicopters would probably still come in much cheaper.
Why even meet at all in that case? Teleconferencing, hell even some kind of virtual reality system so you get the feeling of being there, would probably be a cheaper option (certainly long term and likely even short term depending on how sophisticated it needs to be). I don't understand why, when everyone's being told to tighten their belts and save money, we persist in flying these people all over the world - and then they tend not to even reach any agreements.
Those examples are from 40 and 25 years ago
While I don't disagree that this is a massive waste of public money (I've always wondered why the bill for these events falls on the hosts - why not split it and that way everyone will be arguing for doing things on the cheap rather than insisting on the best knowing some other foo' is footing the bill and you'll probably be out of power when your country's turn comes around), I have to say that this kind of complacency is what makes terrorist attacks so effective. Terrorists will be looking for targets that haven't been hit for a long time and are less likely to expect it. There must be other ways of minimising costs and maximising security - teleconferencing seems to make the most sense to me - massively distributed user locations, extremely cheap to implement, completely re-usable. What we need to do is vote in more geeks who are comfortable with technology and don't believe you can only get the measure of a man by looking him in the eye, and we could have this solution up and running in a couple of years max.
The only way to tackle worldwide monetary deficits is by puring money down a huge hole until we eventually end up back at the bartering economic standard. If love of money is the root of all evil, these politicians are saintly indeed for disposing of it as quickly and pointlessly as possible, no? (Note: misunderstanding of money flows intentional for comedic effect).
Agreed, it happens probably a hell of a lot more than people think - although admittedly it's usually technicalities these days (evidence obtained with the wrong kind of warrant, or possibly contaminated or incorrectly processed, or some legal issue in the casework brought against the defendent) that are voiding people's convictions rather than ostensibly planted evidence. The reason for this isn't that the police have become more honest in the last 30 years (ha!), it's that there is a hell of a lot more scrutiny involved at every stage of the process, and for the vast majority of cases it's just not worth planting evidence, especially if the guy is definitely guilty. Better to let him go to court with flimsy evidence than risk voiding the whole process and throwing your career away by planting something more substantial.
Bravo,
What do you need a billion dollars worth of tax payer security for in Canada!? What are we going to do to them, throw hot poutine at them!?
I'm sorry, there are enough watchlists out there that they could have barred all people on these lists from entering Canada and that would have done all they needed to do for the main security.
Heck, Obama got out of his car in Ottawa and started going through shops after he got elected. We showed him true Canadian spirit and gave him maple syrup and other gifts. Did they spend $12.5 million for security on him for the day!?
Canada's political parties are F'd up! There is nobody left to vote for that is worth a shit. God help us all Canadians if Harper gets a majority on the upcoming election. God help us if the Liberals, NDP, or Green party get's in.
Time to move to Europe!
The Internet is Serious Business.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Christ, what an Asshole!
No malicious intent? Yet he planned to take encrypted police communication and broadcast it via Twitter? What an idiot. Throw him in jail. That is not "testing" security.
Most of that money went for putting up fences and the like around town... oh, and sprucing up a few small towns over 100 miles away that the G8-G20 people will never visit in order to boost tourism somehow. Don't forget the 2 million dollar fake lake and media center next to a real lake which will promote the beauty of the Canadian wilderness... There's the almost 100 million dollar sprucing up of Huntsville for, uh, nothing as it turns out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/world/americas/25canada.html
I for one enjoy the ~1 million spent for new sidewalks which cover half of the fire hydrants, new gazebos, landscaping and 200k Welcome rock (as in stone, not music). Nobody from the G8 or G20 will be going there by the way.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/820390--from-fountains-to-gardens-to-buried-hydrants-it-s-a-new-world-in-the-near-north
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b3755778
But that's ok, it's the other host nations which understate what it actually costs them to run a G8-G20 meeting. We're honest here in Canadia!
~Syberz
Canada doesn't have assassinations,...
Pierre Laporte
we don't have terrorist acts,......
All 329 passengers perished aboard Air India flight 182 would beg to differ.
2 out of the Toronto 18 have been released on bail and is currently in Toronto.
No terrorist acts, right... He might want to google the FLQ as well...
~Syberz
My father worked two jobs just so we had enough money to throw into the hole!
Interesting.
Wow man do you have citations for any of that? I mean any of it at all? TFA only states what a friend of his at his security research group said. There is not one word or quote from the guy suspected. So as far as publicly saying and thing even a syllable and being able to derive any type of quote would be interesting. Please do tell.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
So you're trying to make yourself more credible by pointing out how closed-minded you are?
- credible? There is nothing on /. that makes you less 'credible' with the moderators etc. by pointing out you are a libertarian.
I'm not talking about the mods, I'm talking about your attempt to make your point. And I'm not talking about pointing out that you're libertarian, I'm talking about specifying a narrow band that you consistently vote in regardless of issues in a given election, shifts in the parties, et cetera. Think of it this way: If I came to you and tried to convince you of something by beginning with, "I never vote any way except Liberal," how seriously would you take what I have to say?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
and costs of 'cleaning up' disasters are much higher than costs of preventing them.
And your point being?
If a government wants to, has a political will and the correct structure (read: is not neck deep in taking 'contributions' and generally relying on the corporations for the (re)elections) then nothing at all can stop a government from suing.
Most electoral campaigns in Canada are publicly funded -- http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/federal-campaign-finance-laws-canada
Here's also a nice table from that website:
Public Support as Portion of Total Funding by Political Party (2007)
Bloc Québécois 86%
Green Party of Canada 65%
Liberal Party of Canada 63%
New Democratic Party of Canada 57%
Conservative Party of Canada 37%
Also your second to last paragraph is mostly an incomprehensible rant, try turning off the TV and learn how to paraphrase.
And fuck you too.
His friends have reported that he "told them he was going to test security," by monitoring communications, sending emails with suspicious keywords, and the like.
Did you RTFA or any of the associated coverage at all? "Publicly stating" doesn't necessarily mean he disseminated his intent to everybody in the world, with affirmative confirmation that we all knew what he was about.
Slashdot is not nearly as liberal as it pretends to be, and ideas that question, challenge, critique or otherwise stand in the way of a peculiar blend of technological determinism, corporate libertarianism, and blinkered industrialism usually gets blasted as Troll, Offtopic, Flamebait or whatever.
I think the cure to this is transparent modding. you should know who knocked you down.
but again, given the above as the modus operandi and theoretical formation of slashdot, that's not likely to happen.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Isn't it a war crime to put targets of military value in the middle of a civilian population? That's what we're always bitching about Hamas doing.
I guess it's "okay" here because the leaders never recognize themselves as legitimate targets. They think commanding a war while dressed as a civilian separates them from the responsibility.
It's the G20, not G20K, it only needs to have a few hundred people at it, tops. If the bill for a three-day meeting comes to a significant fraction of the GDP perhaps you should cancel it and buy some video-phones.
A billion dollars is being thrown away, against objections, on something we don't need. If you don't think that's fraud you're harping on technicalities.
You are some sort of a dunce, or what? Now you are mixing the punishment that should be brought upon BP for the oil spill AFAIC with the public funding provided to the Canadian politicians.
Back at you with whatever you have there, buster.
You can't handle the truth.
You can take anyway you like, I rather enjoy being an ideologue, I can't ever vote for NDP (which I associate with totalitarianism) or for anything named 'Liberal', which I associate with Keynesian in economic sense, the kind that promotes equality of outcomes.
Of-course Canadian conservative party is a liberal party in terms of social issues, it could never be anywhere near the Republican party of USA, and I am a Canadian. Whenever I have a possibility I vote libertarian, if there is no possibility I will vote conservative. Do I need you to take me seriously here? Unlikely. Do you think I take you seriously here? Really?
You can't handle the truth.
Resisting assault and resisting arrest are different things.
This is a lost cause. All you have is hear say. Like I said no one but the person involved and the police know what is going on at this point but sensationalizing his possible intentions and correlating that with some kind of perceived guilt isn't going to cut it for me anyway. Shouldn't have given this as much time as I have, sorry.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
From this page:
And if he was "just testing," he still was behaving suspiciously - intentionally so, and now gets to find out exactly how good the security is at the G20 summit. When police see somebody behaving suspiciously and believe they could pose a threat, it is the job of those officers to stop the person from being a threat.
Misunderstandings are possible, but when the guy has, as reported, publicly stated his intention to test the security without any coordination with those security services, how exactly would you have them react? Ignore him?
better yet; just give them each a telephone with conference calling, or a web cam.
Ok, given that, having a cricket bat in the closet can result in a "dangerous weapon" charge being added to the list. Which makes me suspect even more that it was just added for negotiation purposes.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
That's the obvious next step, yes. I presume there are some security issues with that, but I'm pretty sure that we've had tech for real-time strong (as in, no intelligence service of those same G20 members could break it) encryption of audio/video streams for quite a while now.
Do I need you to take me seriously here? Unlikely. Do you think I take you seriously here? Really?
Well if you neither intend to be taken seriously nor to take others seriously, what's the point of making a coherent argument, or even a coherent statement, let alone of engaging in discussion? You might was well have started out going "monkey monkey monkey typewriter monkey typewriter shakespeare complete monkey infinite shakespeare fred fred jones bob" and finished by piping your post from /dev/random. I began by assuming that, since you did not do so, but rather engaged yourself in discussing politics, you intended to be taken seriously.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Yeah, because we here on Slashdot are miles above the intellect of every detective, lawyer, judge, politician, analyst, and security consultant who has anything to do with the G20 security.
Maybe, but my point was that we shouldn't assume those specific law enforcement agents in question aren't doing this to shut him up just because it would be a bad idea.
Way to put words in my mouth, by the way.
Was he acting on his own or did he have help from the inside, I wonder if this was a test set up independently by the gov. but without affiliation so as to test its own weaknesses, or maybe have no ties in case something went wrong???
So they can use the citizens of Toronto as human shields against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, of course.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Isn't that our Industry Minister's riding?
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
I'm sorry you feel I'm putting words in your mouth.
In that case, please explain to me how your comment that "Just becasue -we- realize this doesn't mean the Canadian law enforcement realizes this." can be taken as anything other than a commentary on how smart the average slashdotter is, compared to the average person working in canadian law enforcement?
There are a host of other reasons other than "public ridicule" that makes this a "bad idea". I cited the public ridicule effect due to the simple fact that this happening during the G20 summit means that this will be all over the press as a result - it's international news, not just "some crackpot got busted with what we thought were explosives in his backyard, turns out we were wrong, ha ha!" written up in the local paper.
"Hi Mr. Business Owner. I see you've spent a lot of money on your guards, scanners, etc and you're probably wondering how well it's all working. Here is an SD card with a movie I recorded of me walking into your production areas carrying banned items without being properly screened or questioned."
"Hi Mr. Politician, here is a simple metal blank the same size and rough shape as a gun that I just passed through airport security onto this flight - what else might they have missed."
Yes, I can see people getting mad in both cases, but not justifiably.
If the question is what proportion of the population has military experience, your sample set of the people you met while working in the military just might not be representative of the Canadian population as a whole...
No, at various times I saw DND stats on how many people in age ranges in Canada had some military training or experience. It's a lot higher than in the US - training-wise.
It's totally possible it decreased dramatically since when I was CC for PMA and Acting SecO for PMA. Kind of doubt it, however. Especially with so much military being in Afghanistan (higher per capita than US) for almost 10 years now.
Mind you, I was in back when all the missions were peacekeeping or local counter-terrorism or dealing with riots.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not a bad critique, if a bit simplistic and immature (wah wah, I have to work for a living, I'm a slave-serf!) I do wonder if you think society could really be arranged much differently at this point in our development (unless you're the David Icke type there's nothing particularly remarkable about the "aristocrats" - they're just people), and if so, how. Unless you just like griping for its own sake, and have no intention of trying to change things for the better.
Yeah, uh, you might too. The FLQ were implied when he mentioned Pierre Laporte...
I thought it was pretty clear he was correcting individual points, since he wasn't making that particular argument in the first place...
I know, I just wanted to name the actual terrorist group responsible for the act.
~Syberz
It is, but that's just a coincidence I'm sure...
~Syberz
How do you figure that Canada has a higher per capita military presence in Afghanistan than does the US? Official ISAF troop contribution statisics are 2830 from Canada and 62415 from the United States. The total populations of the two countries differ only by about a factor of ten.
for quite a few years there, Canada was in Afghanistan and there were no US military forces. Well, not counting CIA/etc.
You don't get to make up stats using this years figures, after we've been fighting for longer than WW II, you have to use them for the total duration.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --