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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.
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.
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.
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.
How about knowing if we, the canadian public, had our 2 billions's worth of security theater, fake lake and Conservative propaganda?
I dont know this person, or if he had honest intent. But i can think of good reason for such auditing exercise.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.