Pirate Party of Canada Promises VPN For Freedom

An anonymous reader writes "The Pirate Party of Canada has announced that it will extend a VPN originally set up to allow people in Tunisia to browse freely while internet censorship was imposed there. Canada may soon be added to that list since the ruling Conservative Party has vowed to introduce a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians' personal communications. So the Pirate Party of Canada has announced it will extend that service to Canadians."

Comments

Conservative party 'vows'

[unity100]

See, non-conservative parties also perpetrate shit. but, they do not take their filth perpetrating and public-enemyness to a level of 'vowing' for something that is so anti-people.

but you cant go wrong with conservative. they will even vow to take away your freedoms and do not flinch in the process. if you challenge them, they will say they are doing the right thing.

Re:Whats the use?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true, if the VPN _doesn't_ use a cert from one of the major SSL cert providers (which may already be compromised by governments) and you check the cert. It's trivial to use openssl (possibly with a wrapper like TinyCA) to issue your own certs, so if the VPN provider is doing that, it's much harder in some ways for a government to MITM (in fact, if they do manage it, it means either (1) they've compromised the VPN provider itself or (2) RSA is broken)

This is why gpg security is "better" in some ways than SSL CAs - no central CA authority to compromise. It's weird that we haven't seen a gpg encryption option for TLS yet though, there's no technical difficulty I can see.

A conservative no doubt

[SmallFurryCreature]

What is the use of one man standing in front of a tank? That one man stood. You would have folded. That man may be dead but he is a man. You are not.

Sometimes a symbolic action has value. Just to show not all people fold as easily as you do.

PPoC is a joke

[billcopc]

Having sat on one too many IRC meetings, I can quite firmly state that the Pirate Party of Canada is a joke, a very profound disappointment. Every single moment I've spent on their web site or in a chat room has felt like a colossal waste of my time. Nothing but a bunch of overgrown children fussing over inane trivia, trying to sell memberships and merch, and refusing to agree on any sort of official stance or direction. They can't promise shit, because they're too busy arguing over who's going to pay for the next batch of business cards. Appoint a goddamned treasurer, throw fund raisers and awareness rallies, take out ads in the paper or on progressive TV channels, you know, the usual political song-and-dance.

To put things into perspective, the non-partisan OpenMedia group has had great success in the battle against UBB (usage based billing), by leveraging those very same activities. They send an email, maybe once a month, asking for donations and listing off any upcoming meets in my area, and they have delivered RESULTS! If the PPoC put in one tenth of the efforts and professionalism demonstrated by the OpenMedia group, they'd have far more credibility and pull.

Even non-geeks tend to have the opinion that the PPoC are just a bunch of freeloading cyber-hippies, and that's insulting to hippies.

Re:PPoC is a joke

[Nimatek]

"Pirate Parties around the world are one-issue parties"

This is incorrect. The scope of the Pirate Party movement differs from country to country. In countries like Sweden and Germany they evolved from being one-issue parties and worked out programs that cover a whole range of political issues, while their membership and electorate keep growing steadily. Here is the party program of the German Piratenpartei, for example: http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Parteiprogramm

You can't have a 'traditional' party right from the start, there need to be certain levels of momentum, manpower and support, for it to be able to branch out and compete with the established parties on their turf. The cool thing about new parties is that you can take part and contribute to shaping the program and course significantly, which is exactly what they need. If you agree with their general aims - contribute. Pirate Parties won't magically materialize out of thin air and change politics by people just waiting for them to do so.

Re:PPoC is a joke

[psema4]

Hi Billco. I'm a member of PPCA (PPoC was dropped as the acronym quite some time ago) and would like to address a couple of your concerns;

First, most of the time the IRC channels are full of unstructured discussion - but not always. We have structured meetings on a regular basis as well, something that has improved in the last few months. As we development continues on our meeting bot, it'll get better.

Second, we're a young party in Canada and many of us are not professional fund raisers, political science majors, or lawyers. We don't have a war chest, so throwing around what money we do have isn't something we want to do in a wanton fashion. I'm sure that as we grow and attract those with backgrounds (hint, hint) that include these skills, we'll be able to do the "usual political song-and-dance."

Outside of our core concerns, our "party line" (if you will) is to make sure that we represent local constituents the way they want to be represented. Not promise things we can't deliver.

At first, I was somewhat taken aback by your tone and perspective... A look at the big red warning your about page on fnarg.com help me understand though. Maybe you'd be up to stopping by IRC in the future and looking me up? I'd be happy to discuss your concerns further.

Cheers,
- Scott (PPCA Clerk)

More info

[a whoabot]

The Conservatives Commitment to Internet Surveillance

Interestingly: "None of this is to say the Liberals would be any better. They introduced their own lawful access package many years ago and the reaction of MPs like McTeague in 2009 was "what took you so long." The Liberals point to protection from digital threats in their platform, but do not specifically discuss lawful access. They should be asked about where they stand now (so too for the NDP which marshalled opposition in 2009)."

Looks like NDP are the ones to support on this issue.

Link to Conservative promise to monitor internet

[davecb]

First mention of bundling "lawfull access" (aka monitoring) and crime bills for passage within 100 days.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Conservative+majority+would+bundle+crime+bills/4580146/story.html

Link to Conservative platform containing the promise
http://www.conservative.ca/media/ConservativePlatform2011_ENs.pdf
Search for "100 days"

Subsequent comments:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/blogsection/0/126/10/10/

"The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.

While some of that information may seem relatively harmless, the ability to link it with other data will often open the door to a detailed profile about an identifiable person. Given its potential sensitivity, the decision to require disclosure without any oversight should raise concerns within the Canadian privacy community.

The second prong requires Internet providers to dramatically re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance. The bill sets out detailed capability requirements that will eventually apply to all Canadian Internet providers. These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions."