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Canadian Police Want New Internet Surveillance Tools
danomac writes "Police agencies in Canada want to have better tools to do online surveillance. Bill C-30 was to include new legislation (specifically Section 34) that would give police access to information without a warrant. This can contain your name, your IP address, and your mobile phone number. This, of course, creates all sorts of issues with privacy online. The police themselves say they have concerns with Section 34. Apparently, the way it is worded, it is not just police that can request the information, but any government agent. Would you trust the government with this kind of power?"
As somebody who grew up in Germany, I have seen ample historic precedent where this kind of snooping leads. Either fight it now or explain to your children in a decade or two why you did not prevent a surveillance state, where there is no free speech and no tolerated dissent.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Canadian citizens want to police. While we're at it, we also want new politicians.
These ass-clowns just don't get it that while laws that enable them to use new technologies are reasonable, laws that bypass established due process aren't. I don't care that computers allow much more efficient investi-trolling. You still get a warrant, or you don't get the data, in my world. Anything else - C-30 or not - is illegal to me and puts the government and police in an adversarial position relative to their constituents.
"Oh no... he found the
"It sound like some people I know who "Keep getting all these virus things no matter what I do!""
Remember the Sony BMG root kit?
Remember how no Antivirus detected it? Not even Anti root kit scanners?
Remember how only one tool initially detected it?
Now consider for a moment how many other government software/firmware moles/rootkits may be lingering within millions of people's proprietary systems (hardware/software-OS).
Wikileaks published a lot of information on companies willingly selling rootkits to governments and organizations. And do I really need to bring up HBGary?
So many fools using multiple proprietary scanners on their systems, the makers of which could all be in bed with big bro, the programs and/or updates could contain rootkits, and seriously, what the fsck is up with Microsoft and Flash both having so many remote exploits being patched all of the time?
The very products you trust, imo, could be the very e-poison from which you e-drink from.
To this day I laugh inside when twits tell me their system is "clean" because they scanned it with several proprietary tools.
Face it, even on Linux the quality of the root kit scanners are piss poor. You have to boot into a separate environment (like Remnux) to evaluate the malware, but most people won't do it, they'll wipe and reinstall and rely only on signatures which can be compromised. And when they find out they have an APT which continues to reinfect their computer(s)? Would they be intelligent enough to consider a firmware (PCI/BIOS) infection which survives hard drive wipes? Do they also have infected thumb drives laying around they plug into other computers around home and/or friends/family/work?
Chkrootkit has a function to list the strings of binaries, but it's up to you to determine whether or not the content of the strings are malicious. I've tried several root kit scanners on Linux and all of them are, imo, crippled pieces of trash. The crowd will yell back at you, "But most of these require root to exploit!" No, not at all, there are hundreds of ways to exploit a Linux box, many not requiring root, but a particular program/version. I won't even bite down on the subject of ways to subvert package managers. Heck, how many Linux repositories use SSL? SSH? Torrents with established "good" check sums for thousands of packages?
And I've not mentioned Flash and Adobe Reader for Linux and the past problems with those... and the NVidia driver for Linux, had in the past, one or two severe security issues whereby a remote exploit could take over the system! (Google it. The news of one exploit was in 2006.)
Our proprietary hardware and software are both at risk, and likely subverted world wide on millions of computers by governments and select organizations. The fact it takes years until a researcher trips over a particular piece of malware which none of the antivirus companies are detecting is inexcusable.
Were I head of a commercially developed antimalware company, I'd develop a website similar to Virus Total, but instead of the users uploading single files one by one, I'd give them a FOSS program which checked every part of their hardware, embedded and manually inserted, checksum the firmware (of all media drives, graphics cards, anything with firmware) and BIOS and tear apart the results, funneling them into separate result pages, each result for each component going to its own page for comparative results, rather than building a profile on one user's system. I would offer the users the option of publishing a one page result for their unique computer, but it would be opt-in only. Yes, checksum the firmware, including the router, and demand companies publish checksums and use GPG to sign their firmware, all of this information would go to the site as described. A massive database of important, but anonymously pulled and published information.
It's just going to get worse.
On the side, I've been saying to myself for years, IMO, "When Microsoft finally starts to show signs of
..they'll need that because kids taking pictures in malls will figure out how to auto-upload their pics on Dropbox. Ergo, they need to have more internet powers to stop such a heinous abuse of freedom.
-Styopa
The obvious conclusion is that keeping data is very expensive and you should be trying to find ways not to keep more, not finding reasons to hold more!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
so are stupid laws. There are many very powerful arguments for privacy being altogether dissolved, but we can't take away privacy AND continue forward with the same laws. Fact is people do a lot of illegal things that don't actually hurt anybody. If we can decriminalize those relatively innocent activities before eliminating privacy, we'll be OK.
Fact is privacy is going to go, already privacy is an illusion; nothing is truly private anyway, just obfuscated by complexity. Sooner or later, people find everything out, so instead of fighting that, let's fight malformed law.
This law comes up for debate about once every year or two and, to date, Canadians keep shouting it down. Hopefully people up here continue to do so. I'm fine with the RCMP having access to this information with a warrant, but warrantless access by anyone is a bad idea.
As the comments of the linked article suggest, there is no reason police can't get a warrant.
Of course that would entail some pillow talk...I mean probable cause arguments to a judge, I suppose. If even this tiny bit of protection is to be stripped away then all hope is truly lost for our free society.
What we need is Wikileaks to reveal whose really behind it and why. Like the Swedish prosecution of Pirate Bay, where torrent tracking is equated to copyright infringement is equated to a criminal act. Wikileaks revealed this was a demand from the US during secret discussions on laws that would be passed. Interesting the discussion was between the Swedish govt and the US govt and didn't include Swedish people:
http://torrentfreak.com/wikileaks-cable-shows-us-involvement-in-swedish-anti-piracy-efforts-101207/
Interestingly, I did a search to find that wikileak link, and found this one , which shocked me somewhat and explains why they want Assange prosecuted for something:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8202745/WikiLeaks-Swedish-government-hid-anti-terror-operations-with-America-from-Parliament.html
"The secret cables, seen by The Daily Telegraph, disclose how Swedish officials wanted discussions about anti-terrorism operations kept from public scrutiny. ....Making the arrangement formal would result in the need for it to be disclosed to Parliament, they said. "
Wow, the Swedish government had closer links to the Bush government (this was 2008) than it does to the Swedish Parliament.
... more webcams in shopping malls?
Am I on the wrong story?
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The police are still pissed off that the Government basically scrapped Bill C-30 after a national outcry about it. It seems that we Canadians just did not like the idea of warrantless wire taps and that the government wanted to gain access to all our internet data stored by our ISP, again with out a warrant, and without even requiring those getting the data to be law enforcement officials. .
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Presumably he's referring to *STASI* Surveillance, not Nazi Germany, so Goodwin doesn't apply.
Interesting, watching Naomi Wolf talk about how the Stasi actually only had 10% of the people under surveillance, and it was the fear of being watched that kept people from rising up. With all the new computer technology, states about to flip over to dictatorship can watch *everyone* all the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
It's well worth watching that video. The odd thing is that if you 'like' it, that will go into a log somewhere and laws like this one can datamine it and use it against you. All without oversight, all without checks and balances.
They can get a warrant very easily. Why do they want the power to go around that? If you have followed the HUGE outcry against C-30 you would also know that there will be no paper trail behind these requests either and politicians would also be allowed to make such requests. The current Canadian federal government is corrupt and shady and Canadians have already made it abundantly clear that we do not want this bill to pass.
That question is pure flamebait... Put it in a Slashdot poll
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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I don't mind them having better tools, as long as it doesn't usurp due process. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is why there are checks and balances, and they MUST be kept. If there is a good reason for needing the information, then getting a warrant should not be a problem.
There is a very important issue at stake here: transparency.
The ability to breach your privacy is a privilege granted to law enforcement for the purpose of fighting crime, but it is a privilege. The use of that privilege has to have just cause, which is what the whole warrant system is supposed to check.
The UK already has a problem with warrantless intercept based on a combination of RIPA 2000 and the magic word "terrorist", and from what I hear it is abused with gay abandon. Don't go there..
Insert
Probably won't be that big a deal... they'll likely be as disappointed with their "unlimited internet access" as I am with mine.
In the UK we had Jacqui Smith, who wanted to index everything you did on the Internet ready for searching by the police in very similar ways. She was voted out at the next election along with her party.
Good riddance.
98% of the population DO give a fuck. You just have to make a loud enough noise so people are made aware of what they're up to.
Even Canadian agencies want this? No! This is getting to be ridiculous.
Even with a warrant, there are things that no national government can have.
Getting a warrant doesnt make this okay. It is NEVER okay to take this information.
Well, it is Section 34, which is to say, basically Rule34.
Sorry. (not really)
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
No. Privacy is a right (even the UN thinks so) and I will say no as many times as I have to. I believe Bill C-30 is more than a threat to privacy though, it is a threat to Canada's democracy. Strong crypto must be allowed for a digital democracy.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6324/125/#comments
I truly resent the idea that businesses have to be unpaid informers to the government. And it's not like a business can just dump the data in the government's lap. No. They have to ensure that it's quality data, usually in a format dictated by the government. It is yet another file cabinet or server that has to be secured. And if the government leaks the data, guess who the government will blame: the business! And if a business loses the data, they'll be accused of "destroying evidence". Did I mention the business is not getting paid to do this? Nothing but a headache for what might never be useful in the investigation of a crime!
There are numerous police officers who abuse their power and don't get caught.
Sometimes, officers are stupid enough to harass someone with power, and for that they are punished.
Here's an example of a police officer who repeatedly abused his power and avoided numerous complaints:
http://www.northernlife.ca/news/policeandCourt/2011/06/17-police-officers-misconduct-sudbury.aspx
He was eventually fired for comitting criminal offences. Hardly the "equality before and under the law" that is guarenteed by the charter.
I predict that the number of abuses that occur will go up proportionately with the types of abuses that are possible. Giving a group of unaccountable power-tripping undereducated police officers new powers when they clearly can't play nice with the ones they have is a bad idea.
What we need now is a Bill that holds government officials MORE accountable than citizens. You should get a HARSHER sentence when you mess up in a position of power than if you were just an average citizen.
Cops, please fuck off.
BC's biggest incompetent ass, usually about the time he starts squawking over something it's because something really bad has happened and he's trying to deflect attention to something else. Apparently Jim would like to remove R&PG(reasonable and probable grounds), as well. Well for those that don't know most police chiefs in Canada were once cops turned politicians. If you want to know how things actually work here, you look at staff sgts and below, sometimes inspectors. It gets messy though, because police boards like to "install" police chiefs in some places. Said chiefs are politicians to their toenails.
Om, nomnomnom...
...the internet is based on open protocols. They can look up the specs, read the descriptions of the protocols, write test software, and write software all day long to support their needs. I think we should encourage all police state advocates to write their own software. Unless they have more important things to do, like stop burglars, capture pickpockets, etc. It's Canada after all, not exactly a major site for the burgeoning drug war the US is hemorrhaging money into.
You never know...
US & Canada entered into a new joint cybsersecurity plan around the time this was announced. The same happened with Australia. We have new legislation going through for data retention in Australia and the same horrible warrant-less access issues. Check out #dataretention and #natsecinquiry on Twitter and you'll see a lot of the debate here in Australia. You used to have to be a convicted criminal to get a tracking collar attached. Now all citizens are treated like criminals first. It's a complete breach of Article 14 of the UNDHR. The implications of these new authoritarian 'big brother' approaches are very scary indeed. They claim it's too hard to get warrants, but in Australia we spend 14x as much on federal law enforcement as justice (courts, etc.). Seems the "Total Information Awareness" doctrine keeps growing stronger than ever. Recommend reading https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/privacy-as-a-political-right . Nations that have been through abuse of powers like these made the privacy principle for VERY good reasons. What sort of example are developed nations setting for even more authoritarian dictatorships around the world? It's very short-sighted indeed. I also wonder how much of our data will eventually get fed straight to NSA's Utah Data Center under the UKUSA Agreement also (Canada is a party to this).
How many times do police or copyright enforcers quit the first time they get thrown out by a court or spanked by public opinion? At most they shut up till the noise quiets down and then come back with a renamed bill a bit later... That's extra-true for you in Canada, because the US police and copyright mafias want laws like that pushed in the US, and it's easier to do that if they get Canada to do it first so they can point to what a fine example our neighbors to the north are providing, so they're always nagging your bureaucrats and politicians to do things their US counterparts can't quite get away with yet.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Definitely, somebody had to say it first, glad it was you and not me. But yes, you'll start seeing Rule 34 sites for IP addresses with webcams and mobile phones that can have the cameras turned on, based on Section 34 data collection.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Let's add a new tool to the mix: Well Poisoner
A program which can be run on any platform which randomly fires off web searches and randomly crawls the web.
Yes, it will cost you some of your bandwidth and data.
If enough people do this then it will be a lot harder, seriously a lot harder for anyone to easily map what you are doing
Another idea: A program which passes fake coordinates when queries by mobile phone applications. Picks a random location within 50km or where you actually are. Yes, this won't deceive the phone companies who can use the phone cell towers, but it will help dissuade online tracking of your movements.