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Canadian Government Servers Compromised By Anonymous
An anonymous reader writes: There was a cyber-attack on Wednesday by the activist group Anonymous, aimed at the Canadian government. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney says no personal information was compromised. Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attack in protest against the recent passing of the government's anti-terror Bill C-51. "Today, Anons around the world took a stand for your rights. Do we trade our privacy for security? Do we bow down and obey what has become totalitarian rule? Don't fool [yourselves]. The Harper regime does not listen to the people, it acts only in [its] best interests." the group wrote in an online post.
I for one, welcome our Anonymous Canadian Overlords.
So, Anonymous protest against a law that targets hackers by ... hacking? And this will demonstrate to the government and the public that this law is not warranted? Please explain the logic in this, because I can't spot it.
when you were needed most by your country?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_%28homosexuality_test%29
Fruit machine (homosexuality test)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Fruit machine" is a term for a device developed in Canada that was supposed to be able to identify homosexual people, or (offensively and derogatorily) "fruits". The subjects were made to view pornography, and the device measured the diameter of the pupils of the eyes (pupillary response test), perspiration, and pulse for a supposed erotic response.
The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all homosexuals from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military. A substantial number of workers did lose their jobs. Although funding for the "fruit machine" project was cut off in the late 1960s, the investigations continued, and the RCMP collected files on over 9,000 "suspected" homosexuals.[1]
The chair was like one from a dentist's office. It had a pulley with a camera going towards the pupils. There was a black box in front of it that showed pictures. The pictures ranged from the mundane to sexually explicit photos of men and women. It had previously been determined that the pupils would dilate in relation to the amount of interest in the picture. This was called the pupillary response test.[2]
People were told the machine was to rate stress. After knowledge of its real purpose became widespread, few people volunteered for it.
Contents
1 Faulty test parameters
2 In popular culture
3 See also
4 Notes
5 Sources
6 External links
Faulty test parameters
There were many problems with the "fruit machine." To begin with, the pupillary response test was based on fatally flawed assumptions: that visual stimuli would give an involuntary reaction able to be measured scientifically; that homosexuals and heterosexuals would respond to these stimuli differently; and that there were only two types of sexuality.[3] There was also the problem of physiology. The researchers failed to take into account the varying sizes of the pupils and the differing distances between the eyes.[2][3] Other problems that existed were that the pictures of the subjects' eyes had to be taken from an angle, as the camera would have blocked the subjects' view of the photographs if it were placed directly in front. Also, the amount of light coming from the photographs changed with each slide, causing the subjects' pupils to dilate in a way that was unrelated to their interest in the picture. Finally, the dilation of the pupils was also exceedingly difficult to measure, as the change was often smaller than one millimeter.[2]
The idea was based on a study done by an American university professor, which measured the sizes of the subjects' pupils as they walked through the aisles of grocery stores.[2]
In popular culture
Brian Drader's 1998 play The Fruit Machine juxtaposes the fruit machine project with a parallel storyline about contemporary homophobia.[4]
If I ever need Anonymous to take a stand for my rights, I will shine a Guy Fawkes mask onto the clouds. Until then I am more than capable of managing what I do and do not want to stand for. Do not presume to speak or act for me.
You mean the countless layers of ineffective bureaucracy at Shared Services Cana-duh can't help?!
The days when a security breach is big news is so over. When the US Government can lose control over the employment records of every, single employee, this kind of playing around by Anonymous is just kind of sad.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Shit article, shit title. It was a DDOS, and in terms of impact pretty much nothing happened. IP based stuff went into failover, and there wasn't even a pick up in phone call-ins apparently.
Om, nomnomnom...
It does nothing to stop the C51. The right thing to do is to donate to the opposition party that would against C51. They need the money the could get to deliver their messages to the voters. Alternatively, compromise the political party in power, expose their scandals, etc. This is no more than public stunt that does nothing to anyone other than earning a few headline news article, at best.
Bill C51 is particularly troubling... it has already been passed into law and as such may prove very difficult to get rid of by any later prime minister that disagrees with it without a majority government.
The most particularly troubling aspect of C51 is that it empowers CSIS to break almost *ANY* law... short of inflicting enduring physical bodily harm on someone, or acts of sexual violation... in the course of disrupting anything that they believe, rightly or wrongly, to be a terrorist threat, including violating even civil and constitutional rights. That means they can imprison people because of their race, or simply because of what that person believes, for example, even if that person has done absolutely nothing wrong. if CSIS has any reason at all to suspect that such factors link them to committing any act that corresponds with a terrorist threat, a phrase that by itself is so loosely defined (in fact, it isn't even defined in this law... in fact, it appears almost intentional to have left it undefined so that CSIS could apply the term as they saw fit), that even picketing or almost any other form of entirely peaceful assembly that might happens to disrupt some activity that the government is wanting to push forward could qualify.
It's interesting to consider, however, that because CSIS also outlaws the the distribution of terrorist propoganda, if, for example, Westboro Baptist Church were Canadian, then by Bill-C51, the government would have to ban the Christian bible, since WBC uses that text to justify many of their insane acts, and the bill explicitly outlaws the dissemination of literature that encourages acts of terrorism.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A small, ineffective, mostly powerless part
What? The NDP is the official opposition! And not doing all that badly in the polls! Tom Mulcair has pledged to bring in proportional representation if elected, if you want something that "actually represents Canadians".
I'm not affiliated with the NDP in any way (I've voted for them once out of about five elections), but Mulcair has impressed me.
This attack will be used as justification for increased security at the expense of privacy.
A small, ineffective, mostly powerless part
What? The NDP is the official opposition! And not doing all that badly in the polls! Tom Mulcair has pledged to bring in proportional representation if elected, if you want something that "actually represents Canadians".
I'm not affiliated with the NDP in any way (I've voted for them once out of about five elections), but Mulcair has impressed me.
So what? What did the official opposition do to stop this bill? What could they have done? Nothing, and nada. Small, almost completely ineffective in getting anything done. My point stands.
I doubt that proportional representation will have much impact. Certainly it's a less awful idea than First Past the Post (FTFP), but the fact that we are still dealing with politicians remains.
When you go vote - do you read up on the position of the person you're going to elect? Does that matter, if they can go and change it right after they get into office? What exactly are you going to do to ensure that your politician represents the people? If this system actually worked, shouldn't we have better results already? Or do you think what we have now is really the best that we can do?
I know you're being sarcastic, but whether it's Trudeau or the other guy or someone new entirely, odds of them changing anything to actually *fix* this broken system is pretty much nil. They don't want to actually fix what's wrong with the system - they've worked out how it gets them what they want, be it money or power, and that's enough.
"What is a denial-of-service attack? Most commonly, these events occur when mischief makers or hackers simply flood a target computer with more traffic than it was built to handle. ref
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Please stop using the word cyber on a tech site