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Ontario Promotes Private Crypto
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News has this story about the government of Ontario, Canada endorsing citizens to use encryption. 'While the US Congress recoils in horror at the prospect of a population armed with cryptographic tools, a government department in Ontario wants to make it clear that encryption is good. ' " After this and my recent trip to Ottawa, I think I may need to stop making Canada jokes...It's interesting to compare and contrast the crypto policies of various nations.
What's wrong with user fees?
Why should you get away with paying $20/mo for the 300 000 gallons of water you use while I pay $20/mo for the 300 I use?
Why should you get away with free garbage collection when you are wasteful and put out more than a 4-child family?
And your point about emissions testing... so you WANT your children to grow up in a world where they can't breathe the air? Give me a break! If your car's broken, FIX IT. don't bitch at the government for making you fix it so you don't add to the pollution problems!
You sound like you've been abusing the system for so long now that when it's time to pay for what you use you'll rant and rave at how unfair it is instead of owning up to it.
And no, I'm not some wealthy person driving my $60k car, drinking champagne and smoking cigars. I'm a hardworking person who has trouble getting by like the next guy but at least I realize that what is going on is called user fees and evens out the problems. If you were paying a flat fee before, you were subsidizing the guy next to you using more than yourself, or vice versa. If you're a big user, your fees go up. Otherwise they come down.
Yes harris offloaded on to the municipalities and for the most part I'm not happy with that. However, I am happier that my money is going to somewhere closer to home than it was before. My money now has more 'clout' where I live.
Personally I'd love to see road work turned over to private companies like it is in the US. introduce fair competition. you want the $5mil contract for resurfacing the roads? bid on it like everyone else and you've at least got a shot at it. THAT would bring about more employment and make things better (I think).
Andrew
You! Reading this article! Do you use ssh and pgp? If not, why not? You're part of the problem!
If you're not using PGP (yet), drop by http://www.pgpi.com/ and have a look around. http://www.pgpi.com/cgi/download-wizard .cgi will let you easily determine exactly which version of is appropriate for your OS and location. PGP installation is pretty straightforward and there is ample online documentation and tutorials. Not only does PGP become more useful each time a new person starts using it, but the more people we have using PGP routinely the harder it will be to remove our freedom to do so. There's no reason not to use encryption, except for inertia. And I guarantee it's not as hard to install or use as you may be thinking.
Using a nice pgp-aware mailer like mutt is a nice step, too.
If you ARE using telnet or rlogin or ftp, then you have problems now and you don't even realize it. Did you realize that every time you telnet or rlogin or ftp to a remote host that you are transmitting your username and password in clear text? Sniffing passwords is a trivial task, mostly due to the widespread use of insecure protocols such as telnet. ssh is a drop-in, secure alternative for telnet, rlogin, rsh, and ftp. Not only is it secure, but it's easier to use and more featureful as well. On top of security it adds such features as compression, encrypted traffic, encrypted tunnels, and completely automatic and secure X11 forwarding. Plus with RSA Authentication you can eliminate passwords entirely. A cracker can't crack a password that doesn't exist.
Unix users can obtain ssh from ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh/ and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. I recommend the 1.2.27 version of ssh (as opposed to the v2 platform) due to licensing difficulties with the v2 platform. Non-unix users have even more options.
For Win32 there's SecureCRT (http://www.vandyke.com) which is an excellent, albeit commercial solution. There's also a very nice, free implementation of ssh which works with Tera Term. You can grab it from http://hp.vector.co.jp/author s/VA002416/teraterm.html
There's even an opensource ssh for win32 at http://www.chiark.greenend.o rg.uk/~sgtatham/putty.html although I must admit that I'm not sure I trust an ssh implementation done by a guy who refuses to implement RSA Authentication.
For Macintosh, I understand that there's a nice plug-in for NiftyTelnet at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jon asw/freeware/niftyssh/ although I've not used it.
There's never been a better time to be more secure. Simply by installing a couple of easy-to-use applications you could be on your way to a more secure, more private computing experience. Your data is yours, and here are two ways to ensure that it stays that way.
Yeah, I ripped this shamelessly from my .plan -- so sue me, it's still useful information...
They're politicians - and ideologues - which is a dangerous combination, even (especially!) if you happen to like their ideology, as I do. But at least you know what they stand for and what they're gonna do when elected. Here's a snapshot of their platform:
- Lower taxes. They were first elected with a promise to cut the provincial portion of income taxes by 30%. Even I thought they were blowing smoke up the voters' arses on that one - and then they did it. I was both pleased and stunned.
- Lower spending. The five years preceding the current administration saw a socialist administration which hiked welfare benefits by 20%, and taxes to match. Ontario was one of the highest-taxed, highest-spending, highest-deficit provinces when the socialists got the boot for the new crowd. All the spending cuts that were made in Ontario were also campaign promises.
- Generally libertarian business/social practices. Relaxed labor laws, less red tape, less governmental interference in private and commercial affairs.
Within a month of their election 4-5 years ago, this administration:- Abolished photo radar (brought in by the previous administration - no, not visible cameras on the side of the road as deterrents, but unmarked vans, driving along with traffic, designed to maximize revenue.)
- Abolished race quotas (the previous administration brought 'em in and said "they're not quotas, they're merely numerical goals for all businesses to meet or get fined")
- Repealed a rabidly pro-union piece of workplace legislation (umm, also brought in by the previous administration...)
- Cut welfare payments by 20%.
- Instituted the first part of a 5-year tax cutting plan.
Again - all of these things were election promises. This is the first time I'd ever seen a party elected with a platform of repeal laws, not enacting new ones. It was also the first time I'd seen a party actually do the stuff it said it would do during the campaign.Five years later, the previous administration's tax hikes had been completely undone, and the budget, which had been running $12B deficits annually, was within epsilon of being balanced. Well, you get the idea about what the current situation in Ontario is about. Ontario lived through five years under socialism, and then brought in the right-wing libertarians in a landslide of disgust with the socialists. That brought about 4-5 years of radical social change, after which Ontario ended up with the lowest provincial taxes in Canada, and a balanced budget to boot.
The best part? After five years of relative economic freedom (and incessant whining from bitter socialists about how the province was going to hell in a handbasket :), the voters finally got their chance to pass judgement on the new regime...
drum roll...
So what the hell does this have to do with crypto?
IMNSHO, if you elect libertarians - regardless of the party banner they happen to be running under - the free crypto just comes with the rest of the goodies.
That being said, I'm not surprised they would be at talks for IPsec and other things. Undoubtedly they're looking for information on possible weaknesses, and, barring that, ways of using it to enhance their own operations.
The Canadians talk funny in Southpark, so therefore all Canadians must talk funny.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Someone please moderate this FreeBSD post down, it's not suppose to be here, a simple "Off Topic" would do if a few of you have points to spare. I am just going to try to repost the stuff again in the other thread.
Uh, I submitted this to the previous discussion, I am sure of it. How the heck did it end up here, I am luck I found it. Anyone able to switch the storyID it's attached to and move it over to the previous discussion?
Personally I prefer SSL telnet. There are a few reasons, most importantly that SSL/TLS are open standards.
The next thing is that SSL telnet can be implemented directly ontop of your existing telnet daemon and autoswitch between encrypted & non-encrypted clients.
No special daemons, just your plain old telnet daemon with a few patches to authenticate and encrypt via SSL. Of you can just stick in a copy of sslwrap in front of your telnet daemon and not make any changes at all.
Not to mention once you get OpenSSL up and running, you can hookup SSL POP3, SSL SMTP, SSL FTP, SSL NFS, etc.
While most of these don't have Windows clients, SSL SMTP and SSL POP3 do. There is an SSL telnet client for windows, but I don't know how good it is.
And OpenSSL has a host of useful programs from md5 to sha which come in handy once in a while.
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The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.