[HN Gopher] Ottawa wants the power to create secret backdoors in...
___________________________________________________________________
Ottawa wants the power to create secret backdoors in networks for
surveillance
Author : walterbell
Score : 295 points
Date : 2024-05-29 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theglobeandmail.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theglobeandmail.com)
| mikerg87 wrote:
| What could possible go wrong with this asinine idea.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Can't they just ask the NSA for their backdoors? What are allies
| for, after all?
| rolph wrote:
| lets flip the coin over, suppose the NSA, has been nattering at
| canada to get up to date, and resume fulfilment of obligations
| to a current standard.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Is that why my Canadian ISP used to route so much local traffic
| through USA?
|
| (I think it has gotten better now, but Bell used to only freely
| peer in USA, in Canada you had to pay for transit. Most non-
| big3 Canadian ISPs would route a lot of domestic traffic
| through Chicago and other peer points).
| poochipie wrote:
| https://archive.is/y6d41
| poochipie wrote:
| How else will $GOVERNING_PARTY find out which of their political
| opponents' bank accounts they should freeze?
| canadiantim wrote:
| Rest assured, they already have their The Liberalist database
| for that. For those who don't know, that's the Liberal party's
| voter outreach database... also used for picking judges! It's a
| great system we have where $CANADAS_NATURAL_GOVERNING_PARTY
| picks and chooses judges based on their loyalty score in the
| party database.
|
| Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberalist-judicial-
| appoint... Note: There are no checks and balances regarding
| whether or not they are still using it. As such, the default
| assumption must be that they are still using it.
| nvy wrote:
| All parties appoint partisan judges. If you think your party
| of choice doesn't then you need to give your head a shake.
| poochipie wrote:
| From the shared link:
|
| "The Trudeau government has stopped using the Liberal
| Party's private database to conduct background checks on
| candidates for judicial appointments, federal sources say."
|
| This is a specific claim about the Liberals that is not
| refuted by suppositions about other parties, even if the
| supposition is likely true.
| nvy wrote:
| I'm not attempting to refute it. I'm suggesting that the
| idea that only the Liberals appoint partisan judges is
| absurd, because they're all corrupt.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| All in the name of security. Sure, go ahead, let the curtain
| fall.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I hate this but isn't this what the US is secretly doing anyways?
| How did outrage in America die down?
| seanw444 wrote:
| The spying is too far removed from the average person's life
| that people don't care enough. One person sitting in your house
| watching everything you do would be really spooky, and everyone
| would be upset. Countless unidentified people watching
| everything you do, anywhere, from anywhere, is of course not
| nearly as spooky (/s).
|
| I'm still of the opinion that the US proper ceased to exist
| after the American Civil War. Makes me sad every time I think
| about it. And no, I'm not including slavery.
| pc86 wrote:
| What rights did someone have in 1790 that they didn't have in
| 1890?
| ImJamal wrote:
| Not who you are replying to, but there was a shift in
| opinion about what the US actually was and the powers the
| states had.
|
| One of those shifts was instead of people saying the
| "United States are" people started saying the "United
| States is".
|
| This change caused a shift away from the primacy of the
| 10th amendment. Instead of the US government just handling
| the military, foreign affairs, etc it started butting into
| more and more things happening within the country. Look at
| Wickard v Filburn for example.
|
| The 14th amendment also started to be reinterpreted to mean
| the incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Prior to this
| reinterpretation the thought was that the Bill of Rights
| applied to the federal government not to the state
| governments. The federal government was not allowed to
| establish a state church, for example, but the states could
| (and did!). The federal government couldn't ban guns but
| the sates could.
|
| So the states themselves lost a lot of rights and the
| people did as well (see my example of Wickard v Filburn).
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Yeah this was definitely an important shift. Before these
| changes the US wasnt really a country in the same way it
| is now. Antisocial elements in many states was dragging
| the rest of the country down and due to increasing
| federal power we were able to override them. Due to
| broader application of federal law and the bill of rights
| we were able to give more and more rights to the people
| denied them in the past. Due to broader application of
| federal power we were able to do away with things like
| state churches and gun bans. This is all good.
| ImJamal wrote:
| It has obviously increased rights in some areas, but the
| federal government has also stripped rights because of
| their increased power. I don't know if there could be a
| way to determine if more or less rights have been given
| due to this change.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| The nice thing about centralized democratic governments
| is that they can be changed based on the desires of the
| constituents. This doesnt always work perfectly but it
| does work more and more if broader sections of the
| populace spend more time being educated about policy and
| advocating for things they believe in. See civil rights
| as a primary example. In contrast decentralized
| governments without the failsafes of things like the bill
| of rights to prevent them from descending into tyranny
| tend to do just that. Whether its the tyranny of the
| majority in one region or the tyranny of the rich and
| powerful, thats a quick route to having human rights
| trampled, oligarchs put into place and anti-social
| movements gain power. This may become less of a risk as
| education becomes more widespread in a populace and
| indeed statelessness is an admirable ideal but I dont
| think we are there yet technologically or ethically and
| certainly not in the 1790s.
| ImJamal wrote:
| > The nice thing about centralized democratic governments
| is that they can be changed based on the desires of the
| constituents.
|
| States are centralized democratic governments. They are
| just smaller than the federal government. If you want to
| make the argument that having more people under a
| government is better then do you advocate for a single
| worldwide government? Why not go all the way?
|
| > This doesnt always work perfectly but it does work more
| and more if broader sections of the populace spend more
| time being educated about policy and advocating for
| things they believe in.
|
| I don't follow how having a centralized government means
| people are going to be more educated on policies? If the
| majority of politics happened on a state level why would
| people be less informed than if it occurred at the
| federal level. It seems like you are advocating for a
| more informed populace, which may be beneficial, but it
| doesn't seem relevant.
|
| >See civil rights as a primary example.
|
| While this may be an example right now, it wasn't always
| the case.
|
| The federal government (pre civil war) required states
| that did not have slavery to return runaway slaves back
| to slave states.
|
| If you want an example of post civil war, look at the
| Japanese internment camps.
|
| Like I said in my previous post, I don't think it is
| really possible to determine if rights have actually been
| expanded since the federal government started getting
| more involved.
|
| The federal government constantly violates rights.
|
| > In contrast decentralized governments without the
| failsafes of things like the bill of rights to prevent
| them from descending into tyranny tend to do just that.
| Whether its the tyranny of the majority in one region or
| the tyranny of the rich and powerful, thats a quick route
| to having human rights trampled, oligarchs put into place
| and anti-social movements gain power.
|
| I think most, if not all, of the states have a
| constitution that protects the rights of the residents.
| Why are you suggesting otherwise?
|
| Maybe they aren't perfect, but the same can be said about
| the federal constitution.
|
| > This may become less of a risk as education becomes
| more widespread in a populace and indeed statelessness is
| an admirable ideal but I dont think we are there yet
| technologically or ethically and certainly not in the
| 1790s.
|
| What do you mean by statelessness? Are you advocating for
| anarchy? That hardly seems like a way to protect rights.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Actually yeah I do think a global democratically elected
| constitutional government might be fine save for the
| issues of scaling that come with that much size. Probably
| something that various technological innovations could
| help with
|
| Access to education has been supported by the federal
| government where individual districts lagged behind more
| wealthy areas. Without the federal aid poor districts
| would be much worse off as far as education goes.
|
| Yes the federal government has long violated rights and
| done terrible things. We could go on listing the
| atrocities committed by the feds domestically and abroad
| for days e.g. forced sterilization, internment camps,
| vietnam, iraq, residential schools and the various iffy
| things the intelligence community did relating to drugs
| and black nationalism last century. I am not arguing that
| federal power is universally good or that increased
| federal power only resulted in good things but rather
| that its been a net improvement. You say its impossible
| to determine if we have more or less rights post civil
| war than before but I would posit it is very clearly
| more.
|
| Yeah statelessness is a cool idea in theory. Like I said
| an ideal to aspire to as a society. The less
| coercion/threat of violence we have and the more freedom
| and empathy we have in society the better. Its just an
| ideal and not something we can achieve now IMO but still
| something inspiring to think about in conversations about
| state power or otherwise.
| pc86 wrote:
| I have to say it's really weird to see someone advocating
| for every-growing larger centralized governments _and_
| advocating for statelessness as a means to freedom.
|
| Do you see how these ideas are diametrically opposed? How
| does farther-removed, more powerful federal governments
| lead to freedom compared to close, small governments
| staffed by people who live right next to you?
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >Antisocial elements in many states was dragging the rest
| of the country down and due to increasing federal power
| we were able to override them.
|
| Not to pick on you, but I want to point this out: this
| sort of thinking is a vulnerability which can and does
| get exploited in politics. It is a fallacy that Progress
| is inevitable and that The Right Thing always plays out,
| and that the one holding a perspective on this always was
| born in the fully legitimate and righteous branch of
| events. Nature is not just; nature simply is.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| What should the role of government be? Is it to be a
| secular substitute for a god? (I am Atheist myself, but
| also a "Social Contract(tm)" skeptic.)
| pc86 wrote:
| What does that have to do with my question? Do you think
| the popular conception of what government "should" be
| changed post-Civil War?
| waynenilsen wrote:
| Our Encryption is still theoretically sound. There was an
| attempt made to do something very similar called the Clipper
| Chip back in 1993 but it failed. Snowden revealed massive
| warrantless data collection of metadata which is also very
| valuable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
| londons_explore wrote:
| All the big providers seem to have this odd model of "We use
| E2E encryption, but we do unencrypted backups by default".
|
| iMessage and Whatsapp are both this. Since you only need
| _one_ participant in a conversation to not enable backup
| encryption, I would guess that law enforcement has cleartext
| access to over 99% of messages sent by americans.
|
| The next question is do they only have access to certain
| messages on request, or do they get a near real time feed.
| Things like this[1] suggest they had a real time feed of all
| messages, and I doubt they would be allowed to lose that
| ability.
|
| [1]: https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-
| removed-her...
| Marsymars wrote:
| > iMessage and Whatsapp are both this. Since you only need
| one participant in a conversation to not enable backup
| encryption, I would guess that law enforcement has
| cleartext access to over 99% of messages sent by americans.
|
| I'd guess less _only_ because Apple is so stingy on iCloud
| storage. A majority of iOS users I know don 't have
| iMessage backup enabled because they're not willing to pay
| for additional iCloud storage.
| esafak wrote:
| There's always the next thing to be outraged about. This
| morning I heard about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
| seanw444 wrote:
| Canada being totalitarian? I'm shocked.
| tomComb wrote:
| I know that opponents of the current gov are enjoying this line
| recently, but our government is so far from totalitarianism
| that this seems silly to me.
|
| The real problem is oligopoly, not fascism or anything like
| that.
|
| The government puts most of its effort into protecting friendly
| companies and industries from competition and even funneling
| taxpayer money to them.
|
| In the case of Bell & Rogers this is billions of $ a year.
| johnny99k wrote:
| Have we forgotten Covid so quickly? People involved in a
| legal protest had their bank accounts seized.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Yeah but they disrupted the paid long-term vacation that
| federal employees living downtown were enjoying, because
| the government had near zero WFH capability.
|
| How dare a bunch of out-of-province blue collar roughnecks
| protesting logic-defying mandates being put on them disrupt
| the white collar workers sitting in their condo getting
| paid to watch tiger king.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Let's not forget that honking is literally terrorism
| because it hurt my ears.
| tensor wrote:
| Depriving people of sleep for weeks on end is violence. I
| hope a few trucks honk outside your home for weeks.
| You'll change your tune in no time. Sleep depravation is
| literally a torture technique.
| lupusreal wrote:
| How is protest possible if disruption is terrorism?
| Please get a grip.
|
| (That said, thank you for demonstrating that I wasn't
| exaggerating.)
| tensor wrote:
| I used to live in Toronto near queen's park. There were
| very frequent protests down yonge and in queens park.
| Never once in all the time I lived there was I prevented
| sleeping by protestors honking outside my building all
| night.
|
| I was also never once confronted, cornered, harassed, or
| yelled at by protestors. Not once. These actions are not
| ok and not typical of any protest. Yes I was frequently
| inconvenienced with the street blocked, but that's fine,
| the cost of living in a democracy.
|
| Protesting does not involve attacking fellow citizens.
| adamomada wrote:
| The horn usage did not go on for weeks on end. It was an
| early concession to stop
| tensor wrote:
| It was not a "concession" it was stopped by a judge
| issuing an injunction because the truckers were sued by
| locals. That lawsuit is still ongoing.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| Putting the hurt on 50k people in an attempt to coerce
| the government into changing policy _is_ terrorism.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Lighting local shops on fire? _" Firey but mostly
| peaceful protests"_ Honking some horns? _Literally
| terrorism._
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Is blocking a bridge also terrorism? Or is it just
| federal employees that get to not have anyone bothering
| them?
| pookha wrote:
| Disagree with everything you're trying to say. Terrorism
| has evolved into a doublespeak term used to describe your
| systems' quasi enemy...This was just civil disobedience
| and like any form of civil disobedience (that isn't
| directly sanctioned by government actors) they got
| slaughtered. The government in Canada pushed through
| extremely draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules and, just
| like what Camus wax-philosophized over, there's a
| breaking point with subjugated humans and a price those
| subjugating put on their own "hurt".
|
| "The six thousand crosses which, after such a just
| rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome
| demonstrated to the servile crowd that there is no
| equality in the world of power and that the masters
| calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of their own
| blood."
| Marsymars wrote:
| > The government in Canada pushed through extremely
| draconian Wuhan-styled lockdown rules
|
| Pretty much none of "lockdown" rules were federal - and
| at least in my province, I never felt more than mildly
| inconvenienced. Literally the _worst_ thing I experienced
| was a shutdown of indoor team sports for a season.
| richardlblair wrote:
| They stated their goal was to overthrow the democratically
| elected Government.
| naasking wrote:
| No it wasn't.
| richardlblair wrote:
| It absolutely was.
| naasking wrote:
| Please provide a citation of the protest organizers
| stating their goal was to overthrow the government.
| adamomada wrote:
| You weren't there and are full of shit. What else _have_
| you been told?
| richardlblair wrote:
| You have no idea if I'm full of shit or not.
| richardlblair wrote:
| It's hilarious how emotionally invested you are in
| something you did not attend, and knew no one there.
|
| If anyone is spewing shit, it's you mate.
|
| Calm down and get a hobby.
| adamomada wrote:
| I personally know two people who travelled from Toronto
| area to attend. I couldn't because of a shitty situation
| but followed along with the live YouTube casts, which
| (for anyone who cares) will prove you wrong
|
| I Know you are full of shit, therefore I know you know
| you are full of shit
|
| My hobby is calling bullshit and it is fun. There's so
| much of it!
|
| Edit: for extra context, the two people who took major
| time out of their lives to do this, one was in the
| Canadian Forces when they were younger (not at the time
| obv) and the other came to Canada in the early 90s after
| their government wrecked their country and was watching
| in horror of it happening to them again
| richardlblair wrote:
| You're full of shit.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by, "their goal was to
| overthrow the democratically elected Government"? This
| could mean a whole lot of things, like voting out the
| incumbents in the next election - and sure I'll readily
| believe that the protestors were calling for that.
|
| But "overthrow" reads to me like the protestors sought to
| forcefully remove and replace the existing government. In
| other words, a coup. That is a very different statement,
| and one I would really like you to substantiate with
| evidence if that's what you're trying to claim.
| richardlblair wrote:
| The protesters held Ottawa captive while demanding the
| current democratically elected government be replaced by
| the government of their liking, without an election.
|
| It was very similar to the first few days of the Easter
| Uprising in Ireland in 1916, except with trucks. A large
| group of people held key infrastructure hostage, with
| unreasonable demands that would not be met.
|
| Those claiming otherwise need everyone to believe their
| side is the victim.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Why would you lie about this? It's literally not true.
| And no a quote from a random protestor doesn't make it
| more true. Again, this is basically Ben Shapiro style
| tactics where you can quote a single random person in a
| protest to call for violence and repression against an
| entire group. Super convenient when used against the
| other side but it doesn't make it less blatantly
| dishonest. Do you also advocate for full emergency act
| types of repression in may 1st anti capitalist protests?
| They explicitly call for destroying the current
| government system (which is completely their right, imo)
| tenpies wrote:
| Not just seized: seized extra-judicially, and retro-
| actively.
|
| These two details are important because:
|
| 1) no laws were passed and no courts were involved.
|
| 2) activities that were perfectly legal at the time, were
| deemed retroactively illegal and persecuted (not prosecuted
| - no courts, remember?).
|
| The only regimes in which you see this are tinpot
| dictatorships and Trudeau's Canada.
|
| Just imagine how powerful those two precedents are for any
| future radical who seeks to follow on the footsteps of the
| petite tyrant Trudeau.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest and
| deploying the emergency powers _was_ a bit wild. Even our top
| court ruled the emergency powers weren't necessary. Opening
| the windsor bridge, yeah, lets arrest everyone immediately,
| but clearing the people out of ottawa? That ones not so
| clear. But no matter how you slice it, the bank account
| freezing was a precedent that probably shouldn't have been
| made.
| canadiantim wrote:
| On the plus side, now the conservatives can use emergency
| powers to deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag,
| and people with left-leaning politics who were okay with
| the powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure
| we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when it's
| applied to a protest they favour.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the truckers were idiots and that their protest
| made no sense and probably made life for the average
| Ottawa resident very annoying at the time. I also think
| that freezing their bank accounts was huge government
| overreach and I'm sad that the consequence to the
| government for doing it have been basically non-existent.
|
| In both Canada and the US each "side" loves ratcheting up
| government power against what they perceive as their
| political enemies. It's going to end in tears.
| AntiEgo wrote:
| Under the grits, the rcmp have already been extremely
| aggressive with protestors. Look at land defenders in BC
| --they are being removed at gunpoint, having property
| wantonly destroyed, and having masks pulled of their
| faces to apply pepper spray point blank. The clownvoy got
| treaded with kidskin gloves.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's a case to be made that a naked display of force -
| at least in a democracy - is less authoritarian than
| quietly destroying someone's financial life. Spraying
| pepper spray and knocking heads creates some very
| unsavoury images that the government has to contend with
| during the next election and stokes outrage. Having a
| bunch of people's bank accounts frozen doesn't trigger
| the same visceral reaction.
| tivert wrote:
| > ...now the conservatives can use emergency powers to
| deal with protests too. The cat's out of the bag, and
| people with left-leaning politics who were okay with the
| powers being applied to the trucker protest, I'm sure
| we'll find they're all of the sudden not so okay when
| it's applied to a protest they favour.
|
| That just means the conservatives can never be allowed to
| win elections...to protect Democracy!
| nuclearwast wrote:
| Hmm it looks like all protest are being dealt very softly
| now. Natives? We don't want another 1990 oka. Students?
| Don't want another 2012 printemps erable. Truckers? Well
| I'm not sure about that one. Was the majority of the
| police on the protester's side? A bunch sure. But most?
| Nah. Wasn't there like only 1% of all truckers there?
| They had the means but not the number. Also if freezing
| bank account ended it without any police lifting a
| finger, it's best no?
| rustcleaner wrote:
| I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the
| US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a
| click, Right moves it never more than a click (while
| looking like principled plausibly sub-malicious imbeciles
| in the moment).
| mikem170 wrote:
| > I am sure Canada has the progressivist ratchet like the
| US does: Left moves Overton Window never less than a
| click, Right moves it never more than a click
|
| That's what happens when there is change in the world.
| Conservatives resist change, but change often has a
| momentum of it's own.
|
| The world has changed a lot recently. TV brought everyone
| together. Transportation made the world smaller place.
| The internet and social networks gave everyone a voice.
| These are all game changers. For better and worse. We
| can't un-invent all that stuff.
|
| The reason older people tend to be conservative is that
| they are used to the way things were when they grew up.
| They don't like the changes. They want the good old days
| back.
|
| Young people don't have these notions about the good old
| days, they weren't around. They started off with a
| different view of things. The Overton Window moves with
| them. Progress ratchets, as you said.
|
| p.s. None of this implies that I endorse how the protests
| were handled. I'm all for democracy and 100% against
| authoritarians - whether they are communists or fascists
| or whatever else.
| burutthrow1234 wrote:
| Clearing the people out of Ottawa took far too long. The
| local police were cozy with the truckers and the entire
| downtown of a metro area with a million people was shut
| down for a month.
|
| People complain about left-leaning protests taking over a
| public park - these guys took over multiple public spaces
| in multiple parts of the city. About a square mile in the
| middle of the city.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| Yes people complain about "left leaning protests". People
| complain about all sorts of protests. I can't recall a
| single protest that wasn't complained about.
|
| Exactly when did the left leaning protestors have their
| bank accounts frozen? Exactly when did the left leaning
| protests get broken up.
|
| All I remember is canadas stupid government supporting
| the left leaning protests.
|
| In the states I remember fancy Nancy wearing an African
| shawl kneeling in the capital.
|
| This sort of stuff is too obvious not to see. Good luck.
| nuclearwast wrote:
| Spring 2012. Montreal.
|
| It was left leaning and Police were quite happy to handle
| it with all they got. Many hundreds or thounsands of
| protester everyday (or nights) for over 100 days. 17
| years-old students being hit with Baton, pepper spray, ,
| tears gas, rubber bullets, flashbang etc. It was so
| chaotic that vladimir fucking putin even call canada to
| sort its shit (!!!). Since then police really has dialed
| it back in the protest.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| I don't recall what the 2012 Canada protests were.
| Guessing OWS? OWS and the vaccine passport protestors
| have one thing in common - they challenge the ruling
| class.
|
| I wonder why the ruling class hasn't opposed social
| mousetrap identity politics protests.
| nuclearwast wrote:
| Maybe it was mostly a Quebec thing. In 2012, premier of
| quebec, jean charest (know him? He lost the conservative
| parti race to polievre) anounced he would increase
| university tuition fee many times over, to reach canada's
| average. Scolarship would be changed to loan. Students
| were not happy with this and went on strike.It was pretty
| eventful. After a few month it did start to look like
| OWS. It ended in fall, costing charest his re election.
|
| It really was eye opening in many ways. The media sucking
| up to the gouverment, the gourverment not giving shit
| about what end up being a large chuck of the population,
| forgetting they were in a democracy. Trucker were err.
| Well see for yourself.
| poochipie wrote:
| But none of that was a reason to invoke the Emergencies
| Act, per the courts.
| graeme wrote:
| The emergencies act is extremely restrictive. The
| criteria:
|
| >There must be an urgent, critical and temporary
| situation that "seriously endangers" the lives, health
| and safety of Canadians, and it must be so significant as
| to exceed the capacity or authority of the provinces to
| address it.
|
| A foreign funded group with heavy vehicles invaded and
| took over downtown Ottawa and international border
| crossings. The province wasn't interested in dispersing
| them.
|
| The Emergencies Act definition wouldn't allow you to halt
| a coup attempt if Ontario could handle it but chose not
| to. At a certain point you have to analyze things and say
| that if the law has a massive loophole then the law was
| poorly drafted.
| adamomada wrote:
| The emergency act was used after the bridges were clear,
| to stop a peaceful protest in the nations capital that
| pissed off the minority government. You can go on YouTube
| and see endless live video streams of it. At no time were
| any lives in danger.
|
| "You can't protest, there's a government here!" - Ottawa
| residents
| tharmas wrote:
| But that's what makes a protest effective: it's
| inconvenient! Otherwise, the protest has no power to
| change anything. As long as its not violent or blowing
| things up I think "the establishment" should at least
| concede that.
|
| Case in point: look what happened in Israel when the
| Abraham Accords were signed, Hamas decided to go for the
| "nuclear" option.
| tensor wrote:
| Harassing people, preventing people sleeping for weeks,
| this is not "inconvenience" it's violence and
| intimidation against fellow citizens. I have zero
| sympathy or tolerance for violent occupations that force
| people out of their home, nor their supporters who try to
| pretend these things didn't happen.
| adamomada wrote:
| Your bar for violence is so low you might accuse me of it
| for laughing in your face
|
| It is 100% inconvenience, and if there's one thing that
| can not be tolerated in these times, is any sort of
| inconvenience.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Funny. If the police did wake people out several times
| every night, it would be clearly considered not only
| violent, but outright torture.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > But that's what makes a protest effective: it's
| inconvenient! Otherwise, the protest has no power to
| change anything.
|
| Well that's kind of the point - protesters _don 't_ have
| the power to change anything based on physical
| inconvenience. The inconvenience is merely a PR effort
| because protesters don't have any more effective form of
| of PR - if people are famous/wealthy/powerful/etc. they
| have better forms of PR available.
|
| The problem with some styles of protest is that they're
| asymmetrical in terms of damage. A relatively small
| number of people who get worked up enough can congregate
| in one location and indefinitely shut down the operations
| of a person/group/organization/government. At some point
| the legitimate governing body needs to enforce the
| functioning of society, or they'll lose the mandate to
| govern.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that protests shut down Canada's
| entire rail system, for almost twice as long as the
| Trucker protest lasted. It paralyzed a lot of movement of
| products across our country and caused shortages in a lot
| of places. It was much more of an actual problem nation-
| wide than truckers disrupting the downtown of a single
| city
|
| The rail protests had international implications too
|
| So if that wasn't enough to invoke the emergency act then
| it's hard for me to imagine why the Truckers were
| naasking wrote:
| > So if that wasn't enough to invoke the emergency act
| then it's hard for me to imagine why the Truckers were
|
| Possibly because the truckers blocked a bridge to the US,
| and the US didn't like that.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Sure, clear them off the bridge, arrest any that refuse
| to move, etc
|
| But the emergencies act? Freezing bank accounts?
|
| They didn't _blow up_ the bridge did they?
| adamomada wrote:
| - the emergency act was used after the bridges were
| cleared
|
| - the private banks decided to close the accounts,
| ostensibly acting by themselves (but probably not) and
| not by government order
|
| Stuff even two years ago is lost to history
| tracker1 wrote:
| Almost like some kind of Autonomous Zone or some such..
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What does it have to do with the people of Ottawa? Since
| when do residents get to decide on the rights of the
| others? Was it because they were federal employees for
| the most part? I'm glad you think that protests need to
| be shut down when they bother people. You sound exactly
| like a daily wire talking point from 2020 lol
| nahname wrote:
| Ottawa was tricky because the jurisdiction belongs to the
| OPS, which fumbled the entire situation from beginning to
| end. It wasn't entirely clear if that was intentional
| either. The RCMP (federal) was brought in to break up the
| protests, but there was a lot of stone walling from the
| conservative provincial government.
|
| There is also a world of difference between an organized
| protest with a specific purpose drawing awareness to a
| cause and thousands of people using commercial vehicles to
| hold a city hostage with no purpose or agenda other than a
| bunch of angry people unleashing their rage on the cities
| populous.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| No agenda? How many mandated shots before you join the
| protest? 5..10? these people were just protesting at >1
| verandaguy wrote:
| The shots weren't mandated. You couldn't enjoy services
| like cross-country travel by air or rail, but the shots
| were absolutely not mandated to do most things -- at
| least, not by the government. To the vast majority of
| Canadians, those are not essential services for survival,
| and to those Canadians for whom they are (mostly those
| living in northern communities), they got about the usual
| amount of support they get from any federal government
| (which is to say, not enough, and that probably merits
| more discussion than the convoy protesters).
|
| - If you worked from an office, you likely spent a good
| chunk of the first 12-24 months of Covid working from
| home. After that, it was up to your employer to put into
| place a policy about that. - Addendum: if
| you were in the federal government, you *were* required
| to get an initial shot plus a booster for most parts of
| the federal government. Failure to do so was dealt with
| in a few ways depending on department, but would usually
| result in your being placed on unpaid leave (PSAC has
| made it very difficult to fire someone in general,
| including under these circumstances).
|
| - If you worked a blue-collar job, what happened was
| massively up to your employer. Construction in particular
| slowed down in cities because of the extra precautions
| taken to avoid turning worksites into superspreader
| events.
|
| - If you worked in the Forces, I gather you really didn't
| have much of a say in the matter, but militaries
| worldwide have strict and extensive vaccine schedules for
| all enlisted staff (and often officers, too).
|
| The bodily autonomy argument holds some water, sure, to
| the same extent as you have the choice not to vaccinate
| your kid as they start going to school (but don't be
| surprised if they can't go, because we as a society have
| decided that things like polio don't deserve a repeat
| performance).
|
| You were at no point prohibited from leaving the country,
| though you could de facto end up so because other
| countries likely wouldn't allow you in, at least, not
| without a Covid test.
|
| If you were a Canadian citizen, you could not be legally
| denied entry into Canada, though because of the
| circumstances you may have been, at different points,
| required to either undergo a test or to go through a
| quarantine period.
|
| These people were protesting being denied the ability to
| pick and choose what they do in society while
| unilaterally picking and choosing how much additional
| risk they want to introduce to the rest of society.
|
| Frankly, this is probably best showcased by them deciding
| to just decide to take over the Ottawa baseball stadium
| (which is in a suburb and next to a highway) and use it
| and a few other places around downtown to store propane,
| gas, and other heating fluids since they decided to do
| this in the winter.
|
| They were, at best, hypocrites, and massively reckless in
| the face of what was at the time still relatively
| speaking a medical unknown.
|
| I'll also add, Re: the use of the Emergencies Act:
| regardless of what I think, a federal court has ruled it
| unconstitutional; the government has expressed interest
| in appealing the decision. I don't have a legal
| background, so I don't have a useful comment to add here.
|
| I _will_ say that it came after several weeks of multiple
| levels of police (but most notably, OPS) failing to do
| anything about the protests while tensions escalated, so
| it didn 't come out of nowhere, and it wasn't the first
| thing the government tried.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > how much additional risk they want to introduce to the
| rest of society.
|
| Even at the time, despite very strong claims from on high
| to the contrary, it was becoming more and more clear that
| the only people who might benefit from the shots were
| those taking them (and the people selling them of
| course).
|
| It's surprising to me to still see people making the
| "social good" argument in 2024.
| verandaguy wrote:
| Got a source on that? Virus transmission as a field of
| epidemiology is in general decently understood, and while
| vaccines aren't a panacea for everyone in every
| circumstance, herd immunity _absolutely_ exists and _is_
| an effective way of reducing the spread of viruses at
| scale, sometimes significantly so.
|
| Boosters were required as frequently as they were because
| Covid was developing new variants faster than things
| we're used to (like the flu, which tends to have about
| one variant a year with high infection rates among
| humans). Naturally, many people do get flu "booster"
| shots annually to try and reduce the spread of what's
| still a deadly disease to the immunocompromised; we just
| don't talk about it much because flu death rates have
| roughly stabilized for long enough that they're not
| considered excessive deaths (in the actuarial sense).
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > herd immunity absolutely exists
|
| Yes. Who said otherwise?
|
| > and is an effective way of reducing the spread of
| viruses at scale, sometimes significantly so.
|
| I don't follow. Doesn't herd immunity mean the herd is
| immune? As in, there is no transmission and the pathogen
| either dies or fades to the background?
|
| Either way, eventually almost everyone caught covid
| (obviously with some exceptions), no matter how many
| shots you got or didn't get.
|
| The strongest point in favor of the "social good"
| argument is that the shots reduced severity of infection,
| thereby reducing hospitalizations and freeing up hospital
| beds for random accidents. But the overflowing hospitals
| issue wasnt nearly as bad as it was made out to be as I
| understand it. And we'll probably never know for sure how
| many hospitalizations were caused by the shots
| themselves, because only lunatics think that something
| with vaccine in the name can harm you.
| verandaguy wrote:
| > I don't follow. Doesn't herd immunity mean the herd is
| immune? As in, there is no transmission and the pathogen
| either dies or fades to the background?
|
| In a perfect world where everyone gets vaccinated and
| vaccines are 100% effective in all people against all
| individuals of a strain, yeah, probably. In reality, not
| everyone gets vaccinated, and not everyone reacts well to
| the vaccine, and sometimes individuals from a strain slip
| by, so no. Some individuals from a strain will survive,
| some people will catch it and get sick, and of those
| surviving the sickness, they'll become the breeding
| ground for a new mutation.
|
| > Either way, eventually almost everyone caught covid
| (obviously with some exceptions), no matter how many
| shots you got or didn't get.
|
| Source? The latest data shows that out of ~40 million
| Canadians, about 4.8 million or about 12% are reported to
| have tested positive for Covid at any point and been
| recorded as such. Globally, the figure is about 775
| million out of 8 billion[0].
|
| Among vaccinated Canadians, CCDR 2024 Vol. 50 published
| by the PHAC[1] shows that both despite waning immunity
| from the vaccines (which is partially attributable to the
| poor understanding of what would both be safe for humans
| and long-term effective against Covid) as well as the
| emergence of new variants both causing spikes in overall
| case count and associated stats (like hospital admissions
| and deaths), vaccinated people were measurably less
| likely to contract the disease and to fall severely ill
| if they did. This is roughly in line with your comment
| about vaccines reducing infection severity.
|
| The study is a relatively quick read and I encourage you
| to give it a look if you have the stomach for medical
| statistics (which admittedly is pretty dry). The
| methodology is nothing special, but not problematic IMO,
| and the sample size and population distribution are good
| for a study of this scale (though there's an
| overrepresentation of the unvaccinated relative to the
| Canadian population; in this case, it likely doesn't
| represent an issue). [0]
| https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/cases?n=c
| [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-
| health/services/reports-publications/canada-communicable-
| disease-report-ccdr/monthly-
| issue/2024-50/issue-1-2-january-
| february-2024/covid-19-outcome-trends-vaccination-status-
| canada.html
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Here's a source for the US in Q3 2022:
|
| > By the third quarter of 2022, an estimated 96.4% of
| persons aged >=16 years in a longitudinal blood donor
| cohort had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from previous infection
| or vaccination, including 22.6% from infection alone and
| 26.1% from vaccination alone; 47.7% had hybrid immunity.
|
| Doing the math, that estimates ~70% of US blood donors
| over 16 had contracted actual covid by almost 2 years
| ago.
|
| (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7222a3.htm)
|
| Are blood donors representative? I don't know. Reported
| and recorded positives doesn't seem at all representative
| of an overall infection count though, since it misses
| probably most minor cases of covid, which makes up most
| cases period.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > it was becoming more and more clear that the only
| people who might benefit from the shots were those taking
| them
|
| Do you have any evidence at all of that? AFAIK, none
| exist.
|
| What exists is some weak evidence the vaccine severely
| reduced the transmission of the virus. I've never seen
| any study strong enough to be proof, but then this is
| extremely hard to measure (either way it goes).
| richardlblair wrote:
| There are a lot of problems with making this argument,
| though. Ultimately our government lacks the necessary
| powers. Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the
| stated mission of overthrowing the Government. They also
| used their horns in a densely populated area, which an ENT
| doctor confirmed exposed the citizens of Downtown Ottawa to
| volumes that can damage the inner ear. This is without
| taking into consideration those with disabilities, like
| Autism, which can make such sensations exceptionally
| difficult.
|
| Then things get super messy when you start to look at how
| the province deals with indigenous populations, their
| protests, versus a group of white nationalists attempting
| to overthrow the Government.
|
| The fact the emergency powers were used, to me, are a
| symptom of a broken system.
|
| Either way, opposing political powers are jumping all over
| the opportunity to leverage the situation for their own
| gain.
|
| I'm so sick of politics. They are all dishonest. No matter
| what, we lose.
| naasking wrote:
| > Remember, those people travelled to Ottawa with the
| stated mission of overthrowing the Government.
|
| No.
|
| > versus a group of white nationalists attempting to
| overthrow the Government.
|
| Also no, not white nationalists.
| adamomada wrote:
| The horns died down after a few short days, after a
| reasonable concession was made.
|
| I have a feeling hardly any Canadians at all know what
| really happened in Ottawa even though there was and is
| extensive live video evidence streamed and stored on
| YouTube.
| richardlblair wrote:
| Let's park 100 trucks outside your house for 'a few short
| days' and blast their horns. Then you can tell me if
| those days are short or not.
|
| I have friends who live downtown Ottawa. I know exactly
| what went on. I know what flags were on display.
|
| People need to stop down playing what happened.
| adamomada wrote:
| If I lived downtown Ottawa and likely worked for the
| federal government I would be extra sympathetic to any
| protest at all. I would have to appreciate a democracy in
| order to work for such agencies, which apparently your
| buddies don't.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Freezing the bank accounts of the trucker protest
|
| Just putting this into context:
|
| > Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance,
| told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts
| holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial
| measures contained in the Emergencies Act.
|
| > She also said the fact that more than 200 bank accounts
| were frozen did not necessarily mean that more than 200
| people lost access to their funds. Jacques said that
| individuals may have held more than one account affected by
| the measures.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-
| fin...
| poochipie wrote:
| "The government should solve every problem" is a totalizing
| idea the Liberals have implemented though.
|
| We see this in the job growth numbers, for example, that show
| massive federal government hiring and anemic private sector
| growth. A market solution would have federal incentives
| create private sector growth to accomplish goals.
|
| And, yes: Canada badly needs some kind of antitrust regime.
| Perhaps the reward for monopolization of a Canadian market
| should be nationalization.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Governments have figured out they can affect their
| populations like a rancher affects cattle. Elections are no
| longer solemn rituals but instead are processes for
| manufacturing consent to be governed. Only through the magick
| of the social contract can your neighbors collectively eat
| you while individually they are prevented.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The government puts most of its effort into protecting
| friendly companies and industries from competition and even
| funneling taxpayer money to them.
|
| Somehow, the people rushing to use that "faccism" label tend
| to ignore this one property of the original ones.
| larater wrote:
| As an American that has gone up to Canada thousands of times
| in my life, you have to be completely delusional to say this.
|
| The change in Canada from 20 years ago is just shocking. If
| you can't see this, it is because you don't want to see it.
|
| Canadians like you are why I think your country is utterly
| doomed.
| Longhanks wrote:
| No need to worry, the EU tries the same every few weeks.
|
| https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-e...
| chongli wrote:
| Authoritarian. Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of
| the population under a single ideology.
|
| Putin aspires to be a totalitarian leader but even he has not
| managed to pull it off. He depends quite heavily on a
| depoliticized "silent majority" of Russians who are too
| scared/complacent to challenge his security apparatus. If
| Russia were a totalitarian state then you'd see that majority
| rushing to join the military and join the government.
| lynx23 wrote:
| > Totalitarianism requires a large mobilization of the
| population under a single ideology.
|
| Either you forgot about COVID or you seem to have a case of
| Stockholm syndrom.e
|
| Those which haven't had an issue with mandates shots seem to
| totally ignore what a schock the sitaution was for those who
| didnt approve.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't get how any of this was a shock. A lot of vaccines
| are mandated when you're in the public school system. Most
| people in the US have gotten these "mandated" shots without
| much complaint in the past. So much of this seems like
| rationalization of a purely reflexive reaction to the idea
| that there's any kind of social responsibility.
|
| Consider the similar backlash to mask mandates. I didn't
| like wearing a mask, but it's not a huge imposition. Some
| people treated it like it was greatest injustice they'd
| ever experienced though. And then they went on to
| rationalize this emotional reaction by making up shit about
| masks cutting off their oxygen supply or causing brain
| damage, etc. All this despite the fact that wearing a mask
| (or even a respirator) is necessary for a big chunk of the
| day in many jobs ranging from construction workers to
| surgeons.
| markhahn wrote:
| This is pointless and ill-informed cynicism.
|
| Canada is not totalitarian. Frankly, I can't imagine claiming
| so unless you have quite an extreme view of politics (for
| instance, the appropriateness of blockading downtown Ottawa).
| There is plenty of MAGA-like conspiratory thinking in Canada,
| but it's relatively new for Canada, and definitely not widely-
| accepted.
| tavavex wrote:
| People online are insanely cynical about Canada without
| having ever stepped one foot in the country. A ton of
| discourse regarding Canada happens in between non-Canadians,
| and I'm not sure if it's intentional at this point. Every
| scandal or disagreement gets blown up to an international
| stage, people eager to take party talking points as
| unquestionable truth.
|
| There's no shortage of Americans who wholeheartedly believe
| that Canada is an authoritarian regime. Given that the
| average HN user seems to be an older, conservative-leaning
| American I'm not really surprised by the sentiment, though I
| did hope for more level-headed discussions.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What's this weird obsession with Americans? I'm Canadian,
| and it's only white liberal Canadians that have this super
| weird rose tinted look at their own country because they
| blame everything on the US. Maybe you're privileged enough
| to not relate with the issues highlighted, but that's just
| your own bubble.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I mean, Canada is the only country in the west that has used
| emergency powers not once but twice in 50 years. Either our
| country is unstable (it's not) or the federal government
| clearly doesn't give a shit about precedent and due process.
|
| It also doesn't help that the same government has admitted to
| a current genocide without basically doing anything about it.
| So yes, when you combine those two things criticism will
| happen.
| verandaguy wrote:
| This is an awful take.
|
| At no point in the last several decades has any Canadian
| government come _close_ to being totalitarian, authoritarian,
| or otherwise. The most recent example in living memory (which I
| don 't intend to downplay) would've been residential schools,
| which were run by churches with supportive policies coming from
| the federal (and lower) governments. The last residential
| school closed in 1997.
|
| Canada is absolutely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, a
| representative democracy falling under the broad umbrella of
| "Western (Neo)liberal democracies". There are legitimate
| criticisms of neoliberalism just as there are of
| neoconservativism, but totalitarian aspirations are
| exceptionally rarely a valid accusation.
|
| If anything, the biggest threat to Canadian democracy might be
| a decline in political literacy. We don't have an election
| where we vote for PMs, but many people still do. We don't have
| a two-party system; in practice, we have a multi-party system
| to the extent that minority governments are possible (we have
| one now!), but many people vote as though we're in a two-party
| system with a handful of "joke parties" that amount to wasting
| your vote. We have a bicameral parliament, but one of our
| chambers is made up purely of elected members who have so far
| mostly stayed level-headed through more or less sheer force of
| good will (which I don't consider a good enough protection in
| the long term, but that's another topic).
|
| How laws are introduced into parliament and passed is something
| most Canadians probably couldn't answer off the top of their
| heads in more detail than saying that there there are a few
| readings, and most of us aren't following what our MP or MPP is
| doing for your riding, because in real terms, most of us vote
| based on a party leader and their at-large actions in office.
| kevinprince wrote:
| This keeps coming up in most countries every few years. Everyone
| seems to forget in nearly every country telecoms are licensed
| industries and providing legal intercept is a legal obligation of
| those licenses.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Ah okay, the law says so, so it must be acceptable.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I just want everyone to be _aware_ of this. Every call or
| chat conversation that is intercepted should have an audible
| /text message saying "beep. beep. Sergeant Tom smith has
| joined this conversation as allowed by wiretapping
| regulations for your safety and security".
|
| Followed by "This conversation is now being recorded by
| Sergeant Tom Smith".
| rustcleaner wrote:
| No we should ignore the loons in Washington and instead use
| Session/Briar to communicate privately. What Senator Timmy
| gonna to do, pass a law? :^)
| worewood wrote:
| While they have the power to backdoor telecom networks for
| surveillance, what they actually want is a way of doing this
| without legal oversight or recourse to traditional legal
| gatekeeping like warrants.
|
| So we should not shrug this off just because "they already can
| do it".
| tamimio wrote:
| Pretty much, as right now with proper legal justification the
| government can access any communication, or at least get the
| meta data associated with.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| We have seen these a thousand times. I say bring it on. The
| pendulum has swung solidly into the hands of users. We have so
| many privacy tools to counter state surveillance these days. Any
| country openly conducting mass surveillance will soon see the
| target population wrap itself in VPNs and encrypted services.
| Remember when ISPs began throttling torrents? Everyone then
| flicked the switch and torrent traffic become encrypted. Remember
| the London riots, what happened to RIM shortly afterwards?
| Remember Lavabit? Go ahead and tap my SMS or whatsapp text
| messages. That's the push I need to switch the last of my friends
| over to Signal.
| poochipie wrote:
| Accelerationism[0] FTW.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| See China, most people are totally okay with it and VPNs are
| rare.
| kredd wrote:
| The reality is super majority of user base don't care about
| data privacy or what government can see as long as it doesn't
| affect their day to day lives. There was a big outrage when
| WhatsApp changed their privacy policy, everyone is still using
| it. Supermajority of people who live in China are not using any
| of the western social media. Or how nobody cares when there's a
| breach of personal data, and it gets leaked online. Again,
| unless it affects them directly, it really doesn't matter. We
| (people in tech and tech-adjacent fields) are in an extremely
| fringe bubble. And I can't really blame them, after all who has
| time to think about all the second order effects of different
| policy changes.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >Again, unless it affects them directly, it really doesn't
| matter.
|
| It does affect them directly, doesn't anyone know why they're
| broke all the time (aside from inflation)? Is it possible all
| that harmless telemetry for harmless marketing purposes
| actually isn't so harmless, and Terminator is inducing you to
| buy products you like but really don't need more than the
| savings you're splurging with? No, can't be!
|
| If people woke up to how insideously manipulated they are at
| large... oh man!
| kredd wrote:
| Yeah, but it really doesn't matter. Majority of my friends
| are not in tech space, and not a single one would care
| about it. It's similar to how I don't care about some
| sports team winning the championship, or Taylor Swift, or a
| relationship between two reality TV stars. You can call
| those "superfluous interests", but those people would say
| the same about our interests. And since things you've
| mentioned doesn't negatively affect the things they care
| about, it just... doesn't matter to them. I wouldn't even
| call it an abnormal behaviour, since a person can only
| think about so many things during the day.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| But "our interests" in observing the use of psychological
| trickery through memes and celebrity pawns to subtly
| nudge group actions and [the holy grail:] individual
| actions. Sports wins don't have the influence Meta's data
| pipeline has on individuals' lives! It's huge and
| insidious, 1984 is now literally becoming possible! It
| does negatively affect them. Now special interest
| politics can better out maneuver said people's interests
| and intentions even more effectively, now that personal
| and cohort profiles exist and updated in realtime!
|
| No, we are cooked if we do not spread persuit of privacy
| like a religion! The individual cede to the group, and
| the group to the regal classes.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> We have so many privacy tools to counter state surveillance
| these days.
|
| Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had to
| break any encryption protocols to catch people doing bad
| things. Pedo's on TOR were busted without it. Terrorist rings
| have been broken up without breaking encryption protocols.
| There's been rumors the NSA has broken encryption on WhatsApp
| and Telegram but will never admit it publicly.
|
| If you think simply having good encryption will buffer state
| surveillance, it won't. If the gov wants to get you they will
| always have a huge advantage. They never sleep and have
| unlimited resources. Right now, tracking a smartphone, getting
| the data from your provider and the profile companies like
| Verizon, Google and others have on you is pretty easy. They
| don't _need_ to break encryption when there are so many other
| vectors to get at you. Just having the GPS data Google has on
| you is enough to give them a roadmap on your life.
|
| Unless you're willing to be a hermit like Ted Kaczynski was for
| years, it will be easy for any state to surveil you. And the
| gov still got Ted, even after all things he did to cover his
| tracks and living completely off the grid.
| tharmas wrote:
| Good post. But I believe it was his brother that recognized
| the hand writing. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have got
| him.
| burningChrome wrote:
| Little know trivia about him - he was a suspect for years
| as the Zodiac Killer.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| But we are not all unibombers. Any security/privacy
| discussion starts with the level of threat. The average
| person doesn't want to hide their every detail, nor do they
| have to. The average person probably wants something like "I
| don't want my government to passively scan what I read
| online". That's an easy hurdle. Or, "my brother is addicted
| to cocaine and I want to talk to him about it without AT&T
| reporting our conversation the police." Again, this is easy.
| But if you say "I'm a defense contractor currently under
| investigation for treason and want to I pass
| money/information to my handler in North Korea undetected."
| THAT would be a challenge. It is probably still doable, but
| we should not abandon the basic needs of most people simply
| because we cannot promise total privacy to the most difficult
| cases too.
|
| (Fyi, I once talked to a defense attorney representing
| alleged terrorists. His clients lived overseas and the
| attorney was representing them in the US. That man was one of
| those hard privacy cases.)
| rustcleaner wrote:
| If you know what you're doing it's easy. The hard part is
| getting from nascent to knowing what to do without
| inadvertently tripping wires in the process. The
| surveillance has a major component built around how people
| behave normally in normie society (specifically,
| communication and technology habits).
| rangestransform wrote:
| That's why it's important that software and hardware
| companies ship security that's secure against nation state
| actors by default, so that those who actually need it can
| blend into the masses
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >Most of the cases you hear and read about, the gov never had
| to break any encryption protocols to catch people doing bad
| things.
|
| If you had a god's view, but wanted to keep that classified,
| you'd construct a parallel path to obtaining the same outcome
| in court without tipping your hand to the god's view.
| Parallel Construction.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| CISA can analyze flow on backbones and (I presume) the various
| branches of partner domestic ISP networks. It's one way they
| track down botnet C2 nodes. What does this mean? It means the
| fact you accessing a hidden service is no longer hidden from
| the state. While the content may be encrypted, CISA could tap
| on the pipe with a wrench at a known HS node and see what
| pipeline in the mix rings on the other end (my cute way of
| describing adding delays and interrupts to a stream so those
| show up as recognizable fingerprints to scan for elsewhere,
| like a cable finder/tester). Combine in some techniques on
| analyzing payload sizes and order, and some decent guesses of
| the content can be formulated.
|
| Only way I can think to defeat the analysis is to make a mixnet
| which asks for a GB/month target and simply transmits either
| data or padding uniformly in time with all nodes it peered with
| (a much much smaller subset than the whole network). Padding
| should be multi-hop so immediate neighbor nodes can't tell what
| is encrypted traffic and what is encrypted padding.
| johnnyAghands wrote:
| Its almost as if these policy makers don't know anything about
| anything.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I've met people who believe that there are good guys and bad
| guys, that they are the good guys, and that there should be no
| protections for the bad guys.
|
| You can't convince them that to others, or in the future, they
| might be seen as the bad guys. Because that just isn't true --
| they're the good guys.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Their crystal ball for telling the future has proven that
| they are on "the right side of history [which hasn't yet
| occurred]."
| piltdownman wrote:
| Canada _has_ the power to backdoor telecom networks for
| surveillance. All host nations do for their infrastructure as
| part of the RAN Architecture
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
|
| What Canada seems to _actually_ want is a way of doing this
| without legal oversight or recourse to traditional legal
| gatekeeping like warrants.
| mrandish wrote:
| Given the rapidly declining state of individual privacy, when
| discussing these extensions it helps to be specific about the
| authorized agency and context. For example, these days, it's
| pretty much a given that NSA-type spy agencies are already
| getting all of whatever electronic communications they want
| with little friction. In the US there are certain supposed
| safeguards against surveilling US citizens domestically but
| we've already seen how quickly and easily these have been
| circumvented by using partner 'five eyes' agencies and
| commercial data brokers.
|
| While this is obviously problematic, to me, it's even worse if
| domestic law enforcement agencies gain new ways to remove
| friction like warrant requirements or at least the need to make
| specific per-instance requests (which are possible to (in
| theory) be tracked and reviewed to detect over-use and abuse).
| The idea of domestic law enforcement agencies gaining access to
| "full take" feeds of everything enabling them to
| retrospectively build massive connection trees of metadata
| which can be searched is downright terrifying.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Good insight. The difference between the NSA and local cops
| is that the NSA won't be looking for some bullshit to use as
| an excuse to arrest or harass you.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Nope, but they will be looking for your nudes. [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nude-photos-of-
| strangers-...
| sqeaky wrote:
| There are just fewer of them, I suspect they are harassing
| someone.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Of course not. The dragnet surveillance is not to bother
| with your doobie habit. You and I and most of us are
| irrelevant losers doe the NSA
|
| They dragnet surveil to get dirt on the ten thousand or so
| lawmakers that matter.
| always2slow wrote:
| While your presentation is probably getting you
| downvoted, this is the real problem. They use this
| information to control/influence government officials or
| people with power.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > lawmakers that matter
|
| And journalists, and people that see something and may
| want to wristleblow, and people that know commercial
| secrets (yes, they've been caught doing commercial
| spying). There are more categories here.
|
| And, of course, there's always the danger that the one
| random person that you didn't see eye to eye earlier just
| happens to work there.
| Liquix wrote:
| they dragnet surveil to build an increasingly accurate
| stockpile of data on an increasing number of people.
| everything is catalogued and filed away, nothing is
| discarded. at some point in the past or future, this data
| has been/will be weaponized via ML and used in the best
| interest of whomever controls it (the government), not in
| the best interest of the surveilled masses. this is why
| it is important to care about your privacy on the
| internet.
| sneak wrote:
| Unless you're a journalist publishing information about the
| federal government that they don't like. Then they'll
| imprison you indefinitely without trial.
|
| The bar is higher for them to wield "some bullshit" against
| you, but rest assured, they still will.
|
| It's been more than a decade since Assange has been free.
| wubrr wrote:
| > The difference between the NSA and local cops is that the
| NSA won't be looking for some bullshit to use as an excuse
| to arrest or harass you.
|
| No, the difference is NSA is much more capable and has much
| less oversight (not that cops have much oversight or
| accountability).
| esafak wrote:
| What's RAN? It's not in the link.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| Radio Access Network - basically think the cell phone towers
| and the equipment for those towers.
| kevin_nisbet wrote:
| I was going to add the same thing, this isn't only something
| the telecom providers do, the equipment providers include
| lawful intercept features as part of the equipment, the telecom
| just has to setup access. I don't have a chance to check right
| now, but I think this is even part of the published standards.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Furthermore, Canada doesn't have a (real) constitution since
| the TP they have since 1982 has a "not withstanding" clause,
| meaning parliament can just ignore their equivalent of the Bill
| of Rights
| SECProto wrote:
| Note that the notwithstanding clause has never been used by
| the federal government (the "parliament" you referenced).
|
| It's a shitty clause, and should be removed but it was put in
| at the behest of certain province(s) as the only way to get
| the Charter of Rights and Freedoms _at all_ , and has only
| been used by _provincial_ governments (aka legislatures,
| though a few provinces do call them "provincial
| Parliament").
| glitchc wrote:
| What prevents its use by the federal government? If the
| answer is "nothing", then it's only a matter of time.
| Galxeagle wrote:
| Political blowback has been enough to keep the power in
| check - it significantly raises the visibility of the
| attempted action whenever it's invoked(1) and
| historically has been associated with a political hit. It
| also has a 5-year sunset/renewal requirement, and can
| only override certain sections.
|
| I think everyone would generally agree a constitution
| would be stronger without it, but even if 'it's only a
| matter of time', it's played out as a pretty decent
| compromise to actually get the charter signed ~45 years
| earlier than potentially no charter at all.
|
| Canada generally relies on trust and good behaviour more
| than the US system of checks-and-balances - the most
| obvious difference is that our Prime Minister plays the
| role of both US president (head of exec) and congress
| (technically just the House equivalent, but the senate
| equivalent is much weaker)
|
| (1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/notwithstanding-
| clause-doug...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What? There has been absolutely no blowback when Quebec
| used it. And minimal blowback for all other uses. This is
| just a weird cope, people don't really care if they use
| it here. It's sad but true.
| glitchc wrote:
| There's no doubt that the RoC, especially the West, is
| not particularly happy with Quebec's liberal use of the
| notwithstanding clause.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I agree but that's not super actionable. There's no
| actual consequences. In fact, I don't think said usage
| has ever been even slightly important in any election for
| any of the government that has used it.
|
| And since that's usually the main defense for the
| notwithstanding clause ("using it would lead to too much
| backlash so self policing is fine!"), then i don't see
| how it's defensible.
|
| Not that it actually even makes sense anyways. If it
| won't be used, why have it? If it will be used for issues
| as trivial as what it has actually been used for up until
| now, that's super dangerous, so again why even leave it
| there? And for exceptional situations, we already have a
| government that's pretty trigger happy with the emergency
| act that allows for basically anything.
|
| So it leaves us with provincial government using it in
| non critical situations (which would be handled by the
| federal government anyways). I guess that's also a
| "valid" option, and the one we have now, but then it's
| hard to argue that our constitution isn't completely
| worthless.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Keep what in check? The war measures act has been used
| twice in 60 years!
|
| The trucker fiasco ended only when the Ukraine war
| substituted the COVID madness
| thsksbd wrote:
| Nothing. But they dont need to use it.
|
| 1. There is effectively one ruling party in Canada (the
| Liberals) representing the interest of the Eastern
| industrialists (the Laurentian elite). The supreme court
| is appointed from this incestuous group and the
| government typically wins (exception - truckers)
|
| 2. They have the War Measures act which the feds have
| proven very willing to use.
|
| 3. Canadians are extremely conforming. Really they are
| Scandinavians in their attitude.
| peeters wrote:
| That said, the Conservative Leader has signalled that he
| will use it to override the Supreme Court on social issues.
| Now dropping hints in an election runup is obviously
| different than actually invoking the NWC, but it
| demonstrates that our Charter is as robust as our
| politicians' perceived risk of throwing it out. Having the
| loophole to preserve some level of provincial autonomy is
| one thing, but having federal parties signal they will use
| it is an attack on the institution itself.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Yes, yes we all know the history. "We didnt want it! We
| dont want it! We've never used it" As if 42 years are a
| long time.
|
| Of course, the feds dont really need the clause. In less
| than 60 years they've invoked the war measures act _twice_.
| The last time the government lost the court case on its
| suitability.
|
| Canada has always been the land of the free to conform.
| peeters wrote:
| I know you know this, because you mentioned the Bill of
| Rights, but just to be more precise, we have a constitution,
| but our charter of rights is overridable in certain
| circumstances. The constitution is more than an enumeration
| of rights in both the US and Canada, it also defines the
| structure of representation, government, and democracy, none
| of which is subject to the notwithstanding clause (obviously,
| because the notwithstanding clause itself is part of the
| Constitution).
| thsksbd wrote:
| Of course. The clause doesn't cover how the country is
| divided into provinces, for example.
|
| The clause covers, with no real check on power (see Quebec
| vs high court), the most important part of the constitution
| - the government's relationship with its people!
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Canada does have The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but even
| basic things like property rights or self defence are not
| even mentioned there, and those that are, described vaguely,
| so it renders the whole charter not worth the ink that it's
| printed with.
| cal5k wrote:
| A "parchment guarantee", as Scalia would say.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Canada already has lawful intercept.
|
| This is totally their goal.
| torginus wrote:
| How? Doesn't HTTPS offer E2E interception?
|
| Do they have the ability to compromise that, or can they
| 'merely' ask the owner of the endpoint you are talking to to
| rat you out?
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Can you have true E2E encryption without knowing your peer's
| public key in advance? They could cheat by sending you to
| talk to someone else in a "private" manner.
|
| An offline attack against the host's keys that relies on
| undisclosed vulnerabilities, or an online one against their
| infra that abuses recent CVEs and bad security also seem
| possible.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Wouldn't this involve breaking the trust chain? You can't
| just redirect HTTPS traffic to a separate host with a
| different key. If the government demanded the peer's
| private key then this is possible. But you can't just
| arbitrarily redirect traffic without resulting in a cert
| error.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| You don't even have to ask the peer.
|
| Because of the same chain of trust, you can just ask the
| root authority to give you a certificate for peer's
| identity.
| BA_and_bored wrote:
| Are we supposed to believe that 5 eyes aren't doing it already?
| tharmas wrote:
| Yes, but they can't use it in court. This, presumably, would
| enable the info to be used in court.
| achrono wrote:
| If Snowden and Assange have taught us one thing, it is that
| state-sponsored surveillance is not a topic you want to have a
| very high evidence threshold for. The available evidence is
| always going to lag the actuality and even what we previously
| thought of as exaggerations/outliers in terms of suspicions of
| surveillance (e.g. "NSA knows I hate broccoli") have turned out
| to be not so unwarranted after all.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The NSA was literally spying in World of Warcraft. [1] About
| the time you have spooks running around in video games as Elves
| 'for national defense', you know we live in the dumb (but
| endlessly entertaining) timeline.
|
| [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-
| onli...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Online games have historically been quite a way for people to
| organize beyond the wide Internet. Steam and Discord in
| particular gained notoriety in recent years [1], but I
| distinctly remember UT2004 being flooded with Nazi trolls all
| the time even around 2010.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-
| discor...
| adamomada wrote:
| There was a show on Amazon a few years ago called Patriot
| about the misfortunes of a CIA operative with hardly any
| support from the agency. An interesting part was that even
| though he used a blackberry, arguably having better e2e
| messaging than today, the comms were done through some
| online scrabble game.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Spying by participating there is normal and expected.
| cbsmith wrote:
| [delayed]
| lupusreal wrote:
| For some reason, Canada wants us to believe they don't already
| have this.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well with GNU pg, you can have all the backdoors in networks all
| you want, but it will do Canada no good.
|
| But I sometimes wonder if the M/S push to Windows 11 w/tpm2
| allows for a backdoor on Windows. I also think the move of Apple
| to the [M1-n] chips may allow the same :) But back to reality, I
| believe 99% of these backdoor pushes are mainly for Cell Phones.
| Almost no one uses a PC these days for communication.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Almost no one uses a PC these days for communication.
|
| Probably quite a lot of the people that governments want to
| keep a fairly close eye on do still use PCs or laptops though
| rvba wrote:
| Tons of people use teams/zoom/other to make calls on their PCs.
| Also emails and chats..
| markhahn wrote:
| no one uses a PC for communication? why even would you
| apparently equate that silly msft with desktop use?
|
| that silliness aside, there are serious limits to how much
| access even bios/TPM/SMM compromises can provide. for instance,
| if I audit my network, your use of SMM to compromise my machine
| can be mitigated. the picture may be different if you seize my
| machine, of course, but we all know that most bets are off with
| physical access.
| croes wrote:
| I think this is the new part additional to existing surveillance
|
| >This could include requiring telcos to alter the 5G encryption
| standards that protect mobile communications to facilitate
| government surveillance.
| moose44 wrote:
| I don't understand the point of attempting to pass a bill and
| draw attention to the subject if they already do this?
|
| Context: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-public-
| health-a...
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Call me paranoid (I'll fess up to it), but I think client-side
| scanners like Recall are expressly for defeating E2EE without
| breaking the math or hardware.
|
| With NPU-powered client-side scanning combined with lexical
| analysis techniques, even if YOU are knowledgeable enough to have
| privately ditched Apple/Google/Microsoft permanently: your
| mentally normie-tier anon fren may be using a Copilot+ with
| Recall, and so Microsoft gets to read the conversation on his
| machine and then sus you out.
| maxglute wrote:
| Only matter of time before OS/recall operators realize they're
| sitting on stockpile of "accidentally" captured critical info
| and get into the information brokers game.
| rolandog wrote:
| "Microsoft: best Linux salesperson!"
| davikr wrote:
| It won't be long until Microsoft offers "backing up" your
| Recall data into OneDrive, where LEO will be able to easily
| subpoena it.
|
| For instance, WhatsApp strongly suggests backing up your data
| to Drive, where it's easy to obtain a copy if you're a cop.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| They won't even need to subpoena it, companies like
| Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc regularly just hand over data
| when asked nicely by law enforcement. Some of them even have
| portals to automate the process.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| I wish I could find some old talks by John Quaid (actor Dennis
| Quaid's father). I remember one entitled "I don't need no
| stinking drivers license" or something. This headline really
| brings those to mind.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Is he as much of an insane clown as his kid?
| mysterypie wrote:
| > _In 2017, the CBC demonstrated how hackers only needed a
| Canadian MP's cell number to intercept his movements, text
| messages and phone calls._
|
| > From the linked article: _First, the hackers were able to
| record a conversation between Dube in his office on Parliament
| Hill and our Radio-Canada colleague Brigitte Bureau, who was
| sitting at a cafe in Berlin._
|
| So many questions! Does this still work? On any phone using SS7?
| Including landlines and mobile phones? From anywhere in the
| world? To anywhere in the world? What are the limitations of the
| attack? Why isn't this a _vastly_ bigger problem if anyone can
| listen in on anyone 's calls?
| martincmartin wrote:
| The Economist had an article about this last week:
|
| https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/05/17/...
|
| (Accompanying editorial:
| https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/05/23/hacking-
| phones-...)
| cbsmith wrote:
| [delayed]
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I read this first as "China".
| sqeaky wrote:
| That is what we were told as kids, but at least some of that
| was deflection for crimes of our fellow citizens.
| foresto wrote:
| I wonder if it's time for democracies to constitutionally
| enshrine encryption into our systems of due process (or whatever
| the correct legal term is).
|
| It would seem to align well with the concept of checks and
| balances, at least.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The problem with these efforts is they aren't for responding to
| actual crime or safety concerns, but for securing party rule and
| controlling dissent.
|
| Policy attempts like this indicate that given the pace of tech
| change vs. managerialism, Canada is basically a write off
| destined for decades of developing nation status the way former
| powers like Portugal, Greece, Argentina, and Spain were
| considered poor countries in the late 20th century because of
| ruling parties similar to the ones in Canada today. When a
| government switches from growth to managing dissent and capital
| flight, the writing is on the wall.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| lol cope
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| I have some knowledge of the LI (lawful intercept) space. Some
| USA/Canada agencies/companies uses tools by JSI Telecom to do
| this. They do deep packet inspection and phone call recording
| with retention policies set by whatever law the host country has.
| For calls that are recorded, you cant record chats to lawyers, so
| a human has to listen to the call and mute it. Some countries
| don't allow recording, so a human has to listen in on the call
| live. Blah blah blah.
|
| My opinion is that democracy will die in favor of republics where
| govts do whatever. Seems to me were heading that way anyway. I
| find the theater of it tiring.
| gchokov wrote:
| Canada used to be a great country not that far in the past.
| kennywinker wrote:
| When? The last residential school closed in 1996, so anything
| before that is out.
| nativeit wrote:
| > ...while government MPs maintained that their intent is not to
| expand surveillance capabilities,
|
| So...what's their official rationale for including it?
|
| >MPs pushed the bill out of committee without this critical
| amendment last month. In doing so, the government has set itself
| up to be the sole arbiter of when, and on what conditions,
| Canadians deserve security for their most confidential
| communications - personal, business, religious, or otherwise.
|
| Not just the Canadian government! Let's not forget the criminals
| and foreign adversaries who compromise their systems!
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