Author: Christopher Parsons

Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.

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The Murky State of Canadian Telecommunications Surveillance – The Citizen Lab

On January 20, 2014 the Citizen Lab along with leading Canadian academics and civil liberties groups asked Canadian telecommunications companies to reveal the extent to which they disclose information to state authorities. This post summarizes and analyzes the responses from the companies, and argues that the companies have done little to ultimately clarify their disclosure policies. We conclude by indicating the subsequent steps in this research project.

The most recent posting about our ongoing research into how, why, and how often Canadian ISPs disclose information to state agencies.

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Quotations

2014.2.26

The NSA can’t break Tor and it [ticks] them off. Most crypto drives the NSA batty,” [Bruce Schneier] said. “Encryption works and it works at scale. The NSA may have a large budget than all of the other intelligence agencies combined, but they are not made of magic. Our goal should be to make eavesdropping more expensive. We should have the goal of limiting bulk collection and forcing targeted collection.

Bruce Schneier, quoted in Dennis Fisher, “The NSA is ‘not made of magic’”
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Aside

SSHRC Postdoc!

A SSHRC postdoc (starting October 1, 2014) is mine!!

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Quotations

2014.2.14

Politicians are welcome to do strange things at home –read a book for pleasure, think for themselves–as long as they do it in private and nobody finds out. A politician who does random things in public, in front of cameras and microphones, is not merely departing from the disciplined advancement of a political idea, he is undermining it.

Paul Well, The Longer I’m Prime Minister
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Aside Quotations

2014.2.18

“We are assessing Public Mobile pricing right now and looking at product offerings,” Joe Natale, Telus’ executive vice-president and chief commercial officer, said Thursday in a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s fourth quarter results.

“We have made a commitment to keep the $19 unlimited voice plan in the market through 2014, but we will be looking at all the various aspects of Public Mobile rate plans and making sure we strike the right balance between doing what’s right for Public Mobile customers and putting forth a set of economic considerations with the Telus organization.”

Nicholas Kyonka, “Telus working on Public Mobile integration” (subscription required)

Whenever I read ‘balance between our acquired customers and our own economic considerations’ I almost immediately translate to ‘the acquired customers are gonna enjoy the economic benefits of rate hikes.’

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Quotations

2014.2.18

Oakland is a poor city; it can’t really afford its extravagant police force, and it certainly couldn’t afford its DAC [Domain Awareness Centre].

Surveillance trickles down in more than one way. At a time when Oakland is closing schools and dealing with more than $50 million in budget shortfalls, the DAC is made possible by DHS grants. These same grants have been militarizing the police all over America as well as giving them wide surveillance capabilities — capabilities that haven’t translated into much terrorism prevention, but have been aggressively brought to bear on protesters all over the nation in the 15 years since the Battle of Seattle in 1999.

In one of the most revealing moments of these baby Big Brothers, a FOIA request for Oakland City mails about the DAC revealed that none of the talk was about crime – no mention of murders, assaults, thefts, or the violent crime Oakland officials express constant frustration with. Instead, there was talk of tracking protests and labor strikes. The internal desires of Oakland’s minders revealed a frustration with the dissent that finds such powerful political expression in Oakland, and strategies for heading it off.

“I have also made it clear that the United States does not collect intelligence to suppress criticism or dissent,” Obama said in his speech Friday. Whether that is true or not for his NSA and Cybercommand, the Obama Executive has had no problems with funding such efforts at the local level.

Quinn Norton, “NSA Reform: What Could Have Been And What We’ve Got”
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Links Quotations

2014.2.14

Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab, told The Varsity that “Metadata at this point, is as or more invasive in its collection and analysis than the content of a communication. Any suggestion that because its metadata, it’s any less invasive, just isn’t true.”

“If you were to monitor the metadata coming out of my phone for a day, it would be a lot more revealing than any actual content. This would include things like where I was, when I made the phone calls, how long they were, who I made them to, and who those people talked to,” said Parsons. Using this information, Parsons said, intelligence agencies can determine movement patterns, browsing tendencies, shopping and lifestyle habits, all without figuring out specifically what was said in the conversation.

The Citizen Lab’s campaign for government surveillance oversight has been at the heart of the debate on consumer telecommunications and Internet privacy. Last week, they issued an open letter to several Canadian phone and Internet service providers (ISPs). The letter asked them to publicize the extent of customer information divulged to law enforcement and other intelligence agencies. When contacted by The Varsity for further comments on the Citizen Lab’s campaign, Jennifer Kett, Senior Manager at Rogers Media Relations said they were currently reviewing the request. She added: “We take the privacy and security of our customers’ personal information very seriously. We require a properly executed warrant to disclose customer information to law enforcement or any other body. If we believe that a request is overreaching we will take steps to challenge it.” Kett declined to provide further details when asked, saying that the review of the Citizen Lab’s request was pending. Bell Canada did not respond to multiple contact attempts.

Amitpal Singh, “U of T academics at forefront of online privacy battle”
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CTV News Channel: ‘No invasion of privacy here’

Christopher Parsons, Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow, reacts to the assessment that it is okay Wi-Fi data was collected at airports.

My appearance on CTV yesterday, talking about the CSEC Commissioner’s statement that it’s perfectly legal for the foreign signals intelligence agency to collect Canadians’ metadata.

CTV News Channel: ‘No invasion of privacy here’

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Links Quotations

2014.2.13

Dr. Christopher Parsons, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affair, University of Toronto, Canada: “Our democratic governments have been caught massively spying on innocent individuals around the world. In the process, citizens’ willingness to exercise rights of speech, association, and collective action have been chilled. By reforming governments’ behaviours in a concerted, global, fashion we can push back against this surveillance, surveillance that currently threatens to suffocate our democracies.”

Katitza Rodriguez, “International Community Unites to Protest Big Brother”
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Quotations

2014.2.12

Shaping ideas is, of course, easier said than done. Bombarding people with ads only works to a degree. No one likes being told what to think. We grow resistant to methods of persuasion that we see through—just think of ads of yesteryear, and of how corny they feel. They worked in their day, but we’re alert to them now. Besides, blanket coverage isn’t easy to achieve in today’s fragmented media landscape. How many channels can one company advertise on? And we now fast-forward through television commercials, anyway. Even if it were possible to catch us through mass media, messages that work for one person often fail to convince others.

Big-data surveillance is dangerous exactly because it provides solutions to these problems. Individually tailored, subtle messages are less likely to produce a cynical reaction. Especially so if the data collection that makes these messages possible is unseen. That’s why it’s not only the NSA that goes to great lengths to keep its surveillance hidden. Most Internet firms also try to monitor us surreptitiously. Their user agreements, which we all must “sign” before using their services, are full of small-font legalese. We roll our eyes and hand over our rights with a click. Likewise, political campaigns do not let citizens know what data they have on them, nor how they use that data. Commercial databases sometimes allow you to access your own records. But they make it difficult, and since you don’t have much right to control what they do with your data, it’s often pointless.

This is why the state-of-the-art method for shaping ideas is not to coerce overtly but to seduce covertly, from a foundation of knowledge. These methods don’t produce a crude ad—they create an environment that nudges you imperceptibly. Last year, an article in Adweek noted that women feel less attractive on Mondays, and that this might be the best time to advertise make-up to them. “Women also listed feeling lonely, fat and depressed as sources of beauty vulnerability,” the article added. So why stop with Mondays? Big data analytics can identify exactly which women feel lonely or fat or depressed. Why not focus on them? And why stop at using known “beauty vulnerabilities”? It’s only a short jump from identifying vulnerabilities to figuring out how to create them. The actual selling of the make-up may be the tip of the iceberg.

Zeynep Tufekci, “What tear gas taught me about Twitter and the NSA: It’s time to rethink our nightmares about surveillance”