Author: Christopher Parsons

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

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Videos

Lawful access legislation and its associated powers

Lawful access legislation and its associated powers are not new. In the wrong hands, however, these powers ‘legitimize’ the gross abuse of citizens. I highly recommend you watch this investigative news piece on Sweden’s Teliasonera and how lawful access is used by dictators reliant on Teliasonera’s equipment.

If you can’t watch it all then at least watch the interview with the company’s representative, starting at around minute 52. It’s a chilling interview that exposes how ‘good’ Western companies enables human rights abuses around the world in the name of profit and ‘enabling’ communication.

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Aside

How Google collected data from wi-fi networks with Streetview vehicles

This is a terrific graphic that breaks down how Google collected data from wi-fi networks with Streetview vehicles

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Links Writing

VPNs becoming more common amongst youth

The risks that onerous copyright laws pose for law enforcement are rarely considered, despite such laws (potentially) threatening national security operations. In Sweden, following efforts to dissuade file sharing, the population is increasingly moving to encrypted VPN connections to continue their sharing. From an article over at Torrentfreak,

according to new research from the Cybernorms research group at Sweden’s Lund University, an increasing proportion of the country’s population are taking measures to negate the effects of spying on their online activities.

The study reveals that 700,000 Swedes now make themselves anonymous online with paid VPN services such as The Pirate Bay’s iPredator.

What does this have to do with law enforcement? As the Swedish population moves to encrypted communications it limits authorities’ insights into the data traffic moving through Swedish networks. Consequently, the copyright lobby is (unintentionally) increasing the challenges of applying digital ‘wiretaps’ on Swedish citizens. While not something that the copyright lobbies are necessarily concerned with, these developments can be problematic for national security agencies.

I’m not advocating that communications should necessarily be easier for such agencies to investigate – far from it – but do I think that before aligning legislative efforts with copyright groups it is critical for legislators to think of the broader implications associated with ‘strong’ copyright laws. While such laws might dissuade some file sharing, are the benefits derived from limiting file sharing sufficient to justify disadvantaging national security and intelligence operation?

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Links Writing

The Importance of ZTE Security Deficits

A great of speculation exists around mobile companies of all stripes: are they secure? Do they secretly insert backdoors for government? What kinds of assurances do customers and citizens have around the devices?

Recently these concerns exploded (again) following a Reuters article that notes serious problems in ZTE mobile phones. There are a series of reasons that security agencies can, and do, raise concerns about foreign built equipment (some related more to economics than good security practice). While it’s possible that ZTE’s vulnerabilities were part of a Chinese national-security initiative, it’s entirely likely (and more probable) that ZTE’s backdoor access into their mobiles is a genuine, gigantic, mistake. Let’s not forget that even ‘our’ companies are known for gross security incompetence.

In the ZTE case it doesn’t matter if the backdoor was deliberate or not. It doesn’t matter if the company patches the devices, either, because a large number of customers will never apply updates to their phones. This means that, for all intents and purposes, these devices will have well publicized security holes for the duration of their existence. It’s that kind of ongoing vulnerability – one that persists regardless of vendor ‘patches’ – that is increasingly dangerous in the mobile world, and a threat that is arguably more significant (at the moment) than whether we can trust company X or Y.

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Videos

An inspiring commencement speech from Neil Gaiman on creativity and art in the 21st century

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Quotations

2012.5.15

… the relatively high profile of the WSIS has helped to redefine the internet policy agenda and create a greater awareness and understanding at many levels of the substantial breadth and magnitude of potential ICT4D impacts and of the key global issues of internet governance affecting attempts to spread as widely as possible the benefits tied to the internet’s use. The gain in understanding was highlighted by one experienced senior intentional official who commented that at the first Geneva event many people were not even sure what “the internet” meant and why it should be significant to them–let alone what a concept like “internet governance” signifies.

W. H. Dutton and M. Peltu. (2010). “The new politics of the internet: Multi-stakeholder policy-making and the internet technocracy,” in A. Chadwick and P. N. Howard (Eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. New York: Routledge.
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Aside Humour

I’ll Be Watching You

I’ll be watching you – from jaidurevertropfort

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Links Writing

Canada Post Sees Today, In The Future

National mail carriers are important for loads of reasons, including legal protections around letters carried by them versus those carried by couriers. These mail carriers are far less agile than their private competitors and have been incredibly slow to recognize the need to change existing processes and practices. They desperately need to find new growth avenues to remedy declining gross and net revenues.

As a demonstration of how little Canada Post ‘gets’ the market and business it’s in today, we can turn to this comment:

Canada Post chief executive officer Deepak Chopra foresees a future in which consumers receive and pay their bills, get their paycheques, renew drivers’ licences, pay parking tickets, buy magazines and receive personalized ad pitches – all online, through ePost.

This isn’t a future: it’s the present. The only ‘future’ part of what he is outlining is that all these (already daily) functions would be routed through ePost. Unless Canada Post has an incredible value proposition – security, government mandates, or somehow implementing these functions better than existing services are mechanisms that immediately come to mine – I can’t see how the organization will exist in any semblance of what it is today, tomorrow.

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Quotations

2012.5.11

[Computer specialists] are at once the most unmanageable and the most poorly managed specialism in our society. Actors and artists pale by comparison. Only pure mathematicians are as cantankerous, and it’s a calamity that so many of them get recruited by simplistic personnel men…[Managers should] refuse to embark on grandiose or unworthy schemes, and refuse to let their recalcitrant charges waste skill, time and money on the fashionable idiocies of our [computer] racket.

Herbert Grosch. (1966). “Programmers: The Industry’s Cosa Nostra,” Datamation 12(10): 202.
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Links Writing

RIM Demoing the Value of NFC-Enabled Devices

I admit it: I’m really curious to see how NFC technologies are adopted by various vendors and developers. To date, however, the integration has been poor and what adoption there has been tends to focus on payment solutions. Payment solutions scare the crap out of me because they increase the reasons attackers have to compromise my phone: it’s bad enough they want my personal information; I don’t want them after my digital wallet as well!

RIM has a neat bit of technology they’ve recently released, which leverages the NFC functionality in their new phones with Bluetooth pairing systems. Specifically, it enables rapid syncing between phones and audio-output devices (i.e., speakers). While the product is pretty “meh” as released today, it could be pretty exciting were vehicle manufacturers and speaker manufacturers to generally integrate NFC-pairing capabilities with their respective products. It’s presently a pain to listen to music stored on a mobile through vehicle speakers (using Bluetooth) or a friend’s speakers in their home. RIM has offered a partial solution to the Bluetooth pairing problem; now it’s up to the larger ecosystems to actually integrate RIM’s idea in a omnipresent and highly functional way.