Today, Canadian scholars and civil liberties organizations have asked Canada’s telecommunications companies to explain how they disclose information to government authorities.
A project that’s been in the works, now, for 1.5 years is finally really starting! Exciting times!
Source: Towards Transparency in Canadian Telecommunications – The Citizen Lab
I’m not in corporate PR, but when it turns out your company (i.e. BlackBerry) holds the patent on a known-NSA-backdoored encryption standard I’m not sure shutting up and avoiding the press is the best of ideas. Especially if your product (*cough* BlackBerry *cough*) is predicated on strong security against all attackers.
Source: The strange connection between the NSA and an Ontario tech firm
Case # 34644 Matthew David Spencer v. Her Majesty the Queen (December 9, 2013) At issue is Whether section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was violated. The appellant downloaded child pornography from the internet using a peer-to-peer file-sharing software program. The appellant stored child pornography in a shared folder and did not override the default settings that made the folder accessible to others. Since the files were accessible to other users they could therefore be downloaded. A police officer searched the shared folder and discovered the pornographic files. The officer couldn’t identify the owner of the folder but was able to determine that the IP address being used was assigned by Shaw Communications. The police wrote to Shaw and requested information identifying the assignee at the relevant time. Shaw Communications identified the user as the appellant’s sister. The police obtained a warrant and searched her residence, where they seized the appellant’s computer. The appellant was charged with possession of child pornography and making child pornography available.
An interesting case, especially when read against the scholarship that examines the Charter and PIPEDA implications of disclosing subscriber data absent a court order.
If you’re interested in Bitcoin then this is an absolutely wonderful article. The author has done an exceptional job in explaining how Bitcoin operates by walking you through the steps – and problems – of building a contemporary cryptocurrency. It’s not a short read, but it’s well worth the time.
The CBC redacted the Snowden documents concerning NSA surveillance during the G8/G20. While I can agree that some of the redactions were appropriate the majority that were made seem excessive.
My dissertation is now available to the public!
Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica:
Unfortunately, it’s kind of a mess. iCloud Keychain does accomplish the most basic things you’d expect a password manager to do, but it often does so in an awkward manner. Important functionality is hard enough to find that it may be effectively hidden from the average user, particularly on iPhones and iPads.
Ultimately, iCloud Keychain can be put to good use if you’ve carefully examined what it does well and doesn’t do well. It works best as a complement to a complete service like 1Password or LastPass, but it just isn’t convenient and robust enough to act as a standalone password manager.
I think it’s a bit harsh to call it a “mess”, but Brodkin provides a good overview of what iCloud Keychain does. Complaining that it’s not as full-featured as 1Password is like complaining that iPhoto doesn’t do everything Lightroom or Aperture do.
Comparing iCloud Keychain and Lightroom is a bit odd. One helps to manage the security of one’s online life and is meant to resolve a security problem for anyone who uses the Web. Lightroom is a specialist product that caters to experts in a particular field. The two products may have an overlapping user base (i.e. individuals who want secured usernames and passwords) but otherwise bear little resemblance to one another.
“…the Conservative tragedy grinds on. When your only principle is paranoia — when your central organizing proposition is that “everyone is out to get us” — when every criticism is merely confirmation of the essential rightness of that proposition, and every deviation is evidence of disloyalty, then you are less a party than a cult.”
Strong words, this time from Andrew Coyne.
The Globe and Mail reports on discussions in the Canadian Senate. Specifically, Liberal Senator Wilfred Moore asked:
“Can the [Senate] leader enlighten this chamber as to what was done with the data obtained by CSEC from the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy?”
…
Alleging that CSEC’s “cyberhacking” was intended to probe Brazil’s claims about discovering billions of barrels of oil in a new offshore-field find, Mr. Moore noted that no Canadian or U.S. corporations have joined the bidding for drilling rights in an auction that was held earlier this week in Brazil.
This is an incendiary question. If it turns out that Canadian companies didn’t bid because CSEC found Petrobras has overestimated the oil reserves in the Libra field, or if CSEC found that it was going to be harder to extract the oil that stated by the Brazilian government, then it’s a very, very big deal on the basis that the Canadian government (and extension of the department of national defence) would then be engaging in espionage on the behalf of Canadian companies.
Excited Pixels