Category: Quotations

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Quotations

2017.11.28

As effective encryption spreads, it may well be that the future of SIGINT lies increasingly in “end point” operations and other activities designed to cripple or bypass that encryption, and some of those activities could certainly benefit from HUMINT assistance. But there are also pitfalls to that approach. Using on-the-scene people in foreign jurisdictions can mean putting individuals at extreme risk, and such operations also have increased potential to go wrong in ways that could expose Canada to extreme embarrassment and even retaliation. If the government is contemplating going down that road, it should probably be open with parliament and the public about its intentions.

Informed consent. Because it’s 2017.

Bill Robinson, “CSE and Bill C-59 overview”
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Quotations

On The Need For Loneliness and Private Time

As much as I love the intimacy of a stable, healthy romantic partnership, I’ve always been wary of my need for loneliness and private time. I brandish my introvert badge with chutzpah. But, deep inside, whenever I got with someone and I needed to take time off to replenish, I always felt guilty. I felt like I wasn’t ready . That if I really, really wanted a relationship, I would not have this need to be by myself.

Tchassa Kamga, Before I Could Date Anyone, I had to Date Myself.
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Aside Quotations

Hyper-Regulated Mass Surveillance

The difficult project of establishing meaningful oversight would be aided by a deeper appreciation by all sides of the surveillance debates that their adversaries are generally acting in good faith. Too often it seems that we occupy parallel universes. In the first, the U.S. intelligence community operates in a framework so regulated and constrained that it should be the envy of the world, not the target of its scorn. No intelligence agency in the world can match our respect for rules and laws. In the second, the U.S. surveillance state has outgrown legal restraints and allowed its surveillance activities to be driven by technological capabilities. It developed and deployed a global system of mass surveillance without the knowledge or consent of the public, and it is sitting on massive databases of private information that constitute a genuine threat to free societies.

We should acknowledge the possibility that both of these pictures are largely accurate. The intelligence community is staffed by honorable public servants who have an abiding respect for the Constitution. And history gives us reason to be concerned that information collected for one purpose will likely be put to other purposes, particularly in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or other national trauma. We might even elect a president who has no regard for the rule of law.

–Ben Wizner, ACLU

The question of how to draft a system of secret rules while simultaneously ensuring that the actors solely operate within the realm of the rules continues to vex policymakers, academics, politicians, and lawyers. What definitely seems to not work is maintaining a veil of secrecy over the baseline set of rules themselves, to say nothing of cloaking the interpretations of those rules in their own layers of secrecy.

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Links Quotations

RCMP is overstating Canada’s ‘surveillance lag’ | Toronto Star

From a piece that I wrote with Tamir Israel for the Toronto Star:

The RCMP has been lobbying the government behind the scenes for increased surveillance powers on the faulty premise that their investigative powers are lagging behind those foreign police services.

The centrepiece of the RCMP’s pitch is captured in an infographic that purports to show foreign governments are legislating powers that are more responsive to investigative challenges posed by the digital world. On the basis of this comparison, the RCMP appears to have convinced the federal government to transform a process intended to curb the excesses of Bill C-51 into one dominated by proposals for additional surveillance powers.

The RCMP’s lobbying effort misleadingly leaves an impression that Canadian law enforcement efforts are being confounded by digital activities.

An Op-ed that I published with a colleague of mine, Tamir Israel, earlier this week that calls out the RCMP for deliberately misleading the public with regards to government agencies’ existing surveillance powers and capabilities.

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Links Quotations

Pleading the Case: How the RCMP Fails to Justify Calls for New Investigatory Powers

The powers that the government is proposing in its national security consultation — that all communications made by all Canadians be retained regardless of guilt, that all communications be accessible to state agencies on the basis that any Canadian could potentially commit a crime, that security of communications infrastructure should be secondary to government access to communications — are deeply disproportionate to the challenges government agencies are facing. The cases chosen by authorities to be selectively revealed to journalists do not reveal a crisis of policing but that authorities continue to face the ever-present challenges of how to prioritize cases, how to assign resources, and how to pursue investigations to conclusion. Authorities have never had a perfect view into the private lives of citizens and that is likely to continue to be the case, but they presently have a far better view into the lives of most citizens, using existing powers, than ever before in history.

The powers discussed in its consultation, and that the RCMP has implicitly argued for by revealing these cases, presume that all communications in Canada ought to be accessible to government agencies upon their demand. Implementing the powers outlined in the national security consultation would require private businesses to assume significant costs in order to intercept and retain any Canadian’s communications. And such powers would threaten the security of all Canadians — by introducing backdoors into Canada’s communications ecosystem — in order to potentially collect evidence pursuant to a small number of cases, while simultaneously exposing all Canadians to the prospect of criminals or foreign governments exploiting the backdoors the RCMP is implicitly calling for.

While the government routinely frames lawful interception, mandated decryption, and other investigatory powers as principally a ‘privacy-vs-security’ debate, the debate can be framed as one of ‘security-or-less-security’. Do Canadians want to endanger their daily communications and become less secure in their routine activities so that the RCMP and our security services can better intercept data they cannot read, or retain information they cannot process? Or do Canadians want the strongest security possible so that their businesses, personal relationships, religious observations, and other aspects of their daily life are kept safe from third-persons who want to capture and exploit their sensitive and oftentimes confidential information? Do we want to be more safe from cybercriminals, or more likely to be victimized by them by providing powers to government agencies?

 

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Links Quotations

Police surveillance scandal: Quebec tightens rules for monitoring journalists

From the Montreal Gazette:

Mark Bantey, a specialist in media law (who is also the Montreal Gazette’s lawyer), said he was stunned by the scope of the warrant involved in the Lagacé case. He said it seems the police were more worried about who was leaking information to the press than the actual crime.

“It sure looks like they (the police) have gone overboard because they’re not out there investigating a crime, but trying to determine who in the police department is leaking information to the press. You can’t use search warrants to get that sort of information,” Bantey said in an interview Tuesday. “There’s an obligation to exhaust all other possible sources of information before targeting the media.”

As for Couillard’s new directive about obtaining search warrants, he called it a first step that was unlikely to bring an immediate change to police practices. A better solution might be to adopt new legislation — a shield law — that protects media sources, he said.

Legislation to protect journalists from police surveillance is a good idea…until you ask a question of ‘who constitutes a journalist’?

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Links Quotations

50 Sony BRAVIA TV models from 2012 will lose access to YouTube on Sept. 30

A hardware bug or defect is not the cause of the issue, but rather a specification change made on Google’s end that “exceed the capability of the TV’s hardware.”

SmartTVs are the future.

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Aside Quotations

2016.8.10

We have never had absolute privacy in this country. Cars, safe deposit boxes, our apartments, our houses, even the contents of our minds—any one of us, in appropriate circumstances, can be compelled to say what we saw. We have never lived with large swaths of our life off limits, where judicial authority is ineffective. That is something we need to talk about. I don’t think the FBI should tell people what to do. I don’t think tech companies should tell people what to do. The American people need to decide.

James Comey, Director of the FBI

The problem is that Comey is simply wrong: the state has never held absolute power over citizens. The 5th Amendment in the United States guarantees a right to avoid testifying against oneself. Our devices are now so personalized with our communciations, thoughts, banking, business, and life that they are functionally a self-testamonial about our lives.

Moreover, even when some evidence is unavailable – be it because authorities don’t know to look for it, or cannot find it – that doesn’t immediately mean that a case is terminated. Instead, a range of powers as well as alternate charges can be brought to bear. And the price of a democracy is that, sometimes, authorities cannot bring charges against people they suspect but cannot prove may have broken the law. This restraint on state power is a core feature of liberal democratic governance and is a restraint that needs to be maintained so that we can all enjoy our freedoms.

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Quotations RPG

“How can you be so calm about it?“ his younger companion protested. “We’re going to die!”

Level brown eyes stared into his. “Aye, so? We all have to, lad, but there’s nothing as says we have to behave like craven cattle first.” The old man deftly disentangled the thread and held it out. “An’ another thing,” he continued, “I’ve been in about forty o’ these little affrays before, an’ them as came to kill me haven’t quite managed the job yet. It might well take ‘em as many tries afore they get ye, too! I’ve seen it all before, lad… take heart, and be easy, I say.”

  • Ed Greenwood. “All Shadows Fled.”

A nice account of calming green soldiers about to head into their first – and perhaps last – battle.

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Quotations RPG

2015.10.16

Once, Belkram had taken a dagger through the palm of his hand. The attacking bolts felt like seven such daggers in swift succession. The pain smashed the breath out of him as the force of the striking magic missiles drove him back into an untidy heap on the ground. It was like being struck in the short ribs over and over again, Belkram thought, struggling to get his breath.

Ed Greenwood. “Cloak of Shadows.”

A great description of what being hit with magic missiles feels like!