Tag: Canada

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Why doctors are rebelling against Ontario’s crumbling healthcare system

Toronto Life:

The fact that doctors bill more than $11 billion annually makes them something like a corporation—their revenues are roughly the same as Air Canada’s or Canadian Tire’s. When companies of that size have to deal with revenue freezes or shortfalls, they respond by finding efficiencies, eliminating duplication and waste, lowering wages or prices, squeezing suppliers for discounts. They take a hard look at how they run their business, and they usually become better companies as a result. Doctors refuse to do this work. Hoskins is determined to force them.

I’m uncertain that the author has ever travelled on Air Canada. Unless, of course, they think that the ‘efficiencies’ Air Canada has achieved by laying of thousands of people, worsening service quality, and regularly failing to meet its agreements with customers have made Air Canada a “better company” as a result.

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IMSI Catcher Report Calls for Transparency, Proportionality, and Minimization Policies – The Citizen Lab

IMSI Catcher Report Calls for Transparency, Proportionality, and Minimization Policies:

The Citizen Lab and CIPPIC are releasing a report, Gone Opaque? An Analysis of Hypothetical IMSI Catcher Overuse in Canada, which examines the use of devices that are commonly referred to as ‘cell site simulators’, ‘IMSI Catchers’, ‘Digital Analyzers’, or ‘Mobile Device Identifiers’, and under brand names such as ‘Stingray’, DRTBOX, and ‘Hailstorm’. IMSI Catchers are a class of of surveillance devices used by Canadian state agencies. They enable state agencies to intercept communications from mobile devices and are principally used to identify otherwise anonymous individuals associated with a mobile device and track them.

Though these devices are not new, the ubiquity of contemporary mobile devices, coupled with the decreasing costs of IMSI Catchers themselves, has led to an increase in the frequency and scope of these devices’ use. Their intrusive nature, as combined with surreptitious and uncontrolled uses, pose an insidious threat to privacy.

This report investigates the surveillance capabilities of IMSI Catchers, efforts by states to prevent information relating to IMSI Catchers from entering the public record, and the legal and policy frameworks that govern the use of these devices. The report principally focuses on Canadian agencies but, to do so, draws comparative examples from other jurisdictions. The report concludes with a series of recommended transparency and control mechanisms that are designed to properly contain the use of the devices and temper their more intrusive features.

I’m not going to lie: after working on this with my colleague, Tamir Israel, for 12 months it was absolutely amazing to publicly release this report. What started as a 1,500 word blog post meant to put defense lawyers on notice of some new legislation transmogrified into a 130 page report that is the most comprehensive legal analysis of these devices that’s been done to date. It’s going to be interesting to see what the effects of it are for cases currently being litigated in Canada and around the world!

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National security review tries to tackle needs of law enforcement in digital world | Toronto Star

The Toronto Star:

Lawful access is “a real thorny issue,” said University of Ottawa law professor Craig Forcese, a national security law expert, in an interview with the Star.

“For years I’ve been saying we’ve got to deal with it, and you can’t deal with it without investing people in a discussion, because the best-organized civil liberties organizations in Canada right now are privacy groups,” said Forcese.

“And if you go ahead unilaterally and start tabling stuff in Parliament, you’re going to have a replay of the disaster of the last decade in Parliament where nothing ever got passed, except the cyberbullying bill which didn’t address all the issues.”

Parliament did a lot over the last decade. Including passing lawful access legislation following more than 10 years of public debate that included numerous public consultations (i.e. not just with civil liberties organizations).

That civil liberties groups – which by definition argue hard against infringements of constitutional rights – did their jobs is to be congratulated not smeared.

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Marking 70 years of eavesdropping in Canada

Bill Robinson at Open Canada:

Another new factor is the presence of Canadians in CSE’s hunting grounds. CSE was unable to assist during the FLQ crisis in 1970—it had no capability to monitor Canadians. In the post-2001 era, that is no longer true: the Internet traffic of Canadians mixes with that of everybody else, and CSE encounters it even when it is trying not to. When operating under judicial warrants obtained by CSIS or the RCMP, it deliberately goes after Canadian communications. CSE also passes on information about Canadians collected by its Five Eyes partners.

A special watchdog—the CSE Commissioner—was established in 1996 to monitor the legality of CSE’s activities. Over the years, Commissioners have often reported weaknesses in the measures the agency takes to protect Canadian privacy, but only once, last year, has a Commissioner declared CSE in non-compliance with the law.

Whether CSE’s watchdog is an adequate safeguard for the privacy of Canadians is a matter of continuing debate. One thing, however, is clear: As CSE enters its 71st year, the days when its gaze faced exclusively outward are gone for good.

Bill Robinson has done a terrific job providing a historical overview of Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA). His knowledge of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is immense.

Canadians now live in a country wherein this secretive institution, the CSE, is capable of massively monitoring our domestic as well as foreign communications. And, in fact, a constitutional challenge is before the courts that is intended to restrain CSE’s domestic surveillance. But before that case is decided CSE will analyze, share, and act on our domestic communications infrastructure without genuine public accountability. As an intelligence, as opposed to policing, organization its methods, techniques, and activities are almost entirely hidden from the public and its political representatives, as well as from most of Canada’s legal profession. A democracy can easily wilt when basic freedoms of speech and association are infringed upon and, in the case of CSE, such freedoms might be impacted without the speakers or those engaging with one another online ever realizing that their basic rights were being inhibited. Such possibilities raise existential threats to democratic governance and need to be alleviated as much as possible if our democracy is to be maintained, fostered, and enhanced.

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Turning security flaws into cyberweapons endangers Canadians, experts warn

Turning security flaws into cyberweapons endangers Canadians, experts warn:

“The Snowden docs demonstrate that CSE is active in identifying vulnerabilities,” Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at Citizen Lab, told CBC.

“The fact that CSE identifies vulnerabilities and is not reporting them means users are not receiving patches in order to secure their networks.”

Parsons said this “creates a really dangerous scenario.”

“Canadians need to have a discussion about this. Do we want to live in a world in which we’re protecting our own citizens? Or should the priority of Canadian government organizations [like CSE] be first and foremost hacking foreign systems?”

…

Canadian politicians, judges, journalists and business leaders use smartphones vulnerable to the flaws now fixed by Apple — and to flaws still unknown. The country’s infrastructure is increasingly networked and vulnerable to sabotage by a foreign intelligence agency.

In such a world, Parsons wondered, does national security mean using security flaws against potential enemies? Or disclosing and fixing them?

“We haven’t had that debate in this country,” he said.

It’s increasingly looking like we are going to have the debate concerning whether the Canadian government should be stockpiling vulnerabiltiies or actively working to close identified vulnerabilties. Let’s hope that the debate tilts in favour of protecting the citizenry instead of leaving it vulnerable to domestic and foreign attackers.

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Vacation shaming our politicians – Policy Options

Vacation shaming our politicians – Policy Options :

The great irony of the criticism around Trudeau’s family vacation is that politicians keep talking about work-life balance, and specifically about how to attract more women to Parliament and to high-placed corporate jobs and boards. Jurisdictions around the world have changed the sitting hours of their legislatures to align with the school calendar and to eliminate night sittings.

One wonders what message women interested in federal politics drew from the coverage of the Trudeau family vacation: maybe “Don’t even think about taking time off with your kids.”

The message isn’t just sent to women interested in politics, but to workers more generally: you can have whatever work-life balance you’d like, so long as that balance doesn’t upset productivity (or your manager) in any way.

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Edmonton Police Say They Didn’t Mean It When They Said They Own a Stingray

Edmonton Police Say They Didn’t Mean It When They Said They Own a Stingray:

“Earlier this week, Media Relations Unit received an inquiry from Motherboard (VICE) asking if the [Edmonton Police Service] owns a Stingray device, or has ever used one from the RCMP. There was some miscommunication/misunderstanding internally surrounding the information obtained on whether the EPS owns a Stingray , and in fact, the EPS does not own a Stingray device. Police agencies do not comment on equipment used in electronic surveillance or on investigative techniques, therefore the EPS cannot provide any further information on this topic.”

Edmonton police are walking back their assertion that they did have, and use, an IMSI Catcher. Money says that the walk back is correct (it’s likely the RCMP that owns the device that EPS has used or had access to) while also misleading (because EPS would be working with the RCMP to investigate whatever the crim happens to be, while using the IMSI Catcher).

Police do not engender trust when they dogmatically try to stop the public from knowing what kinds of surveillance tools they use. Or the numbers of innocent people affected by such surveillance. Sadly, the logics of policing seem to run counter to developing this kind of generalized trust.

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How to market Justin Trudeau

How to market Justin Trudeau:

In academic terms, the coziness built by these efforts is called parasocial interaction—it’s the one-sided attachment people develop for media figures, and the reason why, when we meet a celebrity, we feel like we already know them. The big problem with this in a political context is the bread-and-circuses effect, where citizens get distracted by a personality they like and stop paying attention to issues and policies. But Marland and Goodyear-Grant both point out, with resigned ruefulness, that reams of research in their shared discipline suggests very few people think about those things anyway. Citizens generally form broad impressions of their political leaders, decide whether they like and trust them, and then leave them to handle the details if they do. “Most people are just not paying attention to this stuff. They just don’t care,” Marland says. “So it gives them probably a sense of pride that their Prime Minister seems to be well respected on the international stage.”

The entire article is excellent: Shannon Proudfoot has masterfully accounted for how the Trudeau campaign (and Prime Minister’s Office) has branded and marketed him. But the part that I quoted from the article is something that more people need to appreciate and understand, especially those who are involved in politics. Canadians generally are removed from politics and simply don’t care about them. This isn’t to say that political parties’ positions and actions don’t matter. But few people are actually paying attention to the minutia or day-to-day of federal, provincial, or municipal politics.

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How do young people afford a house? They find roommates.

How do young people afford a house? They find roommates:

“When you look at the home market for first-time buyers, to get in can seem like an insurmountable task,” says Aaron Zifkin, Airbnb’s country director for Canada. “In a lot of our host community meet-ups, we’re seeing a lot of people who are really excited being able to bridge that pay point by earning a little extra income from a nanny suite.” Or, if no nanny suite exists, the pullout couch in the living room might do.

In Vancouver, for example, more than half of the money taken in by the 4,200 Airbnb hosts went to pay for necessities like the rent, mortgage or groceries, according to a company report released in July. With the typical host earning $6,500 each year, more than half of them said the extra cash was a reason they could afford to stay in their home. Seven per cent said the money helped them avoid foreclosure.

But don’t worry: there isn’t really a housing crisis in major metropolitan areas when people have to rent (parts of) their home in order to avoid forclosure. And the fact that roommates are a requirement for many 30-somethings to purchase 850ft condos in Toronto is entirely appropriate.

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How a file-sharing lawsuit against Rogers threatens your Internet privacy: Geist | Toronto Star

In the next stage of the copyright wars in Canada, Voltage is moving forward with its efforts to use a reverse class-action lawsuit to reveal the identities of thousands of people the company alleges have infringed on Voltage’s copyright. If the company is successful it will open up a new way for companies to access information about subscribers while simultaneously indicating the relative weakness of the privacy protections baked into Canada’s recent copyright legislation.