Words to live by in 2017: For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical…
The Canadian government should take notice. With Bill C-13 now becoming the law, and Bill C-51 before the Parliament (another piece of legislation with huge implications for privacy and freedom of expression), I think it’s only a matter of time before the Canadian courts will have a hard look at…
This is a sad… one guy maintaining the GPG email encryption software? That’s ONE GUY IN THE WORLD OF 7 BILLION PEOPLE: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke
There is something disturbingly wrong with this: http://globalnews.ca/news/1803553/are-you-already-violating-the-feds-new-anti-terror-bill/ It takes less than half-hour to take online speech underground, using Tor and its hidden services. It can take months (if possible at all) of highly specialized computer forensic skills and very expensive equipment to track and make sense of the chatter underground…
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the previously disclosed Snowden documents: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cse-tracks-millions-of-downloads-daily-snowden-documents-1.2930120 https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/28/canada-cse-levitation-mass-surveillance/ https://openmedia.ca/news/breaking-spy-agency-cse-monitoring-our-private-online-activities-massive-scale-and-sharing-sensitive
Saw Citizenfour at Cinecenta Victoria last night. For those who have been living under the rock, it’s a documentary about Edward Snowden’s revelations about the massive NSA spying on its own citizens (and elsewhere). You can watch the official trailer here: From film-making perspective, the film is so-so. I am not sure…
Yesterday’s decision by Supreme Court of Canada about police ability to search a phone during arrest is wrong. The split decision (4-3) illustrates the difficulty of the issue, and as the dissenting judges rightly pointed out, it gives too much room for interpretation and judgement by law enforcement in case…
This has popped up in my inbox a couple of times over the last few weeks. I think it’s an important initiative, and decided to share. It’s an online tool to write a letter to editor to your local newspapers, expressing your disapproval of Bill C-13. https://openmedia.org/SpyBill/
(Cross posted from Facebook) An emotionally charged weekend. Twenty five years ago tomorrow, the Berlin Wall came down. I’ve added a post about that day on my freedom-25.ca website. I took a bit of hiatus from writing there… a lot of the memories and recent events were just too painful…
On October 20, 2013, the House of Commons vote approved the “Cyber bullying” bill C-13. I don’t have to go into details on all the problems with the bill, you can google it. That the conservatives voted in favour is not surprising – they sponsored the bill, and the government…