Canada’s use of Huawei 5G would hamper its access to U.S. intelligence – U.S. official — National Post

HALIFAX — The U.S. national security adviser urged Canada on Saturday not to use Huawei 5G technology, saying that doing so would put in jeopardy intelligence sharing with the United States and expose Canadians to being profiled by the Chinese government. Read More

Canada’s use of Huawei 5G would hamper its access to U.S. intelligence – U.S. official — National Post

Sol and Achenar Confirmed as Thargoid Primary Targets

E

agle Eye intelligence (brokered by ‘Lab 69‘ within Canonn Research has, as of this week, affirmed earlier predictions that both Sol and Achenar are the intended primary targets of recent encroachments by the hostile species into the core systems.  Both Earth and Mars in the Sol system and Conversion and Capitol in the Achenar system are next expected to receive protection from capital ships equipped with the still experimental AX-class weaponry researched by Aegis Corp. through its own research projects in the Pleiades Sectors of the Milky Way galaxy.  Aegis megaships will also likely serve as support bases into both systems when an attack looks imminent.

The full text of Eagle Eye intelligence output follows:

==+ NoSecrets v2.1.3 Log. License expires 17th Feb 3305. THANKS FOR 
UPGRADING +==
==+ [1041745480075058158] > Packet snoop established. P2P GUDP Packet 
identified. +==
==+ [1041745480075058175] > qTLS Tap OK, Auth: Mutual. Eve (v1.2.7701) is 
in the house +==
From: [Captain Rebuy (Canonn)|Canonn Institute|Col 285 Sector IX-T d3-43]
To: [Overseer Gluttony Fang (AXI)|Arc's Faith|HR 1183]
Subject: Eagle Eye Report Week 11 - 17/05/3304

Eagle Eye Report and Summary of the previous week:

For a second time both target systems were successfully defended with
LTT 8517 and Dalfur systems both having the Thargoid threat repelled. 
Well done all who took to their ships in support. Neither system are 
showing non-human signal sources at present.

Intelligence obtained from Eagle Eye this week shows the targets are 
Lalande 4141 and Lwalama, and NHSS have been detected.

Aegis Megaships were dispatched to Coquim and LHS 1453 (neither of 
which were Eagle Eye targets) and wrecked megaships were found in 
several systems nearby.

The other targets given to us by EE were decoded and have indicated a 
barnacle forest location, wrecked megaships, and an INRA base (Almeida 
in Conn).

All indications so far are that both Achenar and Sol are intended 
destinations.

--Captain Rebuy--

Report Ends…..

==+ [1041745480075058259] > qTLS Tap Dropped. Eve (v1.2.7701) has left
the building +==
==+ [1041745480075058259] > End of P2P GUDP Packet +==

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A quick review of recent achievements by CMDR Trium within the last 10 days.  Visit the VFL archive to review helmet-cam footage.

It should be noted here — despite recent comments made by figures in both the Federation and Imperial navies — no Federation or Imperial NPC navy vessels have prevailed in a Thargoid-to-capital-ship engagement.  (This includes task forces employing both the Federation’s Farragut-class carriers nor the Imperial Majestic-class battleships.)

Humanity may find itself ‘on the ropes’ if victories aren’t seen soon.  To say nothing of what might happen to our species in the event speculation about the Thargoid base structures actually turning out to be late-assembly baseships launching off of nearby planets.

One rather large outstanding question remains here: is Frontier timing the release of planet atmospheric operations to coincide with an even bigger Thargoid threat?  What about the possibility of Thargoid attacks on planet bases or (in atmospheric gameplay) population centres like cities on planets like Earth and Mars?

Further reports to follow as developments warrant.

Police Requests for New Internet Powers Could Cost You Big

C

anada’s CBC (a leading media and news organization in the country) promoted a story this past week concerning a very public request to the senior politicians for greater investigative powers.  This was followed by a poll that showed a degree of support for the police requests – seemingly predicated on a desire to curb child pornography among other crimes.  While civil libertarians and technology professionals raised the alarm on hearing this request, there was only limited consideration given to the cost of granting powers of this sort to police – tied largely to the cost of potentially onerous data warehousing by ISPs.  (As a footnote here, I want to cite the case of the UK which, this past week, saw Parliament enact legislation that would be largely in-line with the kinds of legislative change the RCMP would like to see enacted here in Canada.)

“Two parliamentary committees examined this issue.  Then there was the unanimous Supreme Court [of Canada] decision.  What part of ‘unconstitutional’ doesn’t [RCMP] Commissioner Paulson understand?”

— Michael Harris, iPolitics.ca, November 25, 2016

Privacy and Internet Commerce

C

anadians (and people generally) can still be very reluctant to share their personal information online.  A recent website delivered by The AppRefactory — the Edgewater Tenants’ Community Website — has been off to something of a slow start with the administration fielding questions about why an end-user’s address is needed as part of the signup process.  This is done with the awareness and limited support from the property management company that acts as the landlord which has data about every tenant’s address, yet that same information is not so readily volunteered when it takes digital form.  The information in this case is used to simply verify that an end-user signup request is for a tenant as opposed to some random user from the Internet; in order to ensure that any information a tenant elects to access or share on the site is kept within the tenant community only.  As such it is a measure intended to protect tenant privacy, but there can still be reluctance about sharing it.

This is just an example of how users have adapted over the years to safeguard their privacy.  Yet now the police want measures taken by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to circumvent privacy to such a degree that they will never again be aware of who exactly has access to their information.  (We saw in another article posted this past week how police could access computer records without appropriate authorization or authority.)  And should police officers once again demonstrate how human they can be and make a mistake, suddenly the information they’ve been entrusted with is available to parties unknown.

Such cases, once known to the public (as they will tend to be, thanks to our free press), could easily put end-users further on the defensive about their information.  And, despite poll results suggesting some support for increased police powers, there remains the likelihood the average person in Canada (which, historically, tends to be a person that trusts police authority) hasn’t thought the issue through very thoroughly and certainly not technically.  The regime Canadians will be confronted with, whatever their decision about the powers police should have online, could easily be one business is less well-able to thrive in and would find it harder to operate in without being less able to solicit end-user consent and confidence meaningfully.

And they wouldn’t know it until it really was too late.

New Powers Add Onerous Burdens on All Business (Not Just ISPs)

T

he legislation in the UK does not specifically distinguish nor give license to ISPs to operate or grant any special legal distinction to them apart from providers of Internet-facing services generally.  As such it would seem to stand as a matter of law that anyone providing Internet-facing services could be compelled to maintain logs concerning end-user activity.  From a technical perspective, the law wouldn’t be all that meaningful if it couldn’t extend, for example, to providers of Virtual Private Network (VPN) services which are frequently used to both secure corporate communications online as well as anonymize network access to  BitTorrent media sharing sites or “Deep Web” network traffic.

So the law must apply to businesses using the Internet equally (or at least be seen to apply as such).  And how will the small business be impacted when they’re suddenly required to maintain a database documenting (as the RCMP want) up to two years of end-user activity?  One approach we could use would be to use Microsoft Azure’s service calculator to take a service that uses a very modest 5GB of data monthly to track data transfer activity for a service, numbering just 10,000 transactions.  Without any service connections, charging just for the storage of table-based data only, we get an added cost of $409.00 per month, including a $364.00 Standard Support feature on local redundancy only.  (Nothing could immediately be found on legislative requirements for backing up this data, but a vendor support feature seemed logical to imagine in this scenario.)  That’s a not-so-inconsiderable $4,900 per year and is getting pricey for the average small business.

Now if you run a big business, things get interesting: scaled up to 5TB of data and 1 million transactions, the costs at the same level of support (with local redundancy only) balloon out to $5,223.68 per month or a whopping $62,684.16 per year.

These costs are certainly something to consider when it comes to determining who is paying for all this extra monitoring.  One thing is clear, it won’t be coming out of the RCMP’s budget!

And although this is the costs according to one vendor, it is an industry leader in a space oft-credited with reducing the costs associated with maintaining large warehouses of data (a main selling point behind “the cloud” movement).  One shudders to think how much more onerous these costs could become if one is required by law to maintain hardware and software of their own, in a facility that is solely under their own control.

Final Analysis: Restrain Police Powers Online

W

ith passage of the UK legislation this past week, the Government of Canada may be best-advised to stay the course for now and weigh its options again at a later date if it chooses.  While I suspect both in the wake of Brexit and their now police powers law (called the “Investigatory Powers Bill”) will lead the UK (and England in particular) into a self-made socio-economic crisis, there remains the question as to what exactly the impact of their measures will have.  The opportunity here isn’t to regulate early and hopefully stop child sexual abuse — a cause I’m very sympathetic to and have even had occasion to assist police with.  Rather, it’s to gain the wisdom about whether the impacts of these measures will simply drive it further underground or make a meaningful difference (as opposed to being an issue cited simply as a political red herring to grant powers that will be used for other purposes).  To discover whether the economic impact is too burdensome.  And to learn comprehensively if there will be the promised ‘greater good’ worthy of the limits a free and democratic society — a just society — places on itself and its citizens.