Canada To Mandate ISP Deep Packet Inspection 313
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government has proposed new legislation that would require ISPs to install deep-packet inspection capabilities. The proposal includes a laundry list of
surveillance requirements, police review of ISP employees and technologies, and the mandated disclosure of a broad range of
subscriber information without any court oversight."
Re:Who foots the bill? (Score:5, Interesting)
news: its not expensive. networks TAPS are commodity these days. dpi is something 'every box' does (or plans to do). no longer really a differentiator.
I work in the networking field and over the last 10 yrs I've seen a burst of boxes that offer 'security' and other things but mostly they are there for LI and DPI. its the new fad in datacomm and all the governments are into spying on their people. its profitable to supply boxes to such governments and corporations.
since everyone (vendors) are offering port monitoring, tapping and DPI triggering, it won't be too expensive.
cost is not what we should care about, here. its the widespread use and 'well, everyone else is doing it' acceptance of DPI in our lives. that's what annoys and scares me the most; the fact that its so 'everywhere' now. and it seems only us techies really know this.
Re:Let's Just Hope... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's very easy to look at the short story and go "The government wants to read my packets?!?!? Oh Noes this must be bad!" Usually that can get a +5 insightful.
I opened the Article to find it was another one from Michael Geist. Now, normally he puts me off, it seems like there was a week or two there where he kept flooding the world with news about ACTA, and I was getting tired of hearing about it because it was the same old thing, bad bad bad. So I started reading the article and the bills that were being proposed - and he actually seems to be on the mark with this one. Basically what the whole thing boils down to is this:
The Law Enforcement Agencies want to be able to read internet traffic, real time, and have access to the information the ISP has on whoever is in that conversation. While some of these details are already within the ISP's ability to give out voluntarily should the Police ask for it, basically they want it set in stone that they MUST. Makes me wonder if there was an issue where an ISP refused to hand over data recently, or if they simple said "We can't sniff their traffic".
Now - I have a strong feeling that this will fail. Why? It seems that they want ISP's to foot the bill. An ISP isn't going to want to pay any more money than they have to. They won't be getting any kind of a kickback from the government - law enforcement isn't exactly a money making industry. So I see Telus and Shaw and Bell and whoever probably starting to grease some palms to make sure this thing doesn't pass.
Unless there is some odd reason that ISP's would willingly want to comply with this (which would mean they're likely getting refunded somehow) then I would be a little more worried. If Geist can find evidence of that, well, that'd be quite a story!
Re:Time to start buying stock in VPS companies? (Score:3, Interesting)
More importantly, it affects the way companies make money. No VPN & places like IBM have to run hard lines between offices rather than a VPN.
Re:Why... (Score:2, Interesting)
The million-dollar question.
I got caught-up in a conversation with two "friends" who believe TSA patdowns of breasts and groins, or interrogating a passenger "Why are you carrying 4000 in cash?", is necessary and proper and the officers are doing a good job! I tried to explain this violates their 4th amendment rights (no search w/o warrant or articulable suspicion.). I cannot fathom why these people so willingly give-away their constitutional legal protections.
Re:Another form of tyranny from Canada: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure there's a video floating-around to back-up the website..... if not that specific event, then another one where a citizen is having his/her computer scanned for nudie pics. Doesn't Australia have a similar law that carrying even one photo of a topless woman across international border is a crime? I wouldn't be surprised if Canada has the same restriction.
Just now I heard on the radio that an American is being punished $11,000 by the U.S.G. because he refused to be scanned, or prodded, and they told him, "You cannot fly." So he canceled his ticket, got a refund, left the airport, and was arrested.
Apparently once you enter an air terminal, you no longer have any rights... except to submit to the US Gestapo.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who foots the bill? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's even a company offering an HTTPS MITM appliance - info on it isn't publically available. Not groundbreaking, I know, but a company now sells a neat rackmount unit that makes it easy and convenient.
What's funny is that when Wired magazine got their hands on a brochure with info on this thing that was handed out at a secret government intelligence convention, the company that builds it first asked "How did you find out about that!?" XD
Ah here found the article on it:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/ [wired.com]
Re:Time for all websites to go https (Score:4, Interesting)
If google have performance issue, smaller sites (that have real users) may well suffer too.
Didn't Google recently claim that https: adds about a whole 1% to the load on their servers? The only computationally intensive part is the initial key exchange.
Re:Let's Just Hope... (Score:3, Interesting)
An ISP isn't going to want to pay any more money than they have to. They won't be getting any kind of a kickback from the government - law enforcement isn't exactly a money making industry.
1) Out of touch with the prison industrial complex. Huge money maker.
2) When I worked at a US telco we did in fact issue a bill along with the data. Its kind of like assuming a private 3rd party chemistry forensics lab could never do business with law enforcement. Their cell phone provider does not provide service free/gratis. Their mobile radios were not donated by Motorola for free. They do not get free weapons (well, civil forfeiture) Why people continually assume the telcos do not / will not / can not bill law enforcement has always mystified me. Maybe in the pre-84 ma bell days they had a gentleman's agreement not to bother with paperwork and its all the old timers talking? Don't know.
Re:Just goes to show... (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming your correct, there is clearly something wrong with the process. Regardless, describing Canada as "tyrannical" is completely ridiculous.
That's true (although I don't think the GP meant "tyrannical" in a literal sense) but you're obviously afraid of what the Muslim sector might do if aroused, and did everything you could to appease them (at Mr. Levant's and the Canadian public's expense.) Either that, or some high-ranking Muslims in your government decided to make an example if him. Either way, no civilized society should get upset over a cartoon, yet that's exactly what some Muslim cultures do. It's intolerance of the highest order, and you shouldn't accept it from your police and your lawmakers.
Re:Let's Just Hope... (Score:3, Interesting)
> Makes me wonder if there was an issue where an ISP refused to hand over data recently, or if they simple said "We can't sniff their traffic".
I use to work for a small Canadian ISP about 7 years ago and the owner would never give out info to any one or any CDN gov agency unless they came in with a warrant. He was pretty firm about that. Man we had good times writing letters and answering phone calls from US law firms requesting that we must do so and so lol
Not just corruption -- ideology (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. But don't forget that conservative do-gooders really believe that they are doing the right thing, and cannot see the ironic nature of what is going on. After-all, the unwashed masses need to be controlled for their own good. Moral authoritarianism is as much an ideology as it a business proposition for the private-sector profiting from the "war".
For anybody conservative or liberal who smugly thinks that they are the one who has thought it through, consider this: when identical twins are separated at birth, and tested in adulthood, their political attitudes turn out to be similar with a correlation co-efficient of 0.62 (Bouchard et al. 1990; Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989; Holden, 1987; Martin et al. 1986; Plomin et al., 1997, p. 206; Scarr & Weinberg, 1981)
So, the next time it seems a political argument is entrench -- consider that it may be far more entrenched then anyone realizes.
Re:Who foots the bill? (Score:3, Interesting)
It just looks like this guy went one further and put the two box solution into one box with no acceleration and made it easier to have it use a knowingly forged certificate rather than generating its own.