Canadians have right to online anonymity, Supreme Court rules

Rejecting government fears of a “crime-friendly Internet,” the Supreme Court of Canada said anonymity is vital to personal privacy in the digital era. It told police they need a judge’s permission before asking Internet providers for basic information that would identify their customers – such as a suspected child pornographer at the heart of a 2007 Saskatchewan investigation.

Legal observers called the unanimous ruling a privacy landmark, with implications for everything from child porn investigations to snooping by national security agencies to police powers under the Conservative government’s cyberbullying bill.

David Fraser, a Halifax privacy lawyer, said that “the message to police is ‘Come back with a warrant;’ customers’ names and addresses are not as innocuous as police might think, or want us to believe.” The Conservative government would not say whether it would amend proposed laws that expand the sharing of that kind of private information.
(Read full article at Globe & Mail)

Conservatives mum on changing privacy bills after Supreme Court ruling

After a Supreme Court ruling that Canadians have a right to privacy with IP addresses and other online data, the Conservative government is staying silent on whether it will amend bills that expand the sharing of that kind of private information.

Friday’s court ruling comes as the Conservative government pushes ahead with Bill C-13 and Bill S-4, each of which has privacy implications and is under fire from academics, lawyers and privacy watchdogs.

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Daniel Therrien, called the decision a “seminal” ruling and urged MPs to “carefully consider the implications” in consideration of C-13 and S-4.

Among many criticized provisions, C-13 offers immunity to private companies – such as major telecommunications companies – that hand over subscriber information or other data voluntarily to police. The telecom industry got 1.2-million such requests from government agencies in 2011. S-4, meanwhile, overhauls the rules for voluntary data sharing between private companies, and critics have warned it will lead to more sharing of private information without judicial oversight.

In Question Period on Friday, shortly after the release of the decision, the government was under fire from the opposition.

“Police must have a mandate. This new defeat [from the court] underscores the fact that all too often [the government’s] approach is unconstitutional. Will the Conservatives amend bills on electronic monitoring in order to comply with the Supreme Court decision?” NDP House Leader Peter Julian said.

Conservative MP Bob Dechert, who is the parliamentary secretary to Justice Minister Peter MacKay, sidestepped the question.

(read the full article at Globe & Mail)

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RT: June 12, 2014

Facebook is to start providing advertisers with more user data, drawing from browsing habits and external websites visited, in addition to their current ‘likes.’ This will be the first time that Facebook has used information from outside the network.

The company announced the change early on Thursday, saying the move is aimed at targeting individual users more efficiently.

“If you live in the US, you’ll be able to use ad preferences in the next few weeks, and we are working hard to expand globally in the coming months,” Facebook stated in a blog post on Thursday.

However, the move has sparked concern among privacy advocates and will likely ignite further criticism about its respect – or lack thereof – of users’ personal data.

“Facebook is continuing on a campaign to push the data envelope, raising troubling privacy and consumer-protection concerns,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told The Wall Street Journal.

(read the full article at RT)

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Eliana Johnson
National Review: June 9, 2014

The Internal Revenue Service may have been caught violating federal tax law: In October 2010, the agency sent a database on 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups containing confidential taxpayer information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to documents obtained by a House panel.

The information was transmitted in advance of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s meeting the same month with Justice Department officials about the possibility of using campaign-finance laws to prosecute certain nonprofit groups. E-mails between Lerner and Richard Pilger, the director of the Justice Department’s election-crimes branch, obtained through a subpoena to Attorney General Eric Holder, show Lerner asking about the format in which the FBI preferred the data to be sent.

“This revelation that the IRS sent 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax-return data — including confidential taxpayer information — to the FBI confirms suspicions that the IRS worked with the Justice Department to facilitate the potential investigation of nonprofit groups engaged in lawful political speech,” Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS commissioner John Koskinen. The two lawmakers also raise questions about the timing of the meeting, just weeks before the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans recaptured a majority in the House of Representatives.

(read the full article at National Review)

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RT: June 4, 2014

Edward Snowden’s recent revelation that the NSA can bug cell phones even when they are turned off left some experts split on whether it is true or not. But a group of hackers claim that at least there is a way to protect your phone from spies’ ears.

Snowden, who exposed the American government’s secret mass surveillance program, has been making headlines in the media for almost a year with shocking details about the scale of snooping by the National Security Agency (NSA).

In last week’s interview with NBC, the former CIA employee yet again added to the spreading privacy panic when he said the NSA can actually eavesdrop on cellphones even when they are turned off.

“Can anyone turn it on remotely if it’s off?” Williams asked Snowden referring to the smartphone he used for travel to Russia for the interview. “Can they turn on apps? Did anyone know or care that I Googled the final score of the Rangers-Canadiens game last night because I was traveling here?”

“I would say yes to all of those,” Snowden replied. “They can absolutely turn them on with the power turned off to the device,” he added.

It is not news that American (and possibly not only American) special services have been able to use mobile phones as a spying tool for at least a decade.

Back in 2006, media reported that the FBI applied a technique known as a “roving bug” which allowed them to remotely activate a cell phone’s microphone and listen to nearby conversations.

Pinpointing a person’s location to within just a few meters has not been a problem either thanks to a tracking device built into mobile phones. This option, a party-spoiler for criminals, has also been helpful in finding people who have gone missing or got into trouble. The general belief has been that removing a battery would make tracking impossible.

In July last year, Washington Post wrote that “By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off.”

The agency used it to help American forces in Iraq. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) called the method “The Find,” and “it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq,” the paper wrote.

t is very likely that the scale of the use of such techniques has grown much bigger and more sophisticated due to SciTech developments. And with millions of people getting addicted to their smartphones – which they carry with them literally everywhere – it is much easier to spy on them.

But, according to a piece published in Wired magazine, there is a way to make sure that no one is listening to you. The article, citing security researchers, says that if an attacker had a chance to install malware before the phone is turned off, the software could make it only look like the phone is shutting down. Instead, it “enters a low-power mode that leaves its baseband chip—which controls communication with the carrier—on”.

Such “playing dead” state would allow the phone to receive commands, including one to activate its microphone, says Eric McDonald, a hardware engineer in Los Angeles told the news outlet. It also gives practical advice on how to deal with the situation. Whether it works or not – is another question.

If you’ve got totally paranoid about your iPhone, you can try to put it into device firmware upgrade (DFU) mode, Eric McDonald, a hardware engineer, told Wired. In this mode, all elements of the phone are shut down except for the USB port which waits for iTunes to install new firmware.

To enter the mode, use any power outlet or computer USB port to plug in the iPhone. Then hold the power button for three seconds, after start holding the home button, too. After 10 seconds, release the power button, but not the home button. Wait for another 10-15 seconds.

(read the full article at RT)

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Agence France-Presse: May 19, 2014

Police have arrested around 100 people in global raids against a notorious malware being sold complete with “ransom notes” to extort money after taking control of computers.

“During the course of a worldwide investigation, creators, sellers and users of BlackShades malware were targeted by judicial and law enforcement authorities in 16 different countries,” Europe-wide police and justice bodies Europol and Eurojust said in a statement.

Thousands of people around the world have bought BlackShades RAT (Remote Access Tools) malicious software or malware, which can be used to secretly take control of a user’s webcam or entire computer, as well as encrypt its contents and hold them to ransom

The malware could also be used to carry out distributed denial-of-service cyberattacks to bring down websites.

Over two days, police and the FBI raided 359 houses, arrested 97 people and seized “substantial quantities” of cash, illegal guns and drugs, as well as over 1,000 data storage devices, the statement said.

“A recent case in the Netherlands of BlackShades malware being used for criminal purposes was that of an 18-year-old man who infected at least 2,000 computers, controlling the victim’s webcams to take pictures of women and girls,” Eurojust said.

Among the countries raided were the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, the US, Canada, Chile and Switzerland.

The Dutch public prosecutor’s office said that police raided 34 properties in the Netherlands and made no arrests.

Hacker websites began reporting three days ago that police were raiding people suspected of buying or using BlackShades, which is reportedly available on the so-called “darknet” network of trusted peers for under $100 (70 euros).

Chatrooms suggested police were using records from the PayPal payment site to identify those who bought the malware.

(Read the full article on Raw Story)

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