[mobglob-discuss] Virtual Big Brother - Watching You Watching Me

[Bella]

The commentary below was sent to me by a friend, I'm not sure of the
original source, however I also sniffed around on the Dept of Justice
website (always a good site to check in on from time to time to see what
the Feds are up to).  Do any of our U.S. friends know if this is happening
below the 49th?
Bella

Overview of what the Dept of Justice has worked on in the last year.
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/dept/pub/ach/achieve2002.html

Two direct links regarding internet intellegence gathering, spying, and of
course taking away some of our privacy rights.  Commentary article is
below.

http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/news/nr/2002/doc_30670.html
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/news/nr/2002/doc_30672.html

Canadian Internet service providers face the possibility of massive
infrastructure upgrades under a government proposal that would make them
store customer data and disclose it to police and intelligence agencies.

According to a 21-page discussion paper posted on the Department of
Justice Canada's Web site, the government may try to introduce a law next
year that could require ISPs to keep all traffic logs for six months,
while allowing authorities to more closely monitor suspected criminals. It
also raises the notion of a national database of every Canadian with an
Internet account. The government will take comments on the proposal until
Nov. 15 at (email) la-al at justice.gc.ca.

In the discussion paper, the government insists that it will continue to
maintain rights protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,
such as protection to individuals against self-incrimination. Legislation
may be necessary, however, to help law enforcement officials conduct
investigations properly in the 21st century.

"These technologies can make it more difficult to gather the information
required to carry out effective investigations," the paper says. "While
providers of certain wireless services, such as Personal Communications
Services, have since 1996 been required to have facilities capable of
lawful access pursuant to a licensing obligation under the
Radiocommunications Act, there are currently no similar obligations for
other providers."

Bob Carrick, president of ISP help site Carrick Solutions Ltd. and the
directory CanadianISP.com, said retaining records could create a breach of
trust between ISPs and their customers.

"That poses a really serious privacy issue," he said. "If you're storing
every single user's traffic for an extended period of time, that leads to
some really powerful misuses. You could have anybody who works at that ISP
see that data."

Jay Thomson, president of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers,
said the industry has been expecting some kind of legislative effort given
Canada's involvement in the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Treaty. Like
the United States, Canada is a non-voting member of the Council but has
endorsed many of the treaty's obligations.

"They're designed to ensure when ISPs and other telecommunications service
providers come out with new services that the technical capabilities exist
for police come in to do their wiretaps or whatever they may be," he said.
"If the industry's willing to cooperate but doesn't have the technical
capability to do so, that puts the police in a bind."

ISPs have largely maintained a cooperative relationship with law
enforcement, Thomson added, particularly when the police ask for help in
monitoring a customer suspected of running a child pornography site, for
example.

"We've always been of a mind that we're willing to help out, as long as
proper procedures are followed," he said. "The big issues that arise here
are with respect to what kind of cost implications will exist for ISPs."

The Department of Justice proposal takes police rights a step further,
however, said Yankee Group Canada analyst Mark Quigley.

"Typically there hasn't been a problem," he said. "The notion here,
though, is that it would be a little more pervasive -- the ISPs wouldn't
necessarily have control over what was looked at or when, but it would be
in the hands of the law enforcement agencies to monitor Internet traffic,
Internet use, without discrimination."

Thomson said the discussion paper does not make clear whether any law
would apply to existing services or whether it would only kick in once an
ISP introduces new services. There is also the question of compliance --
how the regulations will deal with ISPs that don't follow the law.

Carrick said the bigger question surrounds cost -- whether upgrades
necessary to comply with the law would be paid for immediately by the ISP
or subsidized by the government. Right now, every ISP logs its customers'
IP address and the "start" and "stop" time of their Internet use in order
to bill for the service. One ISP Carrick said he spoke to already stores
450MB of data per month on its 10,000 customers. 

"That's just the start and stop time," he said. "Their average customer
has three to five gigabytes per month, which means they'd have to store
three to five gigabytes per month, per customer (to keep records for six
months). You times 5GB times 10,000 customers, and you're looking at
terabytes of information."

Maintaining that information would probably require multiple servers plus
server capacity to store all the data without slowing down the network
itself, Carrick added.

As for a national database, Quigley said the idea was filled with risks. 

"Security systems fail all the time. There hasn't been any one that hasn't
failed," he said. "If you have a big database that collects that kind of
information -- to suggest that it's only going to be available to law
enforcement agencies is kind of ridiculous. There are people out there
that are going to find access to it."

Carrick said there are about 950 ISPs across Canada, 450 of which serve
more than 1,000 customers.

=====
talk-action=nothing

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com