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#[1]Catprint in the Mash [2]Catprint in the Mash
[3]Catprint in the Mash
Fri, 19 Aug 2005
[4]
Surveillance
Today in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and available [5]here is a story
about new proposed legislation regarding privacy and security in
Canada with regards to the Internet. (Note: the online version differs
from the print version in that the print version has a paragraph
regarding CPCs Vic Toews views, not just the NDP view. I guess thats
the difference between the StarPhoenix and the Montreal Gazette.)
The proposed legislation allows the law enforcement (RCMP, CSIS, CISC,
etc) to intercept and monitor all Internet traffic without a court
order. Currently, all previous forms of covert surveillance (mail,
telephone and search without seizure) require law enforcement to
convince a judge for the purposes of obtaining a warrant.
Additionally, the proposed legislation requires ISPs to monitor all
of their clients Internet activities so that they can provide (given
30 minutes warning) reports and data on the target. This includes
password protected web sites.
Now, I understand that the law hasnt caught up to the technology with
regards to the Internet but the reasoning for this law is suspect. The
article uses terrorism as the basis for the law, but terrorists do not
publish or plan their acts in the clear". In the clear is an industry
term meaning that data is passed back and forth in a non-encrypted
form. Intercepted data can be read without much trouble. Id guess
that the vast majority (like 99.9%) of Internet traffic is in the
clear.
Methods to pass information in an encrypted form include SSL web pages
(https), GPG encrypted email, and steganography. Of these, the middle
is sufficient (depending on configuration) for secure email, the later
two are usually combined for highly sensitive information, and the
first is just stupid if you want secure communications.
Terrorists arent stupid and they arent computer illiterate.
This proposed legislation is another way for our Government to spy on
us without the need for checks and balance. Given this draft the
Justice Minister could call my ISP and demand that the ISP (within 30
minutes) provide any federal law enforcement agency with all of the
data and all of my usage patterns on the Internet.
Two points that I completely disagree with:
* Lack of Judicial oversight.
* Requirement on the ISPs
* lack of definition of ISP
The first is an obvious horror. The second isnt so obvious to the
lay-person, but Im in the industry so Ill try and explain. The third
scares me because without the definition of an ISP it would mean _any_
Canadian machine connected to the Internet and providing a service.
Logs take up a lot of space, they are available for browsing to most
administrators on a system, but they are usually rotated. At work we
are fairly diligent with regards to monitoring the logs, so we only
keep them for about seven days. For the ISPs to meet the requirements
of this draft legislation they would need massive storage capabilities
and would open up your data and usage patterns to anyone on the
system.
Technically, this is simplicity in itself.
When you send an email, you assume that it goes directly to the
recipient, thats false, the email actually passes through _at least_
two other systems. Its nothing for the administrators to copy the
data in transit, we do this at work when told to.
Your web surfing patterns are easily logged, this is as simple as
setting up a proxy server. This can be set up so that it logs all data
between you and the web server.
This is scary stuff.
If you are concerned about this, go get a GPG/PGP program, set
yourself up with a public and private key and encrypt your email. Use
_at least_ a 2048 (4096 is better) bit key. If you are really
concerned, do the above and learn about stenography. It isnt hard.
Mozilla-Thunderbird is available for most platforms and the Enigmail
extension provides GPG/PGP support.
That will effectively protect your email, but wont do anything with
regards to your surfing habits. Thats basically common knowledge, ask
any blogger about how much info they have on who hits their sites.
For anyone interested in testing their GPG/PGP installation, I have a
signed 1024 bit DSA key that I use for normal email communications.
Its available [6]here.
Cheers,
lance
Posted at: [7]22:26 | [8]Comments (0) | [[9]linux] | [10]TB | [11]G |
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