A look at data retention and law enforcement
Ever since Cryptome was shutdown via a DMCA request by Microsoft, I have been itching to compile a small table that shows how long it should normally take before a popular online service deletes your account. This really applies to just American law enforcement officials, but I am certain that the rules for data retention are the same internationally barring any privacy laws.
So if you're looking to disappear or choose "the right service", this may be a handy little guide to show you how long it takes before your "private" data is deleted off of these systems. This is not a guide on how to delete your items off of these services for the purposes of thwarting law enforcement, but rather a guide to show you how these companies are engaging in data storage.
And for the record: I have been following Cryptome for years and if you're not making it a part of your daily digest, you should.
Great Clips violates your privacy!
A visit to a Great Clips location on the weekend proved to be an annoyance more than a necessity. Here's a letter of complaint I have sent to their corporate head office. I also forwarded copies to two other organizations to ensure that this matter is looked at.
My problem with the Olympics
I didn't want to go a whole month without a blog entry and there has been a huge cloud that has been hanging over my head with regards to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic games here in Vancouver. For most people, the excitement of the world watching our city display some excellent achievements in sporting activities has created a disconnect between what they think is going to happen and what is in fact reality.
What should and shouldn’t GVTAPS be tweeting?
Everybody and their dog has a Twitter account these days and it should be no surprise that the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority Police Service (or GVTAPS for short) has one for thesmelves.
While I am not here to make public my position on how the police conducts themselves overall, I do wish to put into question whether or not it is a bright idea to have an on-duty sergeant (in this case, Sgt. Tom Seaman) actively tweeting, I do wish to point out some oddball and questional tweets.
Repost: “Suppressed Texas Instruments cryptographic signing keys”
As per my friend, Peter Kieser:
This are the OS signing keys for different Texas Instruments calculators. The key for the TI-83 calculator was first published by someone at the unitedti.org forum in this message: http://www.unitedti.org/index.php?showtopic=8888. He or she needed several months to crack it. The other keys were found after a few weeks by the unitedti.org community through a distributed computing project. The keys make it possible to sign your own operating system for the Texas Instruments calculators.
Texas Instruments now contacted several people with a DMCA notice to take down the keys from their websites. Some of the websites which got a DMCA notice are: unitedti.org, brandonw.net and reddit.com. One of these DCMA notices can be found here: http://brandonw.net/calcstuff/DMCA_notice.txt
Here are the three keys:
TI-83 (Plus):
n=82EF4009ED7CAC2A5EE12B5F8E8AD9A0
AB9CC9F4F3E44B7E8BF2D57A2F2BEACE
83424E1CFF0D2A5A7E2E53CB926D61F3
47DFAA4B35B205B5881CEB40B328E58F
p=B709D3A0CD2FEC08EAFCCF540D8A100BB38E5E091D646ADB7B14D021096FFCD
q=B7207BD184E0B5A0B89832AA68849B29EDFB03FBA2E8917B176504F08A96246CB
d=4D0534BA8BB2BFA0740BFB6562E843C7
EC7A58AE351CE11D43438CA239DD9927
6CD125FEBAEE5D2696579FA3A3958FF4FC54C685EAA91723BC8888F292947BA1
e=11TI-84 (Plus):
prp77 factor: 67070508990537181066342707695603050521324524613874331879259881495826493920589
prp78 factor: 186923771200711284770368041572205320486346816476524340240220962467860568859381n=EF5FEF0B0AB6E22731C17539658B2E91E53A59BF8E00FCC81D05758F26C1791CD35AF6101B1E35
43AC3E78FD8BB8F37FC8FE85601C502EABC9132CEAD4711CB1
p=94489014C63CC9E1E1ADB192DBBDD1F78F90A630DA9C86EFC4CBCA44E5B4D54D
q=19D431AF2794229620B884E3750D622D1C74F2E4569DC15486FC8D5A3BCDFE2F5
d=2A3E1B2010F318D9BD7C7E19300980B055A0E2A9554B77E7142E23CDF7C7CA13C233A3D462FDFC
968B1F9CEAF2AC2CF305147992AD9E834192ACEBB517DB9941
e=11TI-89:
prp76 factor: 2231124525637629443181963045297394875470510167130210300957267082210173784611
prp79 factor: 3226885534240147415018248397410101286362761128614350056368675111071170873486957(these are factors of 71995834568684773636720438651160472297127884480206535156843307841378050889714332
73011970552138960583799368215373582308591928985045059261105298431035818727)
Which candidate hosts in Canada?
The Conservative Party of Canada prides itself on buying Canadian goods. It presents it as a party for all Canadians (of the right-leaning variety, of course) and puts an emphasis on "Canada-first" qualities (with some American influence, of course). Going into the 2008 elections, I have begun to wonder how "Canadian" some of these candidates are.
Being a technically-minded guy, I decided to see which candidates in Metro Vancouver are using Canadian hosting providers for their campaign websites. The results are a bit staggering and somewhat disappointing. Even this terrible website is being hosted on a server in Canada, so why can't some of these candidates?
Get to know your CRIA lobbyists!
Following up with my previous entry, I decided to do some research into who exactly represents the Canadian Recording Industry Assocation (CRIA) to our members in Parliament.
Thanks to the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, we can determine who represents who when it comes to matters of pressure on the government.
Who is exactly involved in the Canadian copyright review debacle?
While the story has been blogged to death, not much has come out on who is likely involved in the whole copyright review mess that failed to make it into parliament last week. However, every lobbyist is required to register themselves in a publically searchable database that is viewable online.
Doing a simple search for "recording" brought up some interesting results!
Registration type: Consultant Lobbyist
Lobbyist number: 0000783
Registration number: 0000783-86
Effective date: 2007-06-06
Termination date: 2007-11-29Prefix: Mr.
Last Name: GERVAIS
First Name: PHILIPPE
Preferred Language: English
Position Title: SENIOR CONSULTANT
Name of Lobbyist's Firm: The Capital Hill Group Inc.Regulation: Bill C60 and act to amend the copyright act.
Policy or Program: Review of Copyright act.
That's only a sampling of what I managed to find. His lobbyist registration was up on the 29th of last month and was renewed the day of. His was not the only registration that was due to expire on that day as you can see in this image:
One has to wonder what sparked the act to get reviewed now. If I could only find out about what meetings Mr. Prentice was having before he got this all started...
Get to know your CRIA lobbyists!
Following up with my previous entry, I decided to do some research into who exactly represents the Canadian Recording Industry Assocation (CRIA) to our members in Parliament.
Thanks to the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, we can determine who represents who when it comes to matters of pressure on the government.
Currently, there are two listed lobbyists representing the industry, and they both come from the consulting group, The Capital Hill Group. The two members of this organization involved are Sandra Graham (#22591) and Philippe Gervais (#783).
According to the registry, Sandra's subject-matter particulars include copyright reform, intellectual property (IP) rights reforms, and government response to piracy and counterfeiting reports from committees. Her principle client (within CRIA) is Graham Henderson, who was Senior Vice-President of Business Affairs and eCommerce for Universal Music Canada, but is now President of the association.
In regards to Mr. Gervais, he has been involved in the creation of Bill C60, which was a previous attempt at copyright reform under the Liberal government in 2005. His principle client is Richard Pfohl (spelt as "Phfol" on the government site), and he is involved with legal affairs for the association. The ironic thing about Richard's involvement with CRIA is his linked profile states that he was an Executive Editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
Out of all of this, there is one thing that stands out: why did their registrations get terminated and then reactivated on the same day?
Simple.
Before November 30th, the two members were only involved with the Department of Canadian Heritage, which was the focal point of copyright reform in the past. Bev Oda was the previous minister, and while now she is Minister for International Cooperation, in her last election, there was controversy over campaign funding by US copyright proponents. Now that she's no longer involved with the department, the lobbyists had to swim to another pool.
Hence, the lobbyists reregistered so they could then be involved not only with the Heritage department, but also Industry Canada, who of course, is chaired by Minister of Industry, Jim Prentice--he was previously involved with Indian Affairs.
The staggering thing is that this story broke before November 30th. One has to wonder if these lobbyists and the minister may have broken any laws in regards to all of this. I wish I was versed enough in Canadian law that I could come to this conclusion, but sadly I cannot.
Update at 11:11 am: Thanks to Michael Geist for noting an error in Mr. Hederson's current position within the CRIA.