Monday, December 01, 2008
Seven men are facing more than 40 charges after Durham Region police dismantled a potential debit-copying operation in Whitby over the weekend. On Saturday, a tipster called police saying that a group of men were planning on switching a gas station’s debit-machine pinpad. After surveying the business for several hours, police saw a number of suspects replace the machine with a similar device. They followed the suspects to a nearby hotel where they rented a room that they allegedly used to examine the stolen machine. … [continues] …
Friday, November 28, 2008
A Canadian soldier who was found with a large collection of child pornography following an online chat with an FBI agent has been sentenced to 18 months in jail. …[continues] …
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Mystery still surrounds a possible loss of private data on almost half a million clients of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce two years after the well-publicized event. There is no evidence that information on a misplaced computer drive was improperly accessed, and CIBC “now considers it highly possible” that the lost files never left its offices, the federal privacy commission said Thursday. “I am troubled that CIBC has been unable to establish whether a data transfer to a portable disk drive had even been made,” stated assistant commissioner Elizabeth Denham. “If CIBC had followed its policies and processes or had a technical means to determine whether the transfer to a second disk drive had actually taken place, quite possibly, no further action would have been necessary,” Denham added. “Whether or not the personal information of more than 470,000 people was transferred to a disk drive should not be a mystery.” … [continues] …
Monday, November 24, 2008
The RCMP will not pursue charges against the Canadian Human Rights Commission over allegations its investigators hacked an Ottawa woman’s wireless Internet account, the National Post has learned.
They were alleged to have done so to conceal their identity on Web sites under investigation for hate speech. A parallel investigation of the same incident by the Privacy Commissioner remains ongoing.
The complaint arose in March at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hate speech prosecution of Marc Lemire, Web master of freedomsite.org,when his legal team brought a subpoena against Web service provider Bell Canada. They were seeking the identity of whoever logged on to the neo-Nazi Web site stormfront.orgunder the name “Jadewarr” in December, 2006, just as bloggers were using technical data to reveal “Jadewarr” as the online pseudonym of Dean Steacy, a lead hate speech investigator at the CHRC . Mr. Steacy later acknowledged this under oath. In his testimony, Alain Monfette, director of Bell Canada’s law enforcement support team, read out the name and address of a woman, coincidentally a Bell Canada employee, whose computer IP address matched that of Jadewarr at the time in question, according to the Florida- based owner of stormfront.org,Don Black. Neither the CHRC lawyers nor Mr. Lemire’s team had ever heard of her. She has no connection to CHRC investigators, but she did have a laptop computer with a wireless connection, and the address Mr. Monfette gave for her apartment in downtown Ottawa is near the CHRC offices.
This led to speculation that CHRC staff were illegally using an innocent woman’s Web account to hide behind her identity when investigating target Web sites, a claim Mr. Lemire made in a formal complaint to police, while also posting detailed photographs and schematics of her apartment building. That investigation is now concluded without charges. A decision remains pending at Mr. Lemire’s hate speech tribunal.
In a phone interview yesterday, the woman said the RCMP told her they do not have proof her account was hacked, nor proof that it was not, and to investigate further would involve going after technical data from a Web site based in the United States, stormfront.org,which they said is not possible. “They don’t have an explanation. They pretty much said it’s sh——luck,” she said.
The CHRC refused to comment yesterday, but have denied the allegation of hacking in the past. The RCMP refused to comment. In an e-mail, Mr. Lemire said the facts in the wireless hacking case are “fairly overwhelming” and the decision not to lay charges “[s]mells like a highly political decision in the shadow of a self-serving report the CHRC is releasing next Monday. It is full-bore damage control for a government agency spinning out of control.
“It is certainly not a case of the CHRC being found innocent,” he said. “But rather the lack of jurisdiction of the RCMP in the United States.”
A Brampton high school teacher today pleaded guilty to Internet luring in connection with inappropriate conversations with a 16-year-old male student. … [continues] …
The Canadian Human Rights Commission should be stripped of its authority to police hate messages on the Internet, an independent expert has concluded. In a report commissioned by the CHRC , constitutional law expert Richard Moon says cyber hate should be dealt with under the Criminal Code, not by human rights tribunals. He recommends Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act be repealed. The controversial section prohibits telephone or Internet communications that are deemed likely to expose members of an identifiable group to hatred or contempt.Critics say Section 13 violates the Constitution’s freedom of speech provisions. They also complain that it can cost thousands of dollars to defend against complaints – even if an accusation proves to be unfounded.
“Censorship of expression that stereotypes or defames members of an identifiable group is not a practical option and so we must, as a community, develop other ways to respond to this expression,” Moon says. He suggests the Criminal Code already contains adequate provisions to prohibit the most egregious hate speech and to empower a judge to order Internet service providers to remove hate propaganda from their systems. Should Section 13 not be repealed, Moon says it should at least be amended to prohibit only the most extreme instances of hate messages that advocate, justify or threaten violence against members of an identifiable group. And he says Internet service providers should consider setting up hate speech complaint lines and committees of experts to advise them when a website has violated hate propaganda laws and should be shut down.
Moon also says mainstream newspapers and news magazines should revive moribund regional press councils where readers can pursue complaints about articles that allegedly promote hatred. If necessary, he says, government should consider creating a national press council with mandatory membership. Debate has been raging over the authority of human rights tribunals to police hate speech since complaints were lodged against journalists Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant for allegedly exposing Muslims to hatred and contempt.
The debate prompted the CHRC to conduct a comprehensive review of its hate speech policy. Moon’s report is the first step in that review. “The debate on how to ensure that Canadians are protected against hate, while preserving freedom of expression, demanded fresh thinking,” CHRC chief commissioner Jennifer Lynch said in a written statement. “Professor Moon has now provided us with an excellent and thoughtful report.” The CHRC will seek submissions on Moon’s recommendations before tabling a special report to Parliament by mid-2009 on Internet hate speech and Section 13.
Jewish groups weighed in instantly Monday, objecting to Moon’s primary proposal. “We certainly are somewhat concerned, even alarmed really, at the call for repealing Section 13,” said Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress. “We don’t want to be in a situation in this country where we lose that sense of protection for vulnerable minorities.” Farber said Moon’s recommendation would further “criminalize” hate speech and punish offenders. The CJC prefers leaving some authority over cyber hate with human rights tribunals, which Farber said are more accessible to the public and help educate people about ``codes of conduct . . . in a free and democratic society.”
Similarly, B’nai Brith Canada said repealing Section 13 would be ``a step in the wrong direction.” Both groups supported Moon’s alternative proposal to amend the section.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have largely ignored the issue until recently. At a national policy convention earlier this month, Conservatives – including Justice Minister Rob Nicholson – voted almost unanimously in favour of a resolution to eliminate Section 13. However, Farber doubted that repealing or amending Section 13 will be a top priority for Harper’s minority government, which is focused almost exclusively on managing the fallout from the global economic crisis.
Facebook has a won US$873 million judgment against a Canadian man who bombarded the popular online hangout with sexually explicit “spam” messages. The victory, sealed with a judge’s order issued last Friday, probably won’t yield a windfall for privately held Facebook Inc., whose revenue this year is expected to range between $250 million to $300 million. Court records indicate the alleged spammer, Adam Guerbuez of Montreal, has been difficult to find since Facebook sued him four months ago. But Facebook is hoping the size of the judgment will scare off other spammers who might be tempted to target the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s audience of more than 120 million users. …[continued] …
Sunday, November 23, 2008
When business was slow, Greg Backman, a supervisor at Maritime Paper Products, would surf sex sites up to three hours a day. The company never complained Backman was gratifying himself instead of performing his job. Neither did any of the people he supervised. On the contrary, the company was satisfied with the job he was doing.
It kept giving him raises and excellent reviews. Backman must have truly been talented to get his work done while surfing the web for sex for hours a day. The company, like many employers, had an “Acceptable Use Policy” for work computers. Surfing for sex sites wasn’t one of them. At the same time, it was aware of Backman’s habit.
Several years earlier, he was warned to stop watching porn at work or he would be fired, but no one ever followed through. His great ratings continued. The company finally pulled the plug when a woman from the company’s manager of information services complained. Her job was to monitor everyone’s computer use which required her to look at the images on Backman’s computer, most of which were explicit images of young women engaged in sex acts. She told the company she found the images highly offensive. Maritime immediately fired Backman.
The court sided with the company. Justice McLellan of the New Brunswick Queens Bench stated, by displaying sexual images on his work computer, Backman was sexually harassing the woman in Information Services. In law, Maritime had a duty to protect her. It could not permit Backman to surf pornographic sites at work if it meant female co-workers would see it and be offended. Besides, Backman was warned and knew the risk he was running.
The company did the right thing by firing Backman because he placed the company at risk to be sued by the woman in Information Services for allowing him to sexually harass her.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Accused killer Jeremy Steinke wrote in an Internet message that it was his girlfriend’s idea to kill her parents, jurors at his trial heard yesterday. Internet messages and poetry sent under Mr. Steinke’s online username “souleater” to “runaway devil,” the username of his ex-girlfriend, were read to jurors by Medicine Hat police Sgt. Tim Schottner, a computer forensics expert. … [continues] …
Friday, November 21, 2008
Students and teachers will no longer face the challenge of continuously changing their Facebook status updates while in schools in New Brunswick. The Department of Education has unplugged the popular social networking site from teachers and students during school hours. A provincewide Facebook ban took effect at the beginning of this week. Valerie Kilfoil, a department spokeswoman, said the new policy was created because school districts complained that frequent Facebook use was disruptive to the classroom. “It all ties into the use of technology in the schools. It must always be linked to educational outcomes and as well the department always has to be vigilant about privacy and pupil-protection issues so because Facebook is a social network, it was determined that it did not fit into the educational outcomes, in terms of the use of technology,” she said. … [continues]
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