Author: David

Darned Straight.

“It’s really none of Ontario’s business…. the answers no – we’ve worked for eight years to develop the Saskatchewan advantage,” Wall told Ottawa Now Host Evan Solomon on 580 CFRA. “I don’t want a level playing field for our province, I want to have this be the best place for companies to maintain jobs and to create new jobs and to invest.”
Find it here, look for “Brad Wall”.
D/load it here, 37 minute mark.

Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook vs. the FBI

And you can add the evidence chain and forensic science to the defendants.
If the FBI wins this, the ‘cloud’ services are basically screwed. One of the selling points of the ‘cloud’ is that they don’t have or keep copies of the keys that users create to safely upload their data, backup their systems, keep their application data secure, etc.
A ruling against Apple would basically set the precedent that data services would require a tool to break the encryption of whatever they store in case the FBI or another gov’t agency required it.
If you’ve been dealing with computers for any time in the last three years, you know that there has been a mass migration of applications and data from local centralized systems to remote data centres and remote applications. Like everything else in computers, there are now certifications available for too much money to tell people that you can study and pass tests about the cloud and cloud security.
Data integrity is the single biggest reason to use the cloud. With an Apple loss, that integrity is gone.
Google Web Services. Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud, Symantec Backup, Backup4All; everything people do now a days is cloud based.
And the majority don’t live in the US.
Update: Gizmodo was on the conference call with Apple. If true, Oops gov’t employees.

Not Paranoid Enough

The Regina Leader-Post Editorial Board echos my concerns over giving the Internet access to patient records. However the editorial focuses mainly on the threat from allowing external access.
By far, the largest threat vector is internal in origin and I’m not just talking about a disgruntled employee. Any employee who brings in their own device, checks email or surfs the web at work, plays facebook games or VPN’s in from home are all potential points of vulnerability.
This just happened.

A hospital in Los Angeles has been operating without access to email or electronic health records for more than a week, after hackers took over its computer systems and demanded millions of dollars in ransom to return it.

Based on the article it looks like the hospital was hit with a version of Cryptolocker software. That means that some employee in the hospital, or someone who has an ‘always-on’ VPN connection to the hospital and has mapped a drive to the data at the hospital became the accomplice.
No matter how hard you lock down a network or a computer the single largest point of failure is always between the keyboard and the seat.

Apple vs. the FBI

This is what the FBI wants from Apple.
The FBI wants Apple to create an image of the OS that allows them access to that specific device. The software image only has to bypass Apples device protection from brute-force password cracking attempts. This can be done at Apple’s facilities or the gov’t and if at the company then they must provide the government access to the device.
The devil is in the last part. It shouldn’t be too difficult to bypass the built-in brute-force protection but in order to do so Apple will give the FBI a system diff of the bypass. The FBI teams should be able to reverse engineer this to create an in-house version.
This is the top 10 countries using Apple’s products.
Now you know why Apple is balking.

The Reviews are in

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. Sigh.
New links since yesterday. Undoubtedly by tomorrow (or whenever you’re reading this) there will be many more editorials, cartoons and commentary, but they don’t matter, they’re not reporters
Macleans riffs the double face-palm meme.
Rick Bell thinks Alberta politics is going to get really interesting.
The Globe and Mail compares the Alberta NDP to Russia, Egypt and Iran.
Alberta Legislature Press Gallery backs The Rebel’s claim of media.
Evan Solomon. During this podcast I thought Solomon was actually +sputtering+ at times he sounded so angry.
Warren Kinsella, who was also on Sirius/XM’s Arlene Bynon Show on this topic. I listened, but couldn’t find a podcast. She, too, supported The Rebel.
All things in perspective, this is pretty much the Canadian equivalent of a revolution. In fact, the pile-on is getting so large I’m beginning to worry if the AB NDP might not end up suffering from PTSD.
Update: Please stop hating us.

“The government has appointed former Western Canadian bureau chief for Canadian Press, Heather Boyd, to consult and give us recommendations on what the government’s media policies should be. In the meantime, no one will be excluded from government media events.”

I still have issues with this ‘review’ and I am suspicious of the ‘in the meantime’, but as Sun Tzu is written, leave an outlet.
The NP article which includes content from Ezra and The Rebel’s lawyer and seems to indicate that the lawsuit may be on hold.

Do not be fooled.

Notley appointing a retired reporter to ‘review’ the gov’ts media policy is nothing but bait and switch.

Later Tuesday, the government announced that it had appointed a retired journalist to review the government’s policy and report back within two to three weeks.
“In light of the controversy around this issue,” Oates said, “we’ve asked Heather Boyd … to consult with media and give us recommendations on a media policy for the Alberta government.”

First, by putting a two-week time frame on the report the Alberta NDP hope to outlast the news cycle. That will work and is why a court challenge is important.
Second, by putting a ‘process’ in place, the Government tries to validate and justify their power-grab from the Alberta legislature press gallery. Next time something happens, the press gallery will have to ask the government of the day for permission, or to see if it works within their review.
Banning a media source from the press gallery, and all that entails, is not within the purview of the government. There is nothing for the gov’t (or more realistically the NDP party) to review, change, or implement. The government in this case can only acquiesce to what the legislature press gallery requires and according to their president, The Rebel did exactly that.

Oh, Fuddle-Duddle

The Rebel story is spinning way out of government control.
Alberta Press Gallery – Legislature Building
Via, CBC:

“The government’s position is that if you have testified under oath that you are not a journalist, then we don’t consider you a journalist,” she said.
Oates’s comment refers to testimony given by Levant in a libel suit in 2014. He told the court that he was a commentator and a pundit, not a reporter.

You’ll note the deliberate ignoring of the word, ‘reporter’ in Levant’s statement and instead equate it with the much more general ‘journalist’.
I have to ask if Paul McLoughlin or the Armet’s qualify under these new definitions.
And then there’s, We didn’t allow bloggers or online news sources in,” she said. “They (The Rebel) weren’t singled out.”
Does that mean that the HuffPost, the Tyee, Vice, or iPolitics can’t play anymore in Alberta?

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