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Encryption Security

Ontario Promotes Private Crypto 340

Posted by justin++ from the i-wish-my-govt-did-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News has this story about the government of Ontario, Canada endorsing citizens to use encryption. 'While the US Congress recoils in horror at the prospect of a population armed with cryptographic tools, a government department in Ontario wants to make it clear that encryption is good. ' " After this and my recent trip to Ottawa, I think I may need to stop making Canada jokes...It's interesting to compare and contrast the crypto policies of various nations.
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Ontario Promotes Private Crypto More

Ontario Promotes Private Crypto

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  • Let me differ. Ssh is a pain in the butt to install. I have tried this one and gave up. Laugh however you want about point-and-drool types, I just don't want to spend a week setting up ssh. It just isn't worth the effort presently.

    Whatwhatwhat?

    I'm a complete newbee to SSH, but I managed to install it from an RPM, from source, and rebuilt SRPM on a half dozen machines. Each machine, and each method took me less than 10-30 minutes (depending on compile times).

    And as I remember, it was a mostly trivial task to get up and running. WIthin 2 hours after that, I figured out how to bring up port forwarding and now have various machines piercing firewalls and allowing me to work from home over an encrypted link.

    WHeee!
  • Hmmm. But many US schools offer fairly insane levels of scholarships based on either need or merit. I'm not sure what, say, the *average* net cost is here, or how many people pay full-rate...

    The other thing is, in the US, private schools aren't being subsidized that much by taxes, in constrast to the directly research-related funding that they do tend to get. What happens if you figure the Canadian gov't contribution to it? Is it still more efficient than ours, and if so, are there any obvious reasons why?
  • No shit! Why the hell should I support some pregnant woman. She has brains just like everybody else. If she fucks up - her problem ! We are not fricking children anymore.
    I don't mind supporting people who are truly in need of support ( disabled, sick .) That's charity !!!
  • Just like to point out, I meant to post that comment logged in.

    Gryphon, in all my humble opinionated glory.
  • Perhaps it's a silly point, but it would seem less dangerous (from the shooter's POV) to have a school shooting in a suburban district which is unused to such and has low security measures, than in city schools experienced with gang violence. That, and it's far less likely that any students will be able to fire back...

    Suburban schools haven't taken nearly as many safety measures, in general, and have less experience with doing so. If, say, I went mucker, it'd be a lot safer for me to do so in an upscale New England suburb, than in Chicago, or Dallas.
  • Funny how many Americans (I did not say all as I do not want to offend the handful of learned Americans out there) think that they are right in insulting a country where they know little about, if anything at all. Sorry, can someone remind me the last international standing on academics, including math and science (lets leave geo, his and econ completely out to save humiliation to the southerners...)oh, well I guess I won't be getting those stats any time soon, as few americans can count, spell, type let alone read, so where would they find that info anyway? Unless you know what you are talking about, keep you mouth shut. Canadians may be a quiet bunch, but when we talk, we have something informative to say, and we are usually right. Don't forget tweedledee, that the majority of your space program are ex avroaero boys from up north, that a significant number of your software programmers and computer engineers are Canadian born a raised, and that our minds run the world, we just let you guys spend the money to front our ideas. We may look stupid to you, but who benefits from our ideas for free? Hmmmm, now are our taxes really that high? Nope, we just make it seem so...
  • I'll refrain from comparing the original poster to the H-person, but really...

    The poor are not a burden we can just dump. That's the way to a regime of terror. We, the people who have wealth, must give a small part of what we enjoy to those who are without. And, as the previous poster so insightfully pointed out, if people are starving, they're damn well going to stick you up!

  • I am no linux expert. I have set up and use ssh quite a lot on my network. I something like setting up ssh is a problem for you, then you really ought to consider installing debian. A simple 'apt-get install ssh' handles it all for you. It's a 3 min download and a 5 second install. That's it. X11 forwarding, etc, etc....

    I understand your remarks about PGP being difficult. You are right, but what is the alternative? Making some mua do everything automatically creates security holes and other security no no's.

    You want you password cached so that you don't have to remember it? Well is that little cache file secure?

    I'm glad to see other countries taking privacy so seriously, I worry about the U.S. It's not just the government, many many Americans are too reliant on corporations for their daily necessities. Sometimes you just have to hunker down and learn it yourself.

    If you want control over yourself and your love-ones, you really have to take it. Don't ask for it. Don't say, "please Mr. CEO write something easier for me...' Don't be weak. Read. Learn. Work. It's time.

  • Bleeding Heart. Crybaby. Idealist. Take your pick.

    What did you want them to do? Continue along the previous trend? I for one am glad Harris stayed in power. He's got the balls to do something rather than pander to all the SIGs out there demanding money for this and that and not proposing how to pay for it without raising taxes.

    Why the HELL should welfare recipients get free money without any kind of tests to make sure they aren't pissing it away on drugs and alcohol? I see it all the time. Grab the cheque, cash it and go to the liquor store. Screw that!

    Why the HELL should teachers get a 2 month vacation AND get 4.5hrs a day of non-class time? I realize that prep takes time but 1/2 your day for prep and marking?! Give me a break!

    At the same rate, why should professors be allowed to constantly hike up their salaries and make the government pay for it? I'm not using their services! Friends of mine in university often tell me that the profs hardly do anything; they pass it on to the TAs to take care of so they can get on with research. Why should I subsidize that?

    Hospital cuts were a bad thing. I won't deny that. A very bad thing. There needs to be much work done to figure a way to provide decent health care for all, while at the same time weeding out those who abuse the system and call the doctor for every scrape and every headache.

    PLEASE NOTE I am making many over-generalizations here. I know people on welfare who scrimp and save and just can't get by. I know teachers who put their life blood into teaching children and dump hours of extra personal time into extracarricular activities. I'm sure there are professors who actually teach. What I am saying is that a few bad apples do spoil the bunch. I'm sorry the good has to suffer with the bad, but it's the only way to keep things from turning into total chaos and overspending hell. I really do feel sorry for those people caught in the system where there are now so many checks and balances and rechecks that no actual real work can actually get done. I however would rather proceed cautiously than full steam ahead with abandon.

    Andrew
  • God bless America. Where the government has no problem with heavily armed idiots, but is deathly afraid of smart people with cryptography software. Go figure. Yet another reason to move to Canada, eh? ;-)
  • Yup, I was thinking of trying to join IBM in Ottawa after I finish school but decided against it. It appears that there's nothing in my field there.

    According to IBM, "Ottawa has the largest concentration of database talent outside of Silicon Valley."

    I'm not IT, so screw it. Maybe Cisco will pick up someone like me... Oh well, that's another four years ahead, with three just finished.

    Seven years... If I don't go insane first.
  • hmm... what happened to my <flamebait> tags? ;-)
  • "Yeah they do allow it but its heavily restricted and give the people no real power to fight an unjust government." I know this is very off topic, but have you ever heard of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela? Both fought and defeated corrupt systems without any weapons.What they had was real power, weapons are just semi-real power. People have also tried to fight unjustice with weapons, but that rarely leads anywhere. Northern Ireland and the Middle East are examples of this. If a large majority (i.e. 90% of U.S. citizens against a possible future corrupt regime) wants to fight for their freedom they'll win with or without weapons. If a minority wants to fight for their freedom they will probably have better luck not using weapons. If they use weapons they will kill people and people will turn against them. Since they're the weaker part they will be defeated. If they don't use weapons, people might listen to their opinions and support their cause. If they are fought with weapons they might gain support from non-involved observers who might be a bigger threat against their oppressors.
  • Instead of starving people out and scaring the s*&t out of people who can't help themselves already, why don't we go and empower them with skills, knowledge and give them a kickstart?

    But why *should* we? It's not my responsibility to make sure Joe Welfare Bum has food money, it's his! At the very most, we should implement a loan system, like we do for students.
    Cheers,

    Rick Kirkland
  • How many Canadians out there have actually read it? Right up front it says that the gov't can exempt a law from it if they like, and judges only have to uphold it if the infraction "brings the system of justice into disrepute."
    Cheers,

    Rick Kirkland
  • You've obviously never examined counter-insurgency situations, nor history. Are you aware, for instance, that the Bolsheviks were seriously outnumbered by the White forces at the start of their insurrection? That the Maoists had to deal with a significantly larger and well-funded, but insanely corrupt (True. Chiang Kai-Shek and a certain Tong/Triad) Kuomintang? And so forth.

    Have you studied the ACW? The Confederacy had remarkably poor access to industry, armaments, currency and so forth. They were *seriously* outmatched in just about every regard except generalship (for much of the war) and morale (for the early part). Were the population to rebel against the Gov't en masse here, however, it would be the citizens that have the advantages over population, territory, and production; the US has difficulty with situations where the people oppose them partly because they seemingly have lacked the stomach for such, ever since the conquest of the Philippines post-Spanish-American War (where the US *was* utterly ruthless against the rebels, largely imitating the Spanish pre-war tactics in Cuba).

    And, according to your logic, the Finnish would have been routed by the Soviet Red Army within, oh, days, and the Warsaw Ghetto (one of the *most* overmatched situations in history...) wouldn't have held out an hour. And so forth. Insurgency situations are dramatically different from open-battlefield confrontations from the ACW era, as you'd know if you studied history a whit.
  • I think it was meant to be posted in the previous article re Oracle. A simple mispost.

  • Things such as garbage collection which used to be free are now charged for, and our water which used to be a small flat rate is now going to a per gallon fee.

    TANSTAAFL. Those things were never free to begin with. Instead, you used to live in a situation where there was not a relationship between the expenses caused by individuals and the amount that those individuals had to pay. Now things are expensed fairly and there's accountability, and you're complaining?!? *sigh*

    Oh, and lets not forget our education system, ranked as one of the worst funded in North America. Our fscking books are older than I'am, and they're falling apart. That and our teachers have gone on strike twice because of how bad the have been treated by the government.

    If you are unhappy with your "free" public education, why not fire the government from that job? I'm sure you can find someone who will give you a good education for a fair price.



    ---
    Have a Sloppy night!
  • uneducated Canadians


    I'd have to high object since the majority of the American population probably couldn't pass their own test for citizenship.


    I really don't have anything against Americans. Just America.
  • What's wrong with user fees?

    Why should you get away with paying $20/mo for the 300 000 gallons of water you use while I pay $20/mo for the 300 I use?

    Why should you get away with free garbage collection when you are wasteful and put out more than a 4-child family?

    And your point about emissions testing... so you WANT your children to grow up in a world where they can't breathe the air? Give me a break! If your car's broken, FIX IT. don't bitch at the government for making you fix it so you don't add to the pollution problems!

    You sound like you've been abusing the system for so long now that when it's time to pay for what you use you'll rant and rave at how unfair it is instead of owning up to it.

    And no, I'm not some wealthy person driving my $60k car, drinking champagne and smoking cigars. I'm a hardworking person who has trouble getting by like the next guy but at least I realize that what is going on is called user fees and evens out the problems. If you were paying a flat fee before, you were subsidizing the guy next to you using more than yourself, or vice versa. If you're a big user, your fees go up. Otherwise they come down.

    Yes harris offloaded on to the municipalities and for the most part I'm not happy with that. However, I am happier that my money is going to somewhere closer to home than it was before. My money now has more 'clout' where I live.

    Personally I'd love to see road work turned over to private companies like it is in the US. introduce fair competition. you want the $5mil contract for resurfacing the roads? bid on it like everyone else and you've at least got a shot at it. THAT would bring about more employment and make things better (I think).

    Andrew
  • >Therefore, this is the US's way of trying to not say OOPS 20 years from now.

    Except that they're trying to shut the
    field gate when the horse has already bolted...

    Strong crypto is easy to get hold of here in Ireland (and the rest of the EU) They may wish it were otherwise, but the cat's out of the bag, and it isn't going back in...

    The chinese and arab nations also, of course, already have strong crypto, and are not stupid enough not to develop it further ( notwithstanding certain idiot fundamentalist muslims (the majority of muslims are very nice, enlightened, reasonable people -more so than most cristians - but I'm an atheist anyway...) breeding out intelligence from their races by encouraging stupid, subservient women, who will of course bear them stupider children - intelligence is partly genetic, but not much sex-linked...


  • AC speaks the truth. I spent some time living in London Ontario. Inside London was great.. Cable TV and internet everywhere.. 5 mins outside London, at a friends place... lets just say there are some areas of Canada where bell still uses party lines. I am not joking. Here we are in 1999 and major Telcos still force people to use partylines. I've also spent a lot of time in rural Australia. My uncle's farm (200kms from the capital city) has four phone lines going into it.. one for the business phone, one for the residential phone, one for the modem to their ISP, in the local calling area, and one for the fax. Even in the middle of the Australian desert, they have public payphones, solar powered with an immarsat uplink, but still ;>

    My point is this.. Canada is a wonderful place. Just as long as you live in a decent sized city. Otherwise.. think yourself lucky if you have electricity.
  • I couldn't agree more. It should be criminal to shirk your duties as a father. THAT is legislation that should come in.

    How the HELL you'd do it I have no idea. I would imagine if you ran away from your duties the mother woudln't WANT you around, but then you should have your wages garnished to support your children.

    This topic gets me SERIOUSLY seamed. I honestly think that if dad's took a bigger role in their children's upbringing there'd be less violence in the world. Having a poor (or no) father figure is NOT healthy.
  • One of the cocnerns for governments about cryptography is obviously because of it's ability to be used to do the things the lawmakers talk about, like encrypting kiddy pr0n and other unpleasant things like that. Canada's culture dictates that the rights of the individuals are paramount over those of law enforcement, and they don't have a problem with them encrypting the stuff. For example, un-warrented participant surveillance is illegal in Canada. That's where you get a person to wear a "wire" to record their conversation with someone, who presumable, you the policeman, want to talk to. You can still do it, you just need to show just cause for a wiretap order.
  • Well the FBI doesn't own the web, nor does the US (though I have to admit that a large portion is physically located in the US).
    Anyway I don't think that US/FBI can deny non-americans the right to own, use and sell encryption software they can just deny americans the right to sell/give encryption software to non americans.
  • AFAIK, in belgium crypto is theorically and pratically not illegal. There is a law against it, _but_ the application texts where never published, so it's perfectly legal up to that time, which will probably never occur. The current trend is to make crypto non only legal, but to make digital signatures having a legal value.
  • This may be a silly question, but why is using encrypted mail *all the time* deemed to be a good thing?

    When necessary, sure, but just for casual chats between friends, enquiries to companies, etc. I don't *want* to have to be using encrypted mail.

    Admittedly at least part of this can be traced to the fact that Pegasus doesn't have perfect encryption integration, but I wouldn't change my mind anyway. It's just not required all the time.
  • I use WinNT/Linux.

    Is that a new operating system, like GNU/Linux? Maybe the Wine people will get there one day.

  • I wonder if this is because the public found out that the RCMP was intercepting email?

    At least its a step in the right direction.

    Now, if we could just get the Canadian government to stop trying to steal 55% of your income. ;-)
  • Not only is this an insanely good thing to see, but it provides an excellent opportunity to endorse ssh and pgp.

    You! Reading this article! Do you use ssh and pgp? If not, why not? You're part of the problem!

    If you're not using PGP (yet), drop by http://www.pgpi.com/ [pgpi.com] and have a look around. http://www.pgpi.com/cgi/download-wizard .cgi [pgpi.com] will let you easily determine exactly which version of is appropriate for your OS and location. PGP installation is pretty straightforward and there is ample online documentation and tutorials. Not only does PGP become more useful each time a new person starts using it, but the more people we have using PGP routinely the harder it will be to remove our freedom to do so. There's no reason not to use encryption, except for inertia. And I guarantee it's not as hard to install or use as you may be thinking.

    Using a nice pgp-aware mailer like mutt [mutt.org] is a nice step, too.

    If you ARE using telnet or rlogin or ftp, then you have problems now and you don't even realize it. Did you realize that every time you telnet or rlogin or ftp to a remote host that you are transmitting your username and password in clear text? Sniffing passwords is a trivial task, mostly due to the widespread use of insecure protocols such as telnet. ssh is a drop-in, secure alternative for telnet, rlogin, rsh, and ftp. Not only is it secure, but it's easier to use and more featureful as well. On top of security it adds such features as compression, encrypted traffic, encrypted tunnels, and completely automatic and secure X11 forwarding. Plus with RSA Authentication you can eliminate passwords entirely. A cracker can't crack a password that doesn't exist.

    Unix users can obtain ssh from ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh/ [cs.hut.fi] and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. I recommend the 1.2.27 version of ssh (as opposed to the v2 platform) due to licensing difficulties with the v2 platform. Non-unix users have even more options.

    For Win32 there's SecureCRT (http://www.vandyke.com [vandyke.com]) which is an excellent, albeit commercial solution. There's also a very nice, free implementation of ssh which works with Tera Term. You can grab it from http://hp.vector.co.jp/author s/VA002416/teraterm.html [vector.co.jp]

    There's even an opensource ssh for win32 at http://www.chiark.greenend.o rg.uk/~sgtatham/putty.html [greenend.org.uk] although I must admit that I'm not sure I trust an ssh implementation done by a guy who refuses to implement RSA Authentication.

    For Macintosh, I understand that there's a nice plug-in for NiftyTelnet at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jon asw/freeware/niftyssh/ [lysator.liu.se] although I've not used it.

    There's never been a better time to be more secure. Simply by installing a couple of easy-to-use applications you could be on your way to a more secure, more private computing experience. Your data is yours, and here are two ways to ensure that it stays that way.

    Yeah, I ripped this shamelessly from my .plan -- so sue me, it's still useful information...

  • Ontario only encourages it because large companies will spend their money in Ontario. They stick their servers in Canada, and now they can have they're strong encryption, while still operating in the US.

    I believe Hushmail does this, they've got their servers running out of Vancouver, but are American owned
  • Man, now all they need to do is outlaw BOMBS! Culture is a strange thing. Different things tend to happen in different places. I would love to find a country where you didn't have to worry about shootings, or terrorists, riots, arson, or violence of any kind. Unfortunately, unless I am the only resident of that country, it isn't going to happen.
  • In another country (for instance, Canada!) it may be possible to do this, but in America there is such a large, heavily armed military that chances are 90% of the population could not overthrow the government, with or without petty guns. Of course, the military is going to have a massive loss of morale like that occurs on our soil. At least the Civil war had sides, North vs. South.. a war like that would probably just cause utter chaos.
  • >Well, you get the governement you pay for... :-)

    and I'm willing to admit that our dollar is crap right now so...
  • No, the Navy guy was definitely not from CSE. It was just the six of us in the second row.

    PS. You guys should get a life.
  • True,

    The guy was a member of a gun club or something. I think after that the UK imposed even stricter gun control rulings.

    About the festivals, we have at least three big ones (30000+ people) of course some stuff happens but generally thinks go rather quiet (not on the musical side though). I have to say we had our football (soccer in the US) riots whith people ending up dead. God only knows what mess it would have been if guns would have been involved.
  • It seems like half are anarchists, the other half are socialists (quibbling over their title)...

    I'm surprised this article is at +2 as I read it... typically views that are against the mainstream /. get knocked down as flamebait.

  • why is it that the US government wants to deprive its citizens from the benefits of encryption?

    Actually.. for all that the US government does, it doesn't try to deprive its citizens of encryption. For all of DOJ's pleading for key escrow, the NSA seems to have little problem with purely domestic use; they just don't want any non-Americans to get access to cryptography. Hence, they wanted DES to be hardware only, because then Americans would have access to it, but export would be more easily controlled than it can be for a published algorithm.

    My guess is, regardless of what Janet Reno, Bill Clintion, and their thugs want, the long-term NSA strategists (the guys who REALLY control crypto policy) would be perfectly happy if every US citizen and business used 2048-bit RSA and 168-bit tripleDES, as long as the rest of the world used a broken RSA implementation, and 40-bit single DES. In fact, I wouldn't put it above them to use their power of decryption to help a US business or two...

  • Well DUH!
    Why bother throw away the big money when you can just mooch off someone else! That's what I love about this country, it's moocher's heaven!(except for the taxes)

    -Universal healthcare paid through our taxes.
    -Guaranteed military security from our allies who LIKE to throw the big money into fancy guns.
    -unemployment insurrance + pogy
    -government grants for homegrown music / film production (my brother nabbed I think it was 6 grand towards a film he was doing with his friend because his friend was like 1/16th)

    Yep, I love this place
  • Well, for instance, I also don't agree with the fact that we export arms to countries that aren't our official allies. They can get weapons elsewhere, just not from us.

    Why is this such a hard concept to grasp?

    If the crypto is available overseas, just get it there! If US software developers (ahem - Microsoft!) wrote more intellegently structured products it'd be a cinch to add crypto "plug-ins" (a la photoshop, netscape, etc) that supplement the weak crypto in their products with whatever algorithm you choose.

    I'm not at all against strong crypto - I'm just wondering why everyone is all conspiratory in thinking that the US is out to get US citizens. They're not. They're just trying to make it harder for other countries to get at them.

    The internet is a wonderful mechanism for communciation. But, from the govenrments stand point, it makes protecting ourselves/themselves much more difficult. Prior to this, they could detect the amassing of arms and people and know to look out for an event. Now, all the organization can be done remotely, with all communcation taking place over the internet, will no clue being let on that there's something amiss.

    Sure it hasnt' happened. But do you want that to happen (US citizens?)? No. There's more at stake than boosting our GNP...
  • My brother has what he describes as
    "the little black and white TV with the most cable in the city".
    50+ channels on a B/W set.
    He insists on watching X-Files on it for the atmosphere, even when one of the other sets in the house are available.
  • prisons are more expensive than welfare. The more you'll cut on welfare the higher your crimerate + higher crimerate induces a call for heavier punishment -> even more money goes to prisons.

    If you think thats leftist commy bullshit your probably just another american redneck who deserves to get involved in a shooting at the local school.

  • No, actually CSIS is the intelligence agency. The CSE is the "Communications Security Establishment" which is similar to the NSA in the States. In fact, it is the Canadian arm of Echelon.

    Visit their web page [cse-cst.gc.ca] and say hi.

  • That's ALL they're trying to do! They're not even trying to deny americans the right use crypto to protect themselves... They simply do not want it to go past the national borders...

    Granted, then you have people like the NSA trying to artificially weaken domestic products, but that's a completely different argument than allowing the export of commercial products.
  • I second that.
    I lived four years in the US, and found the US to be full of the most ignorant and self-centred people I have ever met.
    Any wonder Canada's been number one overall on the UN country's list for 6 straight years?

    Sue me. Its the American way.
  • Going from memory of the docs that came with pgp... Think of it this way: encrypting email is like putting a snail mail letter in an envelope. If it weren't the standard, and then suddenly you started doing it, someone would think you had something to hide. Now if everyone was using encryption(envelopes) all the time, noone would be suspicious of you.

    I know that doesn't even come close to explaining it, but I did the best I could really quickly without going searching for it in the docs (especialy since I just got this computer 2 days ago and haven't gotten pgp on here yet...)
  • It's very simple:
    You don't like crime -> you pay
    You want educated children -> you pay
    You want to be taken care of when you get sick -> you pay
    you don't like drugs -> you pay

    So happens when you don't pay?
    You get crime, uneducated children who die because there is no good health care and because they use drugs.

    Eventually they get so sick of you that they shoot their teachers and fellow victims at their local school.

    Sounds fammiliar? That's the US today. Rich people send their kids to expensive schools and live in neighboorhoods with fences around them. They lock out the missery that makes up the rest of the country and still complain about the little pieces of tax they have to pay (living in sweden where 50% of your income ends up being paid in the form of taxes and V.A.T. I can only dream of paying 15%).

    Americans have no right to comlain about crime, drugs or their children shooting each other up in school. They get what they paid for (or rather they don't get what they didn't pay for).
  • Check out http://www.zip.com.au/~roca/ttssh.html. It's a free implementation of ssh for Windows, with source available. It's built upon the Tera Term telnet client, for which source is available, and is one of the most configurable telnet clients that I've seen in Windows... And ttssh inherits all that. Check it out.
  • even on a per capita basis the murder rate is more than four times as high as in the Netherlands. Plus most of your recent school shootings seem to have taken place in wealthy suburbs.
  • Dunno. Maybe they fear people spying on them, if the agency lacks the relative notoriety or alleged ferocity of others. :-) 'sides, we probably spy on Canada, and you wouldn't want your Government's secrets to leak out through us, eh?
  • Who the fuck do you think you will work for ??
    Chances are one of those rich motherf* so shut the fuck up and enjoy free ride.
    I can't belive that after 70 years of shit going on in eastern Europe there are still idiots arguing for it ...

  • A day late perhaps, but please check your facts before you publicly reveal your ignorance. Canada is not a third world country like Mexico or Honduras. it is in fact one of the world's richest. The UN ranks it as the #1 place in the world's "Quality of Life" ranking. Not exactly poor.

    So not only is your tax idea a stupid encouragement of anarchy, your facts are wrong.

    Bye,

    -M
  • Here in Brasil crypto is not ilegal, in fact as far as I know there are no laws against using, exporting or importing them.

    But this don't make anything better, because in Brasil we use mainly US made applications witch means that most of our software is restricted to US laws of export. Off course that inteligent people can use GNU tools but most of the population just sticks to windows.

    Other problem is that no one realy cares for crypto or privacy, as I stated before (in other post) we already have a unique ID for all citzens (not that is realy a trheat because the Brasil's goverment is very messy so I don't think they would be able to track everyone), and people here are more or less careless about their rigths. It's common for instance to give up a right so you don't have to create a mess.

    So the situation here is that we can use it, but we don't actualy use it.
    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"

  • After first questions I was hoping this was going to be funny post , but you spoiled everything with the second sentence.
    It isn't even funny - just another stupid insult.
    Next time come up with something better.
  • >Interesting how Ontario judges a "majority >government". It seems in ontario not all votes >are equal. In an after election tally, 55% of >the population voted against the present
    >government.

    That's total popular vote. The way our provincial elections work is each Riding has an Member of the Legislative Assembly. I don't know how many ridings are in Ontario, but here in Nova Scotia (Fresh off a recent election that put the tories in power, with a majority. It's not the grit win I wanted, but t least the freakin NDP didn't get in!) we've got 52. When a party wins over half of the seats in the Legislative Assembly, it's a clear majority victory. Things get a little tricky when you're under a minority government, less than half the seats are under the control of the governing party, so getting unpopular but neccesary legislation though can take some wheelin' and dealin' and such. McKlellen and the NS liberals found that out the hard way a month or two back with the budget being defeated and the election being forced.
  • Nugget94M asks:

    You! Reading this article! Do you use ssh and pgp?
    No!

    If not, why not?

    Because ssh is non-free, and pgp is patent encumbered. Why use that when there are excellent Free alternatives, such as:
    SSLrsh [quick.com.au]
    SSL-MZtelnet [uni-mainz.de]
    gpg [gnupg.org]
    S/WAN [xs4all.nl]

    ----
  • No, he didn't. Do you know what the term "popular vote" means?

    If there are 10 votes in the entire province, the last election would have broken down rougly along these lines:

    4 votes for Mike Harris & the Conservatives 3 votes for Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals 3 votes for Howard Hampton and the New Democratic Party

    So... Harris wins with just 40% of the popular vote. More people voted against him than for him.

    The problem with our electoral system is that if many votes for a candidate come from an area of the province with more ridings (ie. Toronto and the 905 belt) that party gets more seats. Doesn't mean more people wanted that government in, and the results obviously do not reflect the will of the people.

    Before anybody suggests I'm just anti-Harris, let me point out that the NDP got into power in 1990 with about 32% of the popular vote.

    Our electoral system is flawed in that the results often do not represent the popular vote breakdown in the province. If a better system was used (there are many, I won't go into that here) Mike Harris would have won the last election, but he would have had a minority government, rather than the disproportionate majority he enjoys as the result of our flawed electoral system.
  • Sorry, but tuition fees started going up at most universities long before the Harris government was elected. I know, for example, that 10% tuition fee increases at the University of Waterloo have been happening pretty much every year since about 91-92. And I don't know what else Harris was supposed to do. The NDP nearly bankrupted the province. The government had to make cuts just about everywhere. And raising taxes or keeping them at a ridiculously high level does NOT bring in more money.

    You neglect to mention that the majority of the cuts in health care (and to a large degree education) resulted from cuts in federal transfers. You should be blaming Chretien. The ONTARIO government is actually now spending MORE than they were on health care and education when they were elected. Besides, you can't spend money you don't have.

    You also neglect the fact that the government is actually bringing in MORE money now after the tax cuts. All the new jobs created mean more people paying taxes, and more employers paying payroll taxes, etc. The cuts to taxes on small businesses and even corporations has resulted in more companies doing business in Ontario, which also means more money for the government. The socialists would be quick to suggest that this is because Ontario is riding the boom the US is having. That's nonsense, of course. Ontario would not have achieved that growth with the high taxes, employment equity, and other crap the NDP introduced. Ontario now leads all provinces in economic growth, and in fact, the increase in consumption as a % of Ontario's GDP has been much bigger than the increase in exports.

    The Harris government for the mostpart has been an overwhelming success. That's why they were re-elected. Only a crazy bleeding heart socialist could possibly suggest that the province is worse
    off today than it was in 1995.
  • The neat thing about CSIS is that no one knows /anything/ about them.

    Actually, stuff comes out in the papers every couple of months. It often makes them look inept, such as them being sued in court by disgruntled former employees. Just because they are usually silent doesn't make them omnipotent. On what grounds do you equate CSIS with the massively-funded, spooky supercomputers-out-the-yazoo NSA?

  • I taught English in Europe for two years and Canadians were actively sought after. We were considered to have neutral accents, highly intelligible by Americans or British people.

    That said, I'm from Ontario, and I do pronounce "milk" as "melk", something which my friends in Nova Scotia teased me endlessly about. Oh, and some of the people in Nova Scotia said "aboot", but mostly as a joke.

  • Education spending (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I also forgot to mention that it could be much worse. Look at the US. Many of the top universities there will cost you on the order of $40,000 a year. Even cheaper state universities there are still more expensive than the average university in Canada.

    Also, the public education system here has always been terrible (the Universities are still pretty good though). So for a province that's among the lowest in North America in education spending, Ontario is finally getting good value for it's money. The taxpayers are no longer getting ripped off. If anything, the standardized tests and other metrics the government has implemented will finally SHOW how bad the system is and maybe people will endeavour to FIX it. I think that is already happening. There has already been talk about improving standards. This surely is better than spending a ridiculous amount of money and pretending the system is great because of all the money that goes into it.
  • So he meant the client on Windows?! That's even easier. You don't have to type anything!
  • come outside the states, then find yourself a school where such a incident has occured.

    good luck
  • Let's tie some of this stuff together:

    All governments suck, to a pretty large extent. in fact, government, like cola, cars, pizza, music, and blue jeans, is a product. Buy too much of it, with low quality and high price, and it sucks. The difference is that the government can hold a gun to you head and make you buy. IMO, most western governments are about 2X larger and more expensive than they should be. Put them on a PC price curve for a few years are they will suck a lot less.

    Which brings us to guns: Guns are a way for the people to stop buying. In the beginning, the U.S. didn't try to sell too much government, and had no fear of an armed citizenry. In fact, selling less governemnt was the major market differentiator for the U.S. when the U.S. was a startup. Now, however, its buy or die.

    Is crypto like guns? According to U.S. export law it is. In practice, and in relation to the choice to buy less government, is crypto like guns? Yup. In fact, crypto is more dangerous: It enables stored value that cannot be detected like currency. It enables large scale plans to remain secret. It enforces elements of the consitution, like secrity in one's documents, that are now deemed dangerous. It is better than guns at limiting governments' ability to make us buy.

    OK, so who here would buy less government if they could?

  • Chances are, the wide majority of the population ignores this, even though they know it, because they are paranoid.

    And if you say doing something will stop crime, and that there are evil people in their midsts doing bad things in secret, and couple it with a national fear that computers will someday make us their slaves, and that smart people want to take over the world,

    ...if you're lucky, they'll still allow trojan decoder rings in Froot Loops boces.

    Regards,

  • Not quite. Ontario understands politics and this really isn't a whole lot more than a ploy to convince techies that we can be happier here than in the US. The problem is that way too many of us are packing up our maple leafs and our two-fours of beer and heading south for bigger paycheques.
  • It's simple. Provide ways for people to support themselves, or they'll make one. If you don't let people work to survive, they'll *take* what they need.

    And I for one wouldn't blame them one bit.

    There's a difference between not wanting to work and not being able to.

    If you had children you had to take care of and didn't have any way of legally raising money would you sit there and watch them starve or get a baseball bat and go mug some rich fucker as he was getting out of his Jag?

    And if those children barely manage to survive, what choice are they going to have except to do the same thing?

    There are a lot more 'poor' people than rich people, so either treat them with a little respect, like the humans they are, or don't be suprised when they decide to take what the system has taken away from them.

    And honestly, people like you will deserve it.
  • Amen to that. I believe the reason that we are allowing encryption is simply because we (Canada) are not as paranoid as the US. Honestly, to restrict the flow of information these days is almost impossible, so why spend tax dollars trying to prevent it. Also, the computer industry is booming in Canada with places like Vancouver and Ontario taking the lead. Why try to slow down the industry by preventing new and updated technologies to be produced?
  • I thought this would be a discussion on why cryptography is a good thing, not an political endorsement.

    I think its a little dubious to give credit to Mike Harris for some good policies that Ann Cavoukian - Ontario's privacy commissioner made.

    And the moderators gave you a "informative" rating, I assume because your pro-Harris rant was "tied in" to cryptography at the end by claiming that "if you elect libertarians . . . the free crypto just comes with the rest of the goodies."

    Patented nonsense.

    I'm trying to avoid the temptation to enter a political debate with you, because I passionately hate Mike Harris as much as you like him. I can't think of a politician who has created more strife in society than he.

    In fact, I can't think of a more undemocratic politican in Canada them him, and I believe that allowing citizens the right to use cryptography is extremly democratic.

    Yes, but back to the cryptography. When it comes to governments, regardless of whether it happens to be one that you like or dislike, the price of democracy (to paraphrase someone) is constant vigilance.

    Mike Harris has consistently shown a willingness to bend the rules of democracy (for example when he changed the rules of debate in parliament to limit the time the opposition had on the floor) to ram his policies through, and believe me, if for some reason cryptography was inconsistent with his economic policies (like for example if using it threatened trade with the U.S.), then we would lose it in a day, and any amount of protesting would conveniently be written off as "special interest"

    Finally, to answer your question, "So what the hell does this have to do with crypto?"

    Nothing as far as I'm concerned.
  • All this is very off-topic, and I'll join you in it.

    >>You don't like crime -> you pay
    In the US this usually means that if crime goes up, so do #cops. This helps. Yet it doesn't take away the reason for comitting crimes.

    In the USA there is always a percentage of people who do not do as well as the rest. These 'losers' know this. They may not be skilled in 'living in society' but it is often thrown at their faces that they don't do well. They are often rejected and do not have a lot to lose. This is the key issue.

    Why would you care about anybody if they don't care about you. Here is A MINDGAME: think about different groups (in/outside the USA, different status, education, social group, ...) and decide how much you care about them. Would you give food to a beggar? most people don't. Would you give food to a good friend? Yes. To a neighbour? Yes. Someone you met at a summercamp 10 years ago... THE POINT: caring for each other has a limit, and in the USA the limit is low. Even if something is potentially lifethreatening (like being sick) care is not always given.

    So there is a large group of people who don't care about you and you're wellbeing because you don't care about them. So far, nothing is going wrong. Now here comes the 'loser'-group. They have nothing && don't care about you: they sometimes commit crimes... QED
  • [flame bait on]
    The USA is the only nation that went from barbarism straight into degeneration.
    [flame bait off]

    - A European.

    PS: As others already pointed out there are actually a few other countries in America, not just the USA.
  • in essence you don't give a fuck.
    in essence you're not contributing.
    in essence you're e g o i s t i c.
    in essence this is oversimplified, off course :)
  • Sure, but if it's encrypted, why do I care if they think I have something to hide? ;-)
  • No shit! Why the hell should I support some pregnant woman.

    True, there is someone else who should instead: The fucking (pun intended) father.

    That's what all those stupid politicans (including Jesse Ven-DUH-ra) who attack single mothers forget: There is a male prick in the picture, but who has run away from his half of the responsibility, like a little criminal.

    Slightly off-topic, but I sometimes get pissed at certain elements of my half of the population.

  • I'm not so mad at the fact that people have to pay tons of money its the fact that the Government gets a 30% cut of the fees. This is no different than photo radar, except that everyone has to pay.

    And lets not forget all the stories of price gouging by garages...
  • True. We're a violent people, although it's unclear why -- the statistics just show we are. {shrug}

    'suppose the issue boils down to:

    * Do the people trust the Government, and believe that this will continue?

    * If that trust will be violated, will the people be able to do anything 'bout it -- and will arms hurt or help?

    * Is it feasible to confiscate arms and keep them in the hands of police/military?

    Depending on the answers to those questions, one may argue completely differently. I'd have to say that in the case of the US, #3 is right out (law enforcement would have to sweep the nation, and Customs would have to be *really* tight); #1 is a 'yes' for many today, but a distinct 'no' from the Founding Fathers; and #2 is questionable, in that it'd all end up a mess. Eh.
  • The teachers aren't the ones who caused the decline in our education, it was the Tory government. Massive funding cuts to programs and rapid changes made with out concern to impact were the cause of the two strikes.

    If you'll notice Harris never once blamed the teachers it was always the evil unions fault. The unions did not start this strike, it was harris provoking teachers who would not stand by idly and let him destroy the education system. I have not met one teacher who didn't support the strikes against their the government changes out of their own free will.

    Harris has done nothing for me but cause aggrivation. I'm glad I finally out of school because there will not be a quality education system in ontario...
  • Will Ontario promote Corporal Punishment next?

    (And how about General Education? Then again, Ontario does a good job of that, eh? ;)
  • He did change election laws. For example, he reduced the minimum numbers of days required for a campaign. So the campaign was only 28 days, but for at least half a year before the election, we saw television commercials telling us all the great things his government did, and these commercials were paid for with your tax dollars. (although after some complaints the PC's did pay for some of the commercials) Did you notice that the commercials whose "purpose" was to inform us have disappeared now that the election was over.

    He also changed the shapes of the ridings. For example, my old region voted against the PC's this round, but we were amalgamated with a conservative region.

    Anwyay, if you like Harris and the PC's, that's fine. You have the right to like whatever political party you want to. But the most important point of my message still stands, and that is, you can't take something like the right to encryption for granted, regardless of whether a government you like or not is in power.

    I have the feeling that you would like Harris even if his government was against encryption. The issue in this particular slashdot forum is encryption, not politics.

  • pgpi.com seems to be having DNS troubles... If you can't resolve pgpi.com, try these urls:

    http://194.234.236.31/ [194.234.236.31] and http://194.234.236.31/cgi/download-wi zard.cgi [194.234.236.31]

  • For Those At the Ottawa linux showcase... Remember the mass quantities of rcmp guys in the second row of the ipsec talk???....
  • "Hey! Cryptography doesn't kill people! People kill people!"

    Likening this to gun control is a bit weird, especially given the nature of the original story. People in Canada tend to do just fine without a gun in the bedside drawer, although that may be because of Canada's comparatively better health, welfare and education systems that go some way to lessening crime and so you don't have to fear for your life as much in Canada: there's nothing for the mad NRA people to focus on in Johnny Canuck's mind.

    To some extent, this story doesn't surprise me at all: Canada is a much more laid back and liberal place than the States. Maybe I should move there away from "The Long Arm Of The Straw" here in the UK(copyright NTK.now, I think) -- it would be interesting to see some sort of test case come out, if the Canadian government ever has any problems over encryption. If indeed the USA or UK governments ever have any serious problems over conviction too -- has anyone heard of any such things?
  • If majority opinion is any guide, you may not have to worry about your dollar for too many years; last Friday's (August 6, 1999) Wall Street Journal has an opinion column (page A-11, column 1) which predicts North American monetary union: a single currency for all.

    If that happened, Ottawa would get rid of the problem of the Loonie falling against the greenback. Instead, Ottawa would have the problem of people and industry fleeing Canada's punitive taxes, and not having to take an exchange-rate hit to do it. Looks like serious reform (scaling back) of Canada's nanny state is going to be essential to survival, no matter what happens.

  • Also, check out the lsh [ftp.chg.ru] project. I don't know where the home is but the link has the files. The lsh project intends to implement the ssh protocols in open source.
  • If you get a login you can choose your OWN default.
    Just a thought...
  • When I first read this I thought that, through some miracle, the Harris goverenment actually did something right for once. Looks to be a provincial comittee. Anyone know if this was due to Mikey's little gov't there? I'm looking for a reason, even one, not to hate him :-)

    I'm also getting a DNS look up error on http://www.ipc.on.ca/, which was what the Wired article linked to. Anyone know if that's the right link?

  • Taber, Alberta.

    One kid dead, one wounded.

    Several days after the Littleton shooting.

  • Was there a long line-up when this happened?
  • He he, I like that one:
    There are a small number of countries where strong domestic controls on the use of cryptography exist. These are mostly countries where human rights command little respect.
    At least Washington has a sense for irony. Death penalty anyone?
  • But the fact is, I've met a lot of old-timers and `progressives' for such a small place. (note: I don't even have my driver's licence yet, so please understand that I've lived a very sheltered life ]=) I think part of this might be due to the `community spirit' that a lot of rural places have, which people mistakenly think to be workable in large-scale operations, such as running a province.

    In a province dominated by one party, I must admit that the NDP has done a pretty good job finding middle ground. They've done what's needed to be done (eg. balancing the budget) As it stands right now, I would be very, very afraid if the Liberals or Conerva-- Saskatchewan Party came to power, because they're not even close to being able to make an effective opposition, let alone government.

    Hey, isn't there a newsgroup where we could take this? sk.politics or something? ]=)

    (Other people from SK read /.?! Wow.)
  • Well, you sad sad people obviously can't think for your selves either... I keep hearing the same "Unions are Evil communists" argument over and over again... As an insider on these disputes, I have experienced both sides, and I'am definatly on the teachers side because most of what they want is a good thing... I why should large corporations and rich people get everything the easy way... spread the wealth...
  • Posted by Justin:

    perhaps you mean CSE (canadian NSA)? i know there were a few of those registered for the conference. there also was a guy in the fifth or sixth row (i sat in the third row and politely declined the poking and prodding for me to take a bow when the slashdot joke came up) who had a white navy-looking uniform...maybe he was a CSE guy?
  • I came to US with 100 $ and almost no knowledge of English language. 7 years later I am making much more than average American does.
    Don't fucking tell me there are no ways for people to support themselves. If you want - you will make it !!! It is as simple as that.
  • I'm gonna indulge myself and get political here. I was a resident of Ontario for many years; the current provincial administration in Ontario is a libertarian's dream. (OK, maybe that's giving 'em too much credit - they've also done some pretty loony things too - but they're the closest thing to libertarians I've ever seen in power.)

    They're politicians - and ideologues - which is a dangerous combination, even (especially!) if you happen to like their ideology, as I do. But at least you know what they stand for and what they're gonna do when elected. Here's a snapshot of their platform:

    • Lower taxes. They were first elected with a promise to cut the provincial portion of income taxes by 30%. Even I thought they were blowing smoke up the voters' arses on that one - and then they did it. I was both pleased and stunned.
    • Lower spending. The five years preceding the current administration saw a socialist administration which hiked welfare benefits by 20%, and taxes to match. Ontario was one of the highest-taxed, highest-spending, highest-deficit provinces when the socialists got the boot for the new crowd. All the spending cuts that were made in Ontario were also campaign promises.
    • Generally libertarian business/social practices. Relaxed labor laws, less red tape, less governmental interference in private and commercial affairs.
    Within a month of their election 4-5 years ago, this administration:
    • Abolished photo radar (brought in by the previous administration - no, not visible cameras on the side of the road as deterrents, but unmarked vans, driving along with traffic, designed to maximize revenue.)
    • Abolished race quotas (the previous administration brought 'em in and said "they're not quotas, they're merely numerical goals for all businesses to meet or get fined")
    • Repealed a rabidly pro-union piece of workplace legislation (umm, also brought in by the previous administration...)
    • Cut welfare payments by 20%.
    • Instituted the first part of a 5-year tax cutting plan.
    Again - all of these things were election promises. This is the first time I'd ever seen a party elected with a platform of repeal laws, not enacting new ones. It was also the first time I'd seen a party actually do the stuff it said it would do during the campaign.

    Five years later, the previous administration's tax hikes had been completely undone, and the budget, which had been running $12B deficits annually, was within epsilon of being balanced. Well, you get the idea about what the current situation in Ontario is about. Ontario lived through five years under socialism, and then brought in the right-wing libertarians in a landslide of disgust with the socialists. That brought about 4-5 years of radical social change, after which Ontario ended up with the lowest provincial taxes in Canada, and a balanced budget to boot.

    The best part? After five years of relative economic freedom (and incessant whining from bitter socialists about how the province was going to hell in a handbasket :), the voters finally got their chance to pass judgement on the new regime...

    drum roll...

    ...and the right-wing libertarian crowd got re-elected with another majority. Based on the fact that they spent five years in power and made good on every tax cut promise they made in the first campaign, folks who live in Ontario can look forward to more income tax cuts, and a 20% cut in a large part of their property taxes.

    So what the hell does this have to do with crypto?

    IMNSHO, if you elect libertarians - regardless of the party banner they happen to be running under - the free crypto just comes with the rest of the goodies.

  • I use WinNT/Linux. I have to use a remote college box via unencrypted telnet. So first off, anyone who wants to can grab my password or whatever. I run a reasonably secure box...I don't have lots of unnecessary things running, I don't run as root, and don't make things that can write to arbitrary files suid. Even so, anyone can sit down and in 10 minutes compromise either of my OSes...either by doing a linux single reboot (which I haven't had the heart to remove, because I need it if I screw up X, which auto-runs because not using xdm is worse security-wise), or by installing another copy of WinNT onto my DOS volume, rebooting, and giving themselves admin privileges. That assumes that they can't find any holes in the OSes.

    To be fair, you need an armed guard, not IPsec to fix this problem!

    I do have to say that ssh was by far the easiest daemon for me to set up on Red Hat ever.

    rpmfind ssh-server;
    rpm -ivh /tmp/ssh-sever-version-number.i386.rpm;

    That's it. Quite drop-in. Now I suppose if you installed it manually and had to deal with generating a key it might be a bit more difficult, but that was as easy to install as anything I've ever used. Don't know about PGP, though I doubt it's that easy.
  • CSIS (see-sis) I believe you mean, I've never heard of CSE. The neat thing about CSIS is that no one knows /anything/ about them. I'm fairly certain they are just as powerful, all-knowing, etc as the US' NSA - it's just that they are so far under wraps that they'd have to publicise themselves to become mysterious.

    That being said, I'm not surprised they would be at talks for IPsec and other things. Undoubtedly they're looking for information on possible weaknesses, and, barring that, ways of using it to enhance their own operations.

  • The Canadians talk funny in Southpark, so therefore all Canadians must talk funny.
  • Someone please moderate this FreeBSD post down, it's not suppose to be here, a simple "Off Topic" would do if a few of you have points to spare. I am just going to try to repost the stuff again in the other thread.
  • Uh, I submitted this to the previous discussion, I am sure of it. How the heck did it end up here, I am luck I found it. Anyone able to switch the storyID it's attached to and move it over to the previous discussion?

  • SSL * (Score:2)

    by Jordy ( 440 )
    Personally I prefer SSL telnet. There are a few reasons, most importantly that SSL/TLS are open standards.

    The next thing is that SSL telnet can be implemented directly ontop of your existing telnet daemon and autoswitch between encrypted & non-encrypted clients.

    No special daemons, just your plain old telnet daemon with a few patches to authenticate and encrypt via SSL. Of you can just stick in a copy of sslwrap in front of your telnet daemon and not make any changes at all.

    Not to mention once you get OpenSSL up and running, you can hookup SSL POP3, SSL SMTP, SSL FTP, SSL NFS, etc.

    While most of these don't have Windows clients, SSL SMTP and SSL POP3 do. There is an SSL telnet client for windows, but I don't know how good it is.

    And OpenSSL has a host of useful programs from md5 to sha which come in handy once in a while.

    --

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