How Canadian Spies Infiltrated the Internet's Core | Hacker News Reader

How Canadian Spies Infiltrated the Internet's Core

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114 pointssarahnaomi15 comments

The article is also relevant to any Australian's who want to piece together what their government is up to.

> ...one slide within the document hints at the existence of an Australian extension of EONBLUE operated by Australian Signals Directorate.

I wouldn't single out just Austrlia (I'm Canadian but live in Australia). I suspect that many of the 'friendly' governments are working together and allowing access to each others network info.

It's much safer to provide your friendlies with your citizens data than have them actually infiltrate your systems.

IANAL but I think this also gets around the issue of "as a government I am not allowed to spy on my own citizens, but there's nothing that says I can't give my data to a 3rd party to do it".

Canada, the U.S., and Australia all have reasonably strong laws protecting the privacy of their own citizens, but everyone else is fair game. It therefore makes sense for them to contract out their domestic spying to each other. You watch my people, and I'll watch yours.

I honestly don't see how contracting out your domestic spying to a foreign country makes it legal in the face of a law restricting such surveillance. For example, if the local police want to search your house, they need to go to court first for a warrant. They can't just hire a 3rd party to break into your house and then try to use that evidence against you. (the 'government agent' doctrine)

Then again, if judges continue to refuse plaintiffs who challenge these practices, then it really doesn't matter what the law is.

You're right from a 'getting a case in court' stand point, but I don't think most of the spying/tracking is about getting a case to court, and as the SilkRoad trial MIGHT have shown, the gov't just needs a way to show that they were able to track you down. They can probably make up a way that they did it after the fact if their initial search was in fact illegal.

Please don't turn this into a debate about SilkRoad, I'm using that as an example of something that might have happened, I'm not saying it did or didn't. That is for other threads.

Well, there's that whole FISA secret court thing. There's basically a body of law that's above the law in the U.S.. As a Canadian, I expect there's something similar here too. These courts ostensibly aren't interested in prosecuting people for the usual crimes like murder, drug dealing, etc.. Just the nasty terrorist-type stuff that will get just about any bill, no matter how abusable, passed by the powers that be. Of course, there's always mission creep.

> I suspect that many of the 'friendly' governments are working together and allowing access to each others network info.

Absolutely. Countries part of the "Five Eyes" (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK) have data-sharing agreements and operate similar collection programs.

Open-source DPI library, http://www.ntop.org/products/ndpi/

fwiw, not available any more, re-christened as ipoque (http://www.ipoque.com/en/products/pace)

Wasn't ipoque the proprietary rechristening of opendpi, which was then forked by open-source ndpi?

The most recent release of ndpi was in Sept 2014.

So shut up and go home? Is there any viable way to peaceably go about one's business privately and anonymously? Can I bet at least a $1 that no one knows who I am here?

Needs more Canadian codenames. NORTHERNLIGHT BEAVERTAIL SKIDOOSOURCE

"and even the content of unencrypted communications"

hmmmm

As a Canadian, I feel an odd mixture of outrage and pride . . .

thanks for the laugh

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