When I returned from China over the summer, having worked there for a year and a half, people would ask me, “What was it like?” And I, like a child trying to verbalize their first lofty idea, was sort of tongue-tied. There are over a billion individual perspectives in the country, yet only one autocratic organization at its helm. It is barely reined in chaos. It’s wild yet it’s orderly. It’s filled with earnest workers and disingenuous ladder-climbers. It’s pro-gay and anti-gay. It inspires close scrutiny yet offers little in the way of answers.

One thing we can say with authority is that its government doesn’t have the finest track record for human rights—detaining activists, suppressing protest, heavily censoring the Internet, and just generally eschewing democratic processes. We’re talking about the rights of roughly one-sixth of all humans. That’s why, when the UN’s Human Rights Council opened up its first investigation of China since Xi Jinping became president, I expected the government to get a good public shaming.

I was … sort of satisfied. Some countries actually trumpeted China’s progress and human right’s accomplishments—Russia said, “We commend China on protection of rights of religious beliefs”, and Yemen applauded “China’s remarkable achievements in economic and social achievements [sic]”. Most Western countries, however, reproached China for the aforementioned issues (as well as its draconian capital punishment policies and stance towards ethnic minorities). Canada, among the most direct, said, “Stop the prosecution and persecution of people for the practice of their religion or belief including Catholics, other Christians, Tibetans, Uyghurs and Falun Gong… And eliminate extrajudicial measures like forced disappearances”.

But the real win this week goes to the Tibet activists who scaled the height of the UN’s Palais de Nations to unfurl a large 9X15-meter banner reading: “China fails human rights in Tibet—U.N. stand up for Tibet”. The banner was in response to China’s colonization of Tibet (China calls it a “peaceful liberation”) and their assimilative policies, which have led some, including the Dalai Lama, to use the term “cultural genocide”. Since 2009, there have been at least 122 self-immolations in Tibet in response to China’s unwanted presence. It’s good to see the issue continue to garner attention in the west, aside from those ubiquitous bumper stickers. As for the four activists responsible, they can’t be arrested, but they’re being sent back to their home countries (Denmark, UK) to be dealt with locally.

Sadly, we aren’t able to hear what the average Chinese citizen has to say about the human rights issue in China, as netizens are fiercely censored surrounding such topics. When I was teaching there, I polled my class of 25 16-year-olds on whether they thought homosexuality should be allowed in China, and all but two of them agreed that people should be able to love whomever they want. When I asked them about Tibet, however, they didn’t even know that it was an issue outside of China. These are, of course, anecdotes, but I use them to illustrate that there is a difference between Chinese citizens and the Chinese government, and if the people were only given access to more information, the world’s most populous country could really be a force for good. For now, we can take small solace in knowing that those who’re being persecuted and marginalized have a voice outside of China—it’s not ideal, but it’s a start.

one of the targets is an old favourite—the CBC.

If you search hard enough, tucked away in the 111 pages of unrelated motions, you’ll piece together the government’s plan to tighten control over crown corporations. Via Rail and Canada Post are among the 49 companies threatened, but the bill’s implications on the CBC could severely compromise democracy. As a crown corporation, the CBC is funded by the government but maintains independence similar to a private company. But now the government wants control over salary and contract negotiations so it can cut costs and thus taxes. This undermines unions’ right to negotiate and threatens the media’s independence.

Conservative MP, Pierre Poilievre put it this way: “I am not here to take marching orders from union bosses. I represent taxpayers and, frankly, taxpayers expect us to keep costs under control so that we can keep taxes down. It is for those taxpayers that we work. Not union bosses.”

So the government is just looking out for Canadians, right? They’re acting in our best interest so we can save money.

Not everyone’s buying it. Sure, Canadians are an apathetic breed, but does the government honestly think we’re that naïve?  We’re supposed to believe the CBC’s content will be independent while Stephen Harper dictates each journalist’s salary? We’re supposed to believe he won’t reward those who report favourably on the government? This isn’t just about the money, Mr. Harper, is it? It’s about control.

And it’s control Harper’s been tactfully garnering for years.

Take, for example, the feds’ letterhead re-design. In 2009, the Conservatives changed government stationary from “Government of Canada” to read “Harper Government”. It’s subtle, but the message is significant; this is Harper’s Canada—not yours. When public servants finally did approach the Canadian Press about the Harper-centric rebranding, they did so off the record “for fear of retribution”.

When Harper made office in 2006, he introduced the tightest media censorship system parliament had ever seen. Reporters couldn’t access even basic information until it was vetted by the communications and consultations unit of the Privy Council Office.

Already at the CBC, the board of directors (which the government appoints) is stacked with conservative cronies. Eight of eleven directors are Conservative Party donors, including the chair Rémi Racine who gave $1,200 last year. To stay on the board, directors have to maintain “good relations” with Heritage Minister James Moore and his staff—another of Harper’s initiatives.

And some MPs have tried to topple the CBC completely, gathering signatures to support either cutting all funding to the CBC or selling the company. The $1.1 billion annual fund, they said, gives the broadcaster an unfair advantage over competitors, and of course, an unfair burden on tax-payers.

But this latest motion is the biggest blow to press freedom yet, with the most backlash, too. Because, well, it’s hard to maintain the guise of a democracy with a state-run media.

What if, for example, the NDP was the government of the day and tabled this same motion. Would the Conservatives not accuse them of being communist or Marxist? It’s true we associate state-controlled media with nations like China and the former Soviet Union—countries that tend to have weak economies and poor human rights records. And of course, there are exceptions, but I’m not sure Canada is one of them.

The federal government boasts for being a leader in human rights. But last week, 83 UN member countries agreed Canada human rights record isn’t good enough and asked for big improvements. Sorry, Mr. Harper, but press censorship isn’t exactly a step in the right direction.

So maybe Harper really has become transparent. He’s lost his sly, secretive way of undermining democracy and everyone can see through it. At last, there’s serious outcry over Harper’s media control. Political activist group, Avaaz, is circulating a petition which already has more than 50,000 signatures. Now that we’ve cut through the political speak, the onus is on us to not only call bull-shit but do something about it.

Last year on January 18, thousands of websites protested against the major U.S. internet censorship bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protest IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia blacked out its site for a full 24 hours and Reddit took down its services from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Google—still browsable—blacked out its logo for the day and prompted users to get informed on internet freedom.

The bills aimed to punish websites “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” But shutting down these rogue copyright infringers would also mean blocking legitimate websites with loose, inadvertent connections. Companies, big and small, couldn’t afford this. So two days after massive protests on the web and in the streets, congress shelved SOPA and PIPA.

But now internet censorship is back on the table. Haven’t noticed? That’s because web giants have gone silent—not black—on the issue.

Hacktivist group, Anonymous, called for another blackout on Monday, this time to protest Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). But instead of blocking content for internet freedom, major tech companies—like TechNet, whose members include Google and Facebook—are actually supporting the “cyber-security” bill.

In an attempt to protect the U.S. from hackers, CISPA, if passed, will let companies share web users’ information with the government. Essentially, it will override websites’ privacy policies while letting the government have at your info warrant-free.

So why—after all the fuss over SOPA and PIPA—is CISPA so weakly contested?

It’s because the bill is only bad for internet users—not websites or tech companies themselves. It could actually benefit companies by letting them unload responsibility on the government when fishy online activity arises. And since the bill immunizes companies against lawsuits, they risk nothing by breaking privacy contracts and giving it up to The Man.

The House of Representatives passed CISPA on April 18 with 288 to 127 votes. But before taking effect, it has to go to the Senate. This is the second year in a row the Senate will vote on the bill. It was blocked last year, but this time there’s less hope the Senate will be so reasonable.

For one, CISPA promises protection at a time when Americans are sensitive to security breaches. The Senate may take this opportunity to flex some defensive muscle and pass the bill (in part) to repair the vulnerable American psyche.

But more likely, CISPA may succeed where SOPA and PIPA didn’t because it protects corporations and targets individuals. And those in favour are paying good money to see the bill legislated.

According to MapLight, lobbyists who support CISPA donated about $84 million to House members, while opponents donated just $18 million.

“I am not surprised to see corporations spending significant amounts of money lobbying on CISPA,” Rainey Reitman, activism director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and vocal CISPA opponent, told U.S. News & World Report. “Keep in mind that CISPA has sweeping liability protections for companies, making it a sweetheart deal for companies. That’s no coincidence.”

If the bill does pass, internet users in Canada could be at risk too. Last spring, Harper and Obama signed the “Beyond the Border” declaration, committing to (among other things) harmonizing cyber-security practices and objectives, and “assessing and addressing threats together.”

Sure, these “commitments” aren’t exactly binding, but it wouldn’t be terribly un-Canadian to follow suite with American policy. Plus, renewed support for CISPA may breathe new life into bill C-30—Canada’s own attempt at internet surveillance law, ridiculously spun as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. Protest against bill C-30 took off last year when safety minister, Vic Toews declared “You can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.” Ultimately, we chose the latter.

Now, it’s a year later and the States are in the same awkward dilemma—sacrifice web freedom and privacy, or join the ranks of us child-porn supporters up north. True, the Senate may still strike down the bill or Obama may act on his threat to veto CISPA. But at this point, clinging to the successful SOPA and PIPA protests may just breed false hope, because—let’s face it—corporate interest is what got those bills defeated and corporate interest is what’s helping this new one pass.

Finally, we suggest subscribing to our RSS feed to ensure you never miss a new article going online, and following us on Twitter or becoming a fan on Facebook for updates, new articles and tasty links.

On the cover of July-August 2010 is Katie Addleman‘s feature on the decade-long push for electoral reform by Fair Vote Canada. Though proportional representation seems to have slipped off the radar for the media and many voters, Addleman argues that voting reform—far from being an arcane concept that’s only batted around by parliamentary-procedure–wonks—is a universal issue of civil rights and equality that could put more female legislators in office and restore our badly skewed political landscape.

Also in this issue, Jessica Johnston reports from Abu Dhabi on the Masdar project, a city-sized experiment in sustainable development happening in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. Like Canada, the emirate’s economy is currently dependent on oil; but unlike Canada, she finds, the sheikhs are looking to clean technology to power their economy of the future, while we’ve doubled down on the tar sands. With an estimated 20 million jobs hinging on renewable energy in the next decade, is Canada going to be left behind? and Ashley Walters profiles Joel Theriault, a forestry activist who for years has waged a lonely battle against pesticide spraying in Ontario’s northern forests. His tactics have made him enemies in the logging business, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and even among some fellow environmentalists.

Plenty more where that came from: Bruce Hicks writes about the Harper government’s plans to increase the number of seats in parliament, and why that move may fix some problems, and cause new ones; Raina Delisle exposes the cozy relationship between Shell Oil and Canada’s largest newspaper chain; Andrea Warner suggests that human rights tribunals need to draw the line before dragging in bad comedians; Jennifer Osborne writes us a postcard from the Bangu prison complex in Rio De Janeiro; Navneet Alang says that Google’s spat with the Chinese government is just the latest chapter in a centuries long story of the West’s colonial paternalism towards China; and Paul McLaughlin interviews Judy Rebick about the fight for democratic reform.

Plus: Wendy Glauser on Canada’s very own “Black Panther”; Andrew Livingstone on the Petitcodiac River; Michelle Ervin on natural health products; Lindsay Kneteman on how to improve global maternal health; Sarah Snowdon on next-generation birth control pills; Julia Prinselaar on Canada’s own genetically modified pig; Graham F. Scott on copyright reform; Emily Landau profiles playwright and television producer George F. Walker; Shaun Pett on Canada’s interconnected web of musicians; and Jenn Hardy on food-activist/musician Vanessa Rodrigues.

This issue we’ve overhauled our books section to add more reviews of the best of Canada’s independent and small-press publishers. Eve Tobolka reviews Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax; Kim Hart Macneill on Clem and Olivier Martini’s Bitter Medicine; Sarah Barmak on Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s Ghosted; and Chantal Braganza (our new reviews editor!) on Shane Nelson’s new book of poems, Complete Physical. And we bring you three new poems by Andrew Faulkner, plus a new short story by Eva Moran.

The Dalai Lama is charged with watching over Buddhist tradition, but on March 29, 2009 The New York Times revealed a shadowy presence was secretly watching him, invisibly sending information about the religious leader to his anonymous attackers. When the story broke, the office of the Dalai Lama believed it was dealing with an ordinary computer virus. It turned out to be something more widespread, organized, and ominous.

Long before The New York Times, Canada’s Citizen Lab was on the case. Based at the University of Toronto, Citizen Lab is a global leader in documenting and analyzing the exercise of political power in cyberspace. The Lab’s 10-month investigation into the virus that had lodged in the Dalai Lama’s desktop revealed it was in fact just one of 1,295 compromised computers in 103 countries, many found in embassies, government agencies, and significantly, Tibetan expatriate organizations. The researchers at Citizen Lab dubbed the network GhostNet, which spread through a malicious software program—“malware,” in technical circles—called Gh0st RAT. Gh0st RAT spread via email to high value targets: diplomats, politicians, the Dalai Lama. Once installed on a target’s computer it provides barrier-free access to an intruder, giving them full control of the system as if it were their own. This allowed the thieves to bring sensitive documents back to four control servers in China. Worse, Gh0st RAT allows its operators to take control of an entire computer in real-time, giving them the unfettered ability to see and hear their targets through the computer’s webcam and microphone.

It’s virtually impossible to determine whether GhostNet was a work of cyber-espionage by the Chinese government or a single hacker who wanted to make it look that way. In January 2010, search giant Google admitted they were one of 30 companies attacked by the latest version of Gh0st RAT and threatened to shut down the Chinese version of its site. Computer security firm Verisign reported it had traced the attacks back to “a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof.” Beyond China, countries around the world are increasingly using the internet for espionage and intelligence-gathering. Observers report more viruses, more trojan horses, more botnets, more surveillance, more censorship and more denial-of-service attacks. The tactics are being used by governments and independent groups alike for intelligence gathering, terrorism, national security and religious or political propaganda. Most of it happens secretly, obscured by layers of technical complexity. In the early 2000s, China was a leader in cyber-espionage, but it has lately been joined by more players: Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the U.S., and Canada.

We are witnessing, the Citizen Lab researchers believe, the weaponization of cyberspace.

“I realized there was a major geopolitical contest going on in the domain of telecommunications,” says Professor Ron Deibert, Citizen Lab’s founder and head researcher. “The information environment today is mediated through telecommunications. So being able to control, access and retain information through those networks are vital sources of intelligence. This was happening, but it wasn’t being talked about.”

Deibert isn’t new to the intelligence game. He worked as policy analyst for satellite reconnaissance in the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it wasn’t until he wrote a book about major technological shifts in history, and started researching his PhD—documenting how rapid technological changes of the information age affected global politics—that he began investigating the war that would set him on the path to being the “M” behind the Citizen Lab.

“Our technological advantage is key to America’s military dominance,” said U.S. President Barack Obama in a May 2009 speech on his administration’s plans for the militarization of the internet. “From now on, our digital infrastructure—the networks and computers we depend on every day—will be treated as they should be: a strategic national asset. Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority…. We will deter, prevent, detect and defend against attacks, and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage.” In the same speech he assured the world his security plan would not infringe on internet freedom or personal privacy. The U.S. Department of Justice, however, argues (though far less publically) it can’t be sued for illegally intercepting phone calls or emails—unless they admit what they’re doing is illegal, which they won’t.

It’s this kind of secrecy (in the name of national security or not) that Citizen Lab exposes. The small team of researchers and benevolent hackers, who work in the basement of the Munk Centre for International Studies at Devonshire Place in Toronto, watch the watchers and document the shadow war most are too busy updating their Facebook pages to notice. But more than that, Deibert wants to see Canada put its peacemaking reputation to work to lead the way in drafting a constitution for cyberspace among the nations of the G8. He believes Canada can be a leading guardian of the free and open internet, a valuable global commons worth preserving, on par in importance with land, sea, air and space.

Average internet users—the ones doing their banking, their shopping, or their FarmVille cultivating on the brightly lit thoroughfares of the web—are relatively safe from the cyber-spooks of the world. But if you challenge your government, expose injustice, or work for humanitarian ends in hostile places like China, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Pakistan, it can become a dark, threatening place pretty quickly.

Deibert wanted to expose these injustices on behalf of citizens everywhere, but quickly discovered there were places he couldn’t go as a political scientist. So, with a research grant from the Ford Foundation, he launched the Citizen Lab in 2001 and began assembling a team dedicated to his two-pronged mission: monitoring and analyzing information warfare, and documenting patterns of internet censorship and surveillance.

The first major partner for the Citizen Lab was the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based think tank that engages in evidence-based research targeting countries at risk from violence and insecurity. Its CEO, Rafal Rohozinski, was the man originally responsible for connecting all the countries in the former Soviet Union to the internet.

That meant he knew everyone who was anyone when it came to cyber-espionage in a region known for its deep ranks of hackers. This was the beginning of a vast network of agents who would later prove invaluable to all Citizen Lab operations. In those first days together with Rohozinski, Deibert also developed the methodology from which all Citizen Lab missions stem: A combination of technical reconnaissance, interrogation, field investigation, data mining, and analysis. In other words, the very same techniques used by government intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency in the U.S. and its Canadian equivalent, Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC). But this time, the expertise would be in the hands of the people.

“We wanted to take that combination of technical and human intelligence to turn it on its head,” Deibert said. “These organizations are using these techniques for national security purposes. They are watching everybody else, no one is watching them, and we wanted to watch them.”

Next, Deibert needed a powerhouse legal team. “We don’t break Canadian laws, but we do break the law in just about every other country,” he says. That’s why he partnered with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Based at Harvard Law School, this gives Deibert and his team access to a network of some of the best legal scholars in the country.

None was more vital than the final piece of the puzzle. All wars need soldiers and Citizen Lab needed the very best computer scientists, programmers, software developers and data analysts. All of whom were handpicked by Deibert from an unlikely recruitment pool: his own political science course.

The Munk Centre has all the architectural hallmarks of an English boarding school, left over from its days as a men’s university residence at the turn of the century. Few visitors have any idea what goes on beneath their feet in Citizen Lab’s dimly lit basement headquarters, but two of Deibert’s lieutenants have agreed to let me ride along on one of their online patrols.

Born and raised in Singapore, research associate James Tay has a personal stake in Citizen Lab’s mission. “I came from a country where those in power were willfully blocking access to the net. I just thought it wasn’t right, so when I heard about the lab tracking censorship and finally holding these governments accountable, I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, this is something I want to do.’”

That’s why, when riots broke out in Iran following its corrupted June 12, 2009, election, Tay was at Citizen Lab, keeping Iran’s lines of communication open. The Iranian government was blocking opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khamenei’s website, along with Western-run sites such as YouTube and Twitter. Opposition supporters needed a way to stay connected online, to share information and coordinate their response to the crackdown.

The battering ram that broke through Iran’s online barriers is called Psiphon. Developed first by Citizen Lab, the software is now its own commercial entity, helping to fund the lab’s academic research. Through small chinks in the Iranian government’s armour, Tay was able to send a short, crucial message to people inside Iran who needed unrestricted access to the web: the snippet of text he was charged with sneaking over the border through TweetDeck—software that communicates through Twitter without requiring an actual visit to its website— was an encrypted link to the Psiphon web server, a tunnel through the blockaded border that allowed users to see the web unhindered by Iran’s online filters. Once connected, Psiphon is simple to use: It appears as a second address bar in the web browser and delivers internet traffic through proxy sites that haven’t been blocked yet. Block one, and the data simply changes its route to the user. During the crisis, Tay was trusted with making sure Psiphon ran without Iranian governmental interference, allowing thousands of people to liberate their internet connections.

“Psiphon is open-source and free to the user, but the BBC and big media pay us money for the right to spread our proxy to their readers and viewers,” says Tay.

Psiphon isn’t for everyone, though. It doesn’t provide anonymity, for one, something that Psiphon users are made aware of before using it. Even so, many Iranians still used the service, often at great personal risk.

“Some of them were trying to organize rallies,” says Tay. “I saw that on Twitter a lot.”

But even more dangerous research is directed by the lab, just collecting the data risks the threat of imprisonment or torture if discovered by the offending country’s oppressive government. The project is known as The OpenNet Initiative.

If you stumble upon a site a sitting government doesn’t agree with, it may simply look like a problem with your internet connection. But that error page could be a fake. “These governments may publicly claim to block sites to protect the morals of their citizens, then use the same technique to block the site of a politician they don’t agree with,” says Jonathan Doda, Citizen Lab’s software developer for OpenNet. “They set up the error page because they don’t want people to know. The good news is they’re pretty easy to spot.”

“What’s most popular these days is proxy based blocking,” Doda says—in which a country’s internet connection is shunted through a single gateway that allows a regime to filter all the web traffic in and out— “or some American filtering software—the same thing you find in libraries and schools or some private businesses.” In every case, the country’s internet service provider intercepts your connection and substitutes an error page.

Sometimes, the error is legitimate. After all, internet connectivity in many parts of the world can be slow and unreliable. That’s why Doda must gather evidence of governments’ intent through extensive testing. His team accesses sites multiple times and compares what happens from within Canada to what happens from inside the suspected country.

Doda’s been programming since he was a kid, making software in BASIC on his PC Jr. It was fairly easy for him to create “rTurtle,” the software that collects the data, looking for anomalies like dummy IP addresses, weird-looking address headers and missing keywords in the returned page. The lab needed a way to test within the offending countries, but the lists of blocked sites are determined by religious or political elites and implemented by centralized internet providers in target countries—closed systems that are virtually impossible to penetrate as an outsider.

But Rafal Rohozinski’s international reach gave Citizen Lab the ability to recruit agents within those ISPs and other high-value positions in repressive countries’ internet hierarchies. “In Central Asia alone, we have a network of about 40 individuals working for us,” says Deibert. Some of them are literally putting their life on the line—guilty of treason for working with Citizen Lab.

“Going to Burma and running the software that Jonathan developed in an internet café—that’s life-threatening research,” says Deibert. “The person doing that would have to be aware of the risks.” Those risks range from arrest, imprisonment, and interrogation, to torture and death. Deibert knows people have been arrested under similar circumstances, so OpenNet’s work requires a delicate protocol.

“Jonathan might not know the names of testers in certain countries. I might not even know their names,” says Deibert. “They’ll have a key and it’ll be used to unlock that data they need to run the software. We don’t know who they are. There will be a person who mediates their communication with us. If Jonathan were sent to Syria and got captured, he wouldn’t be able to give out a tester’s name.” For everything at stake, you’d never know the risks by stepping into the lab. Among the islands of computer terminals and the big red vinyl couch off to one side, the only thing remotely James Bond-ish is a hollow world globe stocked with contraband cigars and bottles of alcohol from the countries they’ve visited. But for all they do for others, the Citizen Lab largely ignores internet censorship and surveillance at home.

“I’m not worried as much about Canada. We have a government that’s largely accountable. Despite all the problems, we still live in a democracy that includes the benefits of humanitarian law and respect for human rights. If I did this research in Uzbekistan, I’d be jailed and tortured within the hour,” says Deibert.

Canada has cyber secrets of its own that often escape public notice. There are two bills before parliament collectively called “lawful access” meant to aid law enforcement in obtaining information needed to make an arrest. (Both bills were put on hold when parliament prorogued in December, but they appear to be Conservative government priorities and are likely to be reintroduced.)

“The approach we’ve taken is to respect civil liberties to the fullest extent possible by recreating in the cyber world the exact same principles that have been applied in the analog world. In order for police to obtain the content of emails, or intercept phone calls over the net, they will require a warrant,” says Peter Van Loan, Canadian Minister of Public Safety.

That isn’t the whole story, says David Fewer, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, based at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law.

At the moment, police can’t force ISPs to hand over a customer’s name and address without a warrant, but the lawful access legislation will allow them to do just that.

“It’s bad enough that ISPs can give over that information if they want,” says Fewer. “Obviously our view is it shouldn’t be made available.” For now, there’s an unofficial compromise: for child pornography allegations, most ISPs give up the information, but for other crime such as fraud, police still need a warrant. Fewer says the informal understanding isn’t good enough.

“The system should be formalized, so there’s a formal response across the board,” Fewer says. “Police should be obliged to get a warrant except in cases of imminent harm, akin to a search warrant.” But police forces are currently demanding search warrant standards be relaxed. “There are sliding scales they’re demanding on certain search warrants. Ordinarily, police have to give ‘probable cause’ and they want that standard to be replaced with ‘reasonable suspicion.’”

Canada’s democratic laws don’t keep you immune from the government’s roving eye in cyberspace, either. “We have to start with the assumption that everything we do on the internet is public,” says Deibert, “and then work backwards and say, ‘What of my communication is private?’ Since potentially, at every step along the way, you can be monitored.”

In your terms of service agreement with Rogers or Bell they have the right to retain, store or turnover any information they provide you as a service including web history, web addresses, emails, and chat logs to the Canadian government for intelligence gathering and law enforcement purposes. CIPPIC is fighting various court battles around the disclosure of user identity to thirdparties online.

“We need courts to carve out some mechanism for preserving respect for privacy online,” says Fewer, “because privacy is a human right.”

Deibert wants the nations of the world to establish their own formalized treaty for the internet, one that treats cyberspace as a public commons and halts the aggressive arms race that threatens to further erode our basic rights. But drafting such an agreement will prove difficult, as security concerns continue to override basic rights.

Incidents like GhostNet demonstrate that even when all signs point to a massive national espionage plot, online attacks are difficult to trace, and governments nearly always enjoy plausible deniability.

“Even when we have lots of evidence that indicates a country may be behind it, the government denies any association,” says Van Loan. “Attacks are extremely hard to trace. What would likely happen is wholesome, good players would follow it, but the bad operators would continue to operate outside of it.”

And such a treaty could abuse as much as protect. “Anonymity is viewed [by governments] as a tool of terrorists and hate-mongers and—in the negative sense— whistle-blowers,” says Fewer. He fears any such treaty would inevitably morph into a cyberspace trade agreement, further tightening abusive intellectual property laws and scaling back civil liberties at an accelerated pace. “You need a tragedy for anything good to come out of a treaty like that. The International Declaration of Human Rights was the result of the First World War.”

With six billion people on the planet facing global problems, Deibert says the real tragedy is losing the open and unfettered ability to communicate globally, but Van Loan sees no other choice. “It is really the new arms race. Every time we erect new barriers and protections some smart, tech-savvy individual comes along and finds ways around those defenses.”

For the moment, it will have to be enough to know that Citizen Lab will be watching the watchers. James Tay admits he takes his work a little too seriously. “I don’t sleep,” he says. “This isn’t your typical 9-5 job. I regularly find myself responding to emails in the middle of the night. Ron wants us to sleep, but this isn’t a job for me. It’s something I live and breathe.”

Here’s a nauseating little snippet of Kavanagh’s list of “Do’s and Don’ts”, as reported by the Tyee:

“Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event,” read guidelines sent to VPL branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. “Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.”

Among other things, the memo reportedly goes on to say that if  librarians have a guest speaker in from, say, Telus instead of Olympic sponsor Bell, they should make sure they’re not wearing a Telus jacket or other logo-wear while they’re speaking. And if there is any audio-visual equipment being used, make sure it’s from Worldwide Olympic Partner Panasonic. But Jean — what if it’s a Sony brand CD player? The horror! Kavanagh is a step ahead of you with this helpful tip: “I would get some tape and put it over the ‘Sony,'” Kavanagh [told the Tyee]. “Just a little piece of tape.”

The president of CUPE 391, which represents Vancouver’s librarians, told the Globe and Mail that these rules are non-starters:

Alex Youngberg, president of the library union, says the memo is contrary to the spirit of a public library. “There’s something in my library to offend everybody,” she said. “And that’s our job. Our job as library staff is to not ever censor any information.”

C’mon Alex, why be such a Debbie Downer? Catch the Olympic Spirit! Catch it! NO REALLY — CATCH IT. CATCH THE SPIRIT.

Vespa Nation

La dolce Vespa, icon of chic Euro-style and Mod subculture, has motored back to Canada after an 18-year absence. The federal government banned the stylish scooter in 1986 because Piaggio, its Italian manufacturer, failed to meet toughening emission regulations. Its reappearance this past May was due to the diligent pestering of Piaggio by Morey Chaplick, president of the Toronto-based Canadian Scooter Corp.

Chaplick persuaded the innovators of Italian transport that there is a market for Vespas in Canada—our burgeoning urban areas are already home to thousands of devotees of vintage Vespas. And the machines themselves have come a long way. The new line includes a much more environmentally sound four-stroke-engine model, and even the two-stroke-engine model now complies with California emission standards, the toughest in North America.

Piaggio began manufacturing Vespas in 1946 to provide sturdy, inexpensive mobility to Italians on war-ravaged roads in a post-WWII economy. The Vespa has remained popular in Europe due to soaring gas prices, narrow streets and traffic congestion that have made the freedom of the compact, wasp-like scooter a common alternative on arrondissements, stradas and caminos. The Vespa ET4 costs around $5,400 and carries a 150cc four-stoke engine, while the ET2 costs closer to $4,000 and has a 50cc two-stroke engine.

Gridlock: The nimble Vespa measures a slight 1.7 metres in length and a little over half a metre in width. The average city parking space, measuring six metres in length and 2.7 metres in width, can accommodate about 10 Vespas. And you could fit 86 Vespas into the 25 parking spaces that line the length of the average city block on each side.

Fuel Efficiency: If Vespas made up 15 percent of vehicles on Canadian roads, and they were driven 15 kilometres a day, drivers would save more than 91 million litres of gas each month. The average four-door passenger vehicle uses anywhere from 7.89 litres per 100 kilometres to 17.20 litres per kilometre, while the Vespa ET2 uses 3.6 and the Vespa ET4 uses 5.6.

Pocket Change: With today’s gas prices hovering around 90 cents a litre, it costs about $8 to fill the nine-litre Vespa tank. Driving 15 kilometres a day at 90 cents a litre would cost 62 cents a day. If you were willing to bundle up and ride your Vespa nine months out of the year (taking a break for only the three worst winter months), you’d spend a total of $156.24 on gas. Insurance: For the average cost of insuring one car for a year you could insure six Vespas. In major urban areas, insurance rates range from $1,400 to $2,800 per year for a car. Vespas, considered less hazardous on the roads, can be insured for a mere $300 to $400 a year. By Jackie Wallace

Unread Menace
Though some call us a Communist publication, apparently This Magazine is not Communist enough for the Chinese government, according to a 2002 study by a pair of Harvard Law School researchers. Try to look up www.thismagazine.ca in China, and all you’ll see is an error page. Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman tested 200,000 websites and found that 50,000 offering information about politics, education, health and entertainment—as well as some 3,000 sites from Taiwan—were inaccessible on proxy servers in China because of longstanding policies of the ruling Communist Party. For a complete list of blocked sites, check out cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/ By Jenn Hardy

Split On Svend-Gate
When Svend Robinson revealed in April that he had pocketed a pricey antique diamond ring, conservatives were gleeful with schadenfreude, and progressives scratched their heads and wondered what had possessed their fallen hero. Even the experts seem divided about Svend-gate, with opinions almost as polar as Stephen Harper’s and Jack Layton’s.

“There are a lot of different ways to snap, and shoplifting is quite a common one in my experience,” explains therapist and recovered shoplifter Terry Shulman, who runs www.shopliftersanonymous.com. It’s not just a way to get free stuff. Those who shoplift for psychological reasons, he points out, often discard the stolen items soon after the deed is done. “With politicians, it’s hard to say whether it’s pure ego, or if they feel over-extended,” Shulman says. “Politicians are for helping people, that’s their job. That’s really an awesome responsibility, and their own needs may become sublimated.” He explains that many people, including him, have shoplifted as a way to compensate for feeling that they have sacrificed or over-extended themselves.

Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Mark Berber rejects this theory as applied to politicians. “Politicians are very well-supported—they have large staffs and lots of holidays,” he says. “I think sometimes celebrities and politicians may think that at some level they are above the law.” Shulman and Berber also have differing perspectives on Robinson’s case in particular. “When he said ‘I’ve failed,’ that tells me that he was putting a lot of pressure on himself to have this perfect image,” Shulman says. Berber takes a less sympathetic view, emphasizing the importance of knowing the sequence of events in Robinson’s case. “It’s been reported that he was looking at rings beforehand, and if that’s the case this becomes more complex, more pre-meditated,” he says.

Shulman sees the antique ring in question as symbolic. He says the ring represents commitment issues, and antiques represent a longing for times of old. Berber laughs when asked if he reads anything into the ring. “Let’s not get into Freudian issues now.” By Annette Bourdeau

Martin Bucks Wheat Agreement
The potential conflicts of interest involving Paul Martin’s ties to Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) are unlikely to go away soon. Martin owned the private company throughout his tenure as finance minister, keeping it in a blind trust while nonetheless getting briefed on the company’s affairs. During the debate over the Kyoto Protocol to address global climate change, many speculated that Martin’s ties to CSL, which is a major shipper of coal, was the root cause of his wavering support for the agreement.

CSL’s grain shipping business may also be a factor in Canada’s failure to ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The protocol, finalized at a 2000 conference in Montreal, aims to protect against the risks posed by importing genetically engineered (GE) organisms. Once released into the environment, GE organisms can become a permanent fixture, contaminating domestic plant species. Canada signed the Biosafety Protocol in 2001, and the agreement came into force last September. Ninety countries, including Mexico, Japan and all members of the European Union, have ratified it. Even China has stated that it will ratify in the near future. Yet Canada is still dithering.

The biotech industry, worried about provisions in the accord requiring imports of GE products to be labelled as such, has aggressively lobbied against ratification. Pro
-biotech bureaucrats have put forward an ever-changing list of reasons for Canada’s failure to sign on. The latest justification, according to top officials on the file from various departments, is the effects the agreement will have on the grain shipping industry. And one of Canada’s top grain shippers is CSL.

In a September 2003, memo obtained under access to information, Stephen Yarrow, a director at the Canada Food Inspection Agency, stated that bureaucrats are still examining the pros and cons of ratification. “Specifically, this analysis is focussing on the potential impacts on the Canadian grain handling and shipping industries.” At parliamentary hearings this past March, lead bureaucrats from Agriculture Canada and Environment Canada confirmed that shipping industry concerns are the “principle point” hampering Canada’s ratification.

There is no direct evidence that Martin intervened to discourage Canada’s ratification of the protocol. However, his ties to CSL are widely known within government, and many bureaucrats, who already have a cozy relationship with biotech companies that are against the agreement, may be raising the shipping concern as a way of cowing others within government who support ratification.

As a result, so long as shipping concerns remain the primary justification for failing to ratify the Biosafety Protocol, Martin’s ties to that industry may cause some to question why Canada is opting out of a widely supported international agreement. Ottawa Report: By Aaron Freeman