wampus

Yawn.

"Funny I say blah blah about authoritarian bill" -- yet you don't dispute that your approach to arguing was as disingenuous and absurd as the right-wing example I compared you to. And your subsequent reply to the rest is just riddled with insults, intentional misinterpretations of what I'd said, and attempts to misdirect instead of address my comments directly (for the most part). So I guess that you're just a troll, yes? Should I even bother engaging more with anything else? That's... feeding the troll I believe. I've been baited enough to know its not worth the bother :)

I'm going to hope that the airborne trajectory note is mostly about the USA being stupid these days. And the spiking chart, is because of all the defunding of international organisations that would've started tracking the spread sooner -- there's likely a ton of unreported/tracked infected people in the epicenters at this point. The curves being different hopefully just reflects our poorer tracking and response to this stuff... triggered by the USA becoming a diaper dictatorship.

Next we’ll set mandatory cameras on TV so that law enforcement can get records of people at home

This is the same ridiculous style of argument used by ultra-right wing nut jobs -- "Trans RIghts?!?! Next they're going to force gender reassignment on us all and take our dicks!!!"

American big tech companies are ones that are opposed to this type of legislation, because it gives the government more control and ability to regulate/dictate terms to those companies, and because ANY regulation will cost them money to comply with. It is the sort of legislation that moves towards digital sovereignty, in that your government representatives are able to set laws/regulations that must be followed. It's an incremental step to put more distance between Canadian tech and US tech, because Canada's so integrated that it's not something that can be 'turned off' like a switch.

I hold Shopify as an invalid example, because it's got significant ties to the USA and US Tech giants. If a huge part of your business is based outside of Canada, and you are beholden to US legislation/regulations that basically say "You can fuck Canada", then I don't care if that business has an origin story in Canada -- they changed teams, very explicitly.

I don't see the standard companies, and the ones who'd theoretically be most impacted by this stuff, in the headlines -- Rogers, Bell, Telus, Quebecor. A big chunk of the legislation is specifically targeted at Telcos, but they're seemingly shrugging at it. I don't see any of the banks/financial institutions, caring all that much. Basically none of the normally regulated industries are lobbying against this stuff, even though it impacts them. Just foreign, unregulated, US tech giant-oriented companies, and one or two tiny VPNs that like to provide a service with zero accountability.

You seem so quick to dismiss things that you don't even read what the legislation is calling for -- people blindly accept the noise generated by US tech and right-wing controlled media, you blast out that message ad nauseam and convince a bunch of privacy idiots to sign petitions before they even realise what the legislation is talking about / looking to do, or why. Thats the sort of person who'd likely vote separatist in Alberta, just because they'd seen it suggested on TV/media enough.

And people still have options for privacy, despite what people claim. Something like Signal does Peer to Peer chats 'privately' by 'helping' people exchange PGP keys. You can exchange PGP keys in regular email clients fairly easily, and generally if you're the sort that's gonzo about privacy you should likely have done that already -- as, as noted, the lack of logs and meta data means you don't actually know if signal, which hosts a bunch of its services in US cloud service providers, is being forced to hand over data to the US anyhow, or if the CSP that they're on is doing the same from deeper in the stack.

Shopify, the company that recently listed a US headquarters in 2025, and is highly entangled in US regulations/ecosystems? That's the one you want to go with here? Windscribe is valid, but it's not exactly a big business / employer of a bunch of Canadians / generator of productivity. As for big tech being concerned about leaks -- horseshit. They're only concerned about money, and this would add a cost.

As for the backlash, it's fuelled by US interests, and lots of foreign company meddling. "This will harm the Canadian tech sectors viability, by not allowing us Tech Oligarchs to have complete freedom to do whatever the fuck we want without government scrutiny. Canada should emulate the USA, where tech oligarchs are explicitly pushing technofascism, are often employed as social security-net destroying "efficiency" czars, and are overtly supporting the Republican administrations efforts to achieve authoritarian objectives. That's a more viable/friendly setup for tech oligarchs to function in, one where they dont need to follow any rules, and can instead just bribe officials using crypto-scam-currencies". Not exactly a reason for me to support those tech company's positions. How bout we set the legislation up to benefit Canadians and Canada's interests, and if foreign companies don't like it, we get Canadian companies that will comply with our laws to provide service instead. Carney and the govt likes to tout how educated Canada's population is -- so use that.

Logs are logs. PCI has some structure to it, but it's not generally enforced. Hell, we've had cases in Canada where businesses have stored customer credit card information on Excel sheets -- NCIX in BC did this, it came to light after they sold their servers, unwiped, at auction and the new owners got the docs. There are no specific laws that say how a business needs to handle logging to servers holding credit card numbers -- there's just a PCI standard, set generally by a foreign bank consortium, which most/many small businesses ignore.

A log of someone connecting up to something like a customer portal to review their payment information/details, and basic customer information, would fall under the pending legislation. It'd also constitute 'logging' for a log-less company, generally speaking, as it's recording access to that company's services. One reason log-less companies are opposing the legislation, is that it requires them to know who their customers are, and who logs in to use their services, to record some meta data about that usage, and to report that information to the authorities when required.

Heh, it's sorta funny how the report is focused just on women, but the journalists, while verifying/vetting the report's findings, get told it's not a gendered issue, that everyone with precarious residency and working under contractors in the agri sector are getting exploited. Canada really loves to only focus on specific demos, explicitly ignoring men.

More generally, I'm not totally sure where the specific issues are, based on the linked story. Contractors in many sectors will generally work with placement services that take a cut of their wages for those placements. I've known people who worked for places like EA, where tons of contractors were employed with this setup. Even people working as office temps in white collar gigs, are usually paying that placement fee throughout their contract term. Contractors are also often not paid for their commute in to the work site, heck practically no one is. Even if you're a full citizen working in a different sector, if it takes you 2-3 hours to get to the worksite, because you're on transit or car pooling or whatever, you're not getting paid for that commute. And if you're working in a rural area, without great transit, and are relying on someone else to get you to work.... idk, neither of these things sounds to me like 'systemic abuse' of workers in just the agri sector, but rather how the system treats most workers in Canada. It treats people that way with some rationale behind it -- like you can't realistically force employers of things like small businesses to pay for staff commute times, as it'd make the compensation very erratic and unpredictable, not to mention nearly impossible to track. Nor can you expect contractor-placement firms to provide that service for free -- they typically setup wage % agreements with contractors, because contractors are less likely to have funds to pay upfront for placement. Claiming these things are abuses, doesn't really offer any practical solution.

As for undocumented people / people working under the table and getting paid in cash, not being able to report things like verbal abuse due to a lack of evidence.... well, that sucks. But also.... how about... not working illegally / in violation of your visa/legal status? The way the article reports it, any more material abuse, such that leaves physical evidence, is outside the regular experience/situation (the comments from workers specifically notes the lack of any evidence of abuse in this category as being a reason they don't go to the authorities -- implying that in cases where there's evidence of physical abuse, they have options). If you're choosing to work in a situation where you're paid in cash, and likely are avoiding taxes / government oversight due to knowing that your employment is against government rules/expectations, then it's absurd to me to complain that you don't have government oversight/protection. If you're not choosing to work in that situation, and are being forced into it, that'd be slavery -- something that's been illegal in BC practically since the day it joined confederation. I'm fairly sure you'd have legal options / avenues for equity if that were the case, and it were reported to the authorities.

idk, I don't think it's entirely right to frame this as systemic abuse of immigrant women farmworkers. Not only because the journalists interviews showed it to be far more expansive than just women in that sector, but also because many of the "abuses" are evident in many sectors beyond just farm workers -- and those "abuses" have rational / reasonable explanations for why they occur. And as for people working under-the-table complaining about a lack of government supports, they're literally choosing to work without government supports and dodging government taxes.

Show me the line in the current version of the legislation that says organisations need to create back doors for law enforcement.

There's literally pre-defined forms in the legislation, and companies get to challenge those forms / requests for up to 10 business days, and so on. And user content is explicitly exempted. That doesn't really sound like "An automated backdoor to all your data!"

The data sought is largely oriented around meta data, and data the companies have access to. So, like if you have a company that does private/secure cloud backups, you'd provide the cops with confirmation that so and so is a client. They'd then go get a warrant. You'd then provide them with the encrypted blob of data. Since you don't have the private keys to unlock that data, you can't provide that, nor are you required to by the legislation.

Companies freaking out about this just don't want to be accountable, nor do they want to have any added costs/obligations to police/moderate their services.

And who the fuck would side with the USA's tech oligarchs, and the US facist government at this point? Hell, the fact that Meta's crying should be a sign that we're on the right track. Mark's gotta expose all those bots and faceless influencer sorts that are trying to amplify Alberta separatism, when requested to do so by Canadian law enforcement / judicial review etc. Boo hoo. These twats clearly can't regulate themselves. Like seriously, you're whining to Canada that US companies are complaining about the legislation -- even though those same US companies are actively cooperating with the US government to integrate their data holdings into US AI surveillance shit. Rubio literally pushed a memo last year saying to fight against any attempts at data sovereignty outside the US, cause having their ability to covertly spy on everyone's data clipped would be a "national security risk". At least try to list a bunch of big Canadian companies that are concerned about the legislation....

So the legislation specifically excludes 'personal' content, and doesn't require direct paths to data / back doors for law enforcement. This is doomerism hyperbole.

It requires that companies store meta data for a year, so that it can get accessed by law enforcement, and it establishes that law enforcement can ask if 'so and so' is a customer of tech companies, so that law enforcement can then go get a warrant from a judge to access details about that customer. In storing that metadata, the legislation says the specific requirements of what metadata to store would be decided by regulators of industries.

In terms of privacy protection, requiring companies to keep meta data log files isn't a bad thing in itself. Consider a 'log less' service where you've provided some details to get an account going -- or even something you pay for, like a VPN service, which has some payment info from you. If they got hacked, and all your payment data was taken, then your credit cards are exposed and there's a real/material risk of harm to you.... but they didn't keep any logs of any of the hacking event because they're a 'log less' company... do they even know if they got hacked? Can anyone prove they got hacked? Is there any evidence trail available leading to those hackers / tying them to the breach? I've heard guys working in fintechs say "Why would we keep logs -- they're just evidence for when we screw up". Arguably, by not monitoring for this sort of thing / tracking meta data, you expose customers to greater risks, because you are not monitoring who's accessing the personal data -- so anyone could be accessing it, even now.

Especially in the case of foreign services, with laws in foreign jurisdictions that establish their governments can look at whatever they want, even beyond the meta data, without the company being able to disclose that to others (side note, c-22 seems to put a limit of 1 year on muzzling disclosures -- so a privacy oriented company could automate the transparency and inform customers of both requests for their personal metadata, as well as provide an aggregate report of 'last years' requests from govt). But in terms of clandestine/outside legal purview stuff, consider the stuff being done in the states with DHS/Ice, and the Patriot Act. Even if that foreign service, which routes all your messages, is mirroring your messages off to a law enforcement portal for someone like the CIA -- they don't have to log themselves doing it, and would have no obligation to tell you they're doing it, and if you tried to ask for the meta data about how your messages are routed, or who'd accessed your account, they could fall back on the logless setup as an excuse for having nothing to show you.

Getting back to that first case, with the specific companies and logs -- a semi important note is that right now, there aren't really set requirements/standards for how log files are handled by companies. So a company can set a retention period for their granular logs at like 7 days or whatever they want. And most likely everyone understands that retaining log data costs money for storage devices, and that companies often aim for the cheapest options they can get away with. So even if ppl are trying to blast headlines about specific 'log less' services that are saying they may leave, they should also be thinking about "How long would a company like Telus, Bell and/or Rogers willingly pay to store log information for the purposes of investigations / tracking crimes being committed using their services? How about banks, doctors offices, and other critical service providers that hold tons of our personal information?". Same with general ISPs. Like if some ISP is hosting a kiddie porn site, yeah, I think the cops should be allowed to demand at least 1 year worth of meta data to see who connected to that kiddie porn site. That seems reasonable to me, especially if the main (non-meta) data is still behind a warrant/judicial review.

Ebola's scary as hell. Ever since reading the Hot Zone I've been a bit paranoid about it, the book covered a bunch of ebolas history in a semi fictional way -- semi-fictional in that it slaps a bit of a narrative/first person perspective around detailed journal notes, eye witness accounts, doctor reports etc. The detailed descriptions of what Ebola does to people were straight up horrifying. Like "Oh, this is what inspired zombie movies" horrifying.

The symptoms they note in the news seem downplayed, significantly. Like one of the cases described how the virus eats away at the tissue just beneath the skin, resulting in mask-like faces with little to no expressions (zombie face). How the viral load will accumulate in the stomach, leaving people short of breath/bloated, prior to essentially erupting out in bouts of projectile vomiting. Like one of the first cases of one of the strains, the guy made it to the hospital before coating the waiting room floor with bloody virus puke -- they got him on a gurney, but he kept projectile vomiting, infecting the unprepared medical team.

And its persistent, laying dormant for absurd amounts of time. Like it gets on a surface, and it'll just wait for years for a new victim to come along. Hell, even saying it's just 'transferred by fluids' is a bit misleading, with Ebola being one of the reasons medical response teams developed those negative pressure puffy suits with multiple layers of protection to try and stop ANY particle of a virus from touching skin. The book even infers a nightmare scenario, where the virus could go airborne... with some likely instances of such amongst lab animals in isolated flare ups.

I mean, shit, its also in a war zone currently. Imagine how absolutely devastating a bunch of drones with Ebola-infected spray cans would be. Spray a bunch of door knobs... or enemy soldiers... with the state of international laws / norms, bio warfare is on the table for sure.

Early in 2025, Trump's admin removed Russia from their Cyber Threats list. They've lifted sanctions on Russian oil, and are generally helping Russia out. Trump's recently gone to China too, and sucked up to Xi.

Greenlanders/Europe should realise by now that the "Threat" the US talks about in regards to why the US wants Greenland, is the EU and local Greenlanders.

Smells like another faceless influencer type piece, intended to sow discord at a time of foreign aggression. Even if it highlights some legitimate history, it's framed in a strategically negative viewpoint and not providing a broader picture of events.

A hit piece on Canada, by a faceless unknown Mexican Canadian, is also a nicely timed thing in the lead up to the CUSMA review, attempting to increase animosity between Canada and Mexico. I wonder if there's a video by a Canadian faceless person making the rounds in Mexico, talking about all the drug issues and highlighting negative history there. "We must acknowledge that Spain butchered the indigenous peoples of South America, our history is one of genocide and murder, and it continues through to our drug cartel cultures even today!". blah blah.

Something I'm really not too sure of with regards to this topic, is whether Taiwan like.... pays anything to China? Like does Taiwan send some kind of tax revenue or other ongoing annual payment type thing off to China, does it use any of China's laws/regulations locally?

Like can't the independence of a nation / area be objectively shown?