News

Against Oversight: Why Fixing the Oversight of Canadian Surveillance Won’t Solve the Problem

Last summer, I discussed the Snowden leaks and concerns about Canadian surveillance activities with a senior government official. The official remarked that in the wake of the Snowden revelations the political risk did not lie with surveillance itself, since most Canadians basically trusted their government and intelligence agencies to avoid misuse (the steady stream of Snowden leaks and Canada’s increasingly apparent role may have changed this analysis). Rather, the real concern was with being caught lying about the surveillance activities. This person was of the view that Canadians would accept surveillance, but they would not accept lying about surveillance programs.

Those comments came to mind over the past week with the latest revelations about CSEC metadata surveillance. While the story has been characterized as an airport wifi surveillance issue, it is clear that the airport wifi angle misses the real concern. The leaked document and subsequent explanations reveal an attempt to identify travel patterns and geographic locations using user ID data over a two week period provided by a Canadian source (CSEC referred to this as metadata in the Senate committee hearing yesterday) along with a database of geo-locations of IP addresses supplied by Quova (I once served as an advisor to Quova). By identifying airport wifi IP addresses along with broader usage data and geo-identifying information, CSEC hopes to be able to identify locational movements of individual users. Bruce Schneier provides a helpful review of the likely intent of the program.

While some argued the program tracks Canadians and is therefore illegal (citing Charter violations and activities beyond the CSEC mandate), the Justice Minister maintains the program is legal and CSEC has defended the program in a release the day after the story broke and again at the Senate committee yesterday. Moreover, the CSEC Commissioner has posted a somewhat cryptic statement that emphasizes the independence of the review process. Ryan Gallagher has responded to those statements with a post arguing the denials are hollow.

February 4, 2014 — 16 comments — News

Competition Bureau Raises Wireless Competition Concerns, Concludes Big Three Have “Market Power”

The Competition Bureau of Canada has just released its submission to the CRTC’s consultation on domestic roaming rates and with it left no doubt about its concerns with the state of wireless competition in Canada. Despite repeated efforts of the big three incumbent providers to argue that the Canadian market is competitive, the Competition Bureau has concluded that the big three enjoy “market power.” As the Bureau notes, market power is “the ability of a firm or firms to profitably maintain prices above competitive levels (or similarly restrict non-price dimensions of competition) for a significant period of time.”

Given its market power, the Bureau finds the wireless incumbents can use roaming to shield themselves from competition. It states:

“Incumbents can use the terms and conditions of roaming agreements to raise their rivals’ costs such that incumbents are shielded from the full effect of their the rivals’ (i.e., entrants) entry. Making it more costly for entrants to access incumbent networks through roaming agreements is one way for an incumbent service provider to relax competitive pressure.“

January 29, 2014 — 8 comments — News

Another Step Toward the TPP: Canada Moves to Ratify Five Intellectual Property Treaties

The Canadian government quietly tabled five intellectual property treaties in the House of Commons on Monday: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, five treaties, entitled, one, Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks, adopted […]

January 29, 2014 — 3 comments — News

The Destruction of the Department of Fisheries Libraries

The Bibliocracy blog posts the results of a response to an order paper question on the Department of Fisheries and Ocean’s library system with very discouraging news: massive destruction of materials and no information on what was digitized.

January 29, 2014 — 6 comments — News

The CRTC’s Simultaneous Substitution Problem

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications has spent the past year-and-a-half trying to reinvent itself a pro-consumer regulator. On the broadcast front, the most obvious manifestation of that approach is the gradual move toward pick-and-pay channels, which seems likely to emerge as a policy option later this year. Establishing mandated pick-and-pay would be a political and consumer winner, but there are still reasons for Canadians to vent against the regulator. The retention of simultaneous substitution policies is one of them.

I made the case for gradually eliminating the simultaneous substitution policy late last year, arguing that the policy hurts Canadian broadcasters (by ceding control over their schedules to U.S. networks) and Canadian content (which suffers from promotion). Moreover, simultaneous substitution will become less important over time as consumers shift toward on-demand availability of programs. There are still supporters of simultaneous substitution, but few come from the consumer community. Indeed, even the CRTC is hard-pressed to identify consumer benefits in its FAQ on the policy. In fact, its Super Bowl commercial FAQ claims viewers benefit from signal substitution during the broadcast, but the Commission can’t seem to identify any benefits.

January 28, 2014 — 4 comments — News