Green-Light

Vic Toews Response about Bill C-30

Keith Page — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:43:41 +0000

Thank you for contacting my office regarding Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.

Canada’s laws currently do not adequately protect Canadians from online exploitation and we think there is widespread agreement that this is a problem.

We want to update our laws while striking the right balance between combating crime and protecting privacy.

Let me be very clear: the police will not be able to read emails or view web activity unless they obtain a warrant issued by a judge and we have constructed safeguards to protect the privacy of Canadians, including audits by privacy commissioners.

What’s needed most is an open discussion about how to better protect Canadians from online crime. We will therefore send this legislation directly to Parliamentary Committee for a full examination of the best ways to protect Canadians while respecting their privacy.

For your information, I have included some myths and facts below regarding Bill C-30 in its current state.

Sincerely,

Vic Toews

Member of Parliament for Provencher

Myth: Lawful Access legislation infringes on the privacy of Canadians.

Fact: Our Government puts a high priority on protecting the privacy of law-abiding Canadians. Current practices of accessing the actual content of communications with a legal authorization will not change.

Myth: Having access to basic subscriber information means that authorities can monitor personal communications and activities.

Fact: This has nothing to do with monitoring emails or web browsing. Basic subscriber information would be limited to a customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and the name of the telecommunications service provider. It absolutely does not include the content of emails, phones calls or online activities.

Myth: This legislation does not benefit average Canadians and only gives authorities more power.

Fact: As a result of technological innovations, criminals and terrorists have found ways to hide their illegal activities. This legislation will keep Canadians safer by putting police on the same footing as those who seek to harm us.

Myth: Basic subscriber information is way beyond “phone book information”.

Fact: The basic subscriber information described in the proposed legislation is the modern day equivalent of information that is in the phone book. Individuals frequently freely share this information online and in many cases it is searchable and quite public.

Myth: Police and telecommunications service providers will now be required to maintain databases with information collected on Canadians.

Fact: This proposed legislation will not require either police or telecommunications service providers to create databases with information collected on Canadians.

Myth: “Warrantless access” to customer information will give police and government unregulated access to our personal information.

Fact: Federal legislation already allows telecommunications service providers to voluntarily release basic subscriber information to authorities without a warrant. This Bill acts as a counterbalance by adding a number of checks and balances which do not exist today, and clearly lists which basic subscriber identifiers authorities can access.

In response to my first email to Vic

As one of the numerous small business owners breaking a path for our digital economy I’m frustrated by our governments internet policy. Your statements regarding the Liberal Members comments were out of line. The course trekked by your colleagues, be it surveillance with out warrent in your Lawfull Access bill or the digital lock provisions that nullify fair use in c11 is one that puts our country on the back roads of innovation.

I plead with you Mr. Toews that what is needed in our government internet policy is education for citizens for digital work and infrastructure investment so they can do that work. Not social engineering and pornographer fear mongering.

Old men look at the internet and see porn, young men look at the internet and see asia with better access and better labour. The problem is I don’t trust that you guys have any respect for what your playing with and how it’s going to effect the latter. You take a issue as serious as child porn to nurture real reservation about ill conceived policy and it’s repugnant to see happen. We need real discussion about how to get ahead of Germany and Asia not distractions and censorship firewalls to rival China’s.

Because let’s be clear, we all know this is just the entertainment industry using child porn to push turn key systems for piracy tracking. A small industry in our economy is scaring the shit out of grandparents to support facist policy for the purpose of stopping people from stealing lady gaga albums.

Sir, I know your not a fascist but surveillance, without due process and cause, of an entire population is a fascist policy and non too bright.

Keith Page
Owner, Digital Employer, Albertan Farmer

Default wpad.dat on apache

Keith Page — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:52:33 +0000

In an effort to run a tighter hosting environment we’ve been centralizing our logs and resolving the most numerous errors generated by the system. One common error on all the servers is clients searching for auto proxy configurations.

Dirty Code



File does not exist: /home/user/public_html/wpad.dat

File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/wpad.dat

Simple Wpad.dat
In our situation we really just want to remove the error log entry, we want to deliver the simplest version of this file we can. So we don’t get anymore File does not exist errors. The simplest thing to do is to tell the client to simply connect direct. Which is what they are going to do anyway when the file is missing.

Dirty Code



function FindProxyForURL(url, host)

{

return "DIRECT";

}

Default include for /usr/local/apache/conf/userdat/missing-wpad.conf
Next we add an include file for our apache installation so any request on any site on our server for this file is redirect to our default file. But only if the client hasn’t uploaded their own version of the file. ( !-f )

Dirty Code



RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond  %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteRule  .*wpad\.dat$         /usr/local/apache/htdocs/wpad.dat [L]

News Papers of the world

Keith Page — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:55:24 +0000

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=MX8uAAAAIBAJ&sjid=75gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3658,2857107&dq=calgary+herald&hl=en

All Server : Default Favicon.ico

Keith Page — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:46:12 +0000

Clients who’s website don’t have their own robot.txt or favicon.ico files we are now delivering a default version of both files. This is to reduce the number of errors logged from all site requests when these expected files are not found.

Clients can override these defaults by simply uploading their own copy of these files. Contact our design department at 18558045359 if you would like one of our team to design and implement these missing elements.

All Servers : New error reporting

Keith Page — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:01:25 +0000

We have rolled out new error reporting templates on all servers. End users will now have the ability to report errors they experience directly to Green-Light. The goal of the change is to assist our clients in tightening up their websites experiences for their clients. Web Developers can still override these errors with their own templates with the normal .htaccess ErrorDocument and cPanel methods.

Restored : host5 & 6 – Network Outage

Keith Page — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:59:23 +0000

Customers on host5 and 6, including www.green-light.ca, experienced an extended outages starting at 8:30 pm PST till 1:00 am. This was due to a network switch failure at the data center that effected a number of our upstream providers customers. Clients can contact our billing department for compensation under our SLA.

Host3 now 4x faster.

Keith Page — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:34:03 +0000

Clients on host3 have been upgraded to new hardware as part of our routine maintenance cycle. Enjoy the speed.

Host3 Upgrade Scheduled

Keith Page — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:43:20 +0000

Users on host3 in Montreal will be migrated over the coming weeks to new systems. These are scheduled hardware replacements and users should expect an overall improvement in service.

Update : Dec 12, 2011

The new server configuration requires encrypted outgoing mail authentication, the default for most mobile devices. You may need to enable the option on your mail client after the migration. Contact our office for information on how, 18668045359

We’re growing! Programmers, read on…

Keith Page — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:38:54 +0000

For over seven years, Green Light.ca has been in the business of developing websites and providing technical services to vast array of clients in the Kootanays. Your support has contributed to our success and we are currently looking to expand our team to meet growing consumer demand.

If you are one of those left brained, web programming savants and are looking to compliment our design team, please get in touch with Keith today.

Skills you will need

Proficient in standard web technologies, PHP (Certified), SOAP, Etc.
Proficient in at least one other major object oriented programming language, Java, C++, Fortan, etc.
Comfortable with module development for frameworked applications
Effective time and request management
Creative problem solving, with a passion for best practices

Update : Host4 data loss

Keith Page — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:40:52 +0000

We have received reports and confirmed that some clients on host4 have lost emails stored or updated from Nov 2nd to Nov 4th. This appears to be a result of a failed disk array on host4. When technicians at iweb replaced the failed drive, through human error, the wrong drive was replaced and that has directly resulted in this loss.

We are working with the data centre now to bring online the data from these two days. We have complete backups for all clients from Nov 3rd before the problem showed. You can contact helpdesk@green-light.ca to request files be restored manually from the backup. Otherwise we will post additional updates as we work through this problem.

Update : Monday Nov 7th, 2011

The problem was sourced to routine maintenance performed at the data center, we have restored the missing files. If you have any inconsistencies please contact our support department by email helpdesk@green-light.ca