Bill C-10 rammed through parliament in midnight session

Hopes that Bill C-10 would be “skated into the boards” until after the next election have been crushed as the internet regulation and censorship bill was passed in a midnight session of Parliament at 1:30 am this morning.

The Canadian Federal government headed by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals helped by the separatist Bloc Quebec party and the NDP defeated attempts to exempt user generated content from Bill 10 and even to subject the legislation to meaningul debate and review.

In the words of Michael Geist, who has been covering this in detail for the entire process:

“The Liberal government strategy of multiple gag orders and a “super motion” to limit debate bore fruit last night as Bill C-10 received House of Commons approval at 1:30 am. The Parliamentary process took hours as the government passed multiple motions to cut short debate, re-inserted amendments that had been previously ruled null and void, and rejected a last-ditch attempt to restore the Section 4.1 safeguards for user generated content. The debate included obvious errors from Liberal MPs who were presumably chosen to defend the bill.”

As we’ve been detailing here, Bill C-10 gives the CRTC (Canada’s version of the FTC) regulatory powers over the Internet, deems internet content as “broadcast undertakings” and paves the way for implementation of licensing requirements for content creators, and censorship of same.

Read: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2021/06/midnight-madness-as-canadians-slept-the-liberals-bloc-and-ndp-combined-to-pass-bill-c-10-in-the-house-of-commons/

 

 

IoT devices could be weaponized for DDoS attacks at record levels

With more and more devices connected to the internet, many shipping with insecure software and weak default passwords, hackers can harness a lot of firepower for DDoS attacks.

The famous Mirai botnet, which knocked the DNS provider Dynect off the air for an entire day back in 2015 was an example of such an attack.

Nokia Deepfield, which is Nokia’s security research firm, recently published a report estimating that there are now enough vulnerable IoT devices out there to push DDoS attacks at an intensity of 10 TB (terrabytes) per second.

Back when we first published our Proactive Nameservers white paper we cited a Prolexic study which theorized 1 TB DDoS attacks by 2020. Barely a year later and we could be at 10X that.

While no such attacks have yet been reported, the potential is there. They also found that nearly all DDoS attacks today originate from fewer than 50 web hosting and regional connectivity providers.

Read: https://www.zdnet.com/article/100-increase-in-daily-ddos-traffic-in-2020-as-potential-grows-for-10-tbps-attack-nokia/

The report: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2021/06/14/nokia-deepfield-global-analysis-shows-most-ddos-attacks-originate-from-fewer-than-50-hosting-companies/


Peloton software bug allows complete remote takeover

The immensely popular Peleton exercise bikes use simple Android tablets for the interactive network enhancements.

Researchers at McAfee discovered a way to compromise the operating system by intercepting a legitimate over-the-air firmware update, modifying it and then bypassing a security setting that is supposed to stop modified boot loaders from running.

Running it would give the researchers the ability to gain root level privileges on the bike, which meant – they would have full control over the tablet and peripherals, such as the microphone and speaker output.

It goes beyond that, however. As the article notes, Peletons get used in numerous public venues such as cruise ships and workout clubs. Anybody using their account on a device there and re-using those passwords elsewhere can be subject to credential stuffing attacks.

Further, in many homes and workplaces, Pelotons are treated as part of the overall infrastructure, compromising one could give an attacker a foothold inside the network and behind the firewall of the wider organizational network.

Read: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/peloton-bike-plus-vulnerability-allowed-complete-takeover-of-devices/


Big Tech in crosshairs as anti-trust maven Lina Khan to head FTC

US President Biden has appointed an expert in anti-trust as it relates to Big Tech to be the new Chairwoman of the FTC. Lina Kahn is a well known anti-trust maven, especially as it relates to Big Tech. She’s been a vocal critic of Amazon’s anti-competitive practices which any reader of AoE knows there is a lot of that (frankly, Amazon is practically built on anti-competitive practices and abusing their market position).

She’s already been confirmed by the Senate in a 69-28 bi-partisan vote that had 21 Republican senators voting alongside the Dems.

Big tech monopoly critic Matt Stoller described the move as potentially “a revolutionary shift in politics.” Why is Khan so appealing across party lines and with broad based grass roots support? Again as per Stoller:

“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve spoken to in business, Republicans as well as Democrats, who talk in reverential tones about Khan. It’s not just that she is an important thinker, it’s that she *understands* what they are going through, the coercive power they are up against. And that’s because she got her start understanding the economy not in a classroom or at a law firm, but as a business journalist, listening to business people and workers facing monopolists.”

Jesse Hirsh also weighed in on her appointment, noting a tweet that observed Kahn, in her confirmation hearing referenced “possible criminal activity” on the part of Big Tech firms.

With anti-trust wheels already in motion against Big Tech, this looks to heat up before it calms down.

Read: https://www.protocol.com/khan-confirmation-ftc

And: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-antitrust-revolution-has-found

And: https://axisofeasy.com/metaviews/can-lina-khan-save-us-from-big-tech/


ISCC Chairman on Bill C-10: “A Mishmash of hubris and technological ignorance”

In his opening remarks at the Annual General Meeting of the Internet Society Canada Chapter, ISCC Chair Tim Denton called the federal government’s Bill C-10 “a mishmash of hubris and technological ignorance.”

Denton, a former CRTC Commissioner, took aim at the proposed legislation that would give the CRTC regulatory powers over the internet. With amendments to the proposal that would see exemptions for user-generated content having been removed, the bill if passed would pave the way for regulation of content online.

C-10 looks to be directly inspired by the Broadband Telecom Legislative Review (BTLR) which we commented on last year, and introduced a petition into the House of Commons calling on the government to reject it in its entirety. That didn’t happen, obviously, and the government looks to instead have adopted most, if not all of the recommendations the BTLR proposed to regulate and censor the internet in Canada.

Read: https://www.tmdenton.com/index.php/easyblog/entry/chairman-s-report-internet-society-of-canada-2021

And: https://easydns.com/blog/2020/02/08/canadas-btlr-is-a-framework-for-content-regulation/

At that same AGM,  I was re-upped for another two term as a director to the ISCC.


Ivermectin: The other unspeakable subject tech platforms won’t allow

A couple of issues ago I said that I would finally shut up about the corporate media and Big Tech suppression of the Wuhan Lab Leak as the possible origin vector for COVID-19 once it was safe to talk about Ivermectin. At the time I was only half-kidding.

Since then still more data points are coming out that the lab leak hypothesis was being taken seriously by not only Anthony Fauci, but Kristian Andersen as well. Andersen is an infectious disease expert who very publicly declared any ideas around lab leak to be debunked conspiracy theory akin to climate denialism.

Brett Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist who has studied bats (from which COVID-19 purportedly originated) was recently on Triggernometry, the UK based podcast that easyDNS has been sponsoring since mid-2020. At the beginning of the show it came out that neither Weinstein nor Triggernometry can say the word “Ivermectin” in their shows. If they do they’ll get an automatic takedown by YouTube and a “strike” on Facebook for “violating community standards.”

Matt Tiabbi has now posed the question “Why has ‘Ivermectin’ become a dirty word?” He cites one Dr. Pierre Kory in his testimony to a US Senate Committee hearing on medical responses to COVID-19 in December 2020. Kory was referring to an existing medicine that was already FDA approved that he was describing as a “wonder drug” in treating COVID-19….

“We have a solution to this crisis,” he said unequivocally. “There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact.”

 

Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called Ivermectin. A genuine wonder drug in other realms, Ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi Ōmura win the Nobel Prize in 2015. As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant. Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?

 

Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because “every time we mention Ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail.” A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution — disallow calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done. “Once, people weren’t allowed to take drugs before they got FDA approval. Now, they can’t talk about them.”

 

This Senate testimony was televised and viewed by approximately 8 million people. YouTube removed the video of this exchange. They later suspended the account of the United States senator who invited Dr. Kory to speak. Associated Press for their part “fact checked” the exchange, and because, in their words “there is no evidence that Ivermectin is a ‘miracle drug’ against COVID,” they labelled it false. I would have thought that a professional journalism outlet would be familiar with all of the logical fallacies. That one is called “appeal to ignorance.”

Whether Ivermectin is or isn’t a magic bullet is not the point. There were serious researchers and medical professionals doing studies on it and it was a viable topic for discussion. But Ivermectin is off limits, it and other aspects of the pandemic response are simply not discussed in civil society and Taibbi puts his finger on it:

“Arguments about the efficacy of mask use or ventilators, or the viability of repurposed drugs like Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin, or even the pandemic’s origins, were quashed from the jump in the American commercial press, which committed itself to a regime of simplified insta-takes made opposite to Donald Trump’s comments.”

Bingo. As I have to repeatedly point out, I’m not a fan of Trump and I’m not some #MAGA guy. But I wonder how many people had to die from COVID-19 because of complications from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The corporate press and Big Tech were so seized by Type 1 TDS (Type 2 TDS is Trump Divinity Syndrome), that legitimate avenues of inquiry were verboten, and pretty well all governments at all levels with rare exceptions did and continue to double and triple down on a narrow regimen of responses of dubious efficacy.

Meanwhile, back to Brett Weinstein’s Triggernometry appearance, wherein he said that:

“The likelihood at this point is very very low that this came from nature” and that “This virus is spectacularly well adapted to humans and not very well adapted to bats so it had to have done a lot of learning somewhere.”

We’re probably never going to know for sure whether COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan Lab, but as more data comes in and the media and tech overlords concede the narrative we’ll probably settle in the vicinity that it’s more likely than a zoonotic transfer. The press will never be held accountable for demonizing proponents of it and Big Tech will never have to answer for censoring it.

That’s bad enough. My guess is Ivermectin is the next big story that will break out of the confines of the Overton Window around all this, and the tragedy here will be realizing how many lives were lost that may have been saved had the media and tech platforms permitted alternative topics to be discussed in the public square.

Read: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/why-has-ivermectin-become-a-dirty-7bd

Watch: https://youtu.be/sbyIIprV9pE


Uber and Lyft use donations to community groups to lobby against regulations


This story in The Markup gets to the source of a narrative that is propagating through minority press and community groups who are running variations of the same story in multiple markets and publications nationwide.

The story places articles saying in essence, “independent workers want to remain independent” and extol the virtues of gig economy employers like Lyft, Uber and Doordash as “a lifeline” to workers in black and other ethno communities.

Turns out, these are placements, being incentivized by donations made by political action groups (PACs) and lobby firms in the employ of companies like Lyft and Uber.

In other words, gig economy unicorns are Astro-turfing minority run press and communities in an effort to curry public support against various regulatory initiatives that would classify their “independent operators” as employees, or to preempt any unionization efforts.

As per an assistant professor of journalism and media The Markup spoke with:

“Race is a key technology that is being used to signal a kind of progressivism that will allow these companies get around their class and race exploitation,” said Chenjerai Kumanyika, an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University who focuses on the intersection of social justice and popular culture. “They’re happy to say ‘Black Lives Matter’ as long as that means their workers don’t form a union.”

Read: https://themarkup.org/news/2021/06/17/uber-and-lyft-donated-to-community-groups-who-then-pushed-the-companies-agenda


Facebook is the number one platform used in human trafficking rings

A report by the Human Trafficking Institute’s 2020 report found that over half of all online recruitment in active human trafficking cases tracked by the agency over the year occurred on Facebook:

“In 2020 59% of online victim recruitment in active sex trafficking cases occurred on Facebook…making it by far the most frequently referenced website or app in public sources connected with these prosecutions, which was also true in 2019.”

The report went on to find that it was more commonly used to locate child victims than adults.

Said differently, Facebook was the prime driver in online child sexual molestation victim recruitment and sex trafficking for at least the second year running.

The tech community responded quickly to the stunning revelations: Amazon’s AWS gave Facebook 48 hours notice that their services on the platform would be terminated. Google and Apple both removed the Facebook app from their respective app stores, while VISA and MasterCard terminated all payment processing activities. Even Facebook’s registrar revoked their domain name.

Just kidding. There was no reaction from the industry. That only happens if you challenge Big Tech. Not if you are Big Tech.

Read: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-sex-trafficking-online-recruitment-report/ 

The Report: https://www.traffickinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2020-Federal-Human-Trafficking-Report-Low-Res.pdf


Roger Waters declines Facebook request to use iconic Pink Floyd song

One person who did turn a cold shoulder to Facebook recently was Roger Waters.  The former frontman for the legendary prog rock Pink Floyd had some choice words for Mark Zuckerberg  after denying an offer from the company to use “Another Brick in the Wall” for marketing purposes.

Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was an epic, double-length album in the days of vinyl records and was a type of rock opera about youth alienation amid an increasingly totalitarian, conformist world. It was also made into a feature length movie staring Sir Bob Geldof. Waters considers Facebook to be the epitome of repressive power and deemed the offer a bad fit:

“It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money and the answer is, ‘F*ck You. No f*ckin’ way. I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything, I will not be a party to this bullshit.”

He made the remarks at an event in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Read: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-rejects-facebook-offer-another-brick-in-the-wall-1183773/