Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Industry Canada Launches Public Consultation on PIPEDA Reforms

Published on October 30, 2007 in Canada, Legislation and Privacy. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The following appeared on Michael Geist’s Blog:

The government’s response to the PIPEDA review included a promise to consult on possible reforms to the law, including the creation of a mandatory data breach notification requirement. On Friday, Industry Canada published the promised consultation in the Canada Gazette, asking Canadians for comments on the data breach requirement along with a series of smaller changes to Canada’s national privacy law. For those that don’t have PIPEDA consultation fatigue – this is effectively the third consultation on these issues in the past 18 months (the Privacy Commissioner consultation, the Ethics Committee hearings, and now the Industry Canada consultation) – the deadline for responses is January 15, 2008.


AfterVote – Meta Search of Google, Yahoo!, & MSN

Published on October 30, 2007 in Search Engines. 0 Comments Tags: , .

(Reproduced with permission from The SurfReport Vol. 96)

AfterVote is a search aggregator that combines results from the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) and ranks them for you.

But that’s not all. The search results page shows you how each result ranks in each of the major engines. It also shows the page rank, Alexa ranking, and Diggs number. Best of all you can sort your results individually by search engine or ranking (Alexa, Page, Diggs, etc.).

This search engine does have a social side allowing you to rank and view other user rankings for each site. There is also automatic ranking and blocking of blacklist sites to make results more accurate.

Each result offers some great features like one click voting, quick bookmarking, archive and whois lookup, as well as the ability to manually block unwanted sites so they do not turn up in future searches.

When searching with this do not use quotations to do phrase searching as it will return an error message or crash your browser. This works best using IE rather than Firefox.

Inter-agency Cooperation Will Save US

Published on October 29, 2007 in Intelligence Services and Terrorism. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Inter-agency cooperation and intelligence sharing seems to need some improvement in the US…

Driven to desperation by restrictive information sharing rules, and concerned about the terrorist threat to their homes and loved ones, at least five American intelligence officers established a domestic espionage ring. The target of their actions: the federal government. The beneficiary of their actions: Los Angeles. How has it come to this, that otherwise patriotic and loyal citizens feel compelled to work against their government in order to serve and protect their communities?

One member of the ring works in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the other in the LAPD. Maziarz, then an intelligence analyst at Camp Pendleton, was invaluable to the ring because of his ability to regularly access national intelligence databases and pass a steady stream of information to his accomplices on terrorism suspects in the LA area.

For the full story go to ThreatsWatch

Compelling evidence needed for Anton Piller order

Published on October 28, 2007 in Counterfeit Goods, Courts and Intellectual Property Rights. 0 Comments

In its 2007 decision in Catalyst Partners Inc. v. Meridian Packaging Ltd., [2007] A.J. No. 667 (C.A.), the Alberta Court of Appeal considered what evidence is required to satisfy the criteria for obtaining an Anton Piller order. In overturning the lower court’s decision and setting aside the Anton Piller order in this case, the Court of Appeal made it clear that strong evidence showing a real possibility the defendant will destroy documents is necessary before such an extraordinary order will be granted.

Evidence of Chinese Nuclear Sub Found

Published on October 26, 2007 in Competitive Intelligence, Espionage, Industrial Espionage, Intelligence Services, Methods, Private Investigator, Search Engines, Security, Sources, Surveillance and Terrorism. 0 Comments

Blogger and analyst for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Hans M. Kristensen, recently discovered a photo of a second and possibly a third Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine at Bohai Shipyard in northeast China. He discovered the image using Google Earth, an online mapping service provided by Internet search engine giant Google, and posted his discovery on his blog on October 4.

The use of Google Earth for this creates some interesting challenges for both governments and private industry. In the private sector, security officials now must consider the loss of proprietary and competitive data through satellite imagery. An example of this might be the construction of new production facilities. In the past, overflights of such facilities have given rise to law suits. Now that the data already exists and  is searchable, how does one protect against a loss of critical information in this manner?

I predict the creative use of camouflage will become normal practice over the next couple of decades.

Title Fraud in Ontario

Published on October 25, 2007 in Fraud, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments

If you want to learn the current state of Title Fraud, Title Insurance, and our land registry system, then you should read Title fraud and title insurance in Ontario: impact of recent changes by Bruce McKenna at Lang Michener LLP.

FBI and the Internet

Published on October 25, 2007 in Intelligence Services, Security and Terrorism. 0 Comments

An article at the Danger Room illustrates how ineffective large organizations can become. No business would operate like this…

Two-Thirds of G-Men Still Can’t Get Online

Restrictive covenants enforced against departing employees

Published on October 23, 2007 in Canada, Courts and Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments

From Landon P. Young of Stringer Brisbin Humphrey

Two disgruntled senior employees resign effective immediately without notice. The company is caught off guard. The departing employees join a competitor that has just opened a new office and take a significant chunk of business and support staff with them…

…the employees had signed employment contracts that included restrictive covenants. These covenants enabled Staebler to sue the former employees, as well as their new employer, for damages…

… the (Ontario) judge concluded that the covenants were enforceable…

DIY Aerial Surveillance

Published on October 22, 2007 in Security and Surveillance. 0 Comments

WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson loves flying home-made Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). But getting your UAV fix comes with risks. Especially when you start flying your drone over the cyclotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Chris Anderson, a 45-year-old Berkeley resident and aerial-reconnaissance enthusiast, sparked a minor security scare Sunday when his remote-controlled plane – equipped with a camera – crashed into a tree at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Security personnel apparently didn’t notice the plane until Anderson asked for help retrieving it, but they’ve taken notice since.

DIY aerial surveillance is here now.

How to Take Notes like Thomas Edison

Published on October 19, 2007 in Handwriting, Intellectual Property Rights, Methods, Notebooks and Report Writing. 0 Comments

Thomas Edison was one of the world’s greatest note-takers. He considered his note-taking and filing system as a vital part of all his endeavours. This often lead to his victory in legal disputes and it was also the reservoir for what seemed like an amazing memory.

Famous inventor Thomas Edison is probably the most experienced note-taker in the world. His diary which is still maintained as an important part of the United States historical record contains five million (5,000,000) pages.

Edison certainly subscribed to the philosophy that if life is worth living, it is worth writing about.

St. Paul & Today’s Terrorism

Published on October 15, 2007 in Terrorism. 0 Comments

St. Paul relied upon Roman engineering to spread Christianity. He used Roman roads, theatres, and temples to spread his message. It was Roman tolerance and their well-developed cities and roads that allowed St. Paul to preach and convert followers. The rise of Christianity was one of the factors that brought about the collapse of the Roman Empire.

We are seeing something somewhat similar today with the radical Muslims using the resources of modern western societies. I wonder if the result might be the same?

Bigger Still Isn’t Better

Published on October 9, 2007 in Competitive Intelligence, Intelligence Services and Terrorism. 0 Comments

the $40 billion a year intel bureaucracy was not delivering much of value

In Iraq, a hodge podge of geeks and reservists (many of them cops or corporate “competitive intelligence” specialists) came up with lots of new ideas about how to collect, analyze and distribute intelligence. This was usually done at the divisional or brigade level, although some battalions, and even infantry companies, have come up with their own innovations. It was innovations like this that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein, and many prominent terrorists….

The combat troops also have an immediate incentive to make their intel operations work. If they don’t, they, or people they know, could get killed.

Too bad this type of incentive doesn’t exist in the private sector.

Disclosure & Canadian Courts

Published on October 6, 2007 in Courts and Legislation. 0 Comments

In Canada, parties to a civil action must disclose all documents in their possession and control that relate to the lawsuit.

This broad documentary disclosure and production requirement has prompted many provinces to adopt an implied undertaking rule that protects parties from improper publication of the disclosure materials. Violation of this undertaking may lead to a conviction for Contempt of Court.

The disclosure material may only be published once it has been exposed in open court in some manner, such as in testimony, as an exhibit, or as part of an affidavit. Of course, the contents of the Discovery transcript may not be published.

Disclosure material and Discovery transcripts do occasionally appear in court files. Whoever handles this material must understand what may be copied and disseminated, and what must remain in the court file. Otherwise somebody may end-up facing an unsympathetic Judge. After all, ignorance is no defense.

Modern English

Published on October 2, 2007 in Communication and Report Writing. 0 Comments

LONDON (Reuters) – About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

“People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they’re not really sure what they are for,” said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.

If this choice morsel of information is any measure, then it seems people are not quite sure what education is for either.