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'Blinking is like a kitty kiss': Researchers aim to decipher how cats talk to us

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 16 April 2015 | 22.11

When it comes to cats, those meows mean … well, a lot of things.

With each purr, yowl or even blink, felines are saying, "Hello," "Let's snuggle" or "Beat it, Mom." For the increasing number of cat owners who want to connect with their often-aloof fur babies, experts say there's something to gain from those attempts at communication.

Cats are very independent, and so they are easily misunderstood, says Dr. Gary Weitzman, chief executive of the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA and author of the new National Geographic book How to Speak Cat. He aims to unravel the mystery by helping people discern what cats are trying to convey.

Blinking is like a kitty kiss.- Dr. Gary Weitzman

Crafty kitties can make 16 different meow sounds and usually only unleash them when people are around, he said. Meows can be their way of saying feed me, pet me or let me out, and hardly ever get exchanged between cats.

That's because cats learn they can get something desirable from people if they meow, said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, executive director of the American College of Veterinary Behaviourists and a professor at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine. She also wrote the 2003 textbook Feline Behavior.

The meaning of a scratch or a hiss is pretty clear, but cats can talk in more subtle ways — with their eyes and tails. A slow blink from a feline, for example, is like a wink between friends, Weitzman said.

Like a handshake

"Blinking is like a kitty kiss," he said.

Pets Cat Talk

Dr. Gary Weitzman, chief executive of the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA and author of the new National Geographic book How to Speak Cat, gives a chin scratch to Stewart in San Diego. (Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press)

And extending their tails straight up equates to a human handshake, he said. A cat perks up that appendage as it approaches to show it's happy to see you.

Susan McMinn, 55, of Tryon, N.C., was eager to try the slow-blinking exercise with her Siamese cat, Jade, after reading the book.

"I sat and blinked slowly at my cat, and she blinked right back. I know she loves me, of course, but now I feel I understand her communication even more," McMinn said.

McMinn has owned Jade for 10 years and has had six cats over her lifetime, but she says it's clear she still has a lot to learn. "And I thought I was an expert!" she said.

Even ear and whisker movements signify something worth listening to. If a cat's ears are flat, don't get close because it's scared or facing a fight, Weitzman said.

Help them prey

A kitty is happy, calm or friendly when its whiskers are naturally out to the side. Twice as thick as a human hair and rooted three times as deep, the whiskers guide them, help them with prey and show how they are feeling.

Learning to communicate with cats becomes even important for those who adopt a pet based only on the colour or breed they want versus a connection with the animal.

At Happy Cats Sanctuary in Medford, N.Y., a potential owner might ask for a "white cat with fluffy fur," said Melissa Cox, director of communications and development.

She tells them not to go by looks alone because the true indicator of compatibility is spending time with a cat and getting to know it.

For McMinn, she says she isn't done with the book and plans to use some of its training tips. But now she knows "what to look for in her (cat's) tail and ear movement, whisker positions and in her eyes."


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Watch SpaceX's rocket explode after almost landing successfully

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Rocket 'landed fine' on floating platform, but tipped over after touchdown

Thomson Reuters Posted: Apr 15, 2015 11:38 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 16, 2015 9:20 AM ET

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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off 13:45

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off 13:45

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SpaceX has released a video of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket touching down on a floating platform during an attempted landing before toppling over and exploding.

It was the company's unsuccessful second attempt to land the rocket in an effort to develop a booster rocket that can be reused on future space missions.

During Tuesday's launch, the rocket successfully sent an unmanned Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station before separating and attempting to land on an unmanned barge. The barge, described by SpaceX as "an autonomous spaceport drone ship" was named "Just Read the Instructions" and floated about 322 kilometres off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla.

Falcon 9 rocket

The barge called 'Just Read the Instructions' was floating about 322 kilometres off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla., when the rocket came in for a landing. (SpaceX)

Initially, SpaceX posted a seconds-long video on its Twitter account that shows the rocket firing and adjusting its angle as it approaches the platform. It rotates slightly counterclockwise to touch down on the centre of the platform in a cloud of smoke, but appears to keep rotating a little too far, leaning to the left as the video ends.

A longer version on YouTube shows the explosion that follows.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the rocket "landed fine, but excess lateral velocity cause it to tip over post landing."

SpaceX's previous attempt in January ended in a dramatic explosion after it ran out of hydraulic fluid for its steering fins and crashed into the platform.

The company will make a third landing attempt during a space station resupply mission targeted for June.

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Federal government is violating its own law on pesticides, lawsuit claims

Environmental groups have revived a lawsuit against the federal government because the Health Department changed its mind about reviewing a pesticide that is banned in Norway but is increasingly common in Canada.

The decision to stop the review of a fungicide used on cereal, oilseed and vegetable crops violates the government's own legislation, said Lara Tessoro, a lawyer for Ecojustice, the firm acting for several groups behind the lawsuit.

"The duty on the government is to assess all the products containing the ingredient."

The lawsuit is over difenoconazole, which is known to be toxic to fish and believed by some scientists to accumulate in increasing amounts in the food chain. The suit was originally filed in 2013 in an attempt to force the government to review 23 different pesticides.

The action was put on hold after Ottawa agreed to the reviews. But the Pest Management Regulatory Agency has now pulled back.

"The special review ... is no longer required," said a letter from the agency to Ecojustice.

Review required for pesticides banned in OECD

Canadian law requires a review for any pesticide banned in a member country of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Norway, which is a member, has banned difenoconazole.

But it is legal to import seeds that have been treated with the pesticide. That's enough, says the government, to remove the requirement for the review.

"In Norway, the use of difenoconazole is permitted on treated seeds," a department spokesman wrote in an email. "As Norway permits the use of difenoconazole, it does not 'prohibit all uses' of this product."

Tessoro said that's not how the Norwegians see it.

"Please note that this does not mean that we still have uses of difenoconazole allowed in Norway," says a letter to Health Canada from Norwegian officials. "It is prohibited to sell, stock, store or use difenoconazole in Norway."

Tessoro said Canada has ignored Norway's interpretation of its own law.

"Here's Norway telling Canada, 'No, no, don't be misguided here. We do not allow this pesticide to be used in this country.' Canada turned around and said, 'Thanks very much, Norway, but we're going to disagree with how you interpret your own laws."'

She pointed out Canada's position is similar to one urged by the pesticide's manufacturer in a letter to the pest management agency after the review was promised.

Health Canada said it was unable to comment further on a matter before the courts.

Risk well-managed through warnings, Canada says

The Norwegians say their decision was taken as a result of the chemical's "worrisome" toxicology. They say it tends to persist in the environment, concentrate in the food chain and is toxic to aquatic life.

Canadian assessments are similar. But in a letter to Ecojustice, the agency says the chemical's risks are well-managed through warnings.

"With the existing risk mitigation measures in place on the registered labels, the risks to aquatic species are not expected to be a concern," it says.

Ecojustice scientist Elaine MacDonald said difenoconazole is increasingly added to pesticides which some say are behind large die-offs in bee populations. She said the review her group is asking for would force Health Canada to examine all such combined products.

"I think it's worthwhile to have another look, evaluate the risk and evaluate the mitigation. That's all we're asking."


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Why problem coyotes hang out in the city

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 15 April 2015 | 22.11

Certain coyotes are known to have frequent unnerving encounters with humans and their pets in residential neighbourhoods, and scientists now have an explanation.

It turns out that coyotes infected with a common skin parasite tend to develop habits that make them problem animals.

"These coyotes that were losing their hair and were sick were more likely to run into people in residential areas, especially during the day," says Maureen Murray, lead author of a new study on urban coyotes published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Coyote sightings and encounters have been increasing in cities across Canada, from Vancouver to Toronto to Newfoundland.

Murray is part of a University of Alberta research group that has been tracking coyote sightings in Edmonton since 2000.

Maureen Murray

Maureen Murray (right) and Joe Abercrombie of Animal Damage Control in Cochrane, Alta., captured 19 coyotes in Edmonton for the study. (Maureen Murray)

"And it's been increasing exponentially every year," she says.

While coyotes rarely attack pets or humans, their growing presence in cities makes many of their human neighbours uncomfortable.

"It comes down to this unease about a carnivore and a predator around people's backyards, around people's kids and their pets," Murray says.

Most urban coyotes hide in ravines and golf courses, away from humans, eat mainly small animals that they hunt, and are more active at night than during the day.

Murray wanted to find out why certain coyotes seemed to be spotted unusually often on city streets during the day — was that linked to their age, sex, or something else?

Diet leaves traces in hair

Murray and her collaborators caught 19 coyotes in Edmonton and put GPS collars on them to track their location every three hours over an average of four months. They took note of the animals' age, sex and whether they had any signs of sarcoptic mange, a common parasitic mite that lives in the skin, causing itching and hair loss. They also took hair samples to find out what the animals had been eating.

Coyote with pups

Coyote sightings in Edmonton have been increasing exponentially every year since the University of Alberta started tracking them in 2000, says Maureen Murray. (Maureen Murray)

Different kinds of food leave different chemical signatures in hair or fur. Animals with diets higher in meat tend to have higher levels of nitrogen-15, a heavier form of the element nitrogen. Animals who consume more processed human food — which contains corn-based ingredients such as corn starch and corn syrup — tend to accumulate more carbon-13, a heavier form of the element carbon.

The researchers found that eight of the 19 coyotes showed signs of mild mange, mainly in the form of red patches on their hind legs. The coyotes who were sick had four habits that tended to bring them in contact with humans:

  • A greater likelihood of spending time in developed residential or commercial areas of cities.
  • Wandering over much bigger ranges.
  • More active during the day.
  • Eating of more human food and less protein, determined by hair analysis.

The researchers aren't sure why the sick coyotes showed these behaviours, but it may be that sick coyotes rely on easily accessible food from humans such as compost scraps and the shelter provided by human structures such as porches. They could be more active during the day because they find it too cold at night without a full coat of fur.

Many sick animals died

Sadly, many of the sick coyotes got sicker over the course of the study.

"Some of the animals in our study ended up with almost no hair at all," Murray says.

Mangy coyote

Sarcoptic mange is a parasitic skin mite that causes itching and hair loss in coyotes. (Maureen Murray/University of Alberta)

Six of them died. Murray says four of them had apparently frozen to death in their sleep without their hair to protect them from Edmonton's frigid winter temperatures. Two others were euthanized by city officials because they refused to leave the backyards where they had taken shelter.

Murray says that knowing why the animals were spending time among humans may help city officials figure out how to manage problem coyotes.

While cities are generally reluctant to intervene when animals are sick, she says, her results suggest that "that letting nature sort of run its course for these coyotes in cities might not be the best course of action for people."

Coyote mange can be transmitted to dogs, something that Murray says people who have pets in areas with coyotes should be aware of.

However, the disease can be treated with an ointment.

Murray recommends that people discourage coyotes from living near them by eliminating possible food sources. Securing compost and green bins, and cleaning up spilled bird seed and rotting fruit that has fallen off trees in their yard may help.

She hopes that knowing why coyotes might be seeking shelter in their backyards will encourage people to take action.

"I feel like those sorts of messages can resonate with people a lot more if you know why something might work."


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EU launches antitrust complaint over Google search

The European Union's executive branch hit Google with official antitrust charges on Wednesday that allege the company abuses its dominance in Internet searches, and also opened a probe into its Android mobile system.

The move massively raises the stakes in the highest profile antitrust case in Europe and could lead to billions in fines for Google if the case shows the way it does business in the 28-country bloc is illegal.

In announcing the action, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she is "concerned that the company has given an unfair advantage to its own comparison shopping service."

Vestager said the separate antitrust probe into Android will investigate whether the Internet giant relies on anti-competitive deals and abuses its dominant position in Europe's mobile market.

"Dominant companies have a responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position."- EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager

The EU has for years sought a settlement with Google, but says the company has not fully addressed its concerns.

The more confrontational route could mean years of legal wrangling — as well as fines worth billions. The EU can impose fines of 10 per cent on annual revenue, or some $6 billion US, and force the Mountain View, California, company to overhaul its system for recommending websites in Europe.

Vestager said her chief goal was to make sure multinationals "do not artificially deny European consumers as wide a choice as possible or stifle innovation."

The company has a market share of over 90 per cent of Internet searches in the EU, compared with around 70 per cent in the U.S. Vestager said that one in four companies complaining about Google were U.S. rivals.

"Dominance as such is not a problem," said Vestager. "However dominant companies have a responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position."

When it comes to comparative shopping, the EU said it found that "Google gives systematic favourable treatment" to its Google Shopping at the expense of others in its general search results.

"It may therefore artificially divert traffic from rival comparison shopping services and hinder their ability to compete on the market," the EU said in a statement.

Google has 10 weeks to respond to all the allegations.

Senior Vice-President Google Search Amit Singhal said in a reaction that "while Google may be the most used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways — and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide of the mark."

When it comes to comparative internet shopping, Singhal wrote in a blog that "it's clear that (a) there's a ton of competition (including from Amazon and eBay, two of the biggest shopping sites in the world) and (b) Google's shopping results have not the harmed the competition."

Thomas Vinje, legal counsel for FairSearch Europe, a group that has been urging EU regulators to rein in Google, said that Wednesday's move was "a significant step towards ending Google's anti-competitive practices, which have harmed innovation and consumer choice."


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Spacecraft snaps first colour image of Pluto

Scientists have released the first colour image of Pluto and its largest moon Charon ever taken by an approaching spacecraft.

The photo was released at a news conference on Tuesday to discuss the spacecraft New Horizons, which took the image, and its nearing of Pluto.

No spacecraft has ever visited Pluto. Scientists are hoping that will change on July 14, when NASA's New Horizons probe is expected to fly within 9,978 km (6,200 miles) of the dwarf planet after a nine-year journey.

Alan Stern, a New Horizons scientist, spoke about the historic project with excitement.

"This is a small, compact, highly advanced spacecraft. A real 21st century exploration spacecraft with tremendous capability, that's in almost, almost the most wonderful place you can ever imagine you can be as a scientist," Stern said.

SPACE-PLUTO

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, seen in an artist's impression, will make a close flyby of Pluto and its moons on July 14. (NASA/Reuters)

"The spacecraft is in perfect health, it's full of fuel and it's carrying a scientific arsenal of seven instruments that are combined the most powerful suite of scientific instruments ever brought to bear on the first reconnaissance of a new planet. Nothing like this has been done in a quarter century and nothing like this is planned by any space agency, ever again. This is a real moment in time."

Stern said that next month, as New Horizons nears Pluto, it will start taking the most detailed photos ever seen of it. The craft will begin sending back atmospheric data on Pluto in May, and data on the dwarf planet's surface composition in June.


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Kim Dotcom Megaupload case falters over sharing Canadian data

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 14 April 2015 | 22.11

More than three years have passed since Canadian police seized 32 Megaupload-related servers on behalf of U.S. authorities seeking to prosecute company founder Kim Dotcom in one of the world's largest copyright infringement cases.

Still, no one — except perhaps officials with the file-sharing company itself — knows what's on the servers. 

At issue now is how much of this seized Canadian data can be shared with the U.S. Department of Justice, which is very eager to press its case against Dotcom, who is currently fighting extradition from New Zealand, where he's a permanent resident. 

In a Toronto court on Monday, Crown attorney Moiz Rahman, acting on behalf of the U.S., recommended bringing in a U.S. "clean team" — an American term for a group of forensic examiners independent of the case — to sift through the 25 terabytes of data on the servers to pick out relevant files and separate them from personal information. 

But Megaupload's lawyer argued that the Ontario court can only ask the U.S. police officials on the so-called clean team to "double pinky promise" that they won't share information not relevant to the case, since there's no way to enforce the court's decision south of the border.

"Once they return to the United States, that's nothing more than a promise," said Scott Hutchison.

U.S. regulators shut down Megaupload, founded by the notorious Kim Dotcom, in January 2012. At the time, it was one of the world's largest file-sharing sites. (Dotcom, a German-Finnish entrepreneur who was born Kim Schmitz, changed his name in 2005.)

Dotcom and others face charges related to copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering. Prosecutors argue the company essentially rewarded users for uploading popular content such as stolen movies and TV shows.

The three-year-old case has been mired in complications and delays, including here in Canada.

On Jan. 18, 2012, an Ontario judge granted a search warrant to seize 32 servers in Canada — equivalent to the amount of data stored on 100 laptops, according to Megaupload lawyers.

A year later, a different Ontario judge rejected a request to send mirror copies of what was on those servers to the U.S, saying such a request might be overly broad.

Instead, the justice ordered both parties to find a way to filter out and share only the relevant data.

The "vast majority" of the data, argues Megaupload lawyer Hutchison, is likely everyday files uploaded by innocent users of the file-sharing service, which allowed users to upload and share large files such as photos, videos and documents.

"We don't know what we're turning this clean team loose on," said Hutchison at Monday's motion hearing.

Even if the court assumed half of Megaupload's daily users — estimated to be 50 million at the time of the site's shutdown — were innocent, that's a lot of irrelevant files in the hands of U.S. officials, he said.

Instead, Hutchison proposed that an independent Canadian examiner be hired to review the content.

Crown attorney Rahman argued that having a U.S. clean team do the sorting posed no greater risk than the practice of allowing U.S. police to come into the country to witness evidence

He says the clean team would review the materials without delving too deeply. It would then present an index of what's contained on the servers to the court, which would decide what gets turned over to the U.S.

Rahman noted that the treaty guiding U.S.-Canada information exchange allows for the Ontario court to place restrictions on how the evidence is used. 

"That's a little bit of cold comfort to me," said Justice Michael Quigley.

Beyond that, Rahman said this data pales in comparison to other information shared easily with the U.S., such as wiretaps.

"What's being proposed here looks very, very minor in terms of what we're exposing foreign officials to," said Rahman.

Ultimately, however, the issue comes down to cost. Rahman said the price tag to hire an independent Canadian examiner would be "prohibitive."

The judge ordered both parties to do a cost comparison between the U.S. clean team versus. hiring Canadian experts before a decision will be made.


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Researchers quit science Hall of Fame panel over lack of women nominees

Judy Illes

University of British Columbia neurologist Judy Illes, above, along with her colleague Catherine Anderson, resigned from the selection committee of the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame this month after realizing that no women had been nominated for induction two years in a row. (University of British Columbia)

Two female researchers tasked with helping to recognize the top scientists in the country have stepped down from their duties to protest lack of recognition for other women in the field.

Judy Illes and Catherine Anderson resigned from the selection committee of the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame this month after realizing that no women had been nominated for induction two years in a row.

 To have zero women two years in a row signifies a failure on our part to really reach out as needed.
- Judy Illes, University of British Columbia

Illes, a professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia, called for more direct efforts to solicit nominations of female candidates after men swept the ballot during the 2013-14 nomination period. When the result was duplicated for 2014-15, Illes stepped down to voice her objections to what she felt was a flawed process.

Anderson, a member of UBC's faculty of medicine, followed suit days later.

The Canada Science and Technology Museum, which houses the Hall of Fame, runs a nomination period of approximately one year during which the public is invited to put names forward for consideration. Illes said she pushed for officials to be more aggressive in advertising the nomination process among universities and other institutions, but feels her calls were ultimately ignored.

Canada Science and Technology Museum Ottawa

The Canada Science and Technology Museum, which houses the Hall of Fame, runs a nomination period of approximately one year during which the public is invited to put names forward for consideration. (CBC)

"We...did not do a satisfactory job in eliciting a full range of possible nominations," Illes said in a telephone interview from Vancouver.

"There are great science and engineering women out there in Canada today who have been part of our communities. To have zero women two years in a row signifies a failure on our part to really reach out as needed."

Anderson agreed, saying her decision to step down was an effort to force the museum to change its ways.

"There were some good suggestions made last year and we didn't act on them," she said. "I was afraid that if we just kept making suggestions and kept thinking that we'd do them next year, it would always be next year."

Museum spokesman Olivier Bouffard said Illes raised the lack of female nominees as a concern last June in the middle of the 2014-15 nomination period. He said the organization felt her concerns were valid and said officials are working to address the issue, but declined to offer further details.

Misunderstandings abound, since both sides have different perceptions of what Illes proposed to address the gender disparity.

"What we understood is that Dr. Illes wanted us to start over the nomination process midstream when she expressed those views in June," Bouffard said. "...We didn't feel it was fair to those who had been nominated who are deserving scientists in and of themselves."

Illes contends that she proposed allowing existing nominations to stand while working more aggressively to solicit new ones from a more diverse candidate pool.

"We're at a time now when we have to make that extra effort until we find a better balance," she said, adding that she hopes to rejoin the selection committee if that effort is made.

At least one industry observer feels that outreach effort should be targeted far beyond scientific and academic circles.

Organizations have sprung up across the country with the primary goal of attracting youth to the sciences, many of which focus specifically on girls.

Jennifer Flanagan, chief executive of youth outreach organization Actua, said the dearth of female nominees stems largely from public perceptions of women's role in the sciences.

The fact that nominations come from the public, she said, suggests that people don't perceive women as viable candidates for such prestigious honours.

More prominent recognition of women's achievements in the field would do a great deal to establish female role models and promote equality, she said.

"(The controversy) is reflective of a broader societal issue that has nothing to do with the museum and everything to do with the fact that we don't know enough about females," she said. "The opportunity here is to raise that profile."


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Hackers get lots of help from careless victims, studies show

When a cyber security breach hits the news, those most closely involved often have incentive to play up the sophistication of the attack.

If hackers are portrayed as well-funded geniuses, victims look less vulnerable, security firms can flog their products and services, and government officials can push for tougher regulation or seek more money for cyber defenses.

But two deeply researched reports being released this week underscore the less-heralded truth: the vast majority of hacking attacks are successful because employees click on links in tainted emails, companies fail to apply available patches to known software flaws, or technicians do not configure systems properly.

These conclusions will be in the minds of executives attending the world's largest technology security conference next week in San Francisco, a conference named after lead sponsor RSA, the security division of EMC Corp.

In the best-known annual study of data breaches, a report from Verizon Communications Inc to be released on Wednesday found that more than two-thirds of the 290 electronic espionage cases it learned about in 2014 involved phishing, the security industry's term for trick emails.

Because so many people click on tainted links or attachments, sending phishing emails to just 10 employees will get hackers inside corporate gates 90 percent of the time, Verizon found.

"There's an overarching pattern," said Verizon scientist Bob Rudis. Attackers use phishing to install malware and steal credentials from employees, then they use those credentials to roam through networks and access programs and files, he said.

Old, unpatched vulnerabilities exploited

Verizon's report includes its own business investigations and data from 70 other contributors, including law enforcement. It found that while major new vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed are being used by hackers within hours of their announcement, more attacks last year exploited patchable vulnerabilities dating from 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Another annual cyber report, to be released on Tuesday by Symantec Corp, found that state-sponsored spies also used phishing techniques because they work and because the less-sophisticated approach drew less scrutiny from defenders.

Once inside a system, however, the spies turned fancy, writing customized software to evade detection by whatever security programs the target has installed, Symantec said.

"Once I'm in, I can do what I need to," said Robert Shaker, an incident response manager at Symantec. The report drew on data from 57 million sensors in 157 countries and territories.

Troubling trends in ransomware

Another troubling trend Symantec found involves the use of "ransomware," in which hackers encrypt a computer's files and promise to release them only if the user pays a ransom. (Some 80 per cent of the time, they do not decrypt the files even then.)

The new twist comes from hackers who encrypt files, including those inside critical infrastructure facilities, but do not ask for anything. The mystery is why: Shaker said it is not clear whether the attackers are securing the information for resale to other spies or potential saboteurs, or whether they plan on making their own demands in the future.

At next week's RSA Conference, protecting critical infrastructure systems under increasing attack will be a major theme. Another theme will be the need for more sharing of "intelligence" about emerging threats - between the public and private sectors, within the security industry, and within certain industries.

While many of the biggest breaches of the past two years involved retailers, the healthcare industry has figured heavily in recent months. Former FBI futurist Marc Goodman said that both spies and organized criminals are likely at work, the former seeking leverage to use in recruiting informants and the latter looking to cash in on medical and insurance fraud.

Verizon's researchers said that to be most effective, information-sharing would have to be essentially in real time, from machine to machine, and cross multiple sectors, a daunting proposition.

Another section of the Verizon report could help security executives make the case for bigger budgets. The researchers produced the first analysis of the actual costs of breaches derived from insurance claims, instead of survey data.

Verizon said the best indicator of the cost of an incident is the number of records compromised, and that the cost rises logarithmically, flattening as the size of the breach rises.

According to the new Verizon model, the loss of 100,000 records should cost roughly $475,000 on average, while 100 million lost records should cost about $8.85 million.

Though the harder data will be welcome to number-crunchers, spending more money cannot guarantee complete protection against attacks.

The RSA Conference floor will feature vendors touting next-generation security products and anomaly-spotting big-data analytics. But few will actually promise that they can stop someone from clicking on a tainted email and letting a hacker in.


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Mortal Kombat X's graphic 'fatalities' may be too violent for some fans

Written By Unknown on Senin, 13 April 2015 | 22.11

Two warriors face off in a lethal duel. One, a ninja named Scorpion with cloudy grey eyes, uses his magical powers to shoot a fireball through his opponent's chest. It blows straight through the victim, the warrior princess Kitana, leaving a gaping hole in her chest.

Scorpion then takes a sword and slices her face off, which slides off with a sickening gurgling noise. Kitana's maimed body slumps to the ground, as her brain flops out of her bisected skull.

This is a scene from Mortal Kombat X, the latest fighting game from NetherRealm Studios, showing off its trademark "Fatalities."

It's nothing new for the series, which has been synonymous with over-the-top gore since the 1990s. But several critics and gamers have suggested the crystal-clear fidelity vividness of the Fatalities in the new instalment may be too much for them to stomach.

"It's taken two decades, but I think I've outgrown Mortal Kombat," wrote Kotaku UK's Ian Dransfield.

"Maybe I'm old, maybe it's the graphical fidelity that puts me off - there's a distinction between the blocky, pixellated, B-movie style spinal cords ripped out of the original Mortal Kombat and seeing someone's internal organs slapped in front of the camera in vivid detail."

When Chad Sapieha, a games critic for the National Post, first saw the clips of MKX's Fatalities, he said, "My jaw dropped, I cringed a little and then I kind of giggled at how outrageous they were." 

He said it wasn't unlike his reaction to the first Mortal Kombat decades ago, though.

"From the perspective of what's in good taste, Mortal Kombat went beyond the limit years ago, but that's always been the franchise's schtick."

Too much blood, not enough camp?

Mortal Kombat Sub Zero Fatality

In this Fatality move from 1992's Mortal Kombat, the ninja Sub-Zero rips his opponent's head and spine from his or her body. (Midway Games/Wikipedia Commons)

In many ways, Mortal Kombat X is doing what the series has always done, pushing the boundaries as advances in technology allow it to render more graphic violence. 

But the series has always mixed that with a dose of winking humour.

The first game, released in 1992, was supposed to be a tie-in to the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Universal Soldier. The game's cocky movie star character, Johnny Cage, was originally modelled after Van Damme's appearance in Bloodsport (1988).

One only needs to watch Mortal Kombat's storyline mode, featuring a cast of wise-cracking commandos, ninjas and zombies, to see that the series hasn't lost its sense of fun.

Shaun Hatton, a Toronto-based video game and pop culture critic, remembers the first time he saw kids crowd around a Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet in the '90s.

"It was like playing one of those cheesy, dubbed Asian martial-arts movies, and it also had a healthy dose of Big Trouble in Little China influence sprinkled on top."

For Hatton, though, the pendulum has veered a little too far away from the camp and more towards the gore.

"I don't know that they're necessarily more violent, because ripping someone's heart out is still very violent whether you portray it in high graphical fidelity or low fidelity. But right now, with the amount of detail that people can put into these visuals, you start to realize how gross they actually are," he said.

"And for me, they stopped being funny or entertaining."

CBC News contacted Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for this story, but no representatives from NetherRealm were made available for comment.

To Sapieha, whether or not you want to play should be determined by your personal limits. But he does praise the game's diverse cast, with characters of various ages, genders and races throwing down with equal ruthlessness.

"I see men and women and people of different races all getting diced up equally. There's no implied hate here towards a specific group, so there's no reason to jump on it from a moral perspective."

MK1 spurred creation of games ratings system

Back in the '90s, public outcry over Mortal Kombat and other games with mature content, such as the teen horror schlock fest Night Trap, prompted a U.S. Senate hearing on video game violence led by then-senator Joe Lieberman.

EP Daily Shaun Hatton

Pop culture critic Shaun Hatton grew up playing Mortal Kombat, but says some of the new Fatalities in MKX make him squeamish. He'll still play it, though. (Shaun Hatton)

In response to the criticism, the industry formed the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the first ratings system for games in North America.

Mortal Kombat was the first high-profile game to receive an M for Mature rating, which restricts teens under 17 from buying it without the consent of a parent or guardian.

There's no denying the blood-soaked fisticuffs are a winning formula for its creators. With over a dozen sequels and spin-off games, it's sold more than 26 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most successful video game franchises of all time.

Mortal Kombat has also spawned several comic books, a live-action television series and two Hollywood movies.

Back in the mid-2000s, though, fighting games like Mortal Kombat and rival Street Fighter were waning in popularity. Midway, the studio behind the Mortal Kombat series, filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

The series was eventually resurrected by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, with series creator Ed Boon again at the helm, and re-christened NetherRealm Studios, named after the world inhabited by the series' demonic villains.

Flawless victory for Warner Bros.

However, the developers aren't relying solely on dismemberments to sell their game.

The last instalment, released in 2011, earned praise for its tighter and more responsive gameplay. Players had more options to fit their preferred playstyles.

It became the first MK game to be included at the Evolution Championship Series, the biggest competitive fighting game tournament in North America.

In short, while Mortal Kombat is becoming a gorier game, it's also becoming a better one from a technical standpointrivaling more skill-focused competitors such as Street Fighter and Tekken.

It's for this reason that Hatton is still looking forward to playing Mortal Kombat X

"I do love the game. I love the fighting component, and the techniques behind it, [even though] when it comes to the finishing moves, I'm a little bit squeamish about some of them."


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SpaceX Falcon 9 launch ignites dream of reusable rocket

WATCH LIVE: SpaceX's launch and soft landing attempt, set for today at 4:33 p.m. ET in Cape Canaveral, Fl., will be livestreamed on CBCNews.ca.

To the SpaceX engineers behind this afternoon's test launch, recycling really is a matter of rocket science.

Railroads don't scrap their locomotives after every trip. Airports don't junk their jets with each flight. Yet for all their space-age know-how, aerospace scientists have long struggled with how to recommission spent booster rockets that cost tens of millions of dollars to build.

That could change after today, if SpaceX's launch and soft landing attempt succeeds in sending its Falcon 9 rocket into orbit and returning it to Earth, intact and primed for another launch.

"It would be utterly revolutionary," says Boston-based space analyst Charles Lurio, a former aerospace engineer who publishes the Lurio Report, a newsletter about the commercial space industry.

"Reusability means you don't want to throw away a multimillion-dollar vehicle on every flight. This would break this vicious cycle we've had since the '60s."

With each of SpaceX's resupply rockets so far costing in the ballpark of $60 million, the prospect of wasting a booster after each launch is not to be taken lightly.

'Close, but no cigar'

The last failed attempt in January was — as billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk put it — "close, but no cigar."

Approaching its targeted ocean barge in January, the Falcon 9's booster rocket headed toward the landing pad, but its steering fan ran out of hydraulic fluid. The rocket struck the barge at an angle, smashing its legs and engine before exploding.

Space X Elon Musk Dragon V2 Hkg9872037 May 2014

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he hopes to some day die on Mars — just not in a rocket crash. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty)

John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, remembers the attempt as a near-success.

"It got back, but it didn't slow down enough and bounced off the platform," he said. "But it did get all the way back to the platform."

That was as promising a start as any Logsdon has seen.

"Reusability has been the holy grail in the space business for a long time," Logsdon said. "The space shuttle developed in 1969 was supposed to be fully reusable until it was discovered that was too hard."

'All rockets that need to get up into orbit have to be built as light as possible.'—Kieran Carroll, chief technology officer at Gedex

Conventional launching systems are designed to separate into subsets, or "stages," after the rocket lifts off, shedding fuel tanks and engines that essentially become dead weight after their fuel is spent.

This allows the vehicle to ascend more efficiently, hauling its payload containing science experiments or supplies toward its destination.

Expendable rockets ditch their first stage, or bottom portion of the launch vehicle, into the ocean. By that point, the first stage is a virtual wreck, having been damaged by heat upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

An uncompromising equation

Building a beefier rocket isn't the answer, however.

A primary problem with reusability has been an uncompromising principle in rocket design known as the Tsiolkovksy equation, which concerns how much cargo a rocket can carry.

"It's the core equation in all of rocket design. All rockets that need to get up into orbit have to be built as light as possible," said Kieran Carroll, chief technology officer at Gedex, a Toronto aerospace instruments company funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

A typical launch vehicle only dedicates about five per cent of its total mass to payload.

Devices such as landing gear add weight, putting even more of a squeeze on room for the payload capacity.

"So you strip out everything non-essential. Shave off mass so you don't take away from the payload capacity," Carroll said.

That slimmed-down design, however, means the rocket won't last.

Until recent years, Carroll said, the thinking was that "maybe you could build a more robust reusable rocket, but you wouldn't be able to carry any payload."

Carroll said SpaceX designers have since taken advantage of progress in material science. A lighter yet stronger aluminum-lithium alloy, for example, has replaced aerospace-grade aluminum for propellant tanks.

Mars a future target

Commercial space expert Paul Kostek, former president of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, also points to advances in navigation systems, noting they have allowed for unmanned GPS-guided steering of booster rockets.

hi-spacex.jpg

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen at the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Fla. SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 on Monday, with the goal of steering it back to a landing pad in the Atlantic Ocean so the booster can be reused. (Reuters/NASA)

Once the Falcon 9 heads back to its football field-sized barge in the Atlantic Ocean, pop-out steering fins will deploy for aerodynamic guidance.

Kostek said landing legs will unfurl as the first stage of the rocket touches down.

Musk, who has stated his wish "to die on Mars, just not on impact," expresses a wider public desire for futuristic manned missions to other planets, via rockets that would land and ferry people between Earth and the moon or the Red Planet.

07739436

SpaceX plans to use an ocean barge as a landing pad for the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket. (SpaceX/Associated Press)

Reusable rockets would be essential for that to happen.

But SpaceX's mission to pull off a vertical landing manoeuvre is more than a mere flight of aerospace fancy for those dreaming of lunar colonies.

"Bringing materials up to a space station, to the moon, becomes a much quicker turnaround activity," said Kostek.

"You turn around missions faster, costs drop, and for businesses putting satellites in space, they now have a cheaper means of doing it," he said.

Check back later today for CBCNews.ca's full coverage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 liftoff at 4:33 p.m. ET.


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Game of Thrones new episode livestreamed with Twitter's Periscope app

New

First 4 episodes of Season 5 also leaked to public torrent sites

CBC News Posted: Apr 13, 2015 10:57 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 13, 2015 10:57 AM ET

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(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

For Game of Thrones fans without access to a cable or satellite TV package, there was a new way to watch the first episode of the new season live online last night – one that might not be available for the second episode.

The much-anticipated first episode aired Sunday night in Canada and the U.S. on HBO. But it was also streamed illegally online by dozens of users of Twitter's new livestreaming app, Periscope, reported  Australia-based Mumbrella, and subsequently confirmed by several other news outlets.

Media reports noted that the audio and video quality of the streams was low. But that may have been a good enough sneak preview for some fans.

Periscope was launched by Twitter in March. It and popular competitor Meerkat allow users to share live video on Twitter.

Periscope's terms of service say Twitter "respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of Periscope Services to do the same." They also state that the company:

  • Will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement.
  • Reserves the right to remove content alleged to be infringing without prior notice.
  • Will terminate a user's account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer.

On a statement provided to Mumbrella and several other media sites, Twitter said "any violation of the terms of use are taken seriously."

However, it also said it does not monitor Periscope and encourages people to report content that violates its guidelines.

In addition to being streamed live via Periscope, the first episode of Season 5 – along with the next three – were also leaked onto public torrent sites on the weekend,

Comments on this story are moderated according to our Submission Guidelines. Comments are welcome while open. We reserve the right to close comments at any time.

Submission Policy

Note: The CBC does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comments, you acknowledge that CBC has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that comments are moderated and published according to our submission guidelines.


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Iron Maiden's frontman on the future of Zeppelin(s)

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 12 April 2015 | 22.11

When the Hindenburg blew up in 1937, with it went the dreams for airship travel on a large scale. But that could soon change. In a giant hangar in Bedford, England sits an airship called the Airlander 10. It's the world's largest aircraft, a massive hybrid of a plane, balloon and hovercraft. It's not as fast as an airplane, but its proponents say it's greener, can fly for days at a time, and can land and take off from any flat area. They also say it's the future of air travel. 

Hybrid Air Vehicles, the company that manufactured the Airlander, has received millions of dollars from the EU and the U.K. government, and raised hundreds of thousands through crowdfunding and individual investors like Bruce Dickinson, frontman of Iron Maiden and part-time pilot. He spoke to Brent about why he contributed over $400,000 to the airship project. 

BB: What is it like to stand next to the Airlander?

BD: Well, it's jaw-dropping actually. I never cease to be amazed at it. I mean, it's in an enormous hangar that was built to house an aircraft about three times its size that was one of the giant airships of the '30s. It's almost more imposing because of it because you got some kind of scale behind it so it is very, very impressive.

78765450

Mike Durham, the Technical Director at Hybrid Air Vehicles, admires the helium-filled 'Airlander' aircraft in a giant airship shed. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

Can you describe for us what it looks like? It seems to have three hulls on it...

Yeah. In actual fact, the vehicle itself with its engines and everything but with no payload and without fuel basically weighs nothing. And that's because it's inflated with helium. So that's one of the reasons [why] it's so efficient. What makes it workable and manageable, and flyable by two pilots and independently maneuverable on the ground, is as soon as you put stuff on it it's heavier than air. So we can take off vertically because we've got four engines - a bit like the Harrier Jump Jet vectors the thrust - and, in fact, we can take an under-slung load like a helicopter can and we can lower things and do all the stuff that big helicopters can do but we can take massive loads in it. We can take an under-slung load of 35 tons. I mean, that's a locomotive.

When I hear you talk about it, you sound like I fan.  

Of course I'm a fan. That's why I invested in it. It's a game-changing piece of aviation technology. It's not going to replace the airplane, it's not going to replace the helicopter, but it's a hybrid that fits right between in a really cool niche where it can do things that neither of those two forms of aerial transportation can do. And it can do it very efficiently and in a very ecologically-friendly and green way. 

78765855

Bruce Dickinson (R), the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden, sits at the controls on the flight deck of the helium-filled Airlander aircraft. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

You've put a lot of your own money into this. Tell us about the conversation you had with your wife when you told her you wanted to invest in an airship. 

(Laughs.) Well, I said, look, you know we've got a few bucks sitting in the bank account. How much do you think we could afford to burn if I took it out now and I took took a whole lot of bucks and burnt it in the street. (Laughs.) We came to a number. And I said, well, I'm thinking of investing in this project. And I described it to her, and she went, 'That's amazing!' She goes, 'That's a visionary thing.' And if you invest in something that has a vision, it's a bit like Elon Musk with the electric car. You know, with the Tesla? 

Right. 

And years ago people went 'You must be crazy. Nobody's going to buy one of those.'

But everybody might drive an electric car one day. Not everybody is going to have an Airlander.

No, of course not. I mean the market for these vehicles we estimate - actually, it wasn't us that estimated the market for this vehicle, it was one of the two major aerospace manufacturers in the world. I'm not going to tell you which one but they estimated the market to be between eight hundred and one thousand vehicles which is pretty healthy.

78765602

(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


    
So if I buy one, if I need one, what do I need it to do? What is the point of me owning one? 

Let's take an immediate issue. You're familiar with the ice roads and ice road truckers and all that stuff?

Yes, of course. 

Not necessary anymore. You don't need a road, don't need anything. You want to resupply a community in the remote areas of Canada where there's oil and oil sands and all the rest of it? And, by the way, you want to put the pipelines in there as well and you want to lay the pipelines? And you want to deliver the whole thing and take out the trash? One of these vehicles does it for you. Doesn't need a road, doesn't need a runway, doesn't need any facilities other than a flat piece of snow. 

Sounds like you've already thought about selling it to a lot of Canadians. 
    
A lot of Canadians have already thought about buying it. If you talk to people who do logistics, they get this in a heartbeat. It's point to point. I mean, for example, people worry about food miles now with fruit and vegetables. The economies of many African countries depend upon being able to export their fruit and veg to Europe. Something like 80% of the fruit that gets put on ships is dead and wasted by the time it arrives. If they put it on the old freighter airplanes that they used, they're not very ecologically friendly and it's expensive to begin with. But with an Airlander, okay we don't go as fast as an airplane, but we fly for 26 hours non-stop. It amounts to the same thing. And the point is that arriving at six in the morning at an international airport, you've then got to put it on a truck that you're then going to drive to the processing plant, and god forbid you've got to get it in the rainy season in Africa off the farm and to an airport. The Airlander lands on the farm, you load the stuff in, you take off and you land in ... wherever.

78765356

(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


    
People, unfortunately, when the think of airships or they see something this large they think of the Hindenburg disaster which happened all the way back in 1937.

Yes they do. 

What makes the Airlander safe?

Well, first of all, the Hindenburg as people probably realize was filled with highly inflammable hydrogen gas. The kind that people are comfortably now putting in their cars. So, in actual fact, you're driving around in a vehicle full of gasoline which is infinitely more likely to catch fire than an Airlander. Our vehicle is full of inert helium which provides the lighter than air bit of the hybrid technology.

So it won't blow up.

It won't blow up, no it won't blow up. And people ask, 'Oh my god, what happens if it has a puncture?' Well, I can assure you that we had some experience with this - the company - when they built low altitude blimps for the military. And somebody said, 'Well, what happens if somebody comes in with a machine gun and fills it full of holes?' Well, I can tell you. While they were still waiting in the hangar, they did just that. They blasted it full of holes with machine guns and they waited for it to deflate. Well, it was still hanging there 18 hours later. 

Were you there when they shot it with machine guns? 
     
No, I wasn't. I've seen the film though. No this was like fifteen years ago.

Bruce, you've flown Iron Maiden around the world on tour, you're a pilot. Do you think you might do that in a blimp one day?
    
Oh, I've already put my dibs in for a plan as to what would be great. I mean, there's a long way to go before we start qualifying pilots on this vehicle, but it should not be any more complicated than qualifying a person to fly a regular airplane like a turbo prop airliner or a jet airliner. It's exactly the same process. What I would love to do, personally, I would love to fly the airplane round the world twice, from pole to pole. North Pole to South Pole and all the way back up again. Then just for giggles, lets do it round the equator so we could break every airship record there's ever been. But more important that that, we could fly it a lot over land, over the Amazon, over the most extraordinary parts of this planet. Where we can go in this vehicle - we can go down into the hover about five feet above the treetops and just drift on minimal, minimal power chugging around. It's kind of like Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, except our sea happens to be the air. In fact, you can think of the Hybrid Air Vehicle as being a flying submarine. If that's too much for you, we're buoyant, and we're just buoyant in a different medium than the sea. 

That would be an amazing sight to see. That would be a terrific movie. You know, people are going to start thinking you're a member of Zeppelin... 

Well, there you are. You see, we had Eddie - we had 'Ed Force One' when it was the 757, maybe this is the Ed Zeppelin. 

Bruce Dickinson thank you for talking to us. 

That's great. Thank you very much.  

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Bruce Dickinson sits at the controls on the flight deck of the helium-filled Airlander aircraft in a giant airship shed. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


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Paying for YouTube: The next experiment in the TV revolution

Would you pay to watch YouTube videos, uninterrupted by advertising?

That's a question a lot of business analysts — and users — are now pondering, as reports emerge that Google's video-streaming site is in the process of launching an as-yet-unnamed monthly subscription service.  

"Probably not, I don't know if I could justify it," says Michael Senchuk, a music blogger in Edmonton. "But if it was a couple bucks a month, maybe."

So far YouTube has declined to confirm specifics, but early reports suggest the cost of the premium service may be $10 a month.  

Whatever the price, the effort will be yet another test of what it takes to get consumers to fork out hard-earned cash for the type of creative content that the internet once offered for free.  

'It's very hard to to go from free to a subscription mode.'- Ramona Pringle

"Netflix has proved people are willing to pay," says Duncan Stewart, a media analyst and trend forecaster with Deloitte Canada. "I'm not suggesting YouTube's success is a foregone conclusion, but I understand why they're trying it."

YouTube is already a global giant, with more than one billion users and $4 billion a year in revenue.

New streaming services

It's not the only content company trying to win over subscribers via the internet. The revolution in how people consume content is ongoing:

Budget-conscious Canadians will need to add up their entertainment costs, especially now that Canada's telecom regulator has ordered that a new pick-and-pay system for cable TV customers be put in place by 2016. 

Ordering from an a la carte menu of services, including Netflix and YouTube plus specialty channels, could end up costing more than the prix fixe of a cable subscription.

Once upon a time the internet was free

Not so long ago, users believed everything on the internet should be free. 

Music, books, video games, television and movies are all industries that have seen their business models blown apart — either by pirates or via legitimate digital companies. And while Netflix, Apple and Amazon have been successful in convincing consumers to pay for online products, others have struggled.  

Canada's largest circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star, attempted to recover revenue lost through falling sales in 2013 by installing a paywall on its website, charging readers who opted for online news.

But a little more than a year later, the paper announced the wall will be coming down. Its digital focus will shift instead to a tablet edition.  

Online-House of Cards

Netflix, which streams the political drama House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, left, and Michael Kelly, has been successful in getting people to pay. (Netflix/ Associated Press)

"It's very hard to go from free to a subscription model," says Ramona Pringle, creative director of Ryerson University's Transmedia Zone.

"With Netflix, paying has always been the deal. With YouTube, the users are content creators as much as they're content consumers. They're part of the value proposition. That could cause some pushback against paying."

Pringle notes that the bar has been set high by other subscription models. "Netflix's House of Cards has a huge budget, and Amazon's Transparent won at the Golden Globes."  (Transparent won best comedy and best actor, while House of Cards is both an Emmy and Golden Globes winner.)

More than cat videos

"The stuff that's going to be part of a YouTube paid service will not be kitten videos," predicts Deloitte's Stewart. He expects the service to up its game and to target specific customers.

"There are two types of users," he says.

"Big TV-watchers who want to pay as little as possible to get as much as possible, and real connoisseurs who are willing to pay more for special programming.

"I like to say that subscription television will be craft TV, in the same way we have craft beer. Just like with beer, it tends to be for those who want strong flavours. And those people may consume less, but they'll pay about the same."

Stewart recently analyzed what the world's television watchers pay on an hourly basis for different types of services.

His math was simple — take the billions of hours watched globally and stack that up against the revenues of traditional networks and subscription services.

Consumers pay less when they watch ads

His numbers show that traditional TV with advertising generates just four cents an hour, while Netflix is five times more lucrative at 20 cents an hour.

"Television with advertising tends to be cheaper on a per hour basis than television by subscription," says Stewart.

And he points out that the former president of Bell Media made a similar distinction between types of users in December, when the company launched Crave TV, its Netflix-like add-on for subscribers.  

Kevin Crull noted that 90 per cent of Canadians subscribe to TV services, and suggested cord-cutters aren't true television aficionados.  

"The 10 per cent that aren't TV subscribers, in a general sense, they're not TV lovers," Crull said.

The director of communications for Netflix has little to say about YouTube's effort.  

"If you provide content that people want to watch in a timely fashion and at a reasonable price, they will pay for it," Jonathan Friedland told CBC News.

Consumers will decide what works and what doesn't. As the American writer and internet thinker Clay Shirky observed six years ago, "that is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place."


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Should you pay if you get an illegal download notice?

Canada's crackdown on illegal downloading is in full swing, with more and more Canadians reporting that they're receiving notices from their internet service providers. The notices say they could be on the hook legally for downloading copyrighted files.

The warnings are part of a new provision under Canada's Copyright Modernization Act, called the "notice and notice" program, which came into effect on January 1st.

Under the provision, copyright holders — such as movie studios — send a notice to ISPs to inform them about alleged infringements. The ISP, in turn, is required by law to forward that notice onto the customer. But the ISP isn't allowed to reveal the identity of the person to the copyright holder without a court order.

Calgary's Darren Mycroft says he received four illegal downloading notices from his internet service provider, Shaw. He says he got four of the notices in his email inbox this week, all on the same day.

"It was a shock to me. I was really confused, because I don't download files illegally. I wasn't worried or scared because I know that I hadn't done anything wrong, I haven't downloaded anything illegally since Napster shut down so it wasn't me," says Mycroft.

Illegal downloading - settlement website

Screenshot of CEG TEK's website, a copyright enforcement company. Darren Mycroft says the illegal downloading notice he received from his ISP directed him to this page in order to pay settlements for files he says he did not download. (Darren Mycroft)

Mycroft says the notices he received encouraged him to go to a website to pay at least $450.00 in settlements, to avoid further legal action. But he says he has no plans to pay.

"It is almost a form of extortion in my opinion. Once you follow the link to their site, they're asking for your personal information so the privacy that's being protected by your ISP is no longer there because as soon as you go to that site they can look and actually find out who you are," says Mycroft. 

According to Industry Canada, Canadians can be liable for up to $5,000 for downloading a film or other copyrighted material for personal use under the "notice and notice" provision.

Meghan Sali, campaigns coordinator with internet advocacy organization Open Media, says Canada's copyright laws and the notices Canadians receive are doing exactly what they should: deterring people from downloading illegally.

But still, she advises Canadians not to pay settlement fees when they receive a notice from their ISP. She says the notices may not reflect the legal reality of what an illegal downloader could be required to pay. She says people are asked to pay settlement fees, when there's no proof of a law being broken.

"There need to be some clear and simple rules put into the Industry Canada's guidelines about what type of information can be included in the notice. If there aren't any rules around what can go into these notices, Canadians are unsure about whether or not this is actually a real threat to them and that is where ultimately the confusion comes in," says Sali.

Sali says other cases can involve so-called "copyright trolls", companies hired by copyright holders to go after illegal downloaders. She says "copyright trolls" bank on fears of further legal action even when there is no proof of guilt. 

"Copyright trolls actually don't want you to go to court. They know it's difficult to win and what they'd like you to do is settle outside of court and that's really where this bullying behaviour comes in," says Sali.

Mycroft says the files he is being accused of downloading are pornographic movies. He says he's looked back at the dates in question, and he suspects it may have been a friend he had over to his place that day, but he isn't sure.

Sali says Open Media has heard from many Canadians who've been pursued for files with explicit titles. 

"Usually what they [copyright trolls] do is pick titles that are explicit and pornographic because they know they're more likely to get money out of them [subscribers]. They know that these people would be embarrassed if this came to light. Essentially what this amounts to is a shakedown," says Sali.

It's not clear if that happened in Mycroft's case.

Torrent site

Homepage for the website seventorrents.org, featuring a banner ad for shipping company DHL. Movie and music piracy thrives online in part because website operators receive advertising dollars from major companies. (AP Photo) (The Associated Press)

Sali says Canadians shouldn't take the consequences of illegal downloading lightly. She says if you are downloading illegally, you could end up getting sued. 

"The reason the government spent so much time crafting this system is to educate Canadians about copyright infringement. And that's what the notices do and they're remarkably effective at this," says Sali.

But Sali says she wants to see guidelines in place so that Canadians can be sure they're receiving accurate information when they receive illegal download notices.


22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Should you pay if you get an illegal download notice?

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 11 April 2015 | 22.11

Canada's crackdown on illegal downloading is in full swing, with more and more Canadians reporting that they're receiving notices from their internet service providers. The notices say they could be on the hook legally for downloading copyrighted files.

The warnings are part of a new provision under Canada's Copyright Modernization Act, called the "notice and notice" program, which came into effect on January 1st.

Under the provision, copyright holders — such as movie studios — send a notice to ISPs to inform them about alleged infringements. The ISP, in turn, is required by law to forward that notice onto the customer. But the ISP isn't allowed to reveal the identity of the person to the copyright holder without a court order.

Calgary's Darren Mycroft says he received four illegal downloading notices from his internet service provider, Shaw. He says he got four of the notices in his email inbox this week, all on the same day.

"It was a shock to me. I was really confused, because I don't download files illegally. I wasn't worried or scared because I know that I hadn't done anything wrong, I haven't downloaded anything illegally since Napster shut down so it wasn't me," says Mycroft.

Illegal downloading - settlement website

Screenshot of CEG TEK's website, a copyright enforcement company. Darren Mycroft says the illegal downloading notice he received from his ISP directed him to this page in order to pay settlements for files he says he did not download. (Darren Mycroft)

Mycroft says the notices he received encouraged him to go to a website to pay at least $450.00 in settlements, to avoid further legal action. But he says he has no plans to pay.

"It is almost a form of extortion in my opinion. Once you follow the link to their site, they're asking for your personal information so the privacy that's being protected by your ISP is no longer there because as soon as you go to that site they can look and actually find out who you are," says Mycroft. 

According to Industry Canada, Canadians can be liable for up to $5,000 for downloading a film or other copyrighted material for personal use under the "notice and notice" provision.

Meghan Sali, campaigns coordinator with internet advocacy organization Open Media, says Canada's copyright laws and the notices Canadians receive are doing exactly what they should: deterring people from downloading illegally.

But still, she advises Canadians not to pay settlement fees when they receive a notice from their ISP. She says the notices may not reflect the legal reality of what an illegal downloader could be required to pay. She says people are asked to pay settlement fees, when there's no proof of a law being broken.

"There need to be some clear and simple rules put into the Industry Canada's guidelines about what type of information can be included in the notice. If there aren't any rules around what can go into these notices, Canadians are unsure about whether or not this is actually a real threat to them and that is where ultimately the confusion comes in," says Sali.

Sali says other cases can involve so-called "copyright trolls", companies hired by copyright holders to go after illegal downloaders. She says "copyright trolls" bank on fears of further legal action even when there is no proof of guilt. 

"Copyright trolls actually don't want you to go to court. They know it's difficult to win and what they'd like you to do is settle outside of court and that's really where this bullying behaviour comes in," says Sali.

Mycroft says the files he is being accused of downloading are pornographic movies. He says he's looked back at the dates in question, and he suspects it may have been a friend he had over to his place that day, but he isn't sure.

Sali says Open Media has heard from many Canadians who've been pursued for files with explicit titles. 

"Usually what they [copyright trolls] do is pick titles that are explicit and pornographic because they know they're more likely to get money out of them [subscribers]. They know that these people would be embarrassed if this came to light. Essentially what this amounts to is a shakedown," says Sali.

It's not clear if that happened in Mycroft's case.

Torrent site

Homepage for the website seventorrents.org, featuring a banner ad for shipping company DHL. Movie and music piracy thrives online in part because website operators receive advertising dollars from major companies. (AP Photo) (The Associated Press)

Sali says Canadians shouldn't take the consequences of illegal downloading lightly. She says if you are downloading illegally, you could end up getting sued. 

"The reason the government spent so much time crafting this system is to educate Canadians about copyright infringement. And that's what the notices do and they're remarkably effective at this," says Sali.

But Sali says she wants to see guidelines in place so that Canadians can be sure they're receiving accurate information when they receive illegal download notices.


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Iron Maiden's frontman on the future of Zeppelin(s)

When the Hindenburg blew up in 1937, with it went the dreams for airship travel on a large scale. But that could soon change. In a giant hangar in Bedford, England sits an airship called the Airlander 10. It's the world's largest aircraft, a massive hybrid of a plane, balloon and hovercraft. It's not as fast as an airplane, but its proponents say it's greener, can fly for days at a time, and can land and take off from any flat area. They also say it's the future of air travel. 

Hybrid Air Vehicles, the company that manufactured the Airlander, has received millions of dollars from the EU and the U.K. government, and raised hundreds of thousands through crowdfunding and individual investors like Bruce Dickinson, frontman of Iron Maiden and part-time pilot. He spoke to Brent about why he contributed over $400,000 to the airship project. 

BB: What is it like to stand next to the Airlander?

BD: Well, it's jaw-dropping actually. I never cease to be amazed at it. I mean, it's in an enormous hangar that was built to house an aircraft about three times its size that was one of the giant airships of the '30s. It's almost more imposing because of it because you got some kind of scale behind it so it is very, very impressive.

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Mike Durham, the Technical Director at Hybrid Air Vehicles, admires the helium-filled 'Airlander' aircraft in a giant airship shed. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

Can you describe for us what it looks like? It seems to have three hulls on it...

Yeah. In actual fact, the vehicle itself with its engines and everything but with no payload and without fuel basically weighs nothing. And that's because it's inflated with helium. So that's one of the reasons [why] it's so efficient. What makes it workable and manageable, and flyable by two pilots and independently maneuverable on the ground, is as soon as you put stuff on it it's heavier than air. So we can take off vertically because we've got four engines - a bit like the Harrier Jump Jet vectors the thrust - and, in fact, we can take an under-slung load like a helicopter can and we can lower things and do all the stuff that big helicopters can do but we can take massive loads in it. We can take an under-slung load of 35 tons. I mean, that's a locomotive.

When I hear you talk about it, you sound like I fan.  

Of course I'm a fan. That's why I invested in it. It's a game-changing piece of aviation technology. It's not going to replace the airplane, it's not going to replace the helicopter, but it's a hybrid that fits right between in a really cool niche where it can do things that neither of those two forms of aerial transportation can do. And it can do it very efficiently and in a very ecologically-friendly and green way. 

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Bruce Dickinson (R), the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden, sits at the controls on the flight deck of the helium-filled Airlander aircraft. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

You've put a lot of your own money into this. Tell us about the conversation you had with your wife when you told her you wanted to invest in an airship. 

(Laughs.) Well, I said, look, you know we've got a few bucks sitting in the bank account. How much do you think we could afford to burn if I took it out now and I took took a whole lot of bucks and burnt it in the street. (Laughs.) We came to a number. And I said, well, I'm thinking of investing in this project. And I described it to her, and she went, 'That's amazing!' She goes, 'That's a visionary thing.' And if you invest in something that has a vision, it's a bit like Elon Musk with the electric car. You know, with the Tesla? 

Right. 

And years ago people went 'You must be crazy. Nobody's going to buy one of those.'

But everybody might drive an electric car one day. Not everybody is going to have an Airlander.

No, of course not. I mean the market for these vehicles we estimate - actually, it wasn't us that estimated the market for this vehicle, it was one of the two major aerospace manufacturers in the world. I'm not going to tell you which one but they estimated the market to be between eight hundred and one thousand vehicles which is pretty healthy.

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(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


    
So if I buy one, if I need one, what do I need it to do? What is the point of me owning one? 

Let's take an immediate issue. You're familiar with the ice roads and ice road truckers and all that stuff?

Yes, of course. 

Not necessary anymore. You don't need a road, don't need anything. You want to resupply a community in the remote areas of Canada where there's oil and oil sands and all the rest of it? And, by the way, you want to put the pipelines in there as well and you want to lay the pipelines? And you want to deliver the whole thing and take out the trash? One of these vehicles does it for you. Doesn't need a road, doesn't need a runway, doesn't need any facilities other than a flat piece of snow. 

Sounds like you've already thought about selling it to a lot of Canadians. 
    
A lot of Canadians have already thought about buying it. If you talk to people who do logistics, they get this in a heartbeat. It's point to point. I mean, for example, people worry about food miles now with fruit and vegetables. The economies of many African countries depend upon being able to export their fruit and veg to Europe. Something like 80% of the fruit that gets put on ships is dead and wasted by the time it arrives. If they put it on the old freighter airplanes that they used, they're not very ecologically friendly and it's expensive to begin with. But with an Airlander, okay we don't go as fast as an airplane, but we fly for 26 hours non-stop. It amounts to the same thing. And the point is that arriving at six in the morning at an international airport, you've then got to put it on a truck that you're then going to drive to the processing plant, and god forbid you've got to get it in the rainy season in Africa off the farm and to an airport. The Airlander lands on the farm, you load the stuff in, you take off and you land in ... wherever.

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(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


    
People, unfortunately, when the think of airships or they see something this large they think of the Hindenburg disaster which happened all the way back in 1937.

Yes they do. 

What makes the Airlander safe?

Well, first of all, the Hindenburg as people probably realize was filled with highly inflammable hydrogen gas. The kind that people are comfortably now putting in their cars. So, in actual fact, you're driving around in a vehicle full of gasoline which is infinitely more likely to catch fire than an Airlander. Our vehicle is full of inert helium which provides the lighter than air bit of the hybrid technology.

So it won't blow up.

It won't blow up, no it won't blow up. And people ask, 'Oh my god, what happens if it has a puncture?' Well, I can assure you that we had some experience with this - the company - when they built low altitude blimps for the military. And somebody said, 'Well, what happens if somebody comes in with a machine gun and fills it full of holes?' Well, I can tell you. While they were still waiting in the hangar, they did just that. They blasted it full of holes with machine guns and they waited for it to deflate. Well, it was still hanging there 18 hours later. 

Were you there when they shot it with machine guns? 
     
No, I wasn't. I've seen the film though. No this was like fifteen years ago.

Bruce, you've flown Iron Maiden around the world on tour, you're a pilot. Do you think you might do that in a blimp one day?
    
Oh, I've already put my dibs in for a plan as to what would be great. I mean, there's a long way to go before we start qualifying pilots on this vehicle, but it should not be any more complicated than qualifying a person to fly a regular airplane like a turbo prop airliner or a jet airliner. It's exactly the same process. What I would love to do, personally, I would love to fly the airplane round the world twice, from pole to pole. North Pole to South Pole and all the way back up again. Then just for giggles, lets do it round the equator so we could break every airship record there's ever been. But more important that that, we could fly it a lot over land, over the Amazon, over the most extraordinary parts of this planet. Where we can go in this vehicle - we can go down into the hover about five feet above the treetops and just drift on minimal, minimal power chugging around. It's kind of like Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, except our sea happens to be the air. In fact, you can think of the Hybrid Air Vehicle as being a flying submarine. If that's too much for you, we're buoyant, and we're just buoyant in a different medium than the sea. 

That would be an amazing sight to see. That would be a terrific movie. You know, people are going to start thinking you're a member of Zeppelin... 

Well, there you are. You see, we had Eddie - we had 'Ed Force One' when it was the 757, maybe this is the Ed Zeppelin. 

Bruce Dickinson thank you for talking to us. 

That's great. Thank you very much.  

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Bruce Dickinson sits at the controls on the flight deck of the helium-filled Airlander aircraft in a giant airship shed. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images) (Getty Images)


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'Romeo and Juliet' reveal love in the time of dinosaurs

Romeo and Juliet, two dinosaurs that died tragically side by side millions of years ago, are helping reveal what dinosaur love looked like back in the day.

The fossils of the two turkey-sized oviraptors, nicknamed Romeo and Juliet, lay buried together in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia for 75 million years until being uncovered by paleontologists.

"What we think happened is that these two dinosaurs were nestled together during a downpour of rain and they were trying to find shelter by the side of a great big sand dune," said Scott Persons, a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta who studied the fossils.

The sand dune likely collapsed and buried them alive very quickly and deeply, leaving some well-preserved fossils for paleontologists to find, Persons told CBC's Quirks & Quarks during an interview that airs Saturday.

Oviraptors are distantly related to birds, but couldn't fly. Specimens in China have been found with feathers, including some with beautiful light and dark markings. Some specimens also had fused tail bones similar to those used by birds such as peacocks to support large fans of feathers.

Romeo and Juliet

'I imagine Romeo in a courtship dance, approaching Juliette, probably right up front, possibly flashing some of the feathers that it also has on its arms, and then waving that tail,' researcher Scott Persons told CBC's Quirks & Quarks. (Sydney Mohr/University of Alberta)

That led Persons and his colleagues to propose that the oviraptor feathers weren't for flying, but were fanned out like the tails of male turkeys or peacocks as part of courtship displays and dances.

If that were the case, you'd expect to find bigger feathers on males than females — and bigger tail muscles to support them.

So Persons and his colleagues examined the tails of Romeo and Juliet to see if they could find any evidence of that.

What they found was that based on the shape of their bones, oviraptor tails had very large muscles for swinging their tails up and down and from side to side.

And even though Romeo and Juliet appeared to be about the same size and age, Romeo's tail bones were shaped quite differently from Juliet's.

Tail bones

Romeo's and Juliet's tailbones were shaped differently, suggesting that Romeo had larger muscles for swinging his tail from side-to-side. (University of Alberta)

"What this tells us is that Romeo has got a tail that's got even larger muscles responsible for swinging it from side to side," Persons said.

That would have made it possible for him to arch and curve his tail in impressive ways.

"I imagine Romeo in a courtship dance, approaching Juliette, probably right up front, possibly flashing some of the feathers that it also has on its arms, and then waving that tail, maybe raising it up high … and then swishing the tail side to side, but posing and really strutting its stuff."

Persons says the discovery may help identify other oviraptors as male or female in different contexts. For example, one skeleton has been found over a nest of eggs. An examination of its tail may reveal whether the father or the mother was keeping those eggs warm, offering new clues about the social lives of those dinosaurs.

It may also reveal where feathers came from, since oviraptors didn't fly and aren't that closely related to the dinosaurs that gave rise to birds, Persons added.

"This tells us that in fact complex feathers first originated not for flight or for gliding, but for socials or sexual displays."

The findings, coauthored by Gregory Funston and Philip Currie at the University of Alberta and Mark Norell at the American Museum of Natural History, were published in the journal Scientific Reports.


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Online surveillance now routine for police investigators, federal memo says

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 10 April 2015 | 22.11

Canadian police seek online and phone data from telecommunications companies in almost every criminal investigation, according to a briefing note to the federal minister for public safety, obtained by CBC News.

The scale of the practice suggested in the memo indicates it has become routine for officers to tap into private internet activity.

"Canadian police estimate that at least one form of lawful access request is made by government agencies to TSPs [telecom service providers] in about 80-95 per cent of all investigations today," states the Sept. 26, 2014 memo addressed to Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, released under the Access to Information Act.

Lawful access includes police asking telecommunications companies to install wiretaps, give access to emails or texts, and hand over identifiers like the name or address of a customer.

Tamir Israel, a lawyer specializing in internet and technology law, says the figure is likely so high because until a Supreme Court decision last June, police didn't need a warrant to obtain subscriber information such as the name and address associated with an IP address. 

"When a tool is unregulated in this way, it becomes a matter of standard practice," said Israel, a lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. "No assessment is made as to the invasiveness of the tool, whether it's justified in a particular context or not. It's easy to do. It's low cost, so you just do it."​

A similar pattern of behaviour was seen before wiretapping became illegal in Canada without judicial authorization, says Israel. In those days, Canadian police employed wiretaps 20 times more often, per capita, than their counterparts in the U.S. where it was restricted, he says.

"A lot of those are going to be innocent people," said Israel. "A lot of privacy gets violated to find the one person who is the actual criminal.

'Incredibly high rate'

In recent years, civil liberty advocates, journalists and Canada's privacy watchdog have repeatedly sought details on the frequency with which telecom companies hand over data to police officers.

Not all are convinced that the 80-95 per cent estimate is accurate.

"How exactly did they derive such high numbers? What is the methodology?" asks Chris Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at Citizen Lab, an academic unit at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs.

"If it is sound, that indicates an incredibly high rate, assuming that all crimes or all investigations are some way linked with telecommunications data."

It's unclear where the police estimate comes from. Public Safety only said that the figure is an estimate provided by law enforcement agencies.

The federal Office of the Privacy Commissioner said in 2014 that the RCMP didn't keep proper records of how often it asked telecom companies for subscriber data, which at the time didn't require a warrant.

'It could also mean that Public Safety was interested in seeing if there was a way to prevent the reports from coming out.'- Chris Parsons

However, attempts by the commissioner to extract that information from telcos proved a bit more fruitful.

Nine of them revealed that they'd been asked 1.2 million times over the course of a year by investigators for subscriber information — a figure that equates to more than 3,200 times a day.

Legal issues examined

In recent years, there have been increasing demands for transparency over the disclosure of Canadians' online and phone data, particularly following the series of revelations about government surveillance leaked by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Online Surveillance 20141030

In 2014, TekSavvy, Rogers and Telus became the first telecommunications companies in the country to release transparency reports. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Last year, TekSavvy, Rogers and Telus became the first telecommunications companies to release transparency reports — following in the footsteps of their U.S. counterparts and spurred to action by a questionnaire sent by a group of academics led by Parsons. Bell Canada was alone among the large telcos not to issue a report.

Previously released government documents suggested that Public Safety officials worried that the firms might divulge "sensitive operational details" in their reports.

The federal department sought advice on whether any potential legal issues might exist around the disclosure of how telecommunication companies interacted with police, the newly released ministerial briefing says.

"If I were being very charitable, it could be a way to assuage the concerns that ISPs [internet service providers] may have had," said Parsons. "Less charitably, it could also mean that Public Safety was interested in seeing if there was a way to prevent the reports from coming out."

Many internet and phone service providers cited potential legal issues — along with a litany of other reasons — as why they failed to disclose any figures.

Telus seeks guidance

Canadian officials also turned to the U.S. for guidance on the unprecedented disclosures of telecom data, noting that the U.S. government issued specific guidance to companies, according to documents released via access to information.

However, the U.S. guidance focused only on secretive terrorism-related requests, such as through national security letters issued by the FBI, and put no restrictions on crime-related figures. 

The documents obtained also reveal that Telus officials not only met with the deputy minister of public safety, Francois Guimont, in April 2014, "seeking guidance" on issuing a transparency report, but that they also sent a letter to the public safety minister three weeks prior to its release.

On Aug. 29, 2014, Telus president Darren Entwistle wrote a letter to Public Safety Minister Blaney to alert him to the imminent release of the company's transparency report. Entwistle wrote in French that the firm placed importance on its relationship with the government, but also recognized Canadians' interest in privacy.

More than two weeks later, the Vancouver-based company released its report, revealing it had received 103,500 requests for information about its customers in 2013.

"To clarify, Telus consulted with Public Safety Canada on the topic of transparency in general," Josée Sirois, a spokeswoman for Public Safety wrote in an email. "Public Safety Canada did not consult with TSPs on their specific transparency reports."

Rogers and TekSavvy had released their reports three months earlier. Both firms have said they did not consult with the government before publishing the reports.

Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said the firm "sought a broad range of input" before its inaugural transparency report. 

"We wanted to ensure we understood the views of organizations including Public Safety and privacy advocates," Hall wrote in an email. He didn't give specifics on who was approached.

Lawful Access One (PDF)
Lawful Access One (Text)


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