Well, and of course there is the issue that CHRC laptops were apparently NOT wifi enabled at the time. Makes it very difficult to do. (sorry I can't find the link to that story).
I'm no more of a techie than you are, but I can tell you this. If I put my wireless thingie in the basement of my house I can't get a connection on the second floor; a distance of what, 50 feet or so.
Well, I live in a neighbourhood of three-story houses and, should I wish to do so right now, I could log into any one of three or four of my neighbour's wifi connections.
And, like Robert, my wifi source is in the basement. I work from the 2nd floor, without ever losing connectivity, so I'm thinking it depends on the wifi itself.
Our crown corporation and major internet provider, SaskTel, is now offering providing wifi as part of its hi-speed internet package.
As to the conspiracy, well, imaginations do like to roam...
When I bought my iPod touch I connected it to my employer's wireless network. I went for a walk and saw that the signal got all the way down to the street from the 3rd floor, and about 15 feet past the building before fading.
I'm no computer whiz, but this strikes me like a guy desperately needing to take a leak and rather than going back into the house to use his own bathroom, or ducking around the side of the house, he decides instead to walk 400 metres and do it in the middle of a stranger's driveway.
It might be physically possible, but not only would no sane person do it, it's too pointless for most insane people to do it either.
So if the commission is not responsible is Hechme lying then? Did Bell screw up (which wouldn't be surprising)? Not being sarcastic, just wondering what the possible explanations are at this point.
Forget the conspiracy theory for a second. How did Bell Canada make the connection between Jadewarr and an internet IP address used for a transaction at Stormfront?
Right now, I'm assigned an IP by my service provider. If I go to Stormfront and sign on using some user name, my ISP shouldn't be collecting that information anywhere; at least, that's how I understand the privacy issues. Only after Stormfront submits the IP to Bell will they then trace it back to me and then release the information after a subpoena. Do we know Stormfront collected and submitted the actual IP assigned to "Jadewarr" for the transaction in question?
To answer one question...
http://www.technologyreview.com/...Infotech/20432/
According to Michael Geist in a question and answer post on CBC:
Don
Is is considered a punishable crime for me to log onto and use someone elses wireless signal, without their knowledge.
Michael Geist: It depends. If the wifi signal is locked or password protected, then certainly. If it is open wifi, then arguably no, since one could make a credible argument that the open wifi was a signal (no pun intended) that the wifi owner is comfortable with others accessing it.
But I am finding this all very strange? The information came from Lemire? That's sooooooooo not credible? And then some Traditional media articles confuse that whole issue too.
If the HRC did in fact break in to that connection, that would be illegal, INSTANTLY. I think a Proxy would be far easier, less traceable and is completely doable.
I remember the old days. Win-gating, DoS attacks etcetera. I am Remaining wired. And locked down. When I leave my house, I unplug from the matrix.
I would put Lemire, Stacey and Warman in the same drawer credibility wise; but that's just me.
The problem I have with this story is not technical - a non-CHRC wifi enabled laptop could have been used - but rather procedural. Where were the logs of the Jadewarr account's users? Where was the supervision of these cowboys?
The level of sloppiness and disregard for basic investigative technique means that the CHRC s13 investigators can barely produce a chain of evidence. Of course, so long as they appear before a Tribunal which allows them to swap out evidence they don't like for evidence they do there is no incentive to proceed properly.
That lack of proper procedure taints every investigation these people have done. Combined with their lack of disclosure it is difficult to see how any of the decisions of the Tribunal in s. 13 cases is immune from serious challenge.
It is a mess and it needs to be judicially investigated.
In other news the Islam-3 want to surrender - presser tomorrow in TO.
Hey! Jay! Do you "agree with [my] 60’s style leftish thinking"? No? Why aren't you banned here, then? : )
The swapped out evidence amounts to this. A download from Stormfront was placed in evidence. Its evidentiary value had nothing to do with the person who downloaded it. The original, however, blew an investigator's cover. The "swap" was for a document that contained the exact-same content, minus the identity of the downloader, which wasn't an issue in the hearing.
I have yet to hear from the speech-warriors why some kind of mortal sin was committed here.
In other news the Islam-3 want to surrender - presser tomorrow in TO.
I doubt it, Jay. I think Warren has it right. They'll present a very reasonable proposal to end this which Whyte will reject and by doing so look like the arsehole he is.
And by the way, you misspelled "we're whining" on your blog.
Charles:
I take your point. I think simpler hypotheses might include a) Bell screwed up; b) the information provided to Bell by neo-Nazis was screwed up.
What bugs me most about this is that it's the only thing Jay Currie can write about. Otherwise, he'd be off in his little hole churning out disinformation about ancient Ricin as proof of WMD's and accusing Noam Chomsky of being an apologist for Holocaust deniers.
Ti-Guy:
After my "correction" of your impeccable German, I'm afraid to raise this, except as a question. "[A]ncient Ricin?"
Jay wrote:
"The problem I have with this story is not technical - a non-CHRC wifi enabled laptop could have been used..."
The problem you had was technical until the technical stuff didn't pan out, and now you've gone all procedural. Which is a bit silly too. What purpose would logging every single time you visited Stormfront serve?
Although I've always been underwhelmed by the technical evidence purportedly linking Steacy with that post, Charles' question is more than a little intriguing for us Ludlum fans. If Ms. Hechme's connection was secure and she was presumably innocent, who in the world would hack into her service to post on a blog? How and from where? And isn't it a little strange that she is employed by Bell, the service provider who divulged her name in response to the subpoena? And stranger still that this employer/service provider is the principal tenant of 160 Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa, the same building that houses the offices of the Canadian Human Rights Commission?
Sorry, gotta go. My friends and I are playing Abbey Road backwards this afternoon.
"[A]ncient Ricin?"
It was a while back. Containers of ricin (or traces of the toxin) were alleged to have been found in Iraq and Currie declared Victory for the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq. It lasted all of two minutes.
I haven't taken him seriously since then.
Many thanks, Ti-Guy. I almost spat out my castor oil when I read that.
Peter:
Actually, 344 Slater Street. But I take your point. I can save you the trouble wrt Abbey Road: "Satan, sweet Satan, the source..." It get a little repetitive.
Dawg,
I thought it was "Paul is an asshole...kill him...kill him".
My bad. It's the Tribunal that is at Place Bell Canada. But as sure as we know Cheney is primarily beholden to Haliburton, we know the Tribunal is completely under the thumb of the Commission.
I think it's time to take Valium or shot of whiskey and wait for this secured/unsecured issue to be sorted out. There are plenty of other fish to fry with respect to the HRC's - perhaps beginning with Barbara Hall's drive by shooting.
Shorter John B: That issue turned to crap on us, lets change the subject.
Is such access theoretically possible?
Theoretically, yes it is.
Level of technical knowledge required? Not too much. Is it practical in this case? Nope.
To answer the technical aspect, there are some important unknown factors here. What level encryption is she using? (Basic WEP encryption is childsplay to break) Is she hiding her SSID? Does she do MAC address filtering? Does she limit DHCP leases? All of these factors make it hard to determine the level of difficulty of hacking the wireless signal.
The distance is a severely limiting factor. I would love to know how many other wireless signals are emanating on that block. Between physical obstructions and wireless interference, maintaining a signal at such a distance long enough to crack the keys and then use the connection would require a lot of time and patience.
The level of incredulity required is very high on this case. Shit, given how many free wireless networks there are, why would someone hack an encrypted signal? Just drive around, you'll find an open connection in short order.
Oh and the brother-in-law is partially correct. Extending a wireless signal is usually done at the source, boosting the strength of the signal broadcasted. To do it the other way requires the "hacker" to buy a high gain antenna and otherwise invest some coin in technology. This again complicates hacking the signal, requiring more effort and knowledge.
Dr Dawg:
You were fast with that Commission address. I wouldn't be able to tell you the address of the local police station to save my life. Do you keep it in your wallet along with police and fire numbers in case of an emergency? 
Th funny thing about all this is that nobody's story really rings true. The case for a Steacy/Warman hacking of the poor innocent Ms. Hechne eems very dicey, but they and the Commission are leaning on too many "I don't knows" in the face of a lot of coincidence. This is a public body and surely we are entitled to a little more openness about what went on, what they were doing, what they think went on, etc. There is something very defensive, vague and literal about their stories that a seasoned judge would be suspicious of.
If I were conducting a real, professional investigation rather then a virtual amateur one, I think I would start with a list of the tenants of that building and a list of Commission staff and their connections and see what I came up with. But that is what a love of police mysteries will do to you.
And, thank you very much Ti-guy, it is nice to know that, like John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia, a post of mine is so perfectly etched in what passes for your cortex.
The wi-fi crack is interesting. It may be true but, as Peter suggests, a bit more complicated than the pure war driving hypothesis suggests. (I note that the war driving hypothesis first arose wrt how "90sareover" could have come from Lucy's computer.)
Or it could be entirely false either because Lemire faked the logs or because someone else logged in as Jadewarr.
My point is that the hacks - in the strictly non-computational sense of that term - at the CHRC were so utterly sloppy and without supervision that the activities of Jadewarr were never properly logged. So the suspicion remains that the account was hacked.
Dawg, of course the identity of the downloader was in issue. How else would the chain of evidence be established. In an actual Court - as opposed to this flea circus - real lawyers would have been very unserene indeed had this sort of stunt been attempted. And real judges have been known to fire Evidence casebooks weighing several pounds at lawyers trying this sort of crap on.
The substitution of evidence for whatever reason calls the entire process into question. The fact it was done casually by a complainant in a matter is simply outrageous.
Judicial inquiry now!
Catelli has it pegged.
Shorter Jay Currie: No evidence of a crime, so investigate them for being untidy.
The difference between an information-rich and on-topic comment that moves the discussion forward (catelli) and some inane twaddle (Currie) is truly startling when examined one after the other like that.
it is nice to know that...[grandiosity redacted]...a post of mine is so perfectly etched in what passes for your cortex.
That's how my memory works. I have far too much on my plate to remember an inordinate amount of trivial detail (which is usually only a few clicks away, anyway), so when it comes to considering how clever/dull someone is, I settle on a particular milestone and move on.
Ezra Levant's Calgary Sun column on bus-drivers in kerchiefs serves that purpose for me when it comes to him.
Shorter Jay Currie: No evidence of a crime, so investigate them for being untidy.
Competency hearing now!
There seems to be a lot of people who forget that this alleged "hacking" occurred in 2003, not today. So, to further Catelli's fine comment, that means the following:
1. Wifi was 802.11.b at 11 megssec, not todays 802.11g at 54.
2. Wifi was secured using WEP...there was no WPA or WPA2 at the time. That being said, WEP was crackable in a few days then, rather than the few minutes it is now.
3. Using the old "Pringles Can" antenna, it is possible to get even 802.11 b signals over long distance - provided the antenna at the source (Hechme's router) has the can on it - and there is line of sight to the receiver. That means even that won't work through steel and glass of buildings. I have seen Bluetooth hacked at a distance of a mile, but it requires an expensive high gain antenna and 4 people trying to arrange it to get the signal. It was only accomplished at Def Con last summer, not in 2003.
4. I have worked in downtown Ottawa for over 8 years. Free wireless was available at the time at the Roasted Cherry, a coffee shop at the corner of O'Connor and Slater, 3 blocks way. As well, there is the Ottawa public Library, at Metcalfe and Laurier, with its free internet access terminals 1 block away.
5. 160 Elgin is not only the home of Bell and the Commission, it also the home of Secure Channel, the Canadian government's secure network. I worked there in 2005 and getting a wifi signal inside that building was near impossibility, due to the specific shilding put in place to protect Bell and the Channel from this kind of information leakage.
It is in this technological context that people are alleging that members of a CHRC - non-technical people all - managed to hack an protected wifi signal through a maze of downtown apartments in order to post on Stormfront, rather than simply walk a few blocks and do it with impunity and complete anonymity.
Right.
Either Bell is wrong about the IP or Lemire is. Having worked with Bell, I am laying my bets on Lemire.
The only questions is - wrong by accident or on purpose.
Mike:
Thank you for the technical discussion. But I believe that the date in question (when the hacking supposedly occurred) was December 8, 2006.
Reference: http://www.socon.ca/or_bust/?p=873
ummmm ... just to clarify ... I was not pushing any conspiracy theories (if I want those I will watch the X-Files) but simply attempting to identify the possibilites.
Charles,
I, for one, didn't think any such thing of you. Your questions were fine.
Dawg,
Well even today today, most of the stuff the CHRC is being alleged to have done is very difficult except for the most skilled hacker. They would STILL not be able to pick up the signal without line of sight (the Bluetooth hack I discussed was a mile across the desert outside of Las Vegas with no obstacles), they still would have to have the right software and skills to hack WPA or WPA2 (and this takes a lot of recon and hopes that the router pw doesn't change in the meantime). In fact, that means there are MORE free wifi hotspots, including the Starbucks on Queen (across form the World Exchange), the Starbucks at the Corner of Slater and Metcalfe (1 block away, not 3) or any number of places on Elgin...just a few minutes walk in any direction. Not to mention the proliferation of unsecured wifi in the area.
From a technical perspective, Occam's Razor needs to be wielded not just like a sword, but a Claymore. The most skilled hacker will avoid all of that effort if they can accomplish what they want by logging in at a free library terminal or wifi hotspot.
Given that, I think that all of this shows that Lemire provided the wrong IP to Bell, rather than this being evidence of any hacking by the CHRC.
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