Showing posts with label CHRC wifi controversy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHRC wifi controversy. Show all posts

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Open letter to Russ Hiebert about the CHRC, Dean Steacy, and wifi hacking allegations

Dear Mr. Hiebert,

In a recent letter to the National Post you wrote the following.
    Further, uncontradicted expert evidence presented before the hearing demonstrated that investigator Steacy illegitimately used an unsuspecting private citizen's wireless Internet service to post his offensive comments.
This contains several mistakes.

You are referring to the allegation that on Dec. 8, 2006, Dean Steacy logged into Stormfront using the IP 70.48.181.203.

The "expert evidence" to which you refer is that of a Bell technician who testified on March 25, 2008. If you had bothered to read the transcripts of that testimony, you would know that he did not testify that Steacy had used "a private citizen's wireless internet service to post his offensive comments". Rather, he merely identified the Bell customer who had control of the IP 70.48.181.203 on Dec. 8. He said nothing about that person's wireless, nor about any posts made by anyone anywhere. That is all the supposition, speculation, and conspiratorial fantasy accumulated at extremist blogs and discussion sites in the weeks following that hearing.

Nor, in fact, did Steacy post any comments at all on Dec. 8, as you say, much less offensive ones. Steacy's pseudonym, jadewarr, has only ever made one comment at Stormfront, on Sept. 15, 2006. (It's not offensive, by the way.) Steacey posted nothing on Dec. 8; he merely logged in on that date.


So you can see, although you are correct to say that the "expert evidence" of the Bell technician is uncontradicted, the allegation of wifi-hacking has been investigated by the privacy commissioner and dismissed as likely the result of "a mismatch on the part of a third party".

So in a single sentence above you have made at least three factual errors: the expert testimony said nothing about anyone's wireless; Steacy did not post any comments on the day in question; and the whole allegation has been contradicted by the privacy commissioner.

Everyone, of course, makes mistakes. You, however, are offering this error-filled sentence -- and these are not your only errors -- to rebut claims that you had been misinformed. Did you actually read any of this material?

All of this, however, raises an even more problematic aspect of your recent performance. You chair the Parliamentary Subcommittee for International Human Rights (SIHR), which is a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (FAAE). As Chair you have held hearings on Canadian Human Rights Commission. Why is it that your committee is delving into the CHRC at all? To compare how Human Rights is handled in Canada as opposed to other states? Or was the point to provide a platform whereby defamatory allegations could be made in privileged circumstances?

Sincerely,

Buckets

cc: ReidS@parl.gc.ca, SilvaM@parl.gc.ca, ThilaE@parl.gc.ca, SweetD@parl.gc.ca, HiebeR@parl.gc.ca, MarstW@parl.gc.ca, CotleI@parl.gc.ca


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Why the RCMP dumped the CHRC wifi case (70.48.181.203)

The RCMP has decided to drop its investigation of allegations that the CHRC had hacked the wifi of an Ottawan woman. The RCMP itself has made no announcement, but the woman in question was interviewed by Joseph Brean of the National Post (here):
    In a phone interview on Thursday, the woman said the RCMP told her they do not have proof her account was hacked, nor proof that it was not, and to investigate further would involve going after technical data from a website based in the United States, stormfront.org, which they said is not possible.
What does all this mean? The basic problem is that the evidence did not sustain the accusation. To review:
  1. CHRC investigator Dean Steacey logged into Stormfront.org using the handle "jadewarr" several times, including on Dec. 8, 2006, the date of the alleged wifi-hacking.
  2. One of the other times that "jadewarr" logged-in at Stormfront was on Sept. 15, 2006, when he posted the one-and-only message that this account ever posted there (you can see the screen capture of that post here). The IP used to post was 70.48.181.203 (see #4, below).
  3. After it became known that "jadewarr" was Steacey's account, however, Stormfront administrator OdinPatrick publicly outed the account (see screen captures here), declaring both the IP that was used to register jadewarr (65.93.75.6) and the "IP used to post" (70.48.181.203).
  4. Since jadewarr had only ever posted one message (see #2, above), the IP use to post (70.48.181.203, #3) must have been for the message of Sept. 15, 2006.
  5. In March 2007, Marc Lemire emailed Stormfront founder and convicted terrorist Don Black to request jadewarr's Lemire asked Black for the "email address, IP-address, hostname, and access" of the jadewarr account (see Lemire's motion, here, and Black's affidavit, here). Apparently Lemire requested this information without specifying a date.
  6. Black informed Lemire that jadewarr's IP was 70.48.181.203 (see Black's affidavit paragraph iv, here).
  7. The IP that Black reported (70.48.181.203, above, #6) was the same one that jadewarr used to post on Sept. 15, 2006 (above, #3).
  8. Given that Black does not specify a date that jadewarr had used this IP (see #5 and #6, above), he must be giving the IP used for the post of Sept. 15, not the one used to log-in on Dec. 8: the software that he was using, vBulletin, only records the IPs of posts, and not those for log-ins (here).
  9. Lemire apparently did not realize that the IP was from the wrong date. On the basis of Black's information filed a motion to subpoena Bell to provide information about the IP for Dec. 8.
  10. In a CHRT hearing of March 25, 2008, a Bell technician testified that 70.48.181.203 (which jadewarr had used on Sept. 15) was assigned to an Ottawa woman on Dec. 8, 2006, the day on which jadewarr logged into Stormfront (obviously using some other IP).
  11. Once this became known, a theory was elaborated to explain how jadewarr might have accessed 70.48.181.203 on Dec. 8, a theory that including the allegation of wifi-hacking.
So, why did the RCMP drop the investigation? Because the evidence as presented didn't sustain the allegation, and a closer look at the evidence wasn't possible given jurisdictional issues.

Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 10: the software records posts not log-ins

We have been considering the allegation that CHRC investigator Dean Stacey (who registered at several sites using the handle "jadewarr") visited Stormfront, a white supremacist site, by hacking the wifi of Nellie Hechme, an Ottawa woman. The allegation, as we have seen, is dubious.

It has already been amply demonstrated (e.g., by BCL) that the alleged hacking is technically unlikely: the wifi in question was password protected; it was too far from the CHRC offices for the signal to be reachable, with buildings blocking the line-of-site; CHRC computers are not wifi-enabled; Steacy is legally blind.

What do we know?

We know from court testimony that this IP 70.48.181.203 was assigned to Hechme for 27 hours on Dec. 7-8 (here, p. 5646): that is what a Bell technician testified. The technician did not say, however, that this IP was used to visit Stormfront.

We also know that Jadewarr logged into Stormfront on Dec. 8. The question is what IP did Jadewarr use on that day? The short answer is that we don't know and probably never will.

We know, however, that on Sept. 15, 2006 Jadewar made his one and only post to Stormfront (here) he had the same IP as Hechme had on Dec. 8.

The whole allegation, then, is the result of a simple mistake: 70.48.181.203 was an IP that had been asssigned to jadewarr, but on the wrong date.

That this is indeed what happened is furthered confirmed if we consider this from the software side: Stormfront runs on vBulletin, a commercial software for running Internet forums. How does one check the IP of any user? Here is a screen cap of vBulletin's user manual for checking IP addresses (here), with my highlighting of the important sections:

According to the manual, when you ask for the IPs that users have used, vBulletin gives you "what IPs a user has posted with".

Performing this function on the Jadewarr account will have produced the IP that jadewarr used to make his only post on the Stormfront board, which was on September 15 (here).

In short, then, all available evidence suggests that jadewarr had this Bell IP on one day in September, and Hechme had it on another in December. Any suggestion that jadewarr had it again in December enters tin-foil hat territory.

Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 7: the right IP on the wrong date

This series has been examining allegations that CHRC investigator Dean Steacy had hacked the IP of an Ottawa woman to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist site.

The IP in question was 70.48.181.203 and the date of the alleged hacking is Dec. 8, 2006. But as far as I can see, there is no evidence that Steacy had that IP on that date. We know that he had that IP on Sept. 15: a Stormfront moderator said so (see here). And we know that jadewarr visited Stormfront on Dec. 8 (see here), but by then the IP had been assigned to an Ottawa woman named Nelly Hechme. We have no evidence, however, that the Dec. 8th post used this IP.

Yes, Don Black, founder of Stormfront, had apparently informed Marc Lemire that jadewarr had used this IP. Here is the relevant section of Lemire's motion for the Bell subpoena (I've added the numbering; for the whole motion, see here):
    Freedomsite-JadewarrMotionBlackOnly(20080611)
To judge from this, however, Black didn't specify which date (see paragraph 5). Nor is there anything here to suggest that Lemire had asked Black about December specifically (see esp. #4). Indeed, given the context, we wouldn't expect him to ask for a specific date: he wanted as much information as possible.

Now, it is clear that we have incomplete information. But we have as much as the court that awarded the subpoena did, since the court gave that subpoena on the basis of this motion. And this motion does not say that jadewarr used 70.48.181.203 on Dec. 8.

Nor did the Bell technician. He said that Nelly Hechme had that IP on that date.

To be continued…

Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 6: what did Lemire ask Black about jadewarr?

In a series of posts we have been examining the allegations that Human Rights investigator Dean Steacy had hacked the IP of an Ottawa woman to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist site. The visit took place on Dec. 8, 2006, during a time when (according to a Bell technician subpoenaed to provide the information) the IP 70.48.181.203 had been assigned to Nelly Hechme.

But how do we know that 70.48.181.203 was jadewarr's IP on that day? We have already seen that according to one Stormfront official, this IP was used by jadewarr in September, not December 8. (See here.)


The date of Dec. 8th comes from information supplied by Don Black, and given the contradiction about the date, we should look especially closely at this. Unfortunately, he has not himself commented publicly on this matter. What he said comes via Marc Lemire, who reported Black's information in his motion to subpoena Bell. This motion has been archived for easier consultation in part 5 of this series, here. Here is the section in which he discusses Black's information:
    Freedomsite-JadewarrMotionBlackOnly(20080611)
According to paragraph 4, Lemire asked Black for the "email address, IP-address, hostname, and access" of the jadewarr account.

But email address, IP, and hostname when? The motion doesn't say. And "when" is the fundamental question here, since according to the Bell technician's testimony Hechme only had this IP for a single day. Indeed, one wonders whether Lemire asked for a specific date at all. If he didn't, and Black gave him the IP that jadewarr had posted from on Sept. 15, then there is no contradiction between the reports of Black and OdinPatrick.

To be continued…

Other posts relevant to this controversy:

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 5: Lemire's motion for jadewarr's IP

Here is Marc Lemire's motion* for a subpoena to require Bell to provide information about an IP address that had been used by "jadewarr" (a pseudonym used by Dean Steacy of the CHRC to visit Stormfront).
    Freedomsite-JadewarrMotion(20080611)
      (*The original version of this motion was posted at Lemire's own site: here.)
To be continued…


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 4: theoretical possibilities

In our last post, we saw that there are at least two versions out there about when Steacy/jadewarr had the IP 70.48.181.203 and what he did with it. The versions differ from one another in two key ways: they report different actions on the part of jadewarr, and they report different dates for those actions.

Here are the two versions in tabular form:
    Black (via Lemire)OdinPatrick
    Actionvisit Stormfrontpost to Stormfront
    Date Dec. 8, 2006 Sept. 15, 2006
    IP 70.48.181.203 70.48.181.203
    IP ownerHechme* (unknown)
    *From the Bell technician's testimony
If Black and OdinPatrick were both telling the truth, one of these four scenarios would have to be true:
  1. Hecme had the same IP for the entire period and Steacy hacked her wifi twice (once to post to Stormfront and once to visit there).
  2. Steacy had the IP for the whole time and he used it twice (once to post to Stormfront and once to visit there).
  3. The IP belonged to Steacy personally in September, but Hechme in December, and the wifi that he hacked in December by coincidence had the same IP as the one he had used in September.
  4. The IP belonged to some unknown person in September, and to Hechme in December, and Steacy hacked both wifis, which coincidentally happened to have the same IP.
In fact, however, none of these can be true. Scenarios #3 and #4 may be theoretically possible, but the chances of either of these happening are infinitismal: they can be rejected out of hand. And #1 and #2 contradict the testimony of the Bell Technician, who testified that Hechme had this IP from 18:36, Dec. 7, until 21:35, Dec. 8 (T1073/5405, vol. 26, p. 5646, lines 9-10): thus Hechme could not have had the IP in September (ruling out no. 1) and Steacy could not have had this IP in December (ruling out no. 2)

Clearly one of Black and OdinPatrick must be wrong.

To be continued…


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 3: when exactly did Steacy/jadewarr have 70.48.181.203?

We have examining the allegation that Dean Steacy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission had hacked an Ottawa woman's wifi and used her IP to visit Stormfront in December 2006.

Stacey, as you'll recall, had used a pseudonym named "jadewarr" in his investigations.

In Part One we saw two things. First, Marc Lemire produced evidence from Stormfront founder, Don Black, that during jadewarr's visit to Stormfront on December 8, 2006, he used IP 70.48.181.203. Second, that a Bell technician has testified that on that date 70.48.181.203 belonged to Ottawa resident Nelly Hechme.

Part two also showed that another Stormfront moderator, OdinPatrick, reported that Jadewarr had used 70.48.181.203 to post to Stormfront. Second, that jadewarr's only post to Stormfront was made on September 15, 2006.

In tabular form the two versions are:
    Black (via Lemire)OdinPatrick
    Actionvisit Stormfrontpost to Stormfront
    Date Dec. 8, 2006 Sept. 15, 2006
    IP 70.48.181.203 70.48.181.203
    IP ownerHechme* (unknown)
    *From the Bell technician's testimony
So, when exactly did jadewarr/Steacy use this IP?

To be continued…


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Monday, June 09, 2008

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 2: someone else notices Jadewarr

In my first post in this series, we reviewed the background to a recent allegation that Dean Steacy, an investigator with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, had hacked the wifi of an Ottawa woman and used her IP to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist website.

The allegation depended on a chain of evidence:
  • on the testimony of Bell technician that the IP 70.48.181.203 belonged to Nelly Hechme on December 6, 2006;
  • on Don Black, founder and webmaster of Stormfront, who informed Marc Lemire that 70.48.181.203 was the IP of Steacy's pseudonym "jadewarr";
  • on a reporter who contacted Hechme and reported that she had not been involved;
  • and on internet pundits, who concluded that the details could only be explained if Steacy had hacked the wifi.

But in all the discussion about this allegation, people have overlooked an important piece of evidence: that another Stormfront administrator had already noticed the link between Steacy and Jadewarr.

We have already seen jadewarr's member profile from Stormfront, the relevant part of which is reposted to the right. It shows that jadewarr only posted once at that site, and that post is worth visiting.

On September 3, 2006, Marc Lemire had started a new thread denouncing the unfairness of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which had recently rejected his complaints against the hate crimes unit of the Edmonton RCMP. (You can find the thread in Google-cache here, or click through from there to the Stormfront site.) Several other Stormfront members responded, all agreeing with Lemire.

The fifth post to that thread, made Sept. 15, was contributed by Jadewarr. You can read it yourself here:
    JadewarrsOnlyStormfrontPost-7
Following this post, the thread went quiet, and no-one added to it for a long time.

A year-and-a-half later, however -- long after jadewarr's post and the jadewarr-Steacy connection had been made public -- a moderator of Stormfront's Canadian section by the name of "OdinPatrick" noticed jadewarr's solitary post and responded to it.
    OdinPatrick1redone
As you can see, OdinPatrick had unkind words for jadewarr, and more abuse followed that doesn't need to be repeated here. Towards the end of his post, OdinPatrick added this:
    OdinPatrick2
OdinPatrick cites two IPs here: one used to register, and one used to post. The second is identical to the IP that Black had given to Lemire: 70.48.181.203.

Jadewarr had only ever posted one message to Stormfront, on Sept. 15, 2006, that would have been his IP on that date, according to OdinPatrick's statement.

To be continued…


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

The spy who didn't shag my wifi 1: background

Those who have been following the Marc Lemire case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal have seen some weird twists and turns — and a bizarre series of allegations that have been made about the Commission and its employees. One allegation was that human rights activist Richard Warman (who had initiated the complaint against Lemire) had himself posted a racist attack against senator Anne Cools, and allegation that was ultimately proven false. Another weird allegation was that Warman had leaked confidential commission documents related to the Demigorgona case. Again false.

Today we turn our attention to another allegation that Commission employee, Dean Steacy, who is legally blind, had hacked an Ottawa woman's wifi to visit a racist website in December 2006. The details are scattered and complicated, but a fresh look at them will show that there is plenty of room for doubt, and that in fact the evidence suggests that there was no wifi hackery, just a simple miscommunication of facts.

First, some background. In his position at the Commission, Steacy is involved in investigations of websites accused of spreading hate. In these investigations, Steacy has occasionally actually registered in the sites in question -- some sites have areas that are limited to registered members only; others only allow members to view other members' profiles or use the site's search engines.

JadewarrProfileStormFrontPosteSuch was the case with White Supremacist site, Stormfront, where Steacy registered the pseudonym "jadewarr". To the right is Jadewarr's member-profile there. (He was member number 58160, if you want to go there to look for yourself -- but in order to access the member profiles, you will have to become a member) He joined, as you can see, in February 2005 (note the left hand column, right under "Forum Info").

The wifi controversy arose with regards to a visit made to Stormfront on December 8th, 2006. On that date, Steacy had logged into the Jadewarr account in order to find a specific posting related to a hearing before the tribunal. (Stormfront's own search engine is only available to logged-in members.) He then printed the posting, but without logging-out, which meant that "jadewarr" was included on the print out. When the print-out was submitted as evidence, his pseudonym was exposed.

As I said, Lemire is himself a respondent before the Tribunal, and his defense strategy seems to be to delay, distract, and deflect. Spurious complaints are filed with the CHRC against opponents; allegations are made about CHRC unfairness, incompetence, or corruption. The exposure of Steacy's pseudonym gave him an opportunity to make new allegations. Indeed, given the information available, it should be possible to learn Steacy's IP, and once his IP was known, his actions on other sites might be examined.

Marc Lemire himself, however, had no access to that information -- Stormfont is based in the United States, having been founded by former KKK Grand Wizard, Don Black (who has a fairly nasty history of his own). Lemire, however, was (and is) a long-time member there: indeed, his profile (to the right), shows not only that he is a sustaining member, but also proclaims him to be a "Friend of Stormfront". Presumably it was on this basis that Black supplied him with an IP and hostname: 70.48.181.203 and bas2-ottawa23-1177597387.dsl.bell.ca.

We know all this from an affidavit that Lemire filed with the Tribunal in May 2007, requesting that Bell be subpoenaed to supply the name, address, and phone records associated with that IP address (here). The subpoena was granted, and on March 25, 2008, a Bell technician appeared in court to provide the information that he was asked for.

What the Bell technician reported, however, was a surprise to everyone: on Dec. 8, 2006, the IP 70.48.181.203 was assigned to someone with no apparent connection to Steacy, the Commission, or Stormfront. It was a woman named Nelly Hechme who lived in an apartment building in Ottawa not far from the CHRC offices. Once her name was made public, a reporter contacted her to ask whether she knew how and why her email might be involved in this affair, and the only available explanation was that someone had accessed her wifi. But since her wifi was secured with a pass-word, the usual suspects accused Steacy of having hacked it.

To be continued ....


Other posts relevant to this controversy:

Monday, May 14, 2007

Lemire's motion to subpoena Bell

Below is the motion of Marc Lemire applying that Bell Canada be subpoenaed for information about an IP address that at some point had been associated with "jadewarr", a pseudonym used by Dean Steacy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. (I've placed copies here to function as archive; the original was posted at Lemire's own site: http://www.freedomsite.org/legal/infiltrators_target_lemire-Motion_filed_for_Bell_Subpoena.html.

Freedomsite-JadewarrMotion(20080611)
Here is a text version that should be easier to search.
    Motion by Marc Lemire for Subpoena of Bell Canada ’s Records to Ascertain identity of Stormfront User Account “Jadewarr”

    May 14, 2007
    Re: Warman v. Lemire, Tribunal No. T1073/5405

    To: Canadian Human Rights Tribunal,

    This is a motion by the respondent for a subpoena of Bell Canada for all documents and information concerning the IP Address 70.48.181.203.

    The facts which form the basis of this motion are as follows:

    On December 12, 2006, during questioning of Richard Warman by Paul Fromm in the matter of Warman v. Beaumont, he asked about an exhibit filed by the Commission from the Stormfront website which was headed “Welcome, Jadewarr”. Mr. Warman testified that it came from the Commission.

    T1106-8705 2006-12-12 Warman-Beaumont

    CHRC attempts to put into evidence a post from Stormfront entitled “ Italy for Italians” at Tab 17. Warman V. Beaumont. The top of the page showed the login name as “Jadewarr’

      MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, "Welcome, Jadewarr?
      MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.
      MR. FROMM: By whom?
      MR. WARMAN: I'm sorry, I don't know.
      (Page 273, Transcripts)

      MR. FROMM: Is it your testimony, then, that it's a Commission document?
      MR. WARMAN: It originates with the Commission. I do not know its providence.
      (Page 275, transcripts)

    • The person using the account “jadewarr” on Stormfront has attempted to engage Marc Lemire in public conversations on the message board;
    • The person using the account “jadewarr” has engaged a person using the account “fenrisson” numerous times in private conversations on the Stormfront system;
    • The Stormfront “fenrisson” user posts have been used at least twice by the Commission to dismiss complaints against Richard Warman and CAERS as “vexatious”;
    • In March, 2007, Marc Lemire requested and received the e-mail address, IP address, hostname and access to the Stormfront account “jadewarr” from the owner of the Stormfront website, Mr. Don Black
    • The information regarding “jadewarr” provided by Mr. Don Black was as follows:
      • IP Address: 70.48.181.203
      • Host Name bas2-ottawa23-1177597387.dsl.bell.ca
      • E-Mail address used: jadewarr@yahoo.ca

    • During the hearings in Ottawa on May 10, 2007 , the Commission claimed Section 37 of the Canada’s Evidence Act over questions relating to the Stormfront Account “Jadewarr”

      The respondent is requesting a subpoena of Bell Canada ’s records to ascertain the user account and subscriber information for the following:
      • User account and subscriber information for the user of IP Protocol address: 70.48.181.203, with hostname bas2-ottawa23-1177597387.dsl.bell.ca, that was connected to the Bell Sympatico and/or Bell Canada network on: December 8th, 2006 at 03:29 PM (EST) (Also Known as: 3:29 PM “ Ontario time” to Bell Canada Corporate Security)

    • It is submitted that this information is relevant to the hearing of the constitutional issues in this case as it shows the activities of the Commission under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act are going far beyond attempting to ameliorate discrimination, and are impacting the fairness of its procedures, the rights of complainants and respondents both, and the guarantees to Charter rights.

      The Commission appears to be actively engaging with respondents on message boards, in particular with relevance to this case, Mr. Lemire. The respondent should be able to question Commission witnesses concerning these matters upon the resumption of the hearing in Ottawa in June if in fact “Jadewarr” is proven to be the Commission.


(Note: I've back-dated this in blogger to its original composition date.)