Northman's Fury

It seems, despite the attention this subject gets south of the border, that net neutrality gets very little attention here in Canada. That's unfortunate, because the big ISP's are continuing to chip away at it. (If you don't know what net neutrality is, read this piece by Michael Geist. Its a couple years old, but still accurate and a good summary.)

Rogers and Shaw have already admitted to "traffic shaping", or giving priority to certain kinds of traffic, mostly to make peer-to-peer file sharing more difficult. It's probably not a coincidence that these companies are targeting a sector of the internet where possible video sharing can cut into their business as cable and movie providers.

Now, it appears as though Rogers is chipping away at another piece of the neutrality of the net. It has begun to splice its own content into the websites its customers visit.

A screen shot posted to the web over the weekend seems to show that Canada's largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.

. . .

The screen shot, forwarded from "a concerned  reader," shows a Rogers-Yahoo branded customer service message apparently on Google's home page.

. . .

"Just brought to my attention today by a concerned reader who chose Google for his example, what you're looking at is reportedly an ongoing test by Rogers in Canada, scheduled for deployment to Rogers Internet customers next quarter," Weinstein wrote in his blog.

"This is what Net Neutrality is about -- it's not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it's also that the data that's sent is the data that you get -- that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream [from third parties]" he says in an interview.

You can see the screen shot here.

While most of what I've read about net neutrality has focused on ensuring that everybody has equal access to information, this little "test" by Rogers may even be more dangerous. Adding ads and such is bad enough, but my worry is what might happen as this technology matures and the ISPs gain the power to more fully modify website content. Changing websites before your customers can access them is a powerful tool.

Expect this development to become Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation.

One hopes that's the case.

Opposition Leader Stéphane Dion, who completed a three-day Arctic tour Sunday, said that stationing search-and-rescue planes in the North will help protect Canada's sovereignty in the region.

Currently, aircraft from more southerly bases such as Trenton and Winnipeg respond to search-and-rescue requests in the Arctic.

Dion, who was in Cambridge Bay on Saturday as part of his tour, said a Liberal government would locate two search-and-research planes in Iqaluit and two in Yellowknife.

. . .

He also pledged to re-establish an ambassador for the Arctic, which he says the Conservatives have shamefully cut.

I am very much in favour of the search-and-rescue idea, not least of which because I happen to have to travel across the north on a fairly frequent basis. Having such long lead times on search-and-rescue aircraft isn't really acceptable, particularly if you are expecting greater economic activity in the region.

The ambassador position is also important, especially given the importance of diplomacy in the hashing out of boundaries in the newly melting Arctic.

But a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay countered that Dion's Liberal party was in power for a decade and all but ignored the North, while pointing to several government military commitments in the region.

Of course, the Conservatives have promised to build a bunch of practically worthless patrol boats, and I haven't been terribly impressed with their other military promises, either.

Unfortunately, one of the things I have learned from living and working in the north for the better part of the last two decades, is that our politicians are long on promises and short on actions, regardless of party affiliation I like Dion's ideas, but I won't hold my breath waiting for them if he ever gets elected.

Given the recent killings of two RCMP officers in the north, both of whom responded to calls alone, people were calling the back-up policy into question. There's actually no predicting what would have happened had they had back-up, but this certainly doesn't look too good.

In a June e-mail to detachment commanders in Nunavut, an e-mail that was obtained by CBC News, a senior regional officer wrote that while reviewing overtime claims he noticed some units sent two members to all calls.

"The direction that I am giving you, the detachment commander, is to ensure that you and the member(s) under your command base your response to calls on appropriate risk assessment," he wrote in the e-mail.

"Note on all OT claims how many members responded to every call. When more then [sic] one member responds to a call provide an explanation."

Again, back-up may have only given the killers an additional target, but cutting down on back-up because you don't like the amount of overtime people are charging . . .

Maybe the RCMP should spend a little less money on toys like the Taser and more on its people.

Dave at the Galloping Beaver was kind enough to link to my post yesterday pointing out the Conservatives have decided Afghanistan isn't important enough to consider additional funding outside the regular DND budget. In the comments, PeterC said the following:

Perhaps when the military shuts down arctic operations we will ask our good friends to come help patrol the north, just like they recently asked us to help patrol Alaska with our CF-18s?

The patrols in question are the result of Vladimir Putin decided to start sending the "Bears" back out on long-range patrols along the boundaries of American and Canadian airspace. As this other post by Dave outlines, when the US had to ground its F-15's, Canada sent several CF-18's to help patrol the Alaskan coast.

As it happens, PeterC's comment reminded me of another story I had meant to post about, the fact that while our fighters were helping out with patrols of the Alaskan coastline, the aircraft that normally patrol the Canadian Arctic weren't flying, and won't be anytime soon.

The Canadian air force has cancelled its surveillance flights in the North for the next several months even though Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said protecting Canada's Arctic sovereignty is one of his government's top priorities.

More than half of Canada's fleet of Aurora aircraft, which patrol the country's two coastlines and the Arctic, is in the repair shop, undergoing long-term maintenance, the air force said.

Only six of 14 Auroras based at CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia are able to fly, and the air force has decided it will dispatch them to areas off the East Coast and West Coast only.

A rather interesting set of priorites, when you think about it, though unfortunately not that surprising.

And also not terribly surprisingly, the funding constraints Afghanistan puts on other Defence priorities has a hand in this as well.

Dan Middlemiss, a defence expert and professor at Dalhousie University, speculated that Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan is taking huge amounts of money and squeezing missions at home.

"The reality of lack of funds for operations strikes home," he said. "We've seen this earlier this year with the navy's reduction in its planned exercises at the end of its fiscal year."

Something Dave also pointed out in the first post I linked to. Nice when everything comes full circle like that, isn't it?

The War in Afghanistan is important, really important. So important that to even question it means you're supporting the Taliban. It's just not so important that the Conservatives want to dip into that big surplus to pay for it.

National Defence has been warned it will have to cover the costs of the Afghan war entirely out of its own budget next year, without any top-up from the federal Treasury Board, a political source has told The Canadian Press.

. . .

Jay Paxton, a spokesman for MacKay, said in an e-mail that the potential impact of restraining cost-overruns was "hypothetical and we won't speculate." During previous wars the federal government funded military operations separately from the Defence Department's annual budget, using special appropriations.

It was only during the 1960s and the era of peacekeeping that overseas military operations began coming directly out of the department's budget, say defence analysts.

Kenny and many military observers believe the federal government should return to the traditional wartime funding approach, especially if Canada is to remain in Afghanistan past 2009 as the Conservatives suggested in their recent throne speech.

And if the Conservatives were actually serious about fighting Afghanistan as a war, they probably would. Instead, they keep trying to fight using a peacetime force on the cheap in an attempt to score political points.

Kenny said the Conservatives have thus far failed to provide enough money to fulfill their campaign promise to expand the military and fight the war. Recently the Defence Department conceded that its plans to expand to 75,000 regular members and 35,000 reservists had to be trimmed back because there wasn't enough funding.

In addition, a wide range of military spending has come under the microscope at the political level, said Kenny.

"Offloading the costs of the war on the department will have a major impact on just about everything," he said. "These guys want it both ways.

"They want to have a reputation of being strong on national security and strong on defence. Their idea of being strong is to make PR gestures when they're spending less than (former prime minister Pierre) Trudeau did on defence in terms of (gross domestic product)."

Exactly right, and while some may lap up the PR gestures as though they actually mean something, there are apparently enough Canadians out there who actually understand how this all works who aren't being fooled.

At one recent meeting, the source said, political staff groused openly that the Conservatives "have spent $20 billion plus" on the military in new equipment and seen little political "sizzle" for the effort.

Which I guess explains this latest move. Why bother spending money on something you claim is important when you aren't getting any political "sizzle" out of it?