In the 36th episode of the Freezenet official podcast, “A Consultation Ignored is a Consultation Denied”, we take a look at the news and reviews we covered in October 2021.
Welcome to the Public version of the Freezenet official podcast for October 2021. This month’s episode is entitled “A Consultation Ignored is a Consultation Denied” after the Canadian consultation on online harms. It’s basically widely expected to be ignored as of this podcast.
In this episode, we dive in to what the submissions actually had to say – at least the submissions we had access to anyway. Apparently, the Canadian government has decided to keep them out of the public eye. We then dive into the themes of these submission. We also cover the Facebook outage an whistleblower story.
In addition to that, we also cover all the usual music and video game reviews. We even have an exclusive sneak peek into a new EP as well as an added bonus. So, another reason to check out this episode!
We even cover the story of a Danish artist who had a thing called “Take the Money and Run”. All this and more on this month’s podcast!
You can check out our official podcast on Anchor. Alternatively, you can take a listen below:
Edit: This episode is now publicly available on Patreon.
What follows is a transcript of this month’s episode:
Intro
A Consultation Ignored is a Consultation Denied
Hi, I’m your host, Drew Wilson. Welcome to episode 36 of the Freezenet official podcast for October, 2021. Here are your top 3 headlines:
The Top 3
Online harms consultation sees a flood of responses – almost all negative
Themes begin to emerge in online harms consultation
… and Outage hits Facebook as whistleblower speaks before US lawmakers
Top Stories
Over the last few episodes, we’ve been covering the Liberal Party of Canada’s war on the open Internet. It’s a three pronged approach that involves speech regulation, censorship via “online harms”, and link taxes. This month, the second prong of online harms was brought into sharp focus.
Responses began pouring in in the last two months. That included my response, and the response from the Internet Society Canada Chapter. Both responses were generally negative of the online harms proposal as is. That negativity seemed to continue, starting with the Independent Press Gallery of Canada.
The organization raised several key concerns about the proposal. This includes the undemocratic infringement of the Canadian Charter, the creation of unreasonable obligations of service providers, and how it creates the opportunity for bias and discrimination.
The reaction continued with University Law professor, Michael Geist. In his submission, he says that the proposal makes the mistake of lumping all harms into the same category of enforcement, the concerns about scope-creep (where what is considered harmful can be expanded on at any time), the implications of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, the threat it poses to the very groups the proposal seeks to protect, and the concerns that the consultation was not a serious attempt to solicit feedback given the election and platforms circulating during the consultation process.
OpenMedia, in their submission, echoed a number of these concerns. They said that the consultation process was “unacceptable policy-making in a democratic society”. They also raised concerns about the fact that the proposal would also require website owners to report their users to CSIS and, in secret, create criminal records without the users knowledge. They also further comment, “A system this disproportionately balanced towards violation of our privacy and lawful expression simply isn’t fit for Canada”.
After that, the submissions began pouring in so fast, we had to lump submissions together into single articles. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic submitted their own comments which says, in part, “the government’s proposed legislation to regulate online harms seriously undermines claims that Canada is a leader in human rights. By raising the spectre of content filtering and website blocking, the current proposal threatens fundamental freedoms and the survival of a free and open internet in Canada and beyond”.
Citizen Lab, in their submission, said that the consultation is inadequate and that the proposal will not achieve its intended goals, that automated enforcement exacerbates pre-existing problems, the unidirectional takedown mechanism is unconstitutional, and that the new CSIS powers are unjustified and inappropriately included.
Internet Archive Canada responded by saying that they have deep concerns about the proposal. They say that “imposing newly burdensome and potentially overbroad regulatory regimes—even with the best of intentions—is likely to make the costs of participation in certain digital spaces too high for all but the largest commercial actors”
They also noted the potential for this law to violate international trade agreements like the recent CUSMA agreement between Canada, the US, and Mexico.
In the next batch, we saw the response from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (or CARL). They are calling for libraries and research projects to be exempt from the proposed laws. They also expressed concerns about the eventual use of AI algorithms to comply with moderation standards set forth in the proposal – especially in light of the 24 hour take down requirements.
Next up is the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. They expressed concern about how all different types of harmful content is treated the same from an enforcement perspective, the threat to freedom of expression under the 24 hour takedown requirements, and the fact that the proposal seeks new powers to block websites deemed “harmful”.
After that is the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children. They basically became one of the only ones supportive of the proposal, though with caveat’s. They are calling for more resources to be poured into educational efforts about the Internet. In their view, the Internet was not meant for children, yet children are online which is partly why they think there should be more focus on education.
In the batch after, we saw a response from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. They commented in their submission: “we see several worrisome and even troubling aspects to this current proposal that may in fact undermine the stated goals.” They say that there is concern with the different types of content targeted, posing a risk to the very groups that the government says they want to protect, a monitoring and removal process that threatens freedom of expression and privacy rights, and problematic reporting requirements that, in part, gives new powers to CSIS among other things.
Access Now responded by expressing several concerns with the proposal. They called the 24 removal window “onerous” and that it will lead to significant impacts on freedom of expression and speech. They said that the proposed framework “threatens fundamental freedoms and human rights.”
Meanwhile, the Cybersecure Policy Exchange offered a much more analytical submission. They recommend, among other things, “Establish platform size thresholds to place fewer obligations on smaller and non-profit platforms, to avoid entrenching incumbents”, “Clarify the definitions of harmful content as they relate to online content moderation”, “Limit any requirements for mandatory platform reporting to law enforcement to cases where imminent risk of serious harm is reasonably suspected, and consider narrowing to only child sexual exploitation and terrorist content”, and “Remove or significantly narrow the ability to block access to platforms for non-compliance.”
In the batch after, we saw a joint submission from a massive list of anti-racism groups and individual experts. They said that their concerns from an anti-racism perspective include the “Incentivization of over-removal” of content thanks to the 24 hour takedown requirements, the conflation of very different types of online harms, the increased information-sharing with law enforcement and security agencies, and sweeping search powers for “inspectors” to verify compliance with the legislation, secret hearings, and new information-gathering powers for CSIS – allocating further police-like capacities to CSIS.
The Global Network Initiative raised concerns about how much resources the regulations would require to handle these notices. Further, they raised the point that the 24 hour time window would make it very difficult for the author of the comment to file a counter-notice or dispute the complaint. They further raised concerns about how this legislative framework would encourage the use of automated filters.
After that, we documented the sole submission that gave full support for the framework. That came from News Media Canada – an organization that represents journalists. They said that their journalists are the target of hate content and that fighting against hate would better protect journalists. They also pushed the idea of a link tax in their submission. After reading the submission, it was clear to us that their support for the framework is rooted in not bothering to read the “technical paper” in the first place. It makes sense because, honestly, would you ever expect journalists to actually research the very subjects they write about? It’s 2021 after all!
Moving on to the next batch, the next submission came from the Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund. The organization said that they supported the development of a framework for online harms, but do not support the online harms proposal as currently framed. They said that the current framework “posed serious concerns from a substantive equality and human rights perspective. It also risked exacerbating existing inequalities, particularly because it purports to deal with five very different “online harms” with a single approach”. In short, they basically urged the government to go back to the drawing board with this online harms proposal.
Adding their voices to the mix is the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (or PIAC). They said that “PIAC does not believe that site-blocking is an appropriate mechanism to address the online harms identified in the Proposal.” They further commented that site blocking, as envisioned in the online harms proposal, violates Canadian network neutrality rules and that it “could result in excessive infringement of Canadians’ rights to freedom of expression on the Internet”.
Ranking Digital Rights also published their submission. The organization says that they support combating human rights violations as seen on digital platforms, however, “the proposed approach fails to meet its stated goals and raises a set of issues that jeopardize freedom of expression and user privacy online.” The organization further points out that 24 hour takedowns will lead to unnecessary censorship.
In the final batch, we covered what numerous other experts had to say. Natasha Tusikov and Blayne Haggart targeted the consultation process itself. They point out that the consultation itself was not much of a consultation. The papers presented offered no evidence for why the government took the approach that they did. They point out that the proposal is ineffective “in addressing fundamental structural problems with social media”. They called on the government to obtain evidence for the approach that they took and undergo meaningful consultation unlike the approach that was taken in this round.
Meanwhile, Darryl Carmichael and Emily Laidlaw also published their comments in the consultation. They called for reforming the approach taken with “scope and definitions, the proposed regulator, proactive monitoring, 24-hour takedown requirements, website blocking, mandatory reporting, and transparency obligations.”
Fenwick McKelvey, meanwhile, offered some thoughts on the proposal as well. He also notes the problem with putting all harms in the same enforcement basket with the comments, “Conflating harm and criminal acts risks deputizing OSCPs with both enforcement and police reporting for criminal activities”. He also took issue with the 24 hour takedown requirements, saying, “The present risk is that the 24-hr takedown requirement along with a lack of penalties for false positives may encourage OSCPs to further invest in automated content moderation, especially artificial intelligence as a form of media governance.”
So, for those keeping track, there were two submissions that were more or less supportive of the online harms approach after all of that. First was the CCRC which said that while they appreciate what is being done, they felt that investment in education was a better approach. News Media Canada, the other entity that supported this, appears to not have bothered even reading the paper in the first place. This became evident with the fact that they brought up the link tax (which is unrelated to the consultation) and barely addressed the contents of the “technical paper” in the first place, only assumptive generalizations. Everyone else was, to varying degrees, either opposed to it or really really opposed to it. Essentially, it was almost universally opposed within Canada.
So, with so much feedback, we started diving in to the themes from the consultation responses. The first theme that stuck out to us is the heavily opposed 24 hour takedown requirements. This was specifically singled out both nationally and internationally. Organizations and people who opposed it include the Independent Press Gallery, Michael Geist, OpenMedia, CIPPIC, Citizen Lab, Internet Archive Canada, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and Access Now.
Another theme we picked up on was the widely rejected site blocking idea. It’s not really a surprise because it is well documented for years that site blocking is an ineffective tool to cure societal ills in the first place. Those that opposed this aspect include the Public Interest Advocacy Center, Ranking Digital Rights, Access Now, and the Cybersecure Policy Exchange.
Another theme we found is the overall condemnation of the consultation process itself. The criticisms came from submissions such as those from Michael Geist, Natasha Tusikov and Blayne Haggart, Internet Society Canada, OpenMedia (who went so far as to call for the government to abandon this inadequate consultation), and Citizen Lab (who called the consultation process “grossly inadequate”).
As we’ve already pointed out in the past, it’s widely expected that the government won’t bother with reading these submissions in the first place. Still, for many, the goal was not necessarily changing the governments mind, but rather, being able to go on record opposing this proposal in the first place. We’ll continue to document more themes as we go along and report on the response the government may have to all of this – if any at all.
Finally, trouble at Facebook as usual. This month, things got rocky with an outage that lasted a whopping, wait, is that right? 6 hours? That’s it? The story grabbed international headlines as large media types engaged in massive hand-wringing over what to do. Some openly remarked how so many businesses rely exclusively on Facebook. We, of course, remarked that if your business is exclusively on Facebook, you’re doing business wrong. Others were in a panic over what to do without Facebook. After 6 hours, the conclusion was that the outage was caused by a configuration error and that services were quickly restored. At the end of the day, this wound up being a non-story that really didn’t affect us at all.
Of course, of bigger concern for Facebook was Frances Haugen, the person who blew the whistle on the company. She testified what so many knew about the company already: Facebook is run with a mentality of growth at all costs. This is regardless of the health of its users or almost anything else for that matter. The goal of blowing the whistle was apparently to reform the company and for it to be better for its users. Some called it further evidence to break the company up. Others took advantage of this and said that Section 230 needs to be reformed – which often really means repealing Section 230. Still, for many, this is just another round of whistle blowing that we’ve all seen before. Whether anything really changes with this is unclear.
So, definitely a very activist oriented month this month. Let’s take a look at some of the other stories making news this month.
Other Stories Making News
Canadian Liberal party hypocrisy was on full display this month. Throughout the last government, a number of Liberal party members were very vocal about how “big tech” has gotten all too powerful. Some openly remark how they seem to rake in the cash while media outlets supposedly struggle to survive. Transparency reports on Facebook, apparently, were telling a story of a very different attitude behind the scenes. The same critics of big tech were also apparently spending big on political advertising on Facebook.
Steven Guilbeault, a big critic of big tech, spent a big $17,000 on political advertising on Facebook. Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, spent nearly $3 million on political advertising. Innovation Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, spent over $12,000 on political advertising. Meanwhile, deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, spent over $14,000 on her political campaign. So, on the one hand, you have politicians saying that Facebook is too powerful and makes too much money. On the other hand, these same politicians, when it comes to getting re-elected, suddenly have no problem spending big on the very platforms they so heavily criticize. Getting themselves re-elected? Yup, their chequebooks are suddenly open. At least Facebook is open and transparent about political spending – quite impressive for such a secretive company, really.
In a good news story that we don’t often see, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is saying that they are going to deprecate the HTTPS Everywhere extension. The extension was used to add a layer of HTTPS encryption for websites that do not offer it. Now that HTTPS is nearly everywhere, the usefulness of the extension is, happily, in question. The EFF effectively called this moment a success story.
With COVID-19 continuing to cause havoc in society, it has been highlighted to death how important the Internet and technology has become. In the midst of all of this, Bell, one of Canada’s largest telecom companies, quietly raised the rates of Internet and cell phones. A number of political parties vowed to lower Internet and cell phone rates on the campaign trail – a promise we dismissed as unlikely to happen. As such, we can safely say that the promise was broken even before the first sitting day into the new government.
Previously, we brought you news of the Texas moderation ban bill. The bill is said to outlaw banning users for so-called “political viewpoints”. Many consider the legislation unconstitutional. This month, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry filed a lawsuit to block the law from being enforced. The challenge faces an uphill battle thanks to the politically controlled US Supreme Court. That court has already started basing decisions around political, rather than legal considerations.
As that happened, the hugely contested – and arguably unconstitutional – Texas abortion ban law moved ahead in the legal process. The US Department of Justice launched an appeal to have enforcement of the law blocked. A lower court made the downright easy decision to allow the blocking of the law. However, the Republican controlled appeals court overruled that decision. As a result, enforcement of the unconstitutional law was permitted to continue.
In response, the US Justice Department then appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court, another Republican controlled courthouse. It is widely expected that the Supreme Court will make another political decision and back the appeals court decision to allow the unconstitutional law to stand. As many pointed out, the law not only threatens women’s rights, but also online free speech rights as well.
The Internet Archive is showcasing a new feature called the Wayforward Machine. The feature is a followup to the famous Wayback Machine which shows what websites look like in years past. The Wayforward Machine supposedly time travels to the year 2024 and looks at what websites look like on that year. While you might think that this is an exercise in artificial intelligence to predict what websites might look like in the future, the thing is, that isn’t what the feature is about. When you actually use the service, websites are shown as shut down and sued out of existence. The point is to showcase what the web will look like in a post Section 230 world where privacy laws are shot out of existence and copyright rules are running amok even more so than they are now. It urges users to re-consider the idea of repealing Section 230.
Several civil, digital, and journalism rights organizations are renewing calls for the US to drop the case against Wikileaks co-founder, Julian Assange. The call comes as a report surfaced about how the Trump administration actively started forming a plot to kidnap or assassinate the journalist. The story raised fresh concerns about the true intention of the United States. Biden has yet to respond.
Journalists are facing threats from Missouri state governor, Mike Parson. The staff for the journalism outlet discovered a serious vulnerability in the state’s education website. The vulnerability had teachers Social Security numbers embedded in the HTML in plain text. The sensitive information was easily accessible for anyone who knew how to right click and view the page source. The staff privately alerted website administrators of the flaw and the affected pages were taken down. Only then did the outlet publicly report on the incident.
Rather than thanking the outlet for spotting and reporting the issue, Parson attacked the outlet for supposedly “hacking” the website. He threatened to charge the staff, and anyone else involved, to the fullest extent of the law. Parson further used the incident in a political ad campaign in an effort to raise money for one of his PAC’s. In the campaign, he said that the journalists hacked the website in an effort to sell headlines. He called the outlet “fake news” and accused the outlet of putting the safety of teachers at risk. Understandably, some users consider this one of the dumbest reactions they have heard of in a long time.
In response, we followed the story up by referring to a rather interesting YouTube collaboration. Stuff Made Here, known for over-engineering various things in an effort to solve simple problems, decided to make what he called an unpickable lock. While the lock defeated a call-in lock smith, many wanted him to send it to another famous YouTuber, the LockPickingLawyer.
Stuff Made Here, in response, completely redesigned the lock from the ground up and sent both the original version and the upgraded version to the LockPickingLawyer. The LockPickingLawyer gave the locks high praise for coming up with a design that was, to the best of his knowledge, completely original. Still, he was able to defeat both locks using, in at least one case, a somewhat unconventional method of picking the lock. Still, he admitted to having a lot of fun trying to figure out how to pick the lock. He also offered some feedback to make the strength of the lock even stronger. Stuff Made Here responded by saying that he intends on making a version 3 of the lock with the suggestions to see if he can make an unpickable lock. As of now, we are still waiting on version 3 which is, no doubt, going to take some time to engineer.
The point of raising this story was to highlight how white hat hacking can help improve the security of something. Their job is to poke around and look for vulnerabilities. After that, they can offer feedback for ways of improving said security. This story highlighted a very nice analogue version of this positive relationship for those who get a little lost in the technical and theoretical neuances. As an added bonus, the video series was really fun to watch as well.
Finally, NDP MP, Charlie Angus, has finally broken his silence on Bill C-10. Angus, of course, has long had a reputation of really understanding the nuances of technology and criticizing governments when they get tech policies so very wrong. While he was seemingly the voice of reason in the House of Commons, when Bill C-10 came around, he fell shockingly silent on the matter. Eventually, the vote for Bill C-10 came in and he voted for the legislation. This, of course, shocked and disappointed the tech community who generally wondered where the Charlie of old went.
Recently, however, Angus broke his silence and criticized the government for Bill C-10. He called the legislation a “dumpster fire” and called for someone who actually knows what they are doing to draft a new approach. Of course, if it was such a dumpster fire, then the obvious response is, “well, why did you vote for this dumpster fire in the first place?” We noted that it’s going to take more than a brief splash in the news with firey comments to salvage his reputation at this point – especially given his actions already on this file.
One thing is for sure, another really busy month here on Freezenet.
Video Game Reviews
So, with that, we turn towards entertainment.
Before we get into the video game reviews, I wanted to point out the first impression video’s we’ve posted this month.
For this month’s Steam game, we played the action adventure game, Just Cause 2. You can check out the video directly on our site or via YouTube.
After that, we checked out the Playstation 3 action adventure game, Watch_Dogs. You can also check out that video directly on our site or via YouTube.
As always, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on notifications to get realtime updates on what video’s we’ve posted.
Now, here are video games we’ve reviewed this month:
First up is Hexcite – The Shapes of Victory for the Game Boy Color. While the inital learning curve is both painful and steep, the game does become a surprisingly strong one after. So, this one gets a solid 70%.
We then published our last Game Boy Color game review in this run. That last game wound up being 3-D Pinball Ultra: Thrillride. A short game consisting of only one pinball table. As a result, it winds up getting a mediocre 60%.
We then moved on to the next console for our reviews: The Sega Genesis. Yes, we finally started digging into this system. Promise delivered! We started this run with the rather famous game, Altered Beast. While it looks like your standard beat ’em up game, I found myself being pleasantly surprised with how much this game has to offer. Combined with really good graphics, this one scored a very nice 78%.
After that, we played the notoriously difficult Sega Genesis game, Ghouls ‘N Ghosts. As expected, difficulty really holds this game back. While variety was certainly a positive, it only improved the overall score to 66%.
From there, we tried the famed mascot game, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis. A somewhat shorter game, but one that permits loads of exploration and an overall enjoyable experience. So, a game that get’s a great 84%.
Music Reviews
Before we get into the music reviews, we wanted to point out that we have gotten another release in our inbox for preview. This is the EP release Psy’Aviah ft. Oliviya Nicole – Sunbird. It features 11 tracks featuring a variety of different styles, and takes, on the track. So, we thought we’d offer a preview of this. Enjoy!
Always cool to hear something new from Psy’Aviah. Now, as a reminder, the music previews section is powered by you, the artist. If you have a forthcoming release that you think will be cool to have featured on this podcast, and the main website, do let us know. If we are interested, we’ll be happy to add it to the podcast like you heard just a moment ago. Such a really cool feature to have.
Now, here are the other tracks we’ve listened to this month:
First up is Lisa Loeb – Stay (I Missed You)
Then, we heard Lagwagon – Brown Eyed Girl
Underworld – Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You
Prong – Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck
… and finally, Black Sabbath – The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
Picks of the Month
So, that leads us to our pick of the month. This month, our pick of the month belongs to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis. Also, be sure to check out Rob Zombie – Meet the Creeper.
Oddities
Some might argue that there just isn’t enough romance in this world. A woman in Pittsfield wanted to spend more time with her boyfriend. So, she did the most romantic thing you can imagine: sending bomb threats to the boyfriends employer. Of course, his employer, Puritan Medical Products were not amused and referred the matter to police. Police tracked the woman down who confessed that she was responsible for the threats. The woman was charged with a felony count of terrorizing and was held in prison. Bail was set at $1,500. Aww, how romantic. One word to the lucky boyfriend in all of this: run.
A Danish artist, Jens Haaning, was asked to recreate two pieces of his artwork known as “Work it Out”. The exhibit showcased how much money a year of work is worth in different countries. The museum gave the artist $84,000 to recreate the work showcasing the yearly average sallary for a Danish worker and the yearly sallary for an Australian worker. They even offered money to keep the works updated. Things took an odd turn when, part way through the contract, the artist said that he was going to do something different. Since he was a well known artist, the Museum staff were curious as to what would come out of this. In response, the museum received a crate. When they opened the crate, all they got was two blank canvases. After looking at the canvases, they found out the exhibit was called “Take the Money and Run”. Following the discovery, staff at the museum started looking for the artist to find out what happened to the money. I’d talk about the moral implications of stealing money, but I can’t help but shake the idea that the incident was also quite hilarious.
A woman in Troy, Michigan made the news because she was sad about a song she heard. She visited the Paradise Fruit Market when she heard the song. She confronted staff and demanded that they stop playing that song. When staff explained that they have no control over the music choice, she apparently got angry and started yelling at employees. In response, employees called police. Police showed up, but the woman had left the store. A police cruiser attempted to block her exit, but she drove around and tried to make an escape. Police were able to ultimately pull her over and arrest her, charging her for hinder and obstruction of a police officer. After she was released from the Troy Lock-Up Facility, she apparently started screaming at the front desk attendant. When the woman didn’t calm down, police arrested her again. They kindly added a disorderly conduct charge to her rap sheet. Didn’t catch the name of the woman, but the name Karen kept popping up in the comments for some reason.
Outro
Before we close out this month’s episode, we got one quick announcement to make. This month, we posted the September Wiki content patch. This one was smaller than expected, but we did manage to post a few additional mixes for the 400th episode of the Future Sound of Egypt. So, a small amount of progress was made on that special. In addition to that, we added the latest episodes for the Future Sound of Egypt, Fables, Resonation, the V Recordings Podcast, and the Random Movement Podcast. We got a new episode for that last one, so we happily added that to the update. We hope you enjoy that new stuff and look forward to adding even more content in the future!
Also, huge shoutout to Nolan for providing mixing services!
If you’d like to get your hands on some behind the scenes stuff, exclusive content, and early access material, you can check out our Patreon page at Patreon.com/freezenet. Through this, you can help make Freezenet just that much better all the while getting some pretty cool stuff in the process. That’s Patreon.com/freezenet!
Alternatively, you can simply buy us a coffee via ko-fi.com/freezenet!
…and that’s this months episode for October, 2021. I’m Drew Wilson for Freezenet. Be sure to check out our website at freezenet.ca for all the latest in news and reviews. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Thank you for listening and see you next month.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
