Archive for July, 2016|Monthly archive page
Feds expect provinces to ratify free trade deal next year, with booze in the mix
The lede focuses on interprovincial alcohol commerce but that’s probably the least interesting part of the article. The most interesting, if not the most newsworthy, is the point made by the minister regarding immigration and its economic benefits to the region:
“Immigration is an economic driver,” he said. “Frankly, immigration was looked on in a very different light by the previous government. There was a lot of fear-mongering around immigration. It held back innovation, I think it definitely had a negative impact in the past.”
Canada’s provinces and territories will ratify a free trade deal next year and the federal government is pushing hard to include an ambitious liberalization of alcohol laws in the agreement despite provincial intransigence, the country’s economic development minister says.
Source: Feds expect provinces to ratify free trade deal next year, with booze in the mix
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: Attack of the week: FREAK (or ‘factoring the NSA for fun and profit’)
Matthew Green is a particularly interesting writer on cryptography, theory and practice. He’s joined the EFF in a lawsuit to undo one of the most contentious and problematical provisions of the DMCA, Section 1201, which limits a user’s rights over a digitally locked object. (See EFF sues US government, saying copyright rules on DRM are unconstitutional | Ars Technica .) The argument by the EFF is that the provision unconstitutionally limits free speech; Green relates the provision to his own work, cryptography and its use on behalf of the (US, at the least) public good, to argue that Section 1201 compromises his work, puts him in legal (and financial) jeopardy, and thus endangers US society. He makes a good case.
But this account below actually relates to issues that have less to do with copyright than with the ways we secure many of our routine electronic communications. And it’s told well.
With all that in mind, there’s a third aspect of SSL/TLS that doesn’t get nearly as much attention. That is: the SSL protocol itself was deliberately designed to be broken.
newspeak 