The Flipper Zero is a general-purpose tool and STEM educational device. By banning the device, a country would be setting back their workforce of engineers and scientists a bit.
How can you use a Flipper Zero to steal a car? Flipper Zero can't crack hard encryption.
Is the real problem that cars were made with security that they already knew was negligently weak at the time? If so, is a recall of those cars more appropriate?
The Flipper Zero is a general-purpose tool for engineering and information security research. By banning the device, we will be doing a disservice to our country’s practitioners in these fields, while doing little to thwart car thefts.
If possession of a device like Flipper Zero is the enabler for car theft, then it leads me to believe that such cars had negligently insecure encryption from the day they were manufactured, and a recall of such cars would be more appropriate.
Very nice. I like how concisely you hit the points. And also that you can note you're a constituent, tech business owner, and tech expert.
If different people want to mix up approaches, and hit various notes, to see what resonates, a couple thoughts (as a tech nerd, not a political communicator):
* "Information security research" has different connotations for different people. No matter how professionally you conduct yourself and respect the term, and no matter how much you promote the term positively as professional... if a particular reader considers the term to be a euphemism for behavior they think should be curtailed, and they think that's the only use of FZ, that might hurt your effort. (Unless you can find a way to promote both at the same time, to those readers, without compromising on either more than you want to.)
* All the hobbyist experimenting and building things, by kids and adults alike, I consider constructionist "education", which is valued. And I suspect it doesn't hurt to say "STEM", as a keyword for the kinds of jobs and economic development this leads to. (Imagine kids figuring out how modern devices work, which today requires more than just unscrewing an appliance and finding the motor and gears. Or getting interested in the RF that backs much of our global technology infrastructure, and inspired to pursue engineering or science. Or using that knowledge to build things that help get them into universities, or that become a tech startup company.)
You may want to add that the average person's phone is many times more powerful and capable than a flipper. The dual use tools that can steal cars are so ubiquitous in society (such as a cheap laptop) that no amount of device banning will make a lick of difference.
> leads me to believe that such cars had negligently insecure encryption
While accurate, the standard may not be as rigorous as you'd like to imagine; there was a time not long ago when a wire coat hanger was enough to unlock a car.
I remember that time. We even used it once on a friend's car. However, we did not ban wire coat hangers. I'm sure the politicians would agree that would have been silly, but common sense seems to leave them when it comes to tech.
A lot of vehicles - my wife’s 2015 Kia included - have a very flawed implementation of rolling key encryption. Basically, you need to capture three consecutive keys. The receiver is programmed to allow any future key (in case the fob was pressed away from the car), and will happily reset to past keys when you send three consecutive keys in sequence.
Ostensibly this is to avoid people’s fobs from becoming “unpaired” somehow if the car receives a future key. You just hit the button a few times and it works. In practice, it’s trivially easy to exploit.
Here's the unfortunate part of how the Canadian government works. Many of our laws (legislation) defer the specific implementation details to regulations. This specific ban likely doesn't need to go through the House of Commons or the Senate and can just be passed as an Order-in-Council that directs ISED (Canadian FCC) and CBSA (Canadian CBP) to modify their regulations to prohibit the device from use and import respectively. So long as there's an existing law in place that defers to regulations for banning specific devices or specific categories of devices, those regulations can be modified without parliamentary oversight.
It's the same approach they used for their recent (last 5 years) firearm bans. Whether or not I agree with what they're trying to accomplish with the bans, the ability to arbitrarily ban specific items without meaningful oversight isn't great for democracy.
Can a FZ assist in enrolling a new key in the ECU immobilizer’s list of approved keys, or does it just facilitate a relatively quiet way of unlocking the doors?
Because honestly there are lots of ways of gaining access to the inside of a vehicle, and if it can’t enroll a new key it’s neither necessary nor sufficient for stealing a vehicle.
A lot of the weak security now being exposed by the Flipper Zero (but they already existed and were actively being exploited) are the result of trading in security for convenience.
An example: Contactless payments, I can pay up to €50 by just pressing my bank card against the receiver. Very convenient, but, anyone can hold a receiver up to where I have my card and steal money that way. There's insurances of course, in this case the bank is pretty clear in saying "we know this is a risk and you will be compensated", same as with their apps etc. But it is a tradeoff.
> How can you use a Flipper Zero to steal a car? Flipper Zero can't crack hard encryption.
It’s impossible, you can’t even use it against garage doors rolling keys without accessing the garage unit and program it like a new remote. The ban has nothing to do with car theft.
Someone on the plane I was on kept triggering it to do bluetooth attacks ('not your airpods') while I was trying to read (and have my earphones on connected via bluetooth so fuck me right?).
There's hacked firmware's you can install [0]. I understand that there are probably tons of other devices like this out there but this one was SO fucking popular and easily accessible.
I've already seen this thing abused and used in a super obnoxious way. Frankly I think you should be arrested for having it on in the passenger cabin of an airplane.
A person messing with RF while in an airliner should probably be arrested, I agree with that part.
Probably best not to have the tool in carry-on, even powered-off, and I'd understand if TSA didn't permit that (like they wouldn't let a chef carry-on their knives, another tool with very legitimate purposes).
Messing with bluetooth on an airliner isn't going to do anything at all. If they were attempting to spoof GPS or playing with VHF signals that's another issue but the flipper isn't capable of that.
The TSA also doesn't care, they don't look for, and don't remotely have the training to detect suspicious electronics. Even if they did the flipper looks very innocuous unless you know what it is. You can reliably get much more entertaining things onto airplanes without them batting an eye.
It can do something. Many people depend on Bluetooth insulin pumps for instance, and in an airplane they may not have access to the alternatives in case the device stops working.
You don't need a flipper zero for that. A simple esp32 (also the base of a FZ) can do it and even an android phone can.
It's a dick move but banning the hardware doesn't do anything because you can port such simple hacks to any platform. It's the action that should be policed.
I get that this lowers the barrier to entry, but presumably you could do something similar with a software package to make your laptop do the same thing? AFAIK it uses off the shelf radios and firmware so I don’t really understand the framing here that this device is ok but others aren’t. Especially as others point out it’s unlikely this has anything to do with making car theft easier nor to interfere in any way with the safe operation of the plane.
Yeah, this panic over the device is weird when it feels like a nothing burger. I can understand it in the general populace that doesn’t understand tech, but the reaction on HN by some commentators on a forum literally dedicated to hacking on things is weird to see.
It’s like getting upset by a lock picking set except this isn’t even a lock picking set and more like a door knob diagnostic tool.
I am on the fence here. In terms of difficulty, isn't it basically like surfing on someone's unprotected wifi and being surprised that someone can see what you are doing?
I am not excusing the behavior, but I also don't see arrest as an appropriate remedy.
There are good reasons to ban a device like that on an active passenger flight. A modern airplane relies on a lot of radio frequency communication I think.. a reason for strict ban is - there is no feedback to the person in the passenger area when they stomp on some sensitive channel, or they may notice but find it exhilarating perhaps..
I'm a private pilot, but I can't think of any flight critical systems that could really be impacted, especially since the Flipper Zero is very low power. I suppose that it could affect cabin systems like on-board purchasing or seatback entertainment. An unlocked android phone has very similar hardware and capabilities.
This is in no way an endorsement of fucking around with one on an airplane, or even off an airplane when used without the consent of the target.
That seems reasonable to me, but I don't think that was the OPs proposition ( arrest the user ). Ban on a plane is fairly strong, but a lot more reasonable. At least compared to blank ban on electronics that included gameboys and walkmen, this one makes sense.
It’s only facially reasonable to people not familiar enough with RF on a plane. This isn’t in the right radio bands to interfere with anything to do with the safe operation of a plane and it’s using off the shelf radio chips and firmware that would have the appropriate channel switching when they detect a sensitive communication (no different from the stuff the WiFi chip in your laptop and phone are doing when connected to the plane’s WiFi). People were rightly concerned (even if overly conservative and in practice it would be ok) about 3g + planes but since 4g it’s been a solved problem and WiFi has been doing coex with radar channels for forever and if if I recall correctly Bluetooth is too low power to really cause a problem. And to reiterate, flipper zero afaik is using the same off the shelf radio hardware and firmware that would be found in any other product so it wouldn’t be any more dangerous to plane functioning than those products. I really am confused by the FUD being leveled at flipper zero and where it’s coming from.
I've learned a lot from mine, especially how many types of access control RFID work. And I've been working on commercial SDR projects for the past decade.
What kind of projects? I've been looking at moving that direction but most of the fun SDR work is classified stuff and the commercial world seems pretty happy with ancient superhet architectures for the most part.
The problem always comes down to lack of responsible use. Great, you learned a lot. Others are using it for harm. So now we have a problem.
Look at the state of CB radio. Anybody can buy and use one. The airwaves are clogged with the trucker equivalent of YouTube Poop. It's like being in a fucking mental hospital.
Ham radio requires licensing. There are still cranks but now there's a barrier to entry for most of them. It's still usable.
Lockpicks are illegal to carry in parts of America, unless you're a licensed locksmith.
Look at the state of the internet, 1997 vs now. The difference is we onboarded everybody.
Broadly speaking, trolling/crime (and tools to perpetrate it) should not be frictionless. Attacks on infrastructure (malware, etc.) are getting too expensive and social attacks are basically free to execute and costly to respond to.
You can bring any western company to a grinding halt by getting a bunch of entry-level stooges to file false workplace violence and other complaints indiscriminately in bad faith. There's no cost or consequence for this, and the company will panic trying to accommodate in good faith, but do the same with police reports and everyone gets charged with misdemeanors for abusing the system.
> By banning the device, a country would be setting back their workforce of engineers and scientists a bit.
You're pulling a "Think of the children" here. Rest of your comment is fine, but this first statement doesn't hold water. Any incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device. A Raspberry PI, Ardiuno, or other general purpose micro controllers and small form computing devices sure, I could believe that. But some niche device, no.
Edit: I wasn't aware of the popularity of the device, as suggested by comment below, when I wrote this
RF devices are already ubiquitous, the technology and applications keep growing, and there's emerging opportunities for innovative applications.
FWIW, I "funded" the Kickstarter for Flipper Zero because my startup was doing something a little innovative with various kinds of RF tags, to help solve a significant societal problem. (Which, besides what we could've contributed to a country in monetary value of our company, the application domain had significant implications for national economies, as well as for public safety. All things that lawmakers care about, in addition to reducing auto thefts.) We had Android diagnostic software, plus bespoke iOS apps with NFC that I wrote, but a Flipper Zero would've helped me work better and faster at some things.
The Flipper Zero is a small-form computing device that is immensely popular, not particularly niche.
> Any(sic) incredibly small number of engineers and scientists would ever use this device.
I personally know over a dozen people who own them and have tinkered with them in various ways. I managed to "break" my air conditioner unit (permanently setting it to C, not that bad of a "break") with one. Definitely less popular than a Pi or Arduino, but growing in popularity very fast.
Numbers? I see in 2023 they did 80m rev which is what, half a million devices sold worldwide? That’s very niche. % wise close to 0; it’s a geek tool. Nice but not immensely popular.
You'd be surprised how much 500K means if you're not Samsung or Apple. There's recent products you'd say were clear hits and sold an order of magnitude more than that, but in actuality, it was exactly 350K.
But I didn’t say 500k is not a lot or that it’s not successful; I say that it is a niche and it’s not immensely popular. It’s successful in its niche. Again, the comment I replied to used those terms and that’s just not true. I don’t care and wish them all the luck and selling 100m of these things, but if I have to think about how many zeros behind the comma to write the % of human owners, this is not a non niche or popular product. Knock on your neighbours door and ask what it is; they won’t know and they also would never ever buy one.
It's not a niche device - it's explosively popular and is obviously serving as a gateway for some young people into engineering and hacking.
I couldn't possibly comment on the practical consequences to STEM of banning it. I wouldn't make that argument. But it's silly to claim that it's a "think of the children" argument and nothing more.
This is typical. All this stuff about people knowing where their cars are and the police, CBSA etc not doing anything about it*, the complicity of all the port and shipping people, but the government pretends banning some electronics will change something. I don't know what people expected from a "summit" or whatever they did, there are lots of clear steps we could take, but instead we get this.
Well you see, adding the name of a consumer device to a list of prohibited items is easy and costs nearly nothing. On the other hand, unfucking inter-jurisdiction cooperation and rooting out organized crime from the ports is hard.
See also:
- banning various types of (previously) legal firearms vs cracking down on illicit handguns being smuggled in over the border from the US
- banning purchase of property by foreign owners vs addressing supply
- banning single use plastics vs buying a goddamn oil pipeline for billions of dollars rather than cutting oil extraction subsidies
Easier to ban the Flipper than admit to the public that ports in Quebec are run by the mafia which is what makes this entire issue with auto theft possible.
In the grand scheme, these are remarkably unsophisticated devices. It's almost a meme in RF circles to excitedly buy one and then immediately realize it's just a Girl Tech IM-me with NFC.
If you want to do real damage there are portable SDRs that can jam GPS and transmit just about any arbitrary radio signal from DC to 6GHz for less than $500. This is a mildly powerful toy that has a large, intelligent and curious community around it.
The reality is RF stuff is wildly under-explored right now outside of military spaces. On the consumer side I'd guess we're somewhere around the early 2000s internet in terms of security posture. It's probably best to consider the flipper community to be a gift of minimally destructive pentesters relative to what they could be if someone wanted to actually dish out real electronic warfare.
Yes I believe this is true. A capable general purpose SDR can do almost all the things that purpose built illegal device can do. What's protecting society is that figuring out how to do this on an expensive SDR is non-trivial. The illegal purpose built GPS-jamming devices just make it dead simple.
My take is that what makes the Flipper so revolutionary/disruptive is that it puts all these previously difficult to pentest systems (NFC/RFID and sub-GHz radio mainly), behind a dead simple UI.
One example is intercepting a particular NFC card's password to read its protected sectors. This requires reading the card's UID, then presenting that UID to a reader hooked knows that UID's password, recording the password it sends, then using that password on the NFC card.
Prior to the Flipper this NFC password interception was possible but difficult. The Flipper make this sort of NFC MITM attack dead easy. It's literally just 4-5 clicks in the UI. I've cloned my own hotel key cards this way. (And it's impractical to secretly clone someone else's card this way since it requires tapping the Flipper on the same card twice)
If you're interested in the Flipper community, the 3rd party Xtreme firmware has a very active discord: https://flipper-xtre.me/
The Xtreme firmware appeared to be one of the easy ways to get the 'BLE Spam' app which could crash the latest iOS devices until Apple patched it in December.
And that story really echoes the parent's point about Flipper users being a 'gift of minimally destructive pentesters' (love that quote). The Flipper community effectively notified/pressured Apple into fixing an issue that might have been used more nefariously. (Some really malicious folks could have used the ability to crash iOS devices to DoS/shutdown peoples phones at some critical moment as part of a scheme or theft)
Canada has totally lost its way.
Housing is a massive issue. Healthcare is under constant attack. Immigration is used to prop up a failing economy. We don’t really make anything. Wages are lower than the US just because. There’s no negotiating power. The dollar is weak. We can’t extract most of the available resources because of the weather and environmental concerns. The praries are being sold off to foreign investors. The smartest and most educated leave. Starting to feel like a fool for sticking around.
It's an obnoxiously tough time and it's easy to fall into a pit of despair regarding the decreasing availability of a prosperous future if you don't already have it, and all of those issues can be both interesting and depressing to think about.
However, what we do have is a pretty welcoming, friendly, and adventurous population that's a great basis for building a home, even if that doesn't mean having a house. If you have no sentimental attachments, no social life, no outdoor hobbies, no family, no job, and no prospects for a job, all of those together are perfectly legitimate reasons for getting the hell out and seeking prosperity where it might actually be found.
For me, I haven't had a job for almost a year, nobody's hiring, nobody will be hiring, rent is increasing, I'll almost certainly never own a home or be able to retire, and I don't think having kids would be feasible if I was set on it; all together, a miserable situation to be in. But... I do have friends, I have places to spend my time, I don't need to worry about medical expenses, I have a roof (for now), and I'm in better shape than many people in their early thirties. I like the vibe, and don't think I'd have better opportunities in those respects anywhere else.
That said, I did already move for work once, and picked the most appealing place imo, so anywhere else would have to pass a very high bar in order to compete. I'm also relatively more outgoing and open than people who claim to want strong social lives, and am willing to put in the groundwork. If you're a lonely, socially anxious or inept person, or a sweaty careerist tryhard who doesn't take time away from work anyway, being here vs anywhere else probably won't be such a significant difference except a better account balance.
Edit: I'd qualify my characterization of being welcoming, open, and adventurous, with the possible exception of smaller towns and cities where quite the opposite can be true. No so much because they don't like newcomers or because they're bigoted, but many people in those places—even if they're relatively cosmopolitan—haven't bothered to look beyond their high school friends for connection, even well into adulthood, and I've heard that can be quite difficult to break into. But I also don't think it's unique to Canada and it's a worthwhile experience to get the hell out of your hometown no matter where you're from by your mid-twenties I think, if even for a few years.
>For me, I haven't had a job for almost a year, nobody's hiring, nobody will be hiring, rent is increasing, I'll almost certainly never own a home or be able to retire, and I don't think having kids would be feasible if I was set on it; all together, a miserable situation to be in. But... I do have friends, I have places to spend my time,
Im sorry but this is one of the saddest things I've ever read. As a Canadian of this was my experience of Canada I would be doing everything I could to get out. Thankfully it isn't yet, but things definitely are not looking good and I am worried about the future
It's not great, but things aren't always great and I've been through shitty years before. All of those things aren't really unique to Canada either, just some of them, particularly taken as a whole set. It's not true that there's no jobs at all, just that there's figuratively no jobs that I'd be capable of getting as a frontend developer in BC, but I'd probably prefer to try and develop trade skills or something than hope that there will always be a place for me in programming. It's also not true that there is literally no possibility of the other things, but a number of other factors would have to both be in place and be agreeable for me to pursue that.
For example, I don't really want to own a house to begin with, but if I did it would be a modest condo in or close to my current neighborhood where I've established myself, not some arbitrarily cheaper place where I'd get some bungalow and there'd be no jobs outside of trades anyway, not many people to re-establish a social life with, or would require a car, or a remote job that I don't have and wouldn't want to do from home in an isolated prairie town. These are just all factors in the system I'm in that don't serve anyone but people who already have quite a lot of money and want to make more by sitting on property. Until then, I'll eek by living in this studio basement suite owned by boomers, sharing rent with my partner, figuring out what the next move is. Maybe eventually I'll have to yield and bail, but I'll cross that bridge when I end up at zero (real zero, not zero + savings) again.
The systems have more or less been the same for many decades, and they've been getting pushed for at least the last one, just not everywhere all at once to their breaking point. They are slow, complex systems that require people to give up control usually, and that's unfortunate, but it is what it is.
If you think it's that bad I say (not in a snarky way) go but I'm not sure where. By your tone I suspect the EU is not your cup of tea. I think you're wrong I mean we have problems but so do all countries now healthcare is a worldwide issue. And just look south it's a mess politically and socially (sorry USA!). Even the EU is under strain among its members.
Not OP but did add my own take in a sibling comment; as much as I tend to enjoy my time in the states, I just don't like the vibe as much, and there's a subtle but noticable relief I get when I return home. Maybe it's the airport terminals that make me feel as though I'm appealing to get out of prison every time I have to layover there.
Some places I've lived in the US made me wish to return to Canada, others made me thankful I didn't. If you've never lived there long-term of course it won't feel like home. I know it's tempting to make excuses for the place you live, but I think you're downplaying the damage that Trudeau's government has done to the country. The US has its issues too, but greater state independence and a stronger constitution help.
I certainly wouldn't suggest such a move would be broadly regrettable, but don't agree with the implication that I'm making excuses. Many people are attracted to the subtle cultural, political, and financial differences the U.S provides, some aren't, and that's ok. The countries and people are more similar than they are different. The problems Canada is currently facing though is partially to do with stagnant cultural values (that are also more similar to the U.S than different) and deeply flawed policy at multiple levels of governance both current and historical, and Trudeau but he's just the latest. A nation is more than it's current set of politicians though—obviously also true of the U.S—and to leave for more money would mean I'd be dismissing the factors that exist despite the bureaucracy.
It just depends what your personal circumstances are whether that's a reasonable deal or not, and it's not for me to judge one way or another. If I could make U.S software money from Canada, it's a no-brainer, I just can't and wouldn't really want to live there long-term. The outcome I could hypothetically have doesn't seem all that compelling, but it probably does for a great number of people for obvious reasons.
For me though, there's something a bit too intensely capitalist I guess that rubs me the wrong way. So many things and people are American size, and super, and mega, and excessive, and seemingly lacking nuance in a way I just don't like. I do get used to it and forget I'm there, and always enjoy the visit, but I can't see myself being there for more than 6 months.
Never cared much about the Flipper Zero personally, but now that governments are banning them I guess it's time to buy one. Great unintentional marketing campaign, Canada!
That's how I feel; I'm confident that if I had one it would end up in a drawer alongside raspberry pi's and ESP32s and the like, but hearing it may be banned is a compelling argument to get one.
That said, this is the most popular one, I'm sure there's clones out there already that fly under the radar.
Exactly this. It is unfortunately above my budget for items with certain near 100% shelf time, because this is a pretty exciting device to boast about owning. Especially after this news from the Canadians.
Car thefts have increased by a significant amount outside of their normal fluctuations, but they are still much much lower than they were before 2010. To call it a crisis is hyperbole. Canada's car thefts are the approximately the same rates as the US.
Flipper zero is a casualty of poor security practices, and the insurance companies need to be going after the car manufacturers for making it so easy. I would even say if it's so easy to bypass, then buttonless start should never have even been legal.
You can ban the flipper zero, but it does not seem that difficult to get them into the country nor does it seem difficult for criminals to make their own.
I wouldn't trust that data at all without associated data on reporting rates over time. There's absolutely a crisis, and it's bad enough that people have stopped bothering to report thefts to the police since they know nothing will come of it.
People have stopped reporting car theft?? Since a police report is required for an insurance claim, your statement implies people are just accepting their car is gone and eating the loss personally. Can you provide any citations?
Canadian government once again proving it is stupid. These are the same groups that had moral panics and tried to ban video games and rock and roll without any actual information.
Just root a phone and you have a far more powerful hacking platform.
Every government is stupid, and eventually becomes this (and worse) if there aren't protections in place to prevent the government from unilaterally acting on its stupidity. Those protections tend to be eroded over time and need to be aggressively defended and reinforced.
> Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED)
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada will work with Canadian companies, and the automotive industry, to develop new solutions to protect vehicles against theft and to assist with recovery of stolen vehicles.
> ISED will pursue all avenues to ban devices used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry, such as the Flipper Zero, which would allow for the removal of those devices from the Canadian marketplace through collaboration with law enforcement agencies.
The actual solution would be to force auto makers to have better security that can't be cracked by script kiddies. Banning a tool like the F0 is like banning hairpins or paperclips because they can be used to pick locks. Their primary "purpose" isn't that at all. What would be okay is to ban the use of an F0 to steal a car. Not ownership of an F0, or a screwdriver.
> What would be okay is to ban the use of an F0 to steal a car.
Ban carrying them. If it's truly an educational tool you don't need to carry it around with you. Same as (in the UK) carrying a set of lockpicks is grounds to be arrested for 'going equipped' unless you're a locksmith.
GP comment was basically just, "The UK would do it." Zero relevance to the point being made besides "what UK does = good idea". So I responded in kind by registering my opinion that "what UK does = bad idea".
OTOH, how many children got Kinder Eggs ~without~ knowing that there was a small plastic toy inside? That was kind of the whole gimmick.
Also, there have been 9 reported deaths worldwide that have been linked to choking on the toy inside a Kinder Egg. 7 Children in the US die ~every day~ from being shot. It seems pretty clear to me which one is a bigger issue.
I quite like being able to carry the things I (legally!) own, as long as my intent is innocent. I should damn well be able to carry lockpicks or an F0 or a pocket knife without it being assumed I'm a criminal.
It makes no sense anyway. Burglars don't use lockpics. They don't care about doing damage and do care about speed so they just use a crowbar which even doubles as a weapon if someone's home.
Banning lockpics is just security theater and does nothing to reduce burglaries.
Bump keys are also much more effective by the way. And look like normal keys to the uninitiated.
> Ban carrying them. If it's truly an educational tool you don't need to carry it around with you.
The whole purpose of this device is to carry it and the portability aspect, else I will use my other powerful SDR.. I have many fobs that I would like to keep em all in one device than carrying the hardware for each, plus backing it up. UK, a country that still requires licenses for a TV isn’t a good example in your case.
The UK does not require a license for a TV. They require a license to receive live television broadcasts (regardless of medium) and/or use BBC iPlayer.
Watching C-SPAN's live stream on your laptop would, for example, require a TV license, whereas watching Netflix or playing video games using a TV as a display would not.
The definition of "live television broadcast" is somewhat vague, and is essentially "duck typed". The BBC has said an online tv channel would count whereas watching streamers on Twitch wouldn't.
Also, the license covers the address, but there are weird exceptions, such as when watching on a laptop whether that laptop is plugged in or not.
(I live in the UK, and have informed TV licencing that my address does not require a license so they will stop wasting paper by sending threatening letters)
Like every other wide-spanning law the Canadian Government has passed lately (including the one on firearms and the soon-to-pass adult-content on the internet), I imagine they will ban swathes of legal products that use RF and do nothing to actually prevent crimes from occurring.
Sort of like banning foreign buyers of homes to cover up the fact that they’ve given into NIMBYs for four decades and not built enough housing to keep pace with the population!
That one was made to 1) Keep happy the voters who don't have housing, by making it look like they're doing something 2) Keep happy the voters who do have housing, by keep the housing costs sky-high
This is so misguided. If I can in any way steal a car with a Flipper Zero (regardless of firmware), that car should be recalled and fixed by the manufacturer.
This just means that only criminals will use Flipper Zero. And they were already stealing cars. I don’t think they will mind one additional illegal activity.
But how many previously law abiding citizens will be hurt by not having this technology, or becoming criminals now?
But if they’re harder to get, fewer will have them. You can very much get an illegal firearm in Australia or the UK if you really want, but firearms crimes are significantly less because they’re not readily available.
I don’t think we (Canada or anybody) should necessarily ban guns, but I don’t think the US should have the 2nd amendment (as it’s now interpreted anyways) either.
Unfortunately because I wish there were no guns at all. But I’m a pragmatist. I know gun ownership will never go away in the U.S. so I own guns as well.
You can’t compare Australia to the U.S. on many levels.
Australia is less than 10% the population of the U.S. Its easy to get to the majority of 20 million people to agree to something. It’s impossible when you have over 300 million. And the U.S. has a wide history of different states with different attitudes.
Also gun laws are codified in the constitution in the U.S. that’s not the same way in every other country in the world. I wish I could remember who said it, but to paraphrase, Constitutional rights are God-given rights as viewed by Americans. Every other country has government-given rights which can be taken away whenever the government wants. That’s not the case in the U.S. and why it’s so much more entrenched and impossible to get rid of.
I think his point was that Australia does not specifically enumerate a right to bear arms. That makes it much easier for politicians and judges to erode liberties in the name of safety or "think of the children". Eg. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have done mass firearm bans or confiscations in recent years, while the US has largely resisted similar efforts to restrict civil liberties.
The 1973 Act is the part in which we the citizens of W.Australia grant the right for our elected and employed politicians to form regulations wrt firearms.
That can be repealed, if so there is no right for our government to make firearm regulations.
The 1974 Regulations are the evolving regulations, the fine detail about what the licence requirements are, the purchase and sale requirements are, the various classes, storage requirements, and conditions for disqualification.
These can be changed.
Their point was nonsense.
We have a "Washminster" system of government, it's a bit like the UK Westminster system and a bit like the US Washington system .. only it was formed after looking at the shortcomings of both.
> Australia [..] done mass firearm bans or confiscations in recent years
Awww, you read the US NRA dot points on Australia then?
The response here was to unify gun regulations across all states and territories. At the time the bulk of the Australian population had gun regulations .. Queensland (then low population), Tasmania, and Territories (low population) did not.
Once regulation was uniform and gun licencing was taken seriously there were a lot of guns that people didn't want to licence ("we have the three we mainly use and another three out the back that grandad used in the war") - so there was a federally funded buy back scheme "cash for guns" to encourage handing in unlicenced weapons for cash, this resulted in pictures of skip bins full of "confiscated guns".
There are still semi automatics being bought, sold, and used in Australia - these are licenced for feral pig control use.
You cannot get a semi automatic to barrel polish and strut the street in the city with, you can get one if you're going to kill a lot of pigs.
You can get a licence to drive a three trailer prime mover (road train), you are still not permitted to drive these fully loaded on a large number of urban roads.
It's a quibble - the base position here in common law is that the people of this state have a right to weapons .. much later the people of this state first agreed that the body they employ to debate common rules would be allowed to argue the regulation of firearms and delegate enforcement of any agreeed regulations to those tasked with the enforcement of policy - the Act grants that right to our employees, the politicians and the police.
After Regulations were agreed upon, these were codified.
The base right as that citizens of the state can have weapons, the agreed regulations (that can be overturned) are citizens with violent criminal records, domestic assault allegations, unqualified in handling, not willing|able to safely store cannot have weapons - these are our background conditions.
The US also has background checks for sale and possesion - they're just weak on enforcement.
The US is an oddity is they felt after the fact of constitution that they had to whack on an ammendment to spell out common law for firearms - but not for explosives, poisons, motor vehicles, etc.
And now you have no ability to take those "rights" back using violence if you needed to.
You do not have the right to own a firearm in Australia regardless of whatever mental gymnastics you want to perform.
- The fact that a forcible confiscation (governments cannot "buy back" something they never owned) campaign could happen at all means you do not have this right. "Give us these items or go to prison or die when we come to take them" - some right you have there!
- If you cannot own remotely the same articles that your police do, you do not have a right to bear arms. You have a privilege to own a limited set of items under a limited set of circumstances - all of which would be useless for mounting violent resistance.
> And now you have no ability to take those "rights" back using violence if you needed to.
This is repeated a lot and shows that at bottom, gun ownership ideologues are violent thugs, they all promote using violence to impose their political views dressed up as a fight for "rights".
Ultimately it proves that restrictive gun laws are absolutely correct.
The entire purpose of the Second Amendment - at least in the United States - is to enable violent resistance against tyranny. Not hunting, not culling predators, not sport, not home defense.
> Ultimately it proves that restrictive gun laws are absolutely correct.
"We need to restrict something that prevents further restriction."
You need violence, firearms, and "violent thugs" to go around disarm people who possess them - this in Australia is the threat of prison time.
This is plain bullshit, the historical context doesn't support your wishful thinking.
You can justify violence any way you like, but at the end of the day you're promoting violence and killing people based solely on your political views.
> the historical context doesn't support your wishful thinking.
The most left-leaning members of the United States Supreme Court disagree with you legally on this point, just as much they would agree with you in principle.
> You can justify violence any way you like, but at the end of the day you're promoting violence and killing people based solely on your political views.
Where did I "justify violence?" The Second Amendment is quite clear and contains its own justification.
Again, you need violence to disarm people - so you're really not "against violence" - you're just against those using it that you don't agree with.
That doesn't make the least bit of sense, but I can see you were desperate to say that, ie "I'm armed, there's nothing you can do!"
But the idiocy of the armed is the delusion that they are safe. A person can kill another person at a safe distance, at their convenience. Having a gun doesn't help you at all.
Maybe one day you'll start thinking for yourself and come to your senses.
Snail mail tends to work better for reaching out to Members of Parliament just out of the blue, though still no guarantee since it's still an intern that's opening and reading it.
Emails seem to work fine if they already know you.
It appears that Flipper Zero is virtually useless in almost all car thefts and is just being unfairly targeted by Trudeau. Also, the company didn't even get a heads up about being falsely blamed:
> Alex Kulagin, COO of Flipper Devices, said in an interview that his company received no communication from the Canadian government ahead of Thursday’s statements.
So if I'm reading this right, they're banning something that is too underpowered to run the exploits people are using to steal cars (which are only possible in the first place because car companies' threat model is mostly about their customers rather than thieves) in order to pretend to do something about car theft
I've been pretty happy on balance with measures introduced through direct democracy in recent years (mostly happens at the municipal and state levels in the US), and it seems like most people are unhappy with measures introduced by the normal "democratic" means of governance in rich nations, where we elect people, who then make laws
Maybe we should do more of the former and less of the latter
The main problem with direct democracy as performed in the US is that it's trivial to manipulate with sufficiently large ad campaigns, because the average voter is not super well informed on most topics and is usually not motivated to dig deeply when i.e. a ride-sharing company spends a cool hundred million to get the legal outcome they want.
This is not to say that the alternative is immune to these problems, but as a former long time california resident direct democracy was directly responsible for many of the state's problems, i.e. prop 13.
In many cases any special interest or sufficiently motivated rich person can also just keep putting their pet issue on the ballot over and over until it passes.
Do you mean to tell me that the general public weren't in favor of being screwed over by ride sharing companies, so much so that a 7/8 majority would be required to overturn their "democratic
" decision? I'm not sure that HN is an appropriate forum for strong, unsupported opinions like that.
That aside, I don't think a system where the spending disparity is in the territory of $200m vs $20m can be perceived as fair. I'd feel upset about it even if it turned out the way I personally wanted.
To add to the counter-argument you've already acknowledged, direct democracy at least forces the lobbying (and potential misinformation) out into the open. I think this particular part of the argument might boil down to "who is more likely to be able to discount misinformation and value accurate information, the general public or a handful of elected representatives and their private advisors"?
Sufficiently motivated and rich people are also motivated to repeatedly put their pet issues to our political representatives (sometimes alongside big political contributions).
Seems like a case of pick your poison (and antidotes).
Prop 13 is far from being agreed on as a problem amongst Californians. When your property tax could reasonably exceed your mortgage, something must change.
Swiss here, curiously interested, what does direct democracy in the US look like?
Direct democracy means a lot around here, like not having a single party long term in some control positions who could block or manipulate bills. Voting on topics instead of politians is only a small aspect of this all working.
I've been curious as a Brit living thought the mess that was the brexit vote and implementation, how the Swiss would have dealt with such a matter? I'm told they have better systems and wouldn't have done it like we did but I'm not sure quite how.
We have voted in Schengen membership in 2008, but opted out of many association agreements with EU. We have a referendum like every 4 months, so all of this is not a big deal, things like these are routinely decided with a direct all-nation vote.
That is not true. It’s on a state-by-state basis and only a few states have laws that say ownership is automatically seen as intent to commit a crime.
It’s legal in most states to own lock picks and use them on locks you own.
I also believe most of the same states allow you to use them on any locks with the permission of the owner, but there may be a few that require a locksmith for that, even if you aren’t selling the service.
How do you get negative gdp per capita? That must mean negative gdp unless you have less than 0 population. Do you mean negative growth? Then what does per capita have to do with it?
Oops, that's a typo. Negative growth is the right term
> Then what does per capita have to do with it?
If you are really interested, look up Canadian's policies. Tldr: import 'low cost' labor to pop up monopolies without real growth, declining average Canadian quality of life. Flattening gdp/huge labor population import = negative growth
FTA: "ISED will pursue all avenues to ban devices used to steal vehicles by copying the wireless signals for remote keyless entry, such as the Flipper Zero"
Text uses the flipper zero as an example, not as the specific target of the ban.
They don’t need to. Banning the easy method will stop the majority of cases. Most people won’t bother with a slightly less easy method requiring the most basic of technical skills or more research than the first Google result.
Similar to how moving ssh to a non-standard port stops most attacks.
Canadian car theft is organized criminals with connections across the supply chain shipping vehicles to Africa and the middle east. It's not kids joyriding. They will have no issue sourcing other methods of theft.
Yeah, that’s the thing that seems really silly about this to me - if your organization is competent enough to smuggle literally hundreds of cars out of the country, I’m sure you can smuggle a handful of small electronic devices in.
The issue isn't devices like the Flipper Zero as much as the weak standards of security (and perceived obscurity) being used to not use actual security to secure cars.
Auto manufacturers could .. create more secure devices for cars. Of course existing vehicles are a different problem. That was avoidable to some degree.
What's the legal instrument they intend to use? Or are they planning to pass a new law? The way this is worded seems to suggest its already in the authority of ISED to ban these, if so, does anyone know what law would give them that right?
ISED is responsible for the radiocommunication act. Section 6(1) seems to give pretty broad powers to regulate different radio devices. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/r-2/page-2.html perhaps its broad enough to allow banning such devices.
As the other reply said, you don't broadcast your metal car keys to the world every time you use them.
But, also, there's a reason cars have been using microchipped keys for the last 25+ years.
There are ways to transmit information securely that prevent replay and other attacks. (See: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TLS, etc.) If car manufacturers weren't lazy and cheap, they could solve this problem, but they don't really care. They get money when you buy the car, then if you're car gets stolen, they get more money when you buy a replacement. Not solving the issue is in their favor.
Is it even possible to use a flipper zero to steal a car? I thought modern cars have rotating keys which would prevent a replay attack unless you had access to the fob long enough to figure out the seed in which case you may as well just use the key to open the car.
They steal cars by either breaking a window or by getting to the CAN bus through the bumper and hijacking the car by programming a new key using the car's VIN. Ban Toyota and Honda from selling cars with shitty security if you want to do anything about this problem without having to ask the police to be useful.
Has anyone else described how a Flipper Zero can be used to aid in car theft? My understanding is since the 1990s car have used rolling codes for keyless entry, making it improbable for a Flipper to replay captured signals to unlock vehicles¹. But surely Canada has at least a modicum of evidence that thieves are using Flippers?
¹ Caveat: Some cars will accept rolling code signals with a counter only 1-3 values off. So a Flipper recorded unlock message could be replayed successfully if the owner hasn't used their fob again. Plus, replaying codes can desynchronize the car's system from the fob, leading to non-functional keyfobs. You can find online reports where Flipper users did this to themselves: https://www.reddit.com/r/flipperzero/comments/yxgn60/flipper...
edit: A deeper dive makes me think a the Flipper could help with some attacks. On some cars recording multiple successive unlocks and replaying them in order will make the car resynchronize its counter to the messages on your Flipper and the next one will unlock the car. It seems this attack relies on the first signal being jammed, but you could do that with two Flippers. One next to the car jamming, and a 2nd closer to the keyfob recording. Lots of info here: https://i.blackhat.com/USA-22/Thursday/US-22-Csikor-RollBack...
If anyone has a business impacted by this, I would absolutely love to talk to you. je@h4x.club - I'm quite sure I can help (not looking for $$, just think this is insane).
It's a shame, it looks like a fun tool to play with, but the marketing is so gross. I'm not exactly a saint but I'm not into harmful mischief and it's marketed purely at the 'hey we can break things now lmao' userbase, ugh
Wait, so I can use my Flipper as a backup key for my car (mid 2010s Mazda)?
I thought the rolling code thing prevented this. If anyone has a doc on how to use the Flipper for a car, please send it! I promise it's for legit use. I bought it originally to dupe the NFC key fob for my apartment and the RF fob for the garage door.
A guy tracked his stolen truck to CP railyard. Police was sitting outside the railcar that had his truck inside. Police could do nothing because the railyard is outside their jurisdiction. Train left, he watched on the tracker as his truck was eventually shipped to Dubai.
So.. I think CP rail is maybe a co-conspirator here? They have immunity from local law enforcement, and don't seem to require any title checks to move vehicles across border.
There’s only three federal police agencies - the RCMP, CPKC Police Service, and the CN Police Service. The local law enforcement has to pass off the information to the relevant agency to abide by the separations of power.
The problem here is probably the criminal lied about what was in the cargo container, and to process the tens of thousands of titles to ship new vehicles to manufacturers is obscene - and even then, criminals will still find ways to transport cars in shipping containers.
At the end of the day, it’s up to the ports (which again are a federal agency) to scrutinize cargo containers destined for these locations - which they don’t have the staffing or funds to do.
> At the end of the day, it’s up to the ports (which again are a federal agency) to scrutinize cargo containers destined for these locations - which they don’t have the staffing or funds to do.
And now they'll be stretched further inspecting incoming shipments for flipper zeros.
In this case a local police officer was at the location where the stolen vehicle, and probably hundreds of others were. There was no CN police present. In cases where there are no CN police, then local police should automatically get jurisdiction. Otherwise, like in this case, criminals just get a free pass.
> to process the tens of thousands of titles to ship new vehicles to manufacturers is obscene - and even then, criminals will still find ways to transport cars in shipping containers.
What whining is this about? Are you suggesting that we just let the thefts continue at scale using rail because 'paper work hard'? Are you serious?
The gangs are making up phony shipping and customs manifests and hiding behind the rail and port authorities, who are enabling the gangs.
It's going to take some manpower, but every container going overseas will have to be inspected during loading.
The government's "solution" is putting in high tech x million dollar scanners that will take years to implement while the gangs keep stealing and shipping.
For this example, a scanner does nothing. All it will do is tell you that there was a truck there. But in this case the existence of vehicles on the train were not in question - it was about the ownership of them. It should be much harder to fake shipping manifests and every VIN should be manually verified and against a database of stolen.
Why not... hop the fence and get the conductor to radio the police? The fine for tresspassing on CP railway property is $500, likely worth less than the cost of the car. Once you're over the fence, as you said the police on the other side don't have jurisdiction. Getting CP police there to fine you allows them to intercept the truck also
Considering that the Flipper Zero is just open source hardware that anyone can make at home using common off-the-shelf components, I do not see how this measure does help.
If anything, it broadcasts to criminals that they can now steal cars with ease.
I was under the impression that cars and garage doors are essentially 100% immune to replay attacks. How could they possibly be susceptible to something to rudimentary? Or am I not understanding some context?
Not 100%. Some are basically CSPRNGs that iterate with every successful unlock; if you capture the “play” from a key AND block the car from getting the signal, you get a replay attack you can only use once. And which desyncs the key with the car, making it useless until a dealer re-pairs them.
This is my understanding - I guess I shouldn't have said "100%". It's just that it seems like there are vanishingly rare real-world scenarios in which one could engineer this situation that don't involve gaining access to the actual key, at which point you could simply take it, so the choice to use the Flipper instead would be moot for the topic of vulnerability.
In practice, you could start a Hyundai with an USB key, because the manufacturer did not bother to implement any security measures (it's cheaper that way).
It’s already under import ban and I know somebody who got their order seized by customs. It’s a hacking tool and customs flips out about those even if an actual security professional is buying them.
The other joke is, it has also known that car mfgs just let dealers have access to the key databases they hold for cars to make new ones rather than just cloning a physical key...and crooked dealership employees use it behind the scenes.
Not to mention the fact that there are many mundane tools that could be used to copy car keys, from the archaic hammer/forge to the modern camera/CNC mill.
Since when did thieves start caring about not using banned devices? Governments everywhere already pass the buck in dealing with car theft and break-ins to insurance companies.
This is what happens when you let your government run wild.
You can't carry a pocketknife in the UK, you can't carry a Flipper in Canada. Insane. I genuinely hope the US does not become even more of a farce of a democracy like these two.
Soon our own fingers will be banned "for our own safety."
There is nothing wrong with locking knives. They are much safer to use for most tasks, including cutting thick cardboard, difficult food (cheeses), etc. I've brought >3in locking knives to picnics[1]. They are quite useful. The law against locking knives is probably responsible for a few Briton fingers being chopped off and has stopped precisely zero violent criminals.
"Gravity knives" are banned too. Why? They are simply easier to open. As easy to open as flipper knives, which are legal. And you don't even have to open fixed blades - also legal.
Butterfly knives are harmless. It is literally easier to kill someone with a legal knife than a butterfly knife, because with a butterfly knife you're forced into a ridiculous opening animation. But it looks spooky, so banned. Pathetic.
You can't even own some of these items in your own house. Imagine not being able to buy a decorative shuriken or whatever. How many people have been killed to shurikens, again? But if you put one on your wall it's 4 years in prison.
More importantly, what criminals will even care to follow this law? Do you really think a criminal interested in stabbing another person will go "geez, well, I guess the law says I can't use this 3.5 inch locking knife!" Fuck no, worst case they'll grab a kitchen knife and get stabbin'.
Stop trying to justify this ridiculousness. The UK is a surveillance state clown show where things are banned for fun. More cameras per capita than China and you can't own a decent box cutter because some politician is trying to justify their worthless existence.
I love to clown on Brit’s over their government. Every time I read about the current UK I’m even more happy for the events of 1776 and 1787.
There’s a reason that the UK is slowly losing its 1st world nation status. Self inflicted wounds due to among other things a people who want a nany state. Reap what you sow.
You can't carry cool pockets knifes with fast open mechanisms/methods, which doesn't make much sense to me outside of panic other than maybe gives people 0.2 seconds to run. I remember being sorely disapoitned that Jack Bauer's Microtech Halo III was illegal in my country.
Your laws aren't keeping any knives off the streets. Your knife laws are contradictory, nonsensical, and result in normal people being hurt more than stopping any actual criminals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310586
Like banning handgun sales this lets the government get headlines that they are doing something to stop runaway crime without doing anything but piss off normal people.
> such as the Flipper Zero, which would allow for the removal of those devices from the Canadian
Tell me how you have no idea about technology without telling me how.. Flipper is pretty much useless against cars keyless system, in fact, just look at any video of the how thieves do it, they never used flipper but far more sophisticated devices (except the kia switch USB trick). That ban is most likely because some boomer at ISED saw some tiktok and thought it should be banned or got mad after having their Tesla plug door opened remotely, meanwhile, you can import all types of sophisticated full-duplex SDR with all types of antennas that are far more powerful and dangerous than that toy.
I worked with ISED before, overall nice folks but technicalities not much.
Ever since leaving Canada I’ve come to realize how intellectually stupid Canadian politicians are. The U.S. has Rhodes scholars and Harvard graduates and Canada has kindergarten teachers and used car salespeople. The smartest Canadians know that it’s more lucrative to leave Canada and come to the U.S. so the brain drain leaves Canada at the behest of below average intelligence but highly ambitious and greedy politicians.
The Deputy PM of Canada is a Harvard educated Rhodes scholar, wrote an international best-seller and was a correspondent for Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist before joining Thomson Reuters as a managing director.
Chrystia Freeland PM, Mark Carney Deputy PM is a dream team for me. My sister dated Justin for a couple of years at McGill, imo he's a genuinely good guy, but I can't say I'd consider him a good leader.
The Bank of England employees he terrorized would like a word.
Carney has Julie-Payette issues in his past and probably won't leave his board seats to clean up Justin's mess, but never underestimate the ego I guess.
Oh really? Ha! Well, I'm out of the loop on that. I still hold a glowing image of him from when he was working in Canada. I guess I should check what he's been up to... terrorized employees seems surprising, but also... not really.
I'm really really sorry but good people don't wear blackface costumes at the age of 29 years old.
They also don't assault women and apologize for being so forward because if they knew the victim was a reporter they wouldn't have
assaulted them.
I have no idea how anyone can have a favourable opinion of Justin Trudeau. He's repeatedly been caught in racist or misogynistic behavior and it blows my mind the number of people who turn a blind eye to it and think he's different.
The way he handled Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and Celina Caesar-Chavannes speaks volumes of his character and what he really thinks of women. Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. You can stand up on a podium and declare you're a feminist a million times but his actions repeatedly contradict that statement. He's no feminist and I don't think he cares about anything except for himself and his image.
You don't need to be sorry, you're right. And you're right, I should change my mind, so I will. tbh he was even a bit weird when he dated my sister(so my mother says), but he was very kind to me, so I guess I liked him (my sister is 10 years my senior). Because he was sweet to me when I was young should not be the reason I like him, objectively... he's quite the wanker indeed.
Pure ignorance and trend following. This is literally just a (very) custom build of the Mattel GirlTech IM-ME wireless instant messenger. I'd say, "Are they going to ban all devices with a TI CC1110?" but they just might try it.
it means don't travel with it, and if you do get caught with it a zealous officer could say you were "carrying a prohibited device" or something like that.
In other news, hammers can be used to break windows, coathangers to jimmy doors, and towtrucks to just lift the fuckers right up and drive off with 'em.
Keyfob security is difficult at best, and impossible at worst. In order to provide better security, you will make the keyfob near useless for the customer. But that's a problem for manufacturers to sort out, for example, by offering various options to their customers.
That said, banning tools? Seriously? Will they now ban hammers, crowbars and hacksaws, because they can be used for breaking and entering?
In theory, a representative democracy keeps checks and balances by the people still routinely communicating with each other as if it were a direct democracy and if the representatives are not acting in accordance with the direct findings, then it's off with their heads.
But in practice that's a lot of work. The reality is that most people don't want to be involved and are happy to have some figurehead do the work for them, even if that means complaining about it later.
In reality, those with significant wealth and power end up shaping policy. This can lead to public disengagement, as many feel the system is not truly representing their interests.
> those with significant wealth [...] end up shaping policy.
Yes, of course. Those with wealth hire people, often referred to as lobbyists, to put in the hard work. Technically, representative democracy requires everyone to be, or have, their own lobbyist, but in practice that's a lot of work that most people don't want to put in. They prefer to defer to a figurehead. It's easier that way. And, as such, give up power because of it.
The challenge isn't that people don't want to engage; it's that the demands of daily life, such as working long hours to make ends meet, leave little room for the kind of sustained political involvement that wealthier individuals can afford. When we say that people delegate their power to figureheads, it might be more a reflection of an unequal system that doesn't effectively support widespread civic participation, rather than a choice made out of apathy.
Of course the system is not something that magically descended to the heavens, it is simply what people have agreed to go by. If it is unequal, it is so because the people have decided that they want it to be unequal.
No doubt because, as you point out, the typical person would rather spend their time making ends meet (i.e. pay for the luxuries of life) than the worry about making agreements with their neighbours day-in, day-out. You can technically survive on very little time commitment to "make ends meet". Just look at the homeless population. It is not a life you would want to live, but it could be done if you truly saw the need to assert your power. But, understandably, most people would rather focus on their personal goals and let the figurehead worry about the community problems.
What's the alternative? It's just people at the end of the day. There is no magic. Those who do the work are going to do the work the best way they know how. Even if they value your input and want nothing more than to work with you so that you can show your better way, they are not going to scour the globe to find you. If you don't put the effort in to make yourself known on a regular basis you will be forgotten about.
Although people have a role in forming societal structures, it's not a simple matter of choice when entrenched interests shape the rules. The perception that individuals consent to inequality by focusing on their own lives misses the broader context of systemic barriers. Expecting people to prioritize civic action over making a decent living underestimates the challenges they face. The system needs to facilitate equal participation through reforms in political finance, such as addressing the implications of Citizens United, or revisiting institutional frameworks that may dilute the majority's voice (the Senate). It's about creating conditions where engagement is a realistic option for all, not just those who can afford the time and expense.
I think you folks actually agree here: you say "creating conditions" in a rather impersonal way (because who's gonna create them?) while they say that without implication, those conditions will never appear by themselves. And none of you said it would be easy.
The system isn't handed down to us by a higher power. It's just people. It's shaped simply by what people decide to do. Want different? Then you must do different.
There is no alternative. There is no magical genie that will grant you three wishes. If you don't do the work someone else will, and they will do it the way they want it done, same as you would.
Considering how many people have to work multiple jobs wherein they're mistreated and given no leeway to even do stuff like take work off when sick or see a doctor regularly, I think the reason they aren't participating in the democratic process has more to do with how much time and energy they have to spare on what we've made a pretty arcane and onerous process that ultimately seems to mostly decide influence based primarily on wealth than a lack of interest in bettering their situation
And maybe there's a nonprofit business model for lobbyist groups to represent people? It takes a lot of people to pool together the funds that a single wealthy individual can muster, but those funds represent potentially quite a few votes.
Disclaimer: The following might make you feel hopeless - I apologize for that in advance. I guess I’m a little in shock right now by the latest Sam Altman news about him looking to pour trillions into driving people out of jobs and possibly jeopardizing humanity. This is indeed like Oppenheimer all over again. I can see it now. Or maybe I need a fresh perspective. Comments are welcome.
/Disclaimer
Yes people don’t want to get involved. Yes they are stretched thin. Corporate America puts such onerous demands on them that apathy becomes rampant.
It only furthers the agendas of powerful figureheads. Their self-actualization goals influence how the society is governed (top-tier in Maslov’s hierarchy).
Individual needs of the people - the worker bees - suffer as a direct consequence. There is no longer the “life” part in work-life (the weekends maybe, if you take out kid duty and household chores).
There’s no easy way out, and as much as I love everything being done in the name of scientific progress, I don’t like the cost we are paying for it as a society. We’re an unhappy bunch - this wasn’t the American dream, or any dream.
I think what’s increasingly missing is some culture - like non-commercial good music. People doing stuff because they were motivated by themselves - not commissioned art. Maybe what we need is a renaissance.
Why? To help people losen up a bit, so they can start to remember what living used to feel like. Then maybe, just maybe, people will also start to care more about each other. And dare I say, they might even have some time to volunteer in the service of others.
Also, I am not saying everyone fits the above narrative. There are people who do this today - they have dedicated their lives to service. But it’s not the norm, it’s not even 20% of the population. People like me are the norm. We wish well, we want what’s better. But wanting doesn’t automatically translate into actions - that requires motivation and dedication. Which comes from being inspired. And you can’t get inspired by anything when your life is about surviving each day.
In practice there are no built-in mechanics to deal with representatives. Wait X years for reelection is not the option.
Liquid Democracy would be a possible solution, in which you have the right to vote on all policy directly, or delegate and revoke your voting rights at any moment to a representative. That would be the only way to deal with representatives that promise one thing in campaigns and do something different once they are in office (aside from the many other benefits it would bring).
> In practice there are no built-in mechanics to deal with representatives.
There is if the population agrees that the representative is not acting in accordance to wishes of the population: Off with their head – literally. What are they going to do about it with no head?
In practice, representatives by and large do act in accordance with the wishes of the constituency to the best of their ability. The larger problem they face is a constituency that doesn't want to be involved. I expect at least 95% of the population have never even spoken to their representative even just once. But the representatives are only human. They do not possess mind reading abilities, so they can only go on what the tiny fraction of the population who are active submit.
But, of course, the tiny fraction of the population who are active are probably not representative of the entire population as a whole, and so you get large disconnects even when the representatives are acting in good faith.
Sure. All governance, no matter how it is shaped, ends up representing the money. Remember, money is a token of debt. If you give someone money, you promise to give them something of yourself in return at a future point in time. When you are indebted to someone they hold power over you. There is no system or framework that can avoid that shift in power when you indebt yourself to another. The only way to avoid it is to avoid debt.
Banning a Flipper Zero for Car Thefts is like banning a BB Gun for Firearm Deaths.... You're targeting the wrong device lol.
edit: Further perspective: You need something that can perform a relay attack. You need someone with a powerful enough antenna to find the remote inside someone's home and relay it to a person near the car. This involves at least 2x CC1101's
> As you can see, small embedded antennas are very inefficient, however convenient. In all cases here, the antenna radiated less than 1% of the available RF power. Using a full sized high efficiency antenna has the potential to increase TRP by at least 20 dB, which is 100 times more power or about a 10x increase in communications range.
They banned a bunch of sport shooting and hunting guns because they look “scary” when criminals largely use handguns to commit crime.
Licensed gun owners in Canada are statistically the least likely people out of all to commit crime of any kind (let alone gun crime), as they are background checked every day. Let alone the fact that criminals use illegal black market handguns smuggled from the US to commit the majority of gun crime and won’t have a firearms license.
Depends on what the content of the law was, I suppose, but you're not really addressing my point. Why did they say they wanted to ban these weapons? And why did standard capacity mags get banned around the same time?
Hint: your mini 14, my g3, and my buddy's SKS all fell under this rule, despite having some distinct aesthetics (and all being pretty distinct from the dreaded AR15).
One thing that all the guns you listed have in common is that they are all battle rifles or derived from battle rifles (very tenuously the M14 in the case of the mini 14).
In other words they were designed to be given to young men in the military to shoot at other people.
I don't particularly like the new gun rules, but I think that gun advocates do themselves a disfavour when they pretend that an SKS or G3 wasn't designed first and foremost as a military weapon.
> You don't have to be a gun nerd to know that a gun that comes standard with an attached bayonet is materially different from a rifle designed with deer hunting in mind.
I'll bite - what are these relevant material differences?
You seem to think that "designed" is important but is that a material difference by itself? If so, how does that work? Is that true for anything else? (There's a lot of cross-over between other outdoor equipment, such as vehicle drive systems, clothing, and shelter, so ....)
If it's that the intent results in other differences, what are they?
It's not the ammunition. It's not how the gun functions. (Yes, the SKS is supposed to be more tolerant of rough handling than most guns, but the AR-15 is less tolerant.) Surely it's not appearance....
Yes, people tend to shoot back, but what material difference in gun design/function is a consequence of that?
You contrasted deer hunting with shooting people, but how are they appreciably different at the same distance? (The obvious difference, that the military prefers wounds to deaths, works against your conclusion.)
.223, which is what the AR-15 shoots, isn't legal for deer hunting in some jurisdictions because it isn't powerful enough. 7.62x39, which is what the SKS shoots, usually is legal for deer, because it is roughly equivalent to the ancient 30-30. However, typical deer rifles are significantly more powerful. (Of course, people do hunt things other than deer.)
You seem to think that a bayonet is important, but are bayonetings a problem? If not, what material difference does a bayonet make? Does that difference persist after the bayonet is removed? If so, how? (I ask because the first thing that most people do with an SKS is to remove the bayonet.)
> I'll bite - what are these relevant material differences?
For one, I can stab someone in close quarters with a bayonet. It is a feature designed specifically with killing humans in mind. A bayonet has no legitimate or legal use in recreational hunting or shooting. It makes the weapon less useful for legitimate purposes if only as a weight penalty.
The issue isn't "how many bayonet attacks have there been?", the issue is "how many attacks with guns designed specifically as human killing weapons have happened?". The answer is that there have been thousands.
People want to draw the line at weapons designed as weapons of war, or more broadly, weapons designed as anti-personnel weapons (which is how handguns get included).
Pretending that an SKS wasn't designed specifically for killing other human beings makes people rightfully doubt the honesty of the rest of the argument. I personally think that under the right circumstances it is not unreasonable for a Canadian to shoot weapons of war recreationally. But I also think that if you can't acknowledge that an SKS was designed to kill people, and it has been used to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people very effectively, then you have no business handling it.
If gun people keep making arguments about "looks" or guns being "military" as a bad criteria, then legislators will come up with functional criteria, and I really doubt that it will be less restrictive than what they already came up with.
> If not, what material difference does a bayonet make?
From family history, you can't shoot a rifle well during a flat out four mile cavalry charge on machine guns, but you can sling a rifle and hold a bayonet.
An M1 Garand was given to young men to shoot at other people.
How does this argument hold water? If any military, anywhere, purchases your firearm design, it's now "too military" for the citizenry? Where is the line drawn?
How many bayonet attacks have happened in the US or CA in the last 100 years?
This is exactly the sort of argument I was talking about.
An M1 Garand is a weapon that was designed and produced by the US military specifically with war usage (killing people) in mind.
The issue isn't "how many bayonet attacks have there been?", the issue is "how many attacks with rifles designed as weapons of war have happened in the US or CA in the last 100 years?". The answer is that there have been thousands.
People want to draw the line at weapons designed as weapons of war, or more broadly, weapons designed as anti-personnel weapons (which is how handguns get included).
Pretending that an M1, or an SKS wasn't designed specifically for killing other human beings makes people rightfully doubt the honesty of the rest of the argument. I personally think that under the right circumstances it is not unreasonable for a Canadian to shoot weapons of war recreationally. But I also think that if you can't acknowledge that an M1 was designed to kill people, and it has been used to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people very effectively, then you have no business handling it.
If gun people keep making arguments about "looks" or guns being "too military" as a bad criteria, then legislators will come up with functional criteria, and I really doubt that it will be less restrictive than what they already came up with.
All firearms are designed to kill: none are designed to wound. The Second Amendment isn't about hunting or home defense.
What defines "weapon of war?"
Quit intentionally hand-waving with this "designed specifically for killing human beings" garbage - what does this mean in technical, industry terms rather than circular terms?
In the United States, Miller explicitly stated you only have a right to own things of military value (expanded in 2008 (Heller), 2016 (Caetano), 2022 (Bruen) but this was decided almost 100 years ago.)
> then legislators will come up with functional criteria
Let's write some! What would that criteria look like? The 1994 AWB and every similar state statute written since use cosmetic features.
Once we've written some, is there historical precedent for this kind of criteria (required under Bruen)?
The Second Amendment, Heller, Caetano and Bruen are all completely irrelevant in Canada. Canada does not have anything like the Second Amendment, and Americans may be shocked to learn that US law has no relevance to Canadian weapons laws or this conversation. Owning and operating a gun in Canada is a privilege, not a right, and a supermajority of Canadians support more gun control in various polls. Less than 6% of eligible Canadians are licensed, so, for the most part, most Canadians don't really care if they clamp down hard on gun ownership. Largely, Canadians think American gun culture is absolutely insane.
> What defines "weapon of war?"
I already defined it, but to be clear: A weapon originally designed for the military market, or one derived from such a model. We can also include any gun designed for the police market, or for the self-defense market. If the primary design intentions was killing humans, then it shouldn't be allowed. They are inferior tools for the allowed uses of guns in Canada, and they are a fetish item for deranged individuals and the type of gun culture that isn't welcome in Canada. This doesn't have to be the only criteria.
As far as functional criteria lets start from first principles. The allowed uses of guns in Canada are: hunting, target shooting, and protection from wild animals. So for rifles: Single shot bolt action allows you to hunt and target shoot, a rifle is a poor choice for defense against a charging animal, if your aim is so poor that you need to spray bullets in a panic use pepper spray instead like the other 94% of the population. The sale and transfer of handguns is already prohibited, but if it wasn't: You don't hunt with a handgun, they are less effective than bear spray for defense, and for target shooting, you don't need anything more than a single shot 22. Shotguns: Hunting, target shooting, and animal defense can all be done with a double barrel. So any break action gun, and any pump action with a capacity limit of 2.
> Once we've written some, is there historical precedent for this kind of criteria (required under Bruen)?
Historical precedent is that American gun law is completely irrelevant north of the border. My criteria pass the test.
You seem to be claiming that a specific law invoked scary aesthetics specifically. I obviously can't speak to that - I'm saying that I've seen other rationales given for firearm restrictions. It'd be weird if I did know what you were talking about, right?
I am claiming that because the government marketed it as a "assault-style gun" ban. It's not an assault rifle ban it's literally an "ASSAULT-STYLE GUN" ban. There is no such thing as an "assault-style gun". It's not a thing people say and it's not a type of gun you can buy. The word was invented by the Liberals for the marketing campaign the Liberals used to ban guns that look scary.
Again, you are saying "no they're stated goal was X" but I've never heard them state that. You're going to have to show the receipts because I followed this closely and I have told you _exactly_ why they banned them - it's because of how they look.
Which specific law are you referring to? What was the content of the law? You need to be more clear. Repeating the same talking point isn't going to get anywhere, and I can only reference the law(s) I'm familiar with. In Washington at least they were pretty clear that it was a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, exempting handguns. I think California, New York, and Illinois were roughly the same.
Why are you commenting on things you know nothing about and arguing about this with Canadians who actually know what's going on up here? This isn't worth engaging anymore, go to google.com and search for "Canada assault style gun ban" to learn more.
There are gun control laws and increasing crackdown on liberties everywhere, not just Canada, and pressing you to mention the content of a law is still exactly what I'd do in the case of the Canadian weapons ban. Focusing on one sound bite is not productive.
I mentioned the content of the law. I told you what the law is called. You can use Google and learn about it.
Being ignorant, asking me questions, and then disputing the answers when you don't know what you're talking about is not productive. I gave you all the information you need to educate yourself, so leave me alone and stop arguing with me about it.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/02/canada-vows-to-ban-...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/canada-to-ban...