Your Daily Nazi: Late Coda To Hechme Case

Richard Warman is still having to tell people it's lies:

The "Hechme allegation" was one of the stranger incidents in The Speechy Wars--the epic political battle over section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act  that began in 2008 and still grinds on in the Senate.  Two  Neo-Nazis managed to convince a good portion of the Canadian media establishment that government employees hijacked the wifi network of one Nelly Hechme in order to spy on said Neo-Nazis.  it was a lunatic assertion, for many reasons, and the various investigations that followed cleared everyone involved.  More than once, in fact.

But here's the interesting thing. At the time Macleans Magazine was one of the prime media suckers.  They let Mark Steyn defame one of the government employees in question on their website; they let Steyn accuse this man by name (not Richard, incidentally) of criminal acts that he did not commit.  The story still appears on the Macleans website!   Now, the fellow didn't sue them because, I am told, he doesn't do that kind of thing.  But Macleans has been asked many times by bloggers like myself and, I think, Dr. Dawg, to pull down the defamatory piece, for decency's sake.  Clearly that kind of plea cuts no ice with the crew over there.

Macleans Retracts, Will Steyn Apologize?

Something Dawg and others have already picked up, and
...something Maclean's would have realized months ago if they had only been paying attention. Of course, the first article Mark Steyn wrote on the topic, in which he accused CHRC Investigator Dean Steacy of criminal wrong-doing, is still up. So I will be sending Mr. Steyn yet another email suggesting that he apologize to Mr. Steacy and have Macleans put the article down. We shall see what kind of man he is.

RCMP Investigation Of CHRC Led To Investigation Of Marc Lemire

From some heavily redacted documents on Freedom Site.

During the course of the whole "hacked wifi" non-controversy, CHRC lawyer Kathleen Fawcett sent a letter to RCMP officer S. Turgeon requesting a background cheque on Marc Lemire from the DCAU.

The “DCAU” is the RCMP’s “DIVISION CRIMINAL ANALYTICAL UNIT”, which performs CPIC checks on Canadians. Marc Lemire is the man behind the origonal criminal complaint, and one-time leader of The Heritage Front. On FreedomSite, Lemire writes:

The contents of the message sent by the CHRC’s lawyer were censored from the report, but the RCMP immediately turned around and investigated Lemire*.

Not much further can be gleaned from the RCMP documents available (see below). But it is clear that:

The RCMP didn't trust complainants Lemire and Don Black of Stormfront.
They made note of the fact that the CHRC was a full 400 metres from Nelly Hechme's apartment (and therefore out of range of a wireless hack).
They also noted that a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) would be required to secure access to Stormfront records, and these are only used for serious criminal matters, not bogus complaints made by white supremacists.
A post from Ezra's site is also included in the RCMP docs.

Full document here.

* Marc often refers to himself in the 3rd person.

Mistakes Made, Apologies Owed

Since Steyn wants to go another round on this, let me just mention this more time. In his Macleans blog post "That poor woman down the street", from March of 2008, Mr. Steyn accused CHRC investigator Dean Steacy by name of engaging in criminal acts. These allegations were never credible to start with, and already pretty thoroughly refuted even before the RCMP and Privacy Commission finally dismissed them.

Yet there they remain on the Maclean's website.

So let me say it one more time: Mark, you made a mistake. You laundered a boatload of crap passed off as "research" by white supremacists and reproduced it in Canada's national news-magazine.

Admit it and have Kenneth Whyte take down that post.

The Last Piece To The CHRC Puzzle

...can be found at the website of the Office of the Privacy Commisioner of Canada:

In this case, personal information was introduced, as a result of a subpoena issued to an Internet Service Provider, during the course of a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal public hearing. The subject of the subpoena was an IP address allegedly accessed by the CHRC during the course of its investigations. In response to the subpoena, the Internet Service Provider disclosed the name, address and telephone number of the Internet subscriber it associated with that IP address, namely the complainant. It is the view of this Office that the IP address, in this instance, does constitute personal information as defined in section 3 of the Act.

The second issue to consider is whether the CHRC collected the complainant’s personal information and then subsequently used it during the course of its investigations.

The investigation found no evidence that the CHRC ever collected any personal information about the complainant or in fact that the CHRC had any knowledge about the complainant prior to the allegations made in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal public hearing.

There is no evidence that the CHRC ever collected or improperly used, disclosed or retained the complainant’s personal information.

Technological experts have indicated that, most likely, but without certainty, the association of the complainant’s IP address to the CHRC was simply a mismatch on the part of a third party, which could have occurred in a variety of ways not involving the CHRC.

What is certain is that there is no evidence of the CHRC having ever collected or improperly used, disclosed or retained any personal information about the complainant.

Now, what does this bit mean?

Technological experts have indicated that, most likely, but without certainty, the association of the complainant’s IP address to the CHRC was simply a mismatch on the part of a third party, which could have occurred in a variety of ways not involving the CHRC.

It means that, as per usual, Buckets was right. The For Dummies version of his research is here.

It also means that you can't trust them Nazi Computer Experts.

PS. As Dawg helpfully points out, Mark Steyn of MaCleans basically accused CHRC investigator Dean Steacy of committing a criminal act, and his charge has now been shown to be baseless before the whole world. Mark seems big on apologies when others make mistakes in regards to his work. I have emailed him and suggested that he apologize to Mr. Steacy. Lets see what he does when the shoe is on the other foot. Lets see how much class our boy has.