Your Daily Nazi: Definitive Account Of The CHRC "Wifi Hacking" Controversy

Bucket's (pictured left) revs up his extraordinary brain to take a crack at the alleged "hack" of Nelly Hechme's home wifi network by CHRC operatives. That Dean Steacey and other CHRC employees commandeered the wifi network of an Ottawa citizen in order to visit Stormfront (a Neo-Nazi bulletin board) is an allegation made by noted white supremacist (and now Free Speech Hero) Marc Lemire.

I won't go into details in this space, because Bucket's first three posts ( here, and here, and here) provide an extensive background to this thrilling episode, with conclusions to follow.

But... something to consider: Bell IP addresses (like 70.48.181.203, the one Nelly Hechme possessed in December of 2006) are assigned dynamically, belonging to different owners at different times.

A Quick Note From The Speechy Wars

Re. the state of "hacked wifi" affair, in which CHRC employees used space-age technology in order to gain access to the wireless network of Nelly Hechme and visit neo-Nazi websites anonymously when they could have just crossed the street and done it from Starbucks.

After a month looking at the file, the Ottawa police have decided that its all really a matter for the RCMP (warning: link to Lemire). Guess we're looking at another whole month until the whole thing gets tossed.

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice

...shame on Jonathon Kay for, yet again, becoming the unwitting dupe of the Canadian White Supremacist Movement:

The most scandalous disclosure to emerge on Tuesday involved the manner by which investigators logged on to Lemire's Web site. In what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to avoid revealing the commission's IP address, they tapped into the unsecured wi-firouter of a 26-year-old Ottawa woman who lived near the commission's 344 Slater St. headquarters. At Tuesday's hearing, a Bell Canada employee read out the woman's name, address and phone number to shocked audience members. A National Post reporter contacted the woman and found that she'd never heard of Lemire, Steacy, or his investigations. Unless she is secretly working undercover for Steacy, it appears that the commission cynically invaded the privacy of an innocent citizen in order to pursue an obscure Web-trawling vendetta; and then caused her name to be read out to the Canadian public, thereby identifying her as an unwitting conduit to neo-Nazi Web sites. One likes to imagine that the privacy commissioner will be having a chat with Dean et al. in coming days.

This claim has come up in two versions. One, which I wrote about yesterday, has CHRC employees accomplishing the impossible task of tapping into the wifi network at 750 Laurier Ave. from about 1,200 feet away, through several concrete office towers. The other has a legally blind CHRC investigator doing a little wardriving, and camping out in the lobby of the condo building in question in order to access the said network.

Crazy ideas, but the most important point is that both theories are the brainchild of Canadian Nazi Mark Lemire, whose previous display of technical sleuthing ability got Kay and the National Post into so much legal trouble just one month ago.

But still, Kay and co. are back to sip from the trough of Nazi wisdom. I guess any fool can write for the Post.

The Nuts Begin To Cluster

The big reveal at Tuesday's CHRC hearing was supposed to be the identity of a CHRC employee operating from IP address 70.48.181.203. But it turned out that this IP was assigned to someone nobody had ever heard of, living in an Ottawa condo building on Laurier Ave..

So, instead acknowledging the flop of his big gesture, Nazi boy Mark Lemire has concocted an elaborate tale about CHRC employees hacking the wifi of our innocent Ottawa condo dweller. To show off his techy creds, he even did a MapQuest search.

A quick mapquest shows that from the CHRC offices to *****'s house is about a block or more. An EASY distance for a wireless signal to travel. Especially over an open field.

Well, yeah, the operative phrase here is "or more". Specifically, 0.73 miles or 3,854 feet. And across an open field, sure, but then through a block full of office towers and other miscellaneous hi-rise buildings.

I suppose its barely in the realm of possibility, if the condo building in question had one of those military style long-range wifi units that can BLASTT!!! its signal through surrounding buildings. But they're heavy and you'd need a black helicopter to fly them in. I don't think the boyz at Freedomsite or FreeD are ready for the "lets invoke black helicopters" ploy yet.

You know you're argument is in trouble when Flanders believes it. You can link to all the other stuff through him.

And the take away lesson here really oughtta be that you can't trust "research" conducted by Nazi compüder X-burts. And the folks learning the lesson should be Ezra, Connie, Mark, and everyone getting their balls sued off by Mark Warman over the infamous Anne Cools posting.

PS: Bit of a correction. As the crow flies, the distance between is about 1,100 - 1,200 feet, still pretty hefty for (in fact out of range of) your standard residential wifi network, and still through a number of buildings.

Blonde Blogging Wonderbabe At Lemire Hearing

Kady O'Malley is live-blogging the "historic" event. Her impression so far:

You know, for a hearing that the National Post augured would be a 'watershed' for Canadian human rights in Canada, this is kind of -- anticlimatic.

And more:

And now ... they're quibbling over the mechanics of search engine queries. Kill me now.

And more:

"We are done," says the judge. "This case was done last June." This seems to aggravate Christie, who shoots back that nothing is more important than being in this courtroom at this time. I think that may be as close to drama as we're going to get.

Kadey has a way of making her experience of sitting through really boring stuff funny.

Frankly, this all sounds like a rehash of the testimony that's already appeared in transcript, although I would like to know what the "Bell Guy" had to say.

Update: The Bell guy was apparently testifying re. IP 70.48.181.203, which does NOT belong to Warman in any of his incarnations, but is supposed to belong to a CHRC agent of some sort. Not Mr. Steacy, however, and nobody I've heard of in regards to this matter (and, frankly, I'm not sure if I should be revealing the name it is attached to here). Furthermore, their address seems to be an Ottawa condo.

Updater: Looks like the IP above does NOT belong to an CHRC employee:

Barbara asks if he knows someone by the name of ******, and he seems genuinely baffled. No one else seems to have heard of her either, and CRHC lawyer worries that, as a result of that line of questioning, a possibly entirely innocent third party bystander may now have her name and address on the record. The chairman sympathizes, but reminds her that now that they've gone to digital voice recording, there's no transcript to redact.

Another Update: Why was Steacy signed-up on FreeD before a complaint was made against the site?

So why *was* he on freedominion.ca before there was a complaint? Because there was the *potential* for a complaint to come in, he says - prompting muffled gasps from the group beside me, which includes the two founders of Free Dominion.

Like, why wasn't he signed-up with a gazillion other possible forums (FreeD regs are asking themselves)? Well, duh! If you want to monitor internet hate, you go to where it occurs and not somewhere else.

Ezra, You Don't Have to MANUFACTURE Evidence Of Hate Speech At Free Dominion

It happens all the time, as recently as a week ago:

BFA condemns any violence against those of the Moslem faith who mean us no harm. But sadly, it would be foolish for us to allow anyone of the Islamic faith to live in this country. At the very least, our government should deport all foreign Islamic persons immediately as they could pose a greater threat than illegal immigration or even the enemy we fight in Iraq, for some of these Islamists mean us harm while on our own soil.

That's from an article linked to at the site. Some of the responses:

Political correctness is protecting these scum from prosecution, the same way it protected/protects HIV.

And:

If Muslims had shown up in 2001 from outer space, then we would know exactly what to do, but since they originated here on the earth, technically they are not aliens. I think the distinction is becoming less relevant with every passing year, and sooner or later it will come down to us or them. Then we will see whether God is as tolerant of them as columnist David Warren implied He was...

This is surely the problem with any argument Ezra Levant and co. make re CHRC investigators and human rights activists like Richard Warman joining forums like StormFront and FreeD just to "plant" evidence of racism and hate speech. The evidence is there already, to be gathered by anyone with eyes to see.

Incidentally, anyone still huffed at my "linking" Ezra to far right militants should note his cute little shout-out to pre-eminent Canadian Nazi Mark Lemire in the post above.