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.

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.

Always Click On The Links

A quick experiment with The Ez:

The Privacy Commissioner did not investigate whether or not the CHRC hacked Nelly Hechme's Internet account. They merely investigated whether, while hacking Hechme's account, the CHRC kept any of her personal information. Here's the exact wording of the mandate of the Privacy Commissioner's investigation:

The purpose of the investigation was to examine whether the CHRC improperly collected, used, disclosed or retained personal information about the complainant during the course of its investigations, in contravention of sections 4 to 8 of the Privacy Act.

And here's the bit Ezra leaves out, which should go at the head of the previous paragraph:

Investigation finds no evidence that Canadian Human Rights Commission accessed individual's Internet connection

One must access to hack, no?

Anyway, you can play the same game with all of Ezra's links, but it gets pretty boring, as you keep getting the same result.

Sorry, Ezra, the jig's up. Your future lies in bashing the food cops.

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.

CHRC Off The Hook

The RCMP will not pursue charges against the Canadian Human Rights Commission over allegations that its investigators hacked an Ottawa woman's wireless internet account to conceal their identity on websites under investigation for hate speech, the National Post has learned.

This one has been a foregone conclusion ever since Marc Lemire pulled similar claims from his constitutional challenge a couple of months ago. If the man behind the criminal complaint didn't believe his own allegations, why should anyone else? Nevertheless, the decision has been a long time coming.

Furthermore, the charges were ridiculous in the first place. As I have argued repeatedly, at about 350 metres distance, Nelly Hechme's wifi network was out of range of CHRC computers. Nor would it have been necessary for the CHRC to hack her connection, as a wifi scan of the street in front of CHRC HQ shows any number of wireless access points within range.

Furthermore, as some excellent work by Bucket's demonstrated (well, I helped a little), the IP address that Stormfront owner Don Black and Marc Lemire handed over to the tribunal was originally used by CHRC investigator Dean Steacey to access Stormfront in September of 2006. Given the highly dynamic nature of Bell's wireless network, it is wildly unlikely that Streacey's computer should have been given the same IP address in December, when he accessed the site on a 2nd occasion.

I wrote at the time:

Hint One: Most likely nobody visited Stormfront from 70.48.181.203 on December 8, 2006. Not Steacy, not Hechme--nobody. Lemire's criminal complaint, which refs that IP number, will therefore come to nought.

Hint Two: Given the search tools employed by Stormfront, a thorough search of IPs related to Jadewarr should have returned more than a single address. And the address used by CHRC staff in December, 2006 is almost certainly sitting undiscovered in Stormfront records.

This is interesting in the light of this bit from Brean's National Post story:

...to investigate further would involve [the RCMP] going after technical data from a website based in the United States, stormfront.org, which they said is not possible.

Mark Lemire elaborates unhelpfully:

...the RCMP will not criminally charge the CHRC with theft of an innocent woman’s internet connection because the evidence leads to an American website, which is outside the jurisdiction of the RCMP.

Well, wait a minute, if Don Black handed over technical information to Lemire, why could he not do the same for the RCMP? It is quite possible that he in fact refused to hand over this information, and that he is hiding the presence of the 2nd address mentioned above in his records. In other words, the information turned over to the Tribunal and RCMP may have been intentionally left incomplete.

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.

The CHRC: Like James Bond, But EVIL

As Dr. Dawg notes, Ezra Levant has graduated to openly accusing CRHC employees of criminal acts in the strange case of Nelly Hechme and her hacked wireless account. And he does it all on the say-so of Neo-Nazi Marc Lemire.

Given the abysmal coverage of this story in the MSM, it is entirely unsurprising that Ms. Hechme might think that she has been spied upon by The Feds. However, the content of her latest interview with Canadian Press makes this even less likely:

Hechme disputed an initial media report that her wireless Internet access was unsecured and therefore easily hacked. In fact, she said, it required an encryption key that could not have been guessed or casually cracked.

When she forgot the key, even she couldn't access the connection, she said.

"It was so secure to the point I couldn't get into it (so) I'm not sure how they got into it. It's very bizarre."

Since most of the initial news reports on this issue came through the National Post, its not surprising they were bung jobs.

However, lets run back through the two operative theories of how the CHRC might have gotten access to Ms. Hecme's wifi:

1) From CHRC headquarters at 344 Slater (Ottawa, Ont.), a distance about about 400 meters from Nelly Hechme's condo, and through a block of office buildings, commission staff located Ms. Hechme's secure network and, employing super sekrit technology, hacked it.

Note: Your typical wifi connection is good for up to about maybe 100 meters, so probably the boyz from the Commission needed to use some additional super-sekrit technology to even pick up her signal through all the metal and concrete in between.

2) CHRC investigator Dean Steacey, who is legally blind, somehow transported himself to the doorway of Nelly Hechme's condominium building and hacked her secure wifi network from a car outside or the condominium lobby. This would alleviate the need for one set of super-sekrit technology to pick up her signal over great distances.

Wow! you're probably thinking that these guys must not only be Evil to the level of Magneto or Dr. Doom, they must have access to 23rd century tech support! Cue the black helicopters!

Except that, if Dean Steacey or any other CHRC employee bent on nefarious deeds had stepped outside the door of 344 Slater, they would have found themselves in range of any number of unsecured wifi outlets, as well as within 200 meters of a fistful of Starbucks, which usually have wifi service. So all their elaborate scheming would have been completely unnecessary.