Last Friday afternoon, the website of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) was breached by Visi0nZ. Plain text usernames and passwords were posted to Pastebin, along with the message “Snoop on to them as they Snoop on to you” (a quote from the film ‘Hackers’).
In a separate post to Pastehtml Visi0nZ claimed his action was to raise awareness of Bill C-30 and demonstrate “how some Police don't know how to choose a password.” In particular, he says “This quote disgusted me, ‘You’re with us, or the child pornographers’ ~Vic Toews.” Vic Toews is the Canadian Public Safety Minister, and the police are supporters of the bill.
Bill C-30, the Canadian Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act (originally called the Lawful Access Act) was introduced by the Conservative government on 14 February. Its purpose is to allow the Canadian authorities to track the digital activities of Canadians in real time and without a court order. It requires ISPs to maintain and provide on demand a log of users’ activity, and requires a back door allowing remote access to all computers. ‘Children’ and ‘internet predators’ are only mentioned in the title, with many critics believing that the title is only being used to make the content more palatable to the public.
On the day before the bill was introduced, The Globe and Mail reported, “the Conservatives are accusing anyone who opposes their bill to give police new powers to monitor the Internet of supporting child pornography.” According to this report, it was following a challenge by Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia who claimed that the Conservatives were “preparing to read Canadians' emails and track their movements through cellphone signals” that Vic Toews responded, “He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
A report in yesterday’s Winnipeg Free Press suggests that the Visi0nZ cyber attack against the OACP “has only bolstered the organization's support for the government's controversial online surveillance bill”. Spokesman Joe Couto said, "What this does is demonstrate quite clearly to Canadians the type of cyber crimes perpetuated every day. The citizens of this province and this country are asking us to address cyber crimes and we need tools for that.”