Harper and Abbott at APEC : To boldly blow ...

Get Your NSA On - Star Trek Fantasy Spy Centre

NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise

"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, [Gen. Keith] Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a "whoosh" sound when they slid open and closed. 

Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather "captain's chair" in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

"Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard," says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."

Detailed photos of the Star Trek Fantasy Spy Center. 

Can't say I recognize the ubiquitous logo though. Anyone?

Glenn Greenwald : Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander

Wired : The Secret War 

Foreign Policy Mag via Cryptome : The Cowboy of the NSA

Meanwhile, up here in Canada - there's this morning's G&M :

Wireless firms agree to give Ottawa ability to monitor calls, phone data

"For nearly two decades, Ottawa officials have told telecommunications companies that one of the conditions of obtaining a licence to use wireless spectrum is to provide government with the capability to bug the devices that use the spectrum...

 ... including eavesdropping, reading SMS texts, pinpointing users’ whereabouts, unscrambling some encrypted communications, phone logs and keystrokes. ...

Carriers that help their customers scramble communications must decrypt them. "Law enforcement requires that any type of encryption algorithm that is initiated by the service provider must be provided to the law-enforcement agency unencrypted."

 This in addition to Canada's CSEC partnering up with the NSA to weaken Internet encryption standards.

Yet somehow the real Pierre Poutine still eludes them.
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Steve and Kory fail the Komagata Maru test

A formal apology delivered in the House is official; an apology delivered off the back of a truck in Surrey is an apology delivered off the back of a truck in Surrey.
Indo-Canadians were led to believe they would be receiving both and now they are pissed.

G&M : "As requested by the Prime Minister's Office, the organizers sent a draft of a gracious thank-you speech that they intended to deliver after Mr. Harper made his remarks. The Prime Minister's Office did content and grammatical edits of the speech and approved it for delivery."

Minister of Multiculturalism Jason Kenney : "We felt it would be most appropriate for this expression to be made in a venue where the broader community could participate, which is what the Prime Minster did," he said. "This was a way to maximize participation."

"Maximum participation" was somewhat compromised when Steve "left the stage immediately afterward, without waiting to see if his host would deliver the pre-arranged thank you speech."

Well, it's their own fault of course for electing NDP Penny Priddy to Surrey North.