Saturday, December 17, 2011
Blaming China and U.S., Canada says quitting Kyoto
From The Hindu
Canada this week set a dangerous precedent that could unravel
global progress towards mitigating climate change, when it said that it had
decided to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol.
Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent said, “The Kyoto Protocol
does not cover the world's two largest emitters, the United States and China,
and therefore cannot work.” He added that the Protocol originally covered
countries generating less than 30 per cent of global emissions and now it
covered less than only 13 per cent and that number was only shrinking.
The Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997, is part of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, aimed at fighting global
warming by stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere “at a
level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system”.
Not surprisingly, China lashed out at Canada's plan to pull out of
the agreement, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin reportedly describing
the decision as being “regrettable,” and “against the efforts of the
international community.”
Yet Mr. Kent said on Monday it was clear that the Protocol was not
the path forward for a global solution to climate change, and if anything it was
an impediment. “The Kyoto Protocol does not represent the path forward for
Canada,” he noted, adding, “The Durban platform is a way forward to build on our
work at Copenhagen and at Cancun.”
Canada's withdrawal comes at a time when it has increasingly
gained the reputation of a climate “renegade” that has encouraged the rampant
use of polluting energy platforms. For example, oil sands production, one of the
most polluting forms of oil extraction, is at the heart of Canada's discussion
with the U.S. regarding the now-infamous Keystone Pipeline.
Clearly, the impact of the global recession is also an unspoken
factor in Canada's calculus. According to Mr. Kent, the cost of meeting Canada's obligations
under Kyoto was in the range of $13.6 billion. “That is $1,600 from every
Canadian family; that is the Kyoto cost to Canadians. That was the legacy of an
incompetent liberal government,” he said.
Labels: canada, climate change, Durban, Kyoto Protocol
Friday, February 18, 2011
Ottawa networks compromised in cyber-attack
From The Hindu
Unidentified hackers deployed a technique known as “spear-phishing” to breach top-secret caches within the computer networks of the Government of Canada, media reported on Thursday.
Unnamed government sources speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation admitted that the hackers, who used Chinese-origin servers, managed to obtain highly classified data from three departments of the government — the Finance Department, the Treasury Board, and Defence Research and Development Canada.
In a series of cyber-attacks against the Canadian government that was initially detected in early January, the hackers were said to have somehow obtained access to the files of senior government officials and then masqueraded as the officials to trick government technicians into revealing network passwords.
Using this technique of spear phishing, the hackers also sent emails to government employees that unleashed viral data mining programmes, said the CBC report. When the embarrassing scale of the security breach was discovered, reports said, officials cut off Internet access to the thousands of employees in the affected departments.
Officials were however cautious in indicating the source of the attack. Sources speaking to CBC said, though the source of the hack was traced to servers in China, that did not necessarily imply that the hackers were Chinese. Rather, said the sources, the attackers could have routed their paths through China to hide their identities.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in his first comments on the attack, said at a press conference on Thursday his government did have a strategy in place to protect computer networks. He added he recognised cyber-security was "a growing issue of importance, not just in this country, but across the world".
He said in anticipating potential cyber-attacks, “We have a strategy in place to try and evolve our systems as those who would attack them become more sophisticated."
This week's revelations suggest that the most recent in a spate of cyber-attacks took place despite a June 2009 warning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, that such attacks "on government, university and industry computers had been growing significantly".
Unidentified hackers deployed a technique known as “spear-phishing” to breach top-secret caches within the computer networks of the Government of Canada, media reported on Thursday.
Unnamed government sources speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation admitted that the hackers, who used Chinese-origin servers, managed to obtain highly classified data from three departments of the government — the Finance Department, the Treasury Board, and Defence Research and Development Canada.
In a series of cyber-attacks against the Canadian government that was initially detected in early January, the hackers were said to have somehow obtained access to the files of senior government officials and then masqueraded as the officials to trick government technicians into revealing network passwords.
Using this technique of spear phishing, the hackers also sent emails to government employees that unleashed viral data mining programmes, said the CBC report. When the embarrassing scale of the security breach was discovered, reports said, officials cut off Internet access to the thousands of employees in the affected departments.
Officials were however cautious in indicating the source of the attack. Sources speaking to CBC said, though the source of the hack was traced to servers in China, that did not necessarily imply that the hackers were Chinese. Rather, said the sources, the attackers could have routed their paths through China to hide their identities.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in his first comments on the attack, said at a press conference on Thursday his government did have a strategy in place to protect computer networks. He added he recognised cyber-security was "a growing issue of importance, not just in this country, but across the world".
He said in anticipating potential cyber-attacks, “We have a strategy in place to try and evolve our systems as those who would attack them become more sophisticated."
This week's revelations suggest that the most recent in a spate of cyber-attacks took place despite a June 2009 warning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, that such attacks "on government, university and industry computers had been growing significantly".
Labels: canada, cyber security, hacking
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