Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

riskybiznews.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 192 posts

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#31

Post by robotnikman »

originalcopying wrote: post #19
posguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal structures and especially state or state sponsored entities in Canada work much differently than in the US. The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations. This state sponsored vertical integration enables abu…

I clicked > https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/xa9j3x/church_ to get > Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/nottheonion.

Gotta love the overzealous powermods of Reddit...

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#35

Post by Operyl »

chucksmash wrote: post #27
posguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal structures and especially state or state sponsored entities in Canada work much differently than in the US. The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations. This state sponsored vertical integration enables abu…

> The DUI checkpoints up in BC are wild too, I'm glad they are banned in Washington and Oregon. Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach. I was just wondering about these (in the US) the other day. When I was growing up, I seem to remember them being a thing and going through them as a passenger but in 20+ years of driving, including on NYE/July 4 and late at…

Saw one in South Florida on multiple nights during Super Bowl weekend.

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#36

Post by Kranar »

xattt wrote: post #10
kenned3 wrote: post #3

This is so typical of the Canadian government. The effectivly FORCE you to use this site as they try to cut costs and reduce "call in" support. Then, they create a ToS which absolves them of all responsibility if they are hacked? I would be willing to bet that if any Canadian business tried this the government would crack down and state it not permitted. The government has a tendency of "do as i say not as i do". Any…

CRA is almost a separate entity from other federal departments, so it behaves like a private business than a government department. They aren’t even at the behest of the treasury board.

The CRA is its own department, like any other department. It is structured and operates just like any other government department as opposed to a private business.

They are not at the behest of the Treasury Board because the Treasury Board is a committee, not an administration or agency. The board has no executive authority whatsoever and exists to give advice to Cabinet rather than to perform or execute a duty. However, the individual members of the Treasury Board do have the ability to order the CRA, principally the Minister of National Revenue, who sits on the Treasury Board, is the executive of the CRA.

Perhaps you're thinking of the Bank of Canada, which is an actual corporation and operates in a semi-independent manner from Parliament, although technically Parliament has full oversight and authority over it.

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#37

Post by adra »

nayuki wrote: post #7

Also noteworthy is that compared to leading commercial websites (Amazon, Facebook, etc.), the Canada Revenue Agency website: Responds an order of magnitude slower (like 3000 ms vs. 300 ms), and has maintenance downtime hours (instead of being up 24/7). > However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. They conveniently ignore the fact that HTTPS is pervasive…

You can say the same for any institutional web site. Sure CRA is slower than Google, but so is 99% of the sites in the internet. Is access speed really the top concern when you're interacting with the site? Unless you're an accountant, you're probably logging in all of twice a year, once to file and once to review the final result.

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#38

Post by Scoundreller »

posguy wrote: post #13
stewx wrote: post #6

> 10. The Canada Revenue Agency has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the security of this Web site. We have used sophisticated encryption technology and incorporated other procedures to protect your personal information at all times. However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. In the event of such occurrences, the Canada Revenue Agency is not responsi…

Legal structures and especially state or state sponsored entities in Canada work much differently than in the US. The ICBC has a literal state sponsored monopoly over car insurance, titling a vehicle and driver licensing, whereas in the US no state handles car insurance, while titling a vehicle and driver licensing are not necessarily the same state organizations. This state sponsored vertical integration enables abu…

> Suspicionless stopping of cars en masse followed by interrogation by police seems like an overreach.

I’m pretty sure Canadian DUI checkpoints are limited to interrogations about alcohol/drug intoxication (edit: and a few matters regarding the vehicle itself) unless something else is offered/observed.

Supreme Court basically agreed that they are warrantless and detainments without reasonable suspicion, but considered them acceptable for the purposes of preventing drunk driving so that’s all the carve out it for. See R vs Mellenthin here: https://torontodui.com/knowledge-centre/everything-you-need-...

(Worth noting that Canada’s constitution is basically toilet paper for a lot of things because a judge (or politician!) can override a lot of it)

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#39

Post by throwawaysleep »

tpmx wrote: post #15
nayuki wrote: post #7

Also noteworthy is that compared to leading commercial websites (Amazon, Facebook, etc.), the Canada Revenue Agency website: Responds an order of magnitude slower (like 3000 ms vs. 300 ms), and has maintenance downtime hours (instead of being up 24/7). > However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. They conveniently ignore the fact that HTTPS is pervasive…

In first few the years following the 2000/2001 dotcom crash the Swedish Tax Agency realized they had a golden opportunity to move away from expensive and fickle consultants to a competent in-house team of long-term employed developers. They pulled it off really well. The effect is still visible - web services are well designed in a simple and efficient way and generally just work. I think now (and the next year or tw…

Canadians would throw a fit about it though. Government employees earning over 100K triggers a lot of people.

Re: Canada's tax revenue agency tries to ToS itself out of hacking liability

#40

Post by version_five »

bawolff wrote: post #11
nayuki wrote: post #7

Also noteworthy is that compared to leading commercial websites (Amazon, Facebook, etc.), the Canada Revenue Agency website: Responds an order of magnitude slower (like 3000 ms vs. 300 ms), and has maintenance downtime hours (instead of being up 24/7). > However, the Internet is a public network and there is the remote possibility of data security violations. They conveniently ignore the fact that HTTPS is pervasive…

Personally i would rather my tax money be spent elsewhere than latency optimizing a website that i have to use once a year. The maintenance hours thing is unconsiable though. Sometimes i want to know how much tfsa room i have on sunday evening.

Rest assured, it will have cost way more than a comparable commercial website. Poor performance is not a cost savings measure.
Post reply on HN