The link to the protests is a bit spurious. Not just the banks went offline. My employer (that I assure you has nothing to do with banking or Canada) had network outages too. And for that matter, every outage is "mysterious," until it's not.
Corrected headline: There Was A Network Outage
Edit: You can optionally add "Hours-Long" back in, since that's factual.
BMO had issues with its Global Money Transfer. RBC had issues with its online banking system (and acknowledged it). Other banks seem to have had mostly no or only minor issues.
This is pure speculation based on anecdotal reports. Most of the reports started on twitter and the numbers - except for RBC - are negligible.
Check this link [1] from the article itself: it's clear that the numbers from RBC (3k+ reports) are the only ones that cannot be considered noise or a minor issue.
These are just reports people made that the sites were down. Not actual data from monitoring tools or something. I used my Canadian banking website a bunch of times yesterday and had no issues. Banking websites go down for maintenance or randomly start acting slow because of the crappy infrastructure they're built on, or because of other reasons located between your computer and their servers. Nothing I've seen shows any actual evidence that anything out of the ordinary happened. Just confirmation bias.
When I was growing up here in the US, to me the Royal Canadian Mounted Police always had an aura of honor. Those days are gone. Civil disobedience in Canada today means you may have your money removed from your account by law enforcement unless you cave and fall in line.
It's always been the case that banks had the ability to seize funds, what is new with this Emergency Order is that banks can now seize personal funds without evidence, based purely on suspicion and without legal liability if this power is abused. Those whose assets are frozen also have no recourse through the courts or due process of any kind. The implications are chilling and are very likely to result in Canadian banks losing business and reputation/credibility.
>When I was growing up here in the US, to me the Royal Canadian Mounted Police always had an aura of honor. Those days are gone. Civil disobedience in Canada today means you may have your money removed from your account by law enforcement unless you cave and fall in line.
The protesters have been quite public about how well the police have treated them. The police have at least to date done nothing wrong. So I would not go to the extent to say the RCMP's honour has been harmed at all. Those days aren't gone.
However, this is the problem. Since the police have not been able to end the protest because of charter rights. This forced Trudeau's hand to declare martial law, but any and all peaceful protesters whose rights are infringed will be receiving compensation as per the emergency act.
>The police have at least to date done nothing wrong.
The complaint this time isn't about the police using unnecessary force to brutalize the public. Our complaint is that they haven't upheld the law, and are acting like 'buddies' with the people that they are supposed to be ticketing/incarcerating.
>The complaint this time isn't about the police using unnecessary force to brutalize the public. Our complaint is that they haven't upheld the law, and are acting like 'buddies' with the people that they are supposed to be ticketing/incarcerating.
What law have they not upheld? Some microscopic municipal bylaws? Can a municipal government create bylaws to criminalize peaceful assembly? I guess I have my answer, the Ottawa police says no.
>This forced Trudeau's hand to declare martial law, but any and all peaceful protesters whose rights are infringed will be receiving compensation as per the emergency act.
He wasn't forced to do anything, it was his choice, against the wishes of many premiers.
Trudeau should have done what he did with the 2020 train blockade protests. Met with the protestors, had a dialogue about the issues (mandates) and come to a compromise conclusion.
>Trudeau should have done what he did with the 2020 train blockade protests. Met with the protestors, had a dialogue about the issues (mandates) and come to a compromise conclusion.
I totally agree with you there. What happened to the Trudeau who would talk to anyone at town halls.
That's exactly what Melissa Lantsman asked right before Trudeau called her a nazi.
RCMP? They have nothing to do with enforcement in the City of Ottawa (local cops), the brief protest at Quebec City (also local cops), two brief weekend protests in Vancouver (local cops), or the multi-day border closure at Windsor (local cops).
The RCMP do have enforcement duties at the Alberta border crossing and BC border crossing, both now open.
Judging RCMP for the inactions of a useless Ottawa city police force is inaccurate and misleading.
>Interesting. This is the first I've heard of that.
Gotta remember, Trudeau's father declared martial law during the october crisis. There were literally bombs going off, people dying, and I will say there was an emergency then. However, after that because of human rights abuses during that martial law. They scrapped it and replaced it with the emergency act which explicitly requires the government to maintain human rights.
Moreover, in the act, anything the government seizes must be returned to the people. The government doesn't get to just take your things.
The politicians writing the emergency act knew that future governments exercising the emergency act will infringe upon rights. So compensation is to be expected.
Now you have a problem. Any peaceful protesters can stick around and when they get arrested and removed from the area. They get nice retirement fund boosts from the government. So why would you even consider leaving if you want to leave?
The phrase "declare martial law" is 100% misinformation and I wish Americans and/or other interested worldwide observers that do not understand our Emergencies Act that was invoked would stop treating it like so.
>The phrase "declare martial law" is 100% misinformation and I wish Americans and/or other interested worldwide observers that do not understand our Emergencies Act that was invoked would stop treating it like so.
>You are clearly biased and there's no possible way we can have a discussion. Enjoy your day.
Sorry you feel that way. Thanks, you enjoy your day as well.
Oh before you go, if you read the link I provided(section 46). The emergency act specifically disallows charter rights to be violated. So the accounts they have seized already? Under Section 6 of the Charter of unreasonable search and seizure? Ya the government will now be paying them compensation for violating their rights.
I should have said "agenda" rather than biased, sorry.
I'm very aware of our Charter, thank you very much. I recommend reading section 1 of the charter and understanding what reasonable means in the context of section 8 (not 6 as in your comment) from the Canadian legal perspective.
>I'm very aware of our Charter, thank you very much. I recommend reading section 1 of the charter and understanding what reasonable means in the context of section 8 (not 6 as in your comment) from the Canadian legal perspective.
You're right, section 8.
There is to date no section 1 limitations or exemptions to peaceful assembly nor search and seizure.
Something that has been quite interesting is how many lawyers are frothing at the mouth right now. The emergencies act is going from academic to case law. Never before and there's clear charter right violations at the same time as the act being misused.
>I should have said "agenda" rather than biased, sorry.
I am very biased. I believe in charter rights that have been enshrined and defined by international treaty.
The reality that after years of covid restrictions impacting our rights. It's time, like the rest of the world, to return our rights. This protest was inevitable at the reasonable end of the pandemic.
Trudeau should have taken advice from his own party and not vilified the protest quite wrongly. Spoke with them, provided a roadmap to the exit. Instead here we are with charter right abuses and martial law
Banks pretty well everywhere have long had the ability to freeze funds for a variety of offenses without due process.
It's usually sold as a benefit to the consumer (it protects against fraud is the usual claim) but this isn't new. All kinds of transactions can trip automated detection systems leading to account freezes.
I agree that without a court order it's shady but it's not as though this is really that new. The primary change in the legislation is pushing banks to freeze and report the accounts to the agency responsible for dealing with money laundering.
Do I agree with it? Not entirely. However it's not a new thing and exists in widespread use in most of the world in one form or other.
I mean, is it a conspiracy if, by the Canadian government's own admission, they are tracking and freezing the accounts of those involved in the trucking protest?
government decrees that certain accounts need to be frozen. the infrastructure to do so isn't there and needs to be implemented/deployed, or is implemented but hasn't been used in a while so nobody knows how it works. in either case, the roll-out gets bungled and causes downtime.
i thought the conspiracy theory was there was a bank run caused by lack of faith in the banking system and then in order to stifle the run banks had some 'downtime' and 'networking' issues.
Oh, no. I was referring to the conspiracy theory portion of the comment. I've no idea what is responsible for the down time. Could be software tracking at time of, before people start pulling funds in preparation for the freezing of funds as the order went through, or a simple network error. Any speculation, is just that. Speculation. The timing is suspect, though, but that's really all that can be said.
EDIT:
Or in thinking about it further, it could have been thoughts of self preservation on the banks part. In order to keep a decent portion of their customer base from transferring their funds to "offshore" banks, of some sort, they simply closed their proverbial doors for a time, to let the panic die down.
Exactly what conspiracy theory would you be referring to? The one just published by the Canadian Broadcasing Corporation telling their readers that "Banks are moving to freeze accounts linked to convoy protests" less than 24 hours ago?
Should we call it a "conspiracy theory" when people take rational reactions to articles published on major news sites, like taking all of their money out of banks out of fear that they might be labelled a "designated person" to be frozen out of all financial services?
The conspiracy part is that freezing accounts related to illegal activity, a really common thing to do, is somehow related to the downtime. We all know that some people who have been funding illegal activity are getting their account frozen; that's not the disputed part.
>The only reason this story exists is a bunch of conspiracy theories.
Unprecedented times being under martial law and the government saying they'll seize political opponent bank accounts. Conspiracy theories aren't even needed when it's publicly showed on the media's frontpage.
>If it happened any other time (and it does) it would be a normal network failure.
No other outage can be connected here. So we can't blame an AWS outage.
Can you to show ANY other time when Canadian banks went down together like this.
You seem to be under the impression this 1) is a vast coordinated operation, 2) is somehow reliable info and 3) unaware of how often Canadian banks go down.
I agree that it's more likely all the banks use the same provider or IT service and it went down or had an issue, rather than the government trying to shut down the banks. But who knows, crazier things have happened.
There's a joke I've seen circulating recently on the internet that I found amusing. "Do you know what the difference between a conspiracy theorist and reality is? About 6 months."
Apart from that Canada thing I know many people who were labelled a "consipracy theorist" for saying the virus came from Wuhan lab, they were labelled nutjobs for saying that the government would implement vaccine passports to restrict where you could and couldn't go. They said the government would force you to be vaccinated, etc.
My stance on those issues is not necessarily the same as those friends, but I am just saying, it seems the conspiracy theorists are hitting quite a few points lately.
I really hate the demonization of the phrase "conspiracy theory". Why is it so crazy to entertain the idea that the rich and powerful who control major institutions may be working together?
That statement in particular isn't what's crazy, of course various people of the elite strata will work and socialize and collaborate together to various extents.
The craziness is the specifics of certain conspiracy theories. For example the idea that covid itself is a conspiracy, or the there is a conspiracy to suppress ivermectin.
I have to agree with the view that outlandish conspiracy thinking isn't only wrong, it is actively dangerous and should be argued against strenuously. It was a large part of Nazi propaganda that motivated a genocide, so that is an existence proof of a danger associated with such unhinged thinking if it's allowed to go unchallenged in public discourse.
Because they're rich and powerful and its easier to belittle people with genuine concerns and with some incomplete evidence than it is to answer questions that might threaten their rich and powerfulness. And because there are a few who take their theories to extremes without evidence, its easy to lump all together with the crazies and demean them.
I am pretty sure having to show a QR code that can prevent you from participating in society that can be retroactively deactivated was a conspiracy theory. But then in Israel, they did exactly that (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-requires-co...).
Anyone without a booster had their ability to participate in society "deactivated", like in a bad Science Fiction movie. What's more terrifying are the people who want to convince the rest of us that this should be normal and is not completely insane.
That would be the most boring science fiction movie ever made. At least in Canada, we're talking about going to a restaurant or to the gym during a pandemic. It's not normal because pandemics aren't normal. My threshold for outrage is just higher I guess.
In other parts of the world, it was a requirement for every store and venue including supermarkets (e.g. Australia). Even worse, now that contact tracing has largely been discarded, those same governments that pushed out such measures are yet to repeal them.
I'm glad it's not like that here. In Canada, as far as I know, it was only non-essential businesses. For the longest time even gyms and pools were excluded at least where I live.
A few off the top of my head that are extremely well-corroborated:
Jeffery Epstein (nothing in particular, just literally everything about him)
Gulf of Tonkin
MK Ultra
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
And those are just the very obvious ones. I find that a Bayesian way of looking at the world tends to drive up the credibility of various "conspiracy theories" which would otherwise seem fairly unlikely.
I haven't heard of the last three, got to look those up but Epstein? Was that a conspiracy theory at any point? I'm not sure that counts as one but I'm not sure.
The collective internet "underground" knew he was a massive sex trafficker, and that he consistently engaged with the world's elite, for years. Then he got arrested and promptly died. It's unlikely he wasn't committing similar crimes the whole time in between his arrests, but he wasn't being investigated.
> The collective internet "underground" knew he was a massive sex trafficker, and that he consistently engaged with the world's elite, for years. [...] but he wasn't being investigated.
Pretty sure that's been known for a long time, and that investigations (at least in name) have taken place:
I think you're missing that the punishments he got were extremely light, likely due to his connections. He never had remorse nor reform. He and maxwell continued to do what they're so infamously known for throughout the 2010s. The conspiracy is that this could probably have been stopped were it not for "someone" getting in the way.
From the article you linked, here's just a few snippets that showed he was not treated like he should have been.
"After a contested hearing in January 2011, and an appeal, he stayed registered in New York State as a "level three" (high risk of repeat offense) sex offender, a lifelong designation.[122][123] At that hearing the Manhattan District Attorney argued unsuccessfully that the level should be reduced to a low-risk "level one" and was chided by the judge. Despite opposition from Epstein's lawyer that he had a "main" home in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the judge confirmed he personally must check in with the New York Police Department every 90 days. Though Epstein had been a level-three registered sex offender in New York since 2010, the New York Police Department never enforced the 90-day regulation, though non-compliance is a felony."
"On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18,[117] he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff's office, was after 3+1⁄2 months allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. This contravened the sheriff's own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence of 10 months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours."
" According to the Miami Herald, the non-prosecution agreement "essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. The Miami Herald said: "Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims.""
And yes, this is all has been known. What's not known is why, which is the conspiracy. The why is extremely important because of the likelihood that some of the world's most powerful are involved.
The former secretary of labor Alex Acosta, who prosecuted Epstein back in 2008, made a remark that he was told that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" and that the matter was "above his pay grade", which is why he offered him such a lenient plea deal.
> I'm not aware of any government forcing you to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
I guess it depends on what the meaning of "force" is.
If to you "force" means a literal gun literally aimed at your head (not literally as in figuratively) then you're right, no force has been applied yet.
If to you "force" includes regulations and arm-twisting of employers and retailers to require employees and patrons to get vaccinated, then force most definitely has been applied. That force does involve figurative guns to people's heads. If the government decrees that employers must do X, employers will do X on pain of whatever the decree says (fines, cancellation of business licenses, etc.). Fines are backed by guns: if you scofflaw enough then you will end up in prison, and if you resist arrest you will end up roughed up or dead, as in the government's agents will rough you up and possibly kill you, and they'll use firearms in the process.
I.e., the threat of force is force.
The law recognizes this. "Assault with a deadly weapon" doesn't mean that the weapon was actually physically applied to the victim -- it means that de minimis a threat was made to apply it physically to the victim.
It's quite disingenuous to say that governments haven't forced anyone to get vaccinated. In many cases there are literally no laws requiring it, or requiring anyone to require it, but the impression given to the public, and to employers, retailers, etc., is very much that force is being threatened. Even if in the end there are no actual laws making it so, for the average person there might as well have been.
Back to assault with a deadly weapon, I doubt that using a realistic toy weapon would vitiate the charge. If the victim cannot trivially tell what that the deadly weapon isn't actually a deadly weapon, then the assault has to be considered as being with a deadly weapon. The same must be true for coercion with pretend-laws and decrees -- if the victims are led by their victimizers to believe that force is being threatened, then force is being threatened.
You know that these aren't forcing you to get vaccinated and only apply to a small part of the population. In Canada, you don't have to get vaccinated. It's just not true. Do certain professional groups lose their jobs if they don't sure, can others not fully perform their duties like crossing the international border, yes.
> I'm not aware of any government forcing you to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
This is probably due to a lack of language skills on your part. Multiple countries are discussing it and it's de facto already required in France, for example.
> what other conspiracy theories were there that turned out to be possible after all or even true?
Lab leak, cloth masks being ineffective, Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction being made up, Vietnam war Gulf of Tonkin, Epstein Pedophile island. JFK multiple gun theory hasn't been proven but seems more likely than not.
These are all now generally accepted facts but were once considered conspiracy theories.
It surprises me that an adult (that presumably lives in the US) wouldn't be aware of at least some of these.
It does seem like there are some folks out there who, for some reason, want to be overly broad as a way of rejecting an idea more intensely. I don't really get this instinct. In particular:
> I know many people who were labelled a "consipracy theorist" for saying the virus came from Wuhan lab
It was always the case that the right answer to this is, "we haven't seen enough evidence to say this is the case. It is possible, but there are also lots of natural sources it could have come from." This is still the case as far as I know. (?)
"Insufficient evidence of X so far" being misinterpreted as "X is impossible and if you believe in X you are a bad person" is pretty much the story of science communications for this pandemic. It seems like a really big problem.
> they were labelled nutjobs for saying that the government would implement vaccine passports to restrict where you could and couldn't go.
Restricting movement was always on the table. If someone was called a nutjob for understanding that, the person who called them a nutjob wasn't really taking the situation very seriously. The conspiracy theorist (in the pejorative sense) angle comes from the implication that there's some evil behind-the-scenes motivation for it, when it is just an expected pandemic response.
> They said the government would force you to be vaccinated, etc.
Same here. Mandatory vaccinations have always been a possibility in some places. That's not a conspiracy theory (in the pejorative sense). The idea that this implies some malicious behavior on the part of the government, is.
That can be true when the problem is that the transaction fees are high, but sometimes (particularly when there's a slow block) they're unstable. So you might place a 6 sat/byte transaction fee on your transaction with the expectation of a 90% chance of "within the next block", but the next block comes out 35 minutes later and it's stuffed full of 10 sat/byte transactions. So you end up bumping the fee with CPFP and the transaction takes an hour for the first confirmation instead of 10 minutes.
But I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the even rarer cases when no blocks get mined for an hour or more.
They're probably just referring to the (historically decreasing) variance in time between blocks, nominally 10 minutes. Not an outage by any stretch but occasionally annoying. It's smoother in higher frequency blockchains.
I'm not sure I understand how that tweet offers proof the banks went offline. Only one of the four charts in that tweet shows a number of reports that I would consider significant (3000 vs less than a hundred for the other three).
Writing "@dang" does not notify dang, though he sometimes stumbles across these questions. Email hn@ycombinator.com. I have always received a response to my emails in a day or less.
If I understand correctly, "flag" mostly doesn't come from dang. It comes from other users.
I think dang can flag a post himself, but more likely it's from users. It takes more than one user to mark it as flagged; I don't know how many it takes.
Corrected headline: There Was A Network Outage
Edit: You can optionally add "Hours-Long" back in, since that's factual.
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