internet

Scores of internet-providing satellites will soon streak across Canada's skies: study

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:51:45 +0000

Scores of internet-providing satellites will soon streak across Canada's skies: study

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 09/21/2021 - 11:51

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Researchers at U of T, UBC and the University of Regina are studying the light pollution that would be created over Canada by tens of thousands of new internet satellites scheduled to be launched in the coming years (photo by Dave Mantel/iStockphoto)

Don Campbell

Topic

Breaking Research

internet

Research & Innovation

Satellites

Space

U of T Scarborough

The night sky is going to get much busier thanks to thousands of new internet satellites set to launch over the next few years – and researchers say it’s going to affect Canada more than most places on Earth.

Researchers from the ��Ƶ, the University of Regina and the University of British Columbia found that most light pollution is expected to happen near 50 degrees latitude north and south due to the orbits of the new satellites.

This means the skies near most large Canadian cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg could be affected.

“As with any new technology, it’s important to look at all of the possible impacts,” says Hanno Rein, an associate professor at U of T Scarborough and a co-author of the new research.

“This is such a fundamental change to our view of the sky that it requires greater scrutiny.”

Hanno Rein (photo by Ken Jones)

Several internet-service companies are planning to launch tens of thousands of satellites in the near future, resulting in a 20-fold increase of these objects in the Earth’s lower orbit. It’s estimated the number of orbiting satellites could reach 65,000 over the next few years, compared to about 5,000 today.

This flood of satellites presents a major challenge for astronomers (and amateur stargazers) who have to contend with light pollution from the thousands of new points of light. Rein says about eight per cent of all the light in the night sky might soon come from these satellites. What will be most noticeable for the average person is the hundreds of new lights slowly moving across the night sky at any given time.

The researchers say these satellites will also contribute to atmospheric pollution from rocket fuel during launch and on re-entry when they burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

More satellites also increase the threat of low orbit collisions, contributing to what’s known as the Kessler Syndrome. This is where the number of objects in low orbit is high enough that a collision becomes more likely, leading to a cascading effect where space debris increases the probability of further collisions. There is currently no method of cleaning up space debris, which means certain space activities and the use of other satellites could be prevented for long periods of time.

“If these satellites collide it gets much brighter because the surface area increases from all the small fragments of debris that get created,” says Rein, whose research focuses on exoplanets and developing mathematical methods used in astrophysics.

While this technology has been touted by companies as a way to deliver high-speed internet to rural areas, Rein notes that the service is expensive and that only a relatively small group of people living in wealthy countries will enjoy the benefits.

“The light and environmental pollution impact, on the other hand, will be experienced by everyone,” he says.

He says another consideration is what happens if these companies go bankrupt and can no longer manage satellites already in orbit.

The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, has been submitted toThe Astronomical Journal. Rein also helped develop a web app that allows people to select a latitude, season and time of night to find out how many satellites will be in the night sky and how bright they will be.

“The sky plays an important cultural and scientific role in people’s lives,” he says. “You cannot escape this technology – you will always see these satellites flying above you, no matter where you are in the world.”

Digital generation: U of T researchers work with UN to support children's rights online

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:24:47 +0000

Digital generation: U of T researchers work with UN to support children's rights online

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 07/15/2019 - 13:24

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Faculty of Information researchers Sara Grimes and Leslie Shade are hosting workshops at U of T to collect information on children's digital lives that will be shared with the United Nations (photo by Alex Potemkin via Getty Images)

Topic

Faculty of Information

Global

internet

Knowledge Media Design Institute

United Nations

Researchers at the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Information are holding a series of workshops with children to better understand how they use digital technology – information that will be shared with the United Nations as it looks to update its Convention on the Rights of the Child for a digital world.

The workshops, held tomorrow and Wednesday at the Faculty of Information, will see participants aged 10 to 18 sharing their thoughts and engaging in interactive activities like drawing pictures, voting in polls and filling out surveys. Directed by Associate Professor Sara Grimes and Professor Leslie Shade, the consultation is focused on issues like online privacy, identity, freedom of expression and equality.

Grimes says she’s particularly concerned with the practice of banning children from online spaces to “protect” them – children have to be at least 13 before they can create a Facebook account or start a YouTube channel – rather than finding better ways to support their rights and presence in the digital realm.

“Not only do many kids ignore these age restrictions, their parents will often allow them to do it because they think the bans are silly or unnecessary,” says Grimes, who is the director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI).

The problem? When kids ignore the rules, they have no legal rights.

“Kids' content can be removed, their accounts suspended and their complaints ignored because they are not officially allowed to be there,” says Grimes, who sees a growing gap between regulatory policies and user practices. “Rules like not allowing kids to upload content to YouTube, or turning off the comment function on videos featuring kids, results in a big loss in opportunity for kids to engage and to achieve.

“After all, uploading a copyright-infringing cover of a Ne-Yo song to YouTube is how Justin Bieber became Justin Bieber.”

Grimes and Shade (left) boast considerable experience and expertise in the field of children’s digital rights and cultural participation. Their research includes studies on how young people develop strategies to protect their own privacy online as well as on explorations of children’s “folk understandings” of the complex legal concepts and relationships they encounter when they make and share digital content.

Grimes says children and their parents are bombarded with contradictory messages about the online world. On one hand, they’re told iPads are crucial tools for children learning to read and that educational apps can teach kids to code. On the other, there are ubiquitous warnings about how technology is turning kids into sedentary screen “addicts,” ruining their lives and their brains.

While Grimes acknowledges there are dangers online that understandably provoke emotional reactions, she says the “fears are greatly exaggerated and the risks for encountering the types of dangers sensationalized by certain news media are quite small.”

She believes that restrictions need to be balanced with children’s right to freedom of expression, and that the job of keeping kids safe online is being “put on the backs” of children, parents and teachers instead of on media and internet companies, which could invest more, for example, on moderation and tracking down people engaging in abusive behaviour. She describes current practices as a form of “labour exploitation” of platform and app users, who are asked to invest significant time trying to navigate “blackboxed business processes that gird children’s lives in the digital realm.”

Many of KMDI’s research initiatives are focused on supporting children’s rights as participants and cultural producers in digital contexts. Its work expands on the Kids DIY Media Partnership, a recently completed multi-year, Canada-U.S. research collaboration on the same topic.

Kids DIY brought together academics, child advocacy groups, platform developers, media companies and public broadcasters to discuss key issues relating to children’s digital media making and to collaborate on a series of related research projects.

Among its many recommendations: Terms of service contracts and privacy policies on children’s platforms must not be tilted in favour of business interests, nor infringe upon or omit children’s rights; that children have the same copyrights over their creations as adults; that concerns about safety and risk must be balanced with proper consideration of children’s rights and autonomy; and that age restrictions should only be applied if there is a real justification for excluding children.

The workshops Grimes and Shade are overseeing are similar to others being conducted in 24 countries in partnership with the RErights project, a collaboration between 5rights, Western Sydney University and the London School of Economics. Grimes says RErights was instrumental in convincing the UN of the need for this “general comment,” as the guidelines for interpretation of various treaties are known, and that its workshops are well designed and thought out. She will focus on facilitating the participation of the study’s younger study participants while Shade will focus on teenagers.

Participants’ written answers and ideas will be sent back to the RErights project team, which will analyze and compare them with results gathered from the other global workshops. The findings of this cross-cultural analysis will ultimately be compiled into a report to be used by the UN committee to write its general comment later this year.

Censorship in China increases in wake of Liu Xiaobo's death: U of T's Citizen Lab

ullahnor — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 14:58:32 +0000

Censorship in China increases in wake of Liu Xiaobo's death: U of T's Citizen Lab

ullahnor Mon, 07/17/2017 - 10:58

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Protesters posted postcards to Liu Xiaobo earlier this month at the Chinese hospital caring for the cancer-stricken Nobel laureate (photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)

Topic

Global Lens

Citizen Lab

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

censorship

internet

The ��Ƶ's Citizen Lab says the death of Liu Xiaobo last week led to increased censorship in China as people took to social media to express their grief.

The New York Times on Monday reported on Citizen Lab's latest censorship findings from China. The Internet watchdog group, located at the Munk School Global Affairs, says there was a “significant shift” in censorship techniques in the days after Liu’s death, particularly on two of China’s most popular platforms: WeChat and Sina Weibo.

Citizen Lab, which has extensively studied social media censorship in China, found that general references to his death in Chinese and in English, and even just his name, were blocked on WeChat. The group points out that this is the first time images – including photographs of Liu and of people commemorating him – were blocked in one-to-one chats, as well as group chats and WeChat moments.

Read Citizen Lab's full report

“Social media platforms in China regularly censor content related to Liu Xiaobo and his legacy including ‘Charter 08’ and being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as shown in previous research and user reports,” Citizen Lab reported. “However, the death of Liu marks a particularly critical moment for the Communist Party of China (CPC) and, as a result, Chinese Internet companies are facing direct or indirect government pressure to apply broad restrictions to content related to Liu.”

The report stated there are signs that a younger generation in China is slowly forgetting the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, and there's concern about whether Liu will meet the same fate.

Read former U of T expert on Canada failing to criticize China

WannaCry: what U of T community should know about the malware attack

ullahnor — Mon, 15 May 2017 21:45:51 +0000

WannaCry: what U of T community should know about the malware attack

ullahnor Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:45

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U of T's information security team is scanning the university networks to identify unpatched equipment (photo by Jason Krygier-Baum)

Currently, no incidents of malware have been reported to U of T's information security team since the WannaCry attack began on Friday.

WannaCry targets unpatched Microsoft Windows computers and then locks the machine’s contents from the user – pending the payment of a ransom amount. WannaCry propagates by identifying and infecting other unpatched machines on a network.

Read U of T Professor Deepa Kundur's Op-ed on WannaCry

What U of T is doing:

Defences are in place at multiple network locations/gateways to block incoming attacks.

The information security team is constantly scanning the university networks to identify unpatched equipment, primarily using outdated and unsupported operating systems such as Windows XP, and to notify appropriate administrators about the need to patch the devices.

What you should do:

Be careful with e-mail messages. Do not open any messages with offers that are too good to be true. Beware of messages from the CRA about your income tax refund for example, or banks asking for your credentials, or to have you open an attachment.
Keep your devices up-to-date. Install security updates and patches, particularly those identified as being “critical.” Consider ALL your devices, not just machines used at work.
Maintain backups. The existence and integrity of data and system backups is critical to protecting your data and maintaining availability in case of a compromised device. If you are unsure as to whether your devices are backed up, check with your local IT team.

For additional information and support, please contact your local IT team. Additional resources are available from the information security department and at the security awareness site.