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Five major Canadian banks mysteriously go offline in hours-long outage

111 points by _0ffh 5y ago

mmastrac 5y ago
The only reason this story exists is a bunch of conspiracy theories. If it happened any other time (and it does) it would be a normal network failure. EDIT: sigh
- _xnmw 5y ago
  Network failures do not affect banks alone.
- buscoquadnary 5y ago
  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.
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    Other than the lab leak thing, what other conspiracy theories were there that turned out to be possible after all or even true? I'm not aware of any government forcing you to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      > 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.
    - ShockTohp 5y ago
      Australia and Canada both have vaccine mandates. You're either being willfully ignorant or trolling. If the later, 10/10 great bait mate.
      - barbazoo 5y ago
        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.
        ShockTohp 5y ago
        That's coercion. You might as well say "Well those actresses didn't have to interact with winestien, they could have just not be actresses."
        pinephoneguy 5y ago
        Even if they aren't being "forced" (and I would argue they are) it's unpleasant enough that you should be able to understand why there's a protest.
        cryptonector 5y ago
        Only if force were strictly physical violence and not the threat of it could what you say be true. It's not.
    - voldacar 5y ago
      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.
      - barbazoo 5y ago
        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.
        ptudan 5y ago
        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.
        clessg 5y ago
        > 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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#First_criminal_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#First_criminal... What am I missing? Is it just the "pedophile island" part in particular? (Genuinely curious.)
        ptudan 5y ago
        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.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      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-covid-19-booster-shots-stricter-green-pass-2021-10-03/ 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.
      - barbazoo 5y ago
        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.
        jimmydorry 5y ago
        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.
        barbazoo 5y ago
        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.
        mardifoufs 5y ago
        We had to show the pass to get into Walmart and Costco here in quebec. And also for the state owned liquor stores, and any mall/shopping center
    - JPKab 5y ago
      Telling businesses that they have to fire people who aren't vaccinated is basically the government forcing people to get vaccinated.
      - barbazoo 5y ago
        It's just not a thing that's happening on a large scale.
        cryptonector 5y ago
        It sure has happened in the U.S. and Canada, and in large scale. To say otherwise is to be terribly misinformed or blatant gaslighting.
        JPKab 5y ago
        My brother is in charge of HR analytics for a large defense contractor in the US. He absolutely has had to fire thousands of people for refusing to get vaccinated. You may agree with this policy, but let's not pretend it's not happening on a large scale. It absolutely is. My wife's cousin is an RN who works in the ER of a large hospital in the Atlanta metro. She caught and recovered from COVID in early 2021. She was terminated for refusing to get vaccinated (she's in her late 20s, and was concerned about the menstrual side effects of the vaccine experienced by many nurses she works with).
    - nailer 5y ago
      > 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.
      - barbazoo 5y ago
        Keep my civil my friend. I'm not from the US.
        nailer 5y ago
        OK. I’m not either. But surely there’s some local equivalents? Stating that conspiracy theories turn out to be true seems to imply that nobody actually conspires to hide anything.
        nailer 5y ago
        rarely turn out to be true, ahem
        cryptonector 5y ago
        Pretending the threat of violence is not violence is not civil.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      > 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.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    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?
    - guiriduro 5y ago
      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.
    - csee 5y ago
      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.
      - colpabar 5y ago
  - RedShift1 5y ago
    If you throw enough stuff at a wall, eventually some of it will stick.
  - ska 5y ago
    This is an area that is heavily impacted by selection bias.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    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.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  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? https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy-bank-accounts-canada-covid-protest-emergency-powers/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy...
  - arilotter 5y ago
    Tracking and freezing accounts is something banks do all day every day, there's no reason this would be related to bank downtime.
    - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
      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.
  - WJW 5y ago
    Why would banks need to go offline for hours to freeze some accounts?
    - gruez 5y ago
      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.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  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.
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  >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.
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    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.
- ufmace 5y ago
  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? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-protests-1.6353968 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw... 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?
  - bawolff 5y ago
    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.
    - TurkishPoptart 5y ago
      It shouldn't be illegal to peacefully protest.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        It isn't illegal to peacefully protest. The illegal activity is not the "peaceful protest" aspect.
ameixaseca 5y ago
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. [1] https://t.co/NRjPWlG0GE https://t.co/NRjPWlG0GE
323 5y ago
25 Jan: > Russian envoy urges Justin Trudeau to call Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine crisis https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-russian-envoy-urges-justin-trudeau-to-call-vladimir-putin-to-discuss/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-russian-env... 3 days ago: > Canada to send lethal weapons, $500-million loan to Ukraine as it girds for possible war https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-to-send-lethal-weapons-500-million-loan-to-ukraine-as-it-girds/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-to-s...
sleepingadmin 5y ago
[flagged]
- slantyyz 5y ago
  > These 5 banks do not share infrastructure. Don't they all use Interac for a variety of services including e-transfers?
  - sleepingadmin 5y ago
    >Don't they all use Interac for a variety of services including e-transfers? Sure, but 1 thing going down doesn't take down your entire corp. That would be some extremely bad design. Doesn't really explain all the major banks going offline at around the same time. https://twitter.com/AB_inmate/status/1494079461347643392 https://twitter.com/AB_inmate/status/1494079461347643392 No conspiracy. This is just people reacting to the news they will be seizing the accounts of political opponents.
    - sleepingadmin 5y ago
      And my post got flagged? I wonder which rule I broke this time? Does @dang work to ask a user?
      - philipkglass 5y ago
        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.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        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.
    - 5y ago
kragen 5y ago
Another day, another answer to "what is Bitcoin good for?". I've occasionally seen Bitcoin outages of up to an hour or so, though. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346082
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  >Another day, another answer to "what is Bitcoin good for?". I've occasionally seen Bitcoin outages of up to an hour or so, though. Welp, I'll admit it when I'm wrong. Tell me more!
  - flotzam 5y ago
    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. https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-block-time-variance/ https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-block-time-variance/
    - kragen 5y ago
      Right, that's what I meant.
- bawolff 5y ago
  That makes no sense... what would be down in a bitcoin outage? I suppose you meanan exchange, but that's quite different.
- tomiplaz 5y ago
  There have been only two Bitcoin downtime events, last one in 2013. Its uptime is 99.987%.
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    I'd argue the transaction fees the network was experiencing a few years back qualify as effectively (but not technically) downtime. Similar to ETH gas prices.
anaphor 5y ago
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.
sleepingadmin 5y ago
I guess this coincides: https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/banks-get-protesters-names-as-canada-financial-squeeze-unfolds?r https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/banks-get-prote... No court orders, no due process. Guess I'm just glad I'm not personally involved.
- LoveGracePeace 5y ago
  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.
  - sleepingadmin 5y ago
    >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.
    - armagon 5y ago
      > any and all peaceful protesters whose rights are infringed will be receiving compensation as per the emergency act. Interesting. This is the first I've heard of that. Discussion starts in Part V / Section 46 at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html
      - 5y ago
rdiddly 5y ago
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.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  I'm disappointed to see a story like this getting traction here on HN with such shaky information and reasoning.
  - irthomasthomas 5y ago
    Its been moved to page 3 now.
bawolff 5y ago
ITT: people who clearly don't use the canadian banking system. Their websites aren't exactly known for being robust. This is a non-story.

111 points by _0ffh 5y ago

The only reason this story exists is a bunch of conspiracy theories. If it happened any other time (and it does) it would be a normal network failure. EDIT: sigh

_xnmw 5y ago
Network failures do not affect banks alone.
buscoquadnary 5y ago
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.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  Other than the lab leak thing, what other conspiracy theories were there that turned out to be possible after all or even true? I'm not aware of any government forcing you to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    > 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.
  - ShockTohp 5y ago
    Australia and Canada both have vaccine mandates. You're either being willfully ignorant or trolling. If the later, 10/10 great bait mate.
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      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.
      - ShockTohp 5y ago
        That's coercion. You might as well say "Well those actresses didn't have to interact with winestien, they could have just not be actresses."
      - pinephoneguy 5y ago
        Even if they aren't being "forced" (and I would argue they are) it's unpleasant enough that you should be able to understand why there's a protest.
      - cryptonector 5y ago
        Only if force were strictly physical violence and not the threat of it could what you say be true. It's not.
  - voldacar 5y ago
    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.
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      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.
      - ptudan 5y ago
        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.
        clessg 5y ago
        > 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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#First_criminal_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#First_criminal... What am I missing? Is it just the "pedophile island" part in particular? (Genuinely curious.)
        ptudan 5y ago
        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.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    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-covid-19-booster-shots-stricter-green-pass-2021-10-03/ 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.
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      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.
      - jimmydorry 5y ago
        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.
        barbazoo 5y ago
        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.
        mardifoufs 5y ago
        We had to show the pass to get into Walmart and Costco here in quebec. And also for the state owned liquor stores, and any mall/shopping center
  - JPKab 5y ago
    Telling businesses that they have to fire people who aren't vaccinated is basically the government forcing people to get vaccinated.
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      It's just not a thing that's happening on a large scale.
      - cryptonector 5y ago
        It sure has happened in the U.S. and Canada, and in large scale. To say otherwise is to be terribly misinformed or blatant gaslighting.
      - JPKab 5y ago
        My brother is in charge of HR analytics for a large defense contractor in the US. He absolutely has had to fire thousands of people for refusing to get vaccinated. You may agree with this policy, but let's not pretend it's not happening on a large scale. It absolutely is. My wife's cousin is an RN who works in the ER of a large hospital in the Atlanta metro. She caught and recovered from COVID in early 2021. She was terminated for refusing to get vaccinated (she's in her late 20s, and was concerned about the menstrual side effects of the vaccine experienced by many nurses she works with).
  - nailer 5y ago
    > 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.
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      Keep my civil my friend. I'm not from the US.
      - nailer 5y ago
        OK. I’m not either. But surely there’s some local equivalents? Stating that conspiracy theories turn out to be true seems to imply that nobody actually conspires to hide anything.
        nailer 5y ago
        rarely turn out to be true, ahem
      - cryptonector 5y ago
        Pretending the threat of violence is not violence is not civil.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    > 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.
- colpabar 5y ago
  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?
  - guiriduro 5y ago
    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.
  - csee 5y ago
    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.
    - colpabar 5y ago
- RedShift1 5y ago
  If you throw enough stuff at a wall, eventually some of it will stick.
- ska 5y ago
  This is an area that is heavily impacted by selection bias.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  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.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
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? https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy-bank-accounts-canada-covid-protest-emergency-powers/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/trudeau-freeze-freedom-convoy...
- arilotter 5y ago
  Tracking and freezing accounts is something banks do all day every day, there's no reason this would be related to bank downtime.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    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.
- WJW 5y ago
  Why would banks need to go offline for hours to freeze some accounts?
  - gruez 5y ago
    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.
oceanplexian 5y ago
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.
sleepingadmin 5y ago
>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.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  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.
ufmace 5y ago
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? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottawa-protests-1.6353968 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergencies-act-banks-ottaw... 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?
- bawolff 5y ago
  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.
  - TurkishPoptart 5y ago
    It shouldn't be illegal to peacefully protest.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      It isn't illegal to peacefully protest. The illegal activity is not the "peaceful protest" aspect.

ameixaseca 5y ago

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. [1] https://t.co/NRjPWlG0GE https://t.co/NRjPWlG0GE

323 5y ago

25 Jan: > Russian envoy urges Justin Trudeau to call Vladimir Putin to discuss Ukraine crisis https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-russian-envoy-urges-justin-trudeau-to-call-vladimir-putin-to-discuss/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-russian-env... 3 days ago: > Canada to send lethal weapons, $500-million loan to Ukraine as it girds for possible war https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-to-send-lethal-weapons-500-million-loan-to-ukraine-as-it-girds/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-to-s...

sleepingadmin 5y ago

[flagged]

slantyyz 5y ago
> These 5 banks do not share infrastructure. Don't they all use Interac for a variety of services including e-transfers?
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  >Don't they all use Interac for a variety of services including e-transfers? Sure, but 1 thing going down doesn't take down your entire corp. That would be some extremely bad design. Doesn't really explain all the major banks going offline at around the same time. https://twitter.com/AB_inmate/status/1494079461347643392 https://twitter.com/AB_inmate/status/1494079461347643392 No conspiracy. This is just people reacting to the news they will be seizing the accounts of political opponents.
  - sleepingadmin 5y ago
    And my post got flagged? I wonder which rule I broke this time? Does @dang work to ask a user?
    - philipkglass 5y ago
      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.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      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.
  - 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

Another day, another answer to "what is Bitcoin good for?". I've occasionally seen Bitcoin outages of up to an hour or so, though. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346082

sleepingadmin 5y ago
>Another day, another answer to "what is Bitcoin good for?". I've occasionally seen Bitcoin outages of up to an hour or so, though. Welp, I'll admit it when I'm wrong. Tell me more!
- flotzam 5y ago
  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. https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-block-time-variance/ https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-block-time-variance/
  - kragen 5y ago
    Right, that's what I meant.
bawolff 5y ago
That makes no sense... what would be down in a bitcoin outage? I suppose you meanan exchange, but that's quite different.
tomiplaz 5y ago
There have been only two Bitcoin downtime events, last one in 2013. Its uptime is 99.987%.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  I'd argue the transaction fees the network was experiencing a few years back qualify as effectively (but not technically) downtime. Similar to ETH gas prices.

anaphor 5y ago

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.

sleepingadmin 5y ago

I guess this coincides: https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/banks-get-protesters-names-as-canada-financial-squeeze-unfolds?r https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/banking/banks-get-prote... No court orders, no due process. Guess I'm just glad I'm not personally involved.

LoveGracePeace 5y ago
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.
- sleepingadmin 5y ago
  >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.
  - armagon 5y ago
    > any and all peaceful protesters whose rights are infringed will be receiving compensation as per the emergency act. Interesting. This is the first I've heard of that. Discussion starts in Part V / Section 46 at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html
    - 5y ago

rdiddly 5y ago

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.

mmastrac 5y ago
I'm disappointed to see a story like this getting traction here on HN with such shaky information and reasoning.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  Its been moved to page 3 now.

bawolff 5y ago

ITT: people who clearly don't use the canadian banking system. Their websites aren't exactly known for being robust. This is a non-story.