<h1>Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament</h1>
<h4class="post-date line-under">Thursday, July 30 2020</h4>
<divclass="article">
<p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s <ahref="https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data">Open Data</a>
initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation.
It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website.
In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</p>
<h3id="1-find-your-representative">1. Find Your Representative</h3>
<p>The first step in this process is to find who your representative is.
<p>To find your MP’s voting record, do step one, then:
After the <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Overview</code>, and <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Seat in The House</code> sections,
there are three tabs, <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Roles</code>, <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Work</code>, and <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Contact</code>.
Click on work.
At the bottom of that tab is a link which says <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">Chamber Votes</code>.
This will open a small window with some recent votes by this politician.
If you want to see all their votes, there is a button at the bottom named <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">All Votes by This Member</code>.</p>
<p>Tada! You can now keep your local MP accountable for anything you do or do not support.</p>
<h3id="3-bill-details">3. Bill Details</h3>
<p>If you want to get into the nitty gritty,
once you open a specific bill, you can actually find out the status of said bill,
or read the actual text by clicking the <codeclass="highlighter-rouge">View this Bill on LEGISinfo</code> button.</p>
<p>Both the status of the bill, and a link to a PDF document containing the bilingual text of the bill are visible in the main body of the page.</p>
<h4id="conclusion">Conclusion</h4>
<p>I thought this was pretty cool!
It was <em>way</em> simpler than I thought it would be.</p>
<p>Thanks, Canada!</p>
</div>
<footer>
This page is mirrored on <ahref="https://beta.tait.tech/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament.html">beta.tait.tech</a>.
<h3class="post-title"><aclass="post-title-link"href="/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament.html">Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament</a></h2>
<spanclass="post-date">30 July 2020</span>
<divclass="post-excerpt"><p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s <ahref="https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data">Open Data</a>
initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation.
It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website.
In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</p>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<h3class="post-title"><aclass="post-title-link"href="/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo.html">Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux</a></h2>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feedxmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><generatoruri="https://jekyllrb.com/"version="4.0.0">Jekyll</generator><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/feed.xml"rel="self"type="application/atom+xml"/><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/"rel="alternate"type="text/html"/><updated>2020-07-19T02:27:18+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/feed.xml</id><entry><titletype="html">Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux</title><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo.html"rel="alternate"type="text/html"title="Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux"/><published>2020-07-19T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2020-07-19T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo</id><contenttype="html"xml:base="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo.html"><p>In a very odd combination of requirements,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feedxmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><generatoruri="https://jekyllrb.com/"version="4.0.0">Jekyll</generator><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/feed.xml"rel="self"type="application/atom+xml"/><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/"rel="alternate"type="text/html"/><updated>2020-07-30T02:01:56+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/feed.xml</id><entry><titletype="html">Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament</title><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament.html"rel="alternate"type="text/html"title="Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament"/><published>2020-07-30T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2020-07-30T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament</id><contenttype="html"xml:base="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/30/canadian-parliament.html"><p>As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s <a href="https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data">Open Data</a>
initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation.
It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website.
In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</p>
<h3 id="1-find-your-representative">1. Find Your Representative</h3>
<p>The first step in this process is to find who your representative is.
<p>To find your MP’s voting record, do step one, then:
After the <code class="highlighter-rouge">Overview</code>, and <code class="highlighter-rouge">Seat in The House</code> sections,
there are three tabs, <code class="highlighter-rouge">Roles</code>, <code class="highlighter-rouge">Work</code>, and <code class="highlighter-rouge">Contact</code>.
Click on work.
At the bottom of that tab is a link which says <code class="highlighter-rouge">Chamber Votes</code>.
This will open a small window with some recent votes by this politician.
If you want to see all their votes, there is a button at the bottom named <code class="highlighter-rouge">All Votes by This Member</code>.</p>
<p>Tada! You can now keep your local MP accountable for anything you do or do not support.</p>
<h3 id="3-bill-details">3. Bill Details</h3>
<p>If you want to get into the nitty gritty,
once you open a specific bill, you can actually find out the status of said bill,
or read the actual text by clicking the <code class="highlighter-rouge">View this Bill on LEGISinfo</code> button.</p>
<p>Both the status of the bill, and a link to a PDF document containing the bilingual text of the bill are visible in the main body of the page.</p>
It was <em>way</em> simpler than I thought it would be.</p>
<p>Thanks, Canada!</p></content><author><name></name></author><summarytype="html">As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada’s Open Data initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation. It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government’s own website. In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.</summary></entry><entry><titletype="html">Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux</title><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo.html"rel="alternate"type="text/html"title="Installing MultiCraft on Gentoo Linux"/><published>2020-07-19T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2020-07-19T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo</id><contenttype="html"xml:base="http://localhost:4000/2020/07/19/multicraft-php-gentoo.html"><p>In a very odd combination of requirements,
I needed to install <a href="https://multicraft.org">MultiCraft</a> on a Gentoo Linux system.
The PHP <code class="highlighter-rouge">USE</code> flags are important so you don’t have to recompile it three times like I did.</p>
@ -493,344 +536,4 @@ I will likely have luck on a place like <a href="https://kijiji.ca"
<p>The search continues :)</p>
<p>I’m in for a fun ride…. and a few monnies.</p></content><author><name></name></author><summarytype="html">New Project, phase one: Theorize.</summary></entry><entry><titletype="html">How To Encrypt Your Own Documents Using gpg</title><linkhref="http://localhost:4000/2020/04/06/rsa4.html"rel="alternate"type="text/html"title="How To Encrypt Your Own Documents Using gpg"/><published>2020-04-06T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2020-04-06T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>http://localhost:4000/2020/04/06/rsa4</id><contenttype="html"xml:base="http://localhost:4000/2020/04/06/rsa4.html"><p>If you have ever wanted to garuntee the utmost security of your emails and documents, then this is the guide for you!
It should be noted that in some circles the tools used are more common than in others.
These are the everyday tools of many privacy advocates and computer nerds.</p>
<p>If you have never used Linux however, then the method of doing this will be rather unfamiliar.
This tutorial will be done on an <a href="https://archlinux.org/">Arch Linux</a> machine,
but it should be the same on Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Debian,
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, MacOSX, etc.
The only operating system that does not include these tools by default (or easily accessible) is Windows.</p>
<p>This tutorial makes heavy use of the terminal.
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-to-text_encoding#ASCII_armor"><strong>ASCII armour</strong></a> — A way to encode <strong>OpenPGP</strong> documents so they are readable by humans. These files end in .asc</li>
<li><strong>(Open)PGP</strong> — An open standard for encoding pulbic keys and encrypted documents.</li>
<li><strong>GPG</strong> — GNUPrivacyGaurd is an implementation of <strong>OpenPGP</strong>. It is installed by default on most Linux distrobutions.</li>
<p>Step one is having somebody to send your encrypted message to. Maybe this is a friend, a journalist, or a whistleblower.</p>
<p>To encrypt a document with somebody’s public key, you need to first obtain it.
My public key is available <a href="/public-key.asc">at this link</a>, and you can use it to send me encrypted stuff.</p>
<p>If you are on a linux terminal, you can use the <code class="highlighter-rouge">curl</code> or <code class="highlighter-rouge">wget</code> command to download it.</p>
Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? <b>O</b>
</pre>
<p>It will then ask you for a password.
If you are simply using this for test purposes,
then you can feel free to set it to something like “test”.
When create a long-term use pulbic key make sure to make the password <em>very</em> secure.</p>
<p>During the process of creating your key, <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code> may warn you with this message:</p>
<pre class="terminal">
We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
</pre>
<p>If this happens, feel free to smash your keyboard (lightly),
watch a YouTube video on the machine,
browse the web with <a href="http://w3m.sourceforge.net/">w3m</a>,
etc. until the key is generated.</p>
<p>You will know it is done when you see this message (or something similar):</p>
<pre class="terminal">
gpg: key EACCC490291EA7CE marked as ultimately trusted
gpg: revocation certificate stored as '/home/tait/.config/gnupg/openpgp-revocs.d/FFA7D7525C6546983F1152D8EACCC490291EA7CE.rev'
public and secret key created and signed.
pub rsa2048 2020-04-06 [SC] [expires: 2020-04-07]
FFA7D7525C6546983F1152D8EACCC490291EA7CE
uid Mr. Tester (for testing only) &lt;test@test.org&gt;
sub rsa2048 2020-04-06 [E] [expires: 2020-04-07]
</pre>
<p>Tada! You have your own public/private keypair!</p>
<p>Sharing a keypair that will expire soon is not a good idea,
however, if you are ready, then you can use this command to generate a public key file to share with others.</p>
<p>Feel free to substitute “Mr. Tester” for any other identifying part of your key.
Remember that to use the email, you must enclose it in &lt; and &gt;.</p>
<h2 id="step-2-import-public-key">Step 2: Import Public Key</h2>
<p>This list of keys that <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code> keeps on tap so to speak, is called our “keyring”.
Your will need to import a new public key to encrypt files with <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code>.</p>
<p>If you already created your own public key, then this step is not necessary unless you want to also encrypt something for me :)</p>
<figure>
<img src="/assets/img/keyring.jpg" alt="A keyring holding eight allen keys." />
<figcaption>
A keyring holding eight allen keys.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To import a public key to use for encrypting files, use the <code class="highlighter-rouge">--import</code> option of <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code>. Like so:</p>
<pre class="terminal">
$ gpg --import public-key.asc
gpg: key 64FB4E386953BEAD: public key "Tait Hoyem &lt;tait.hoyem@protonmail.com&gt;" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1
</pre>
<p>Now that we have imported a public key, we can make a message to send!</p>
<h2 id="step-3-have-a-message-to-encrypt">Step 3: Have A Message To Encrypt</h2>
<p>You can make a new file which holds some important, secret data.
Feel free to use a graphical editor if you have one, if not, <code class="highlighter-rouge">nano</code> works alright too.</p>
<pre class="terminal">
Rules Of A Good Life:
1. Wash your hands!
2. Work hard!
3. Be firm.
5. Have good friends!
</pre>
<p>Save this file as something like <code class="highlighter-rouge">test-pgp.txt</code>, and we’ll use that name later.</p>
<h2 id="step-4-encrypt-a-message">Step 4: Encrypt A Message</h2>
<p>Now that we have a message to send and person to send to,
all we have to do is encrypt this message and it’ll be on its merry way!
To do so, we must specify two new options to <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code>.</p>
<p>The first is <code class="highlighter-rouge">--recipient</code>.
This tells <code class="highlighter-rouge">gpg</code> to encrypt using a certin public key that we have in our keyring.
You can use the person’s name, email address, or the key’s uid.</p>
<p>The second is <code class="highlighter-rouge">--encrypt</code>.</p>
<p>You will also specify the <code class="highlighter-rouge">--armour</code> option to use ASCII armoured files. Put this option after <code class="highlighter-rouge">--encrypt</code>, and put the file name after <code class="highlighter-rouge">--armour</code>. See below.</p>
<p>You can either use your own public key name to encrypt a document (allowng only you to decrypt it),
or you can use my public key that we imported earlier (allowing only me to decrypt it).
(And maybe even decrypted it yourself too :)</p>
<p>If you encrypted using my public key,
feel free to send it to <a href="mailto:tait@tait.tech">my email</a>.
I am happy to verify if it worked.</p>
<p>For more information on this subject, check out <a href="https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/c14.html">gnugp.org’s guide</a> on using GPG.
They are the ones that make these tools available,
and the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/">GNU Project</a> has been instrumental in creating the open-source world as it exists today.
Give ‘em some love, eh!</p>
<p>Thank you so much for sticking through this whole thing!
Let me know if there is anything that doesn’t make sense.
I am happy to improve this guide as time goes on if that is necessary.</p>
<p>Happy hacking :)</p></content><author><name>tait</name></author><summarytype="html">If you have ever wanted to garuntee the utmost security of your emails and documents, then this is the guide for you! It should be noted that in some circles the tools used are more common than in others. These are the everyday tools of many privacy advocates and computer nerds.</summary></entry></feed>
<p>I’m in for a fun ride…. and a few monnies.</p></content><author><name></name></author><summarytype="html">New Project, phase one: Theorize.</summary></entry></feed>