New tech could secure foreign missions
A team at Global Affairs Canada is testing Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) information transmission, an alternative to Wi-Fi that it says could help make the country’s diplomatic missions abroad more secure.
The Collaboration Centre at the foreign department’s Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa is, by the group’s reckoning, “the first office space in North America to be Li-Fi enabled.”
The technology, first demonstrated to the public less than a decade ago, has yet to achieve widespread adoption. But it could make it easier for workers at Canadian missions abroad to do their job, and allow the government to try other new data-heavy communications technology.
A Li-Fi system uses LED light bulbs that change brightness at high speeds to send signals, which are read by receivers connected to computers or mobile phones. Researchers at the Université de Versailles Saint- Quentin-en-Yvelines started working on data transmission using visible light in 2005; University of Edinburgh professor Harald Haas popularized the “LiFi” name during a 2011 TED Talk.
The Global Affairs project is run by the Beyond2020 team, part of an ongoing series of government-wide, public-service modernization programs. “We do beta testing of some of these technologies that are quite new, and won’t be procured for the government for some time,” said Ian Shaw, unit head and strategic adviser. “That’s where we decided take a look at Li-Fi.”
The team bought and installed Li-Fi equipment in October 2018 from the North American distributors of French and German manufacturers. The pilot project will test the speed, reliability and security of the system.
The technology is “much faster than Wi-Fi,” said Shaw. The centre has seen a two- to three-fold speed difference, although it’s limited by the broadband connection.
But the system’s main advantage for the government may be security. “Outside of the cone of light that comes from the ceiling unit, the transmission cannot be intercepted,” said Shaw. “So that’s of interest to us because it addresses the fundamental flaw of Wi-Fi, in that sound waves can easily be intercepted at quite a distance.”
The technology could be used by Canadian missions in other countries. Currently, “smartphones and laptops working off Wi-Fi cannot be allowed into the secure sections of our because of their security risk,” said Shaw. Such devices may link to an external network, potentially compromising them, since radio waves can travel through walls. A ceiling-mounted Li-Fi system and room-specific receivers would allow workers to use their devices — with the cellular and Wi-Fi settings disabled — to share data and deliver presentations with a much lower risk of interception or unauthorized connections.
Big firms are showing an increasing interest in Li-Fi. In December 2018, Dutch lighting giant Signify acquired San Diego-based Firefly Wireless Networks, one of the two companies that supplied the centre.
None of Canada’s foreign missions has yet tested Li-Fi, and Shaw said it will be up to Shared Services Canada, the department that provides hardware and IT services for most of the federal government, to decide whether it’s used widely. The centre will demonstrate its Li-Fi system during a visit from the department’s officials this week.
Shared Services said it is not considering using the technology, and that it supports “over 11,700 wireless access points” across the government, which it installs when departments and agencies request them.
Shaw noted that the technology is more expensive than Wi-Fi and that some buildings can make do with the older technology. Missions are popular espionage targets. In 2009, Toronto-based digital watchdog Citizen Lab found that a spying operation called GhostNet that it traced to China had infected computers at some embassies of 11 countries including India and Germany, as well as foreign affairs ministries in Latvia and Bangladesh, among others. The system could prove useful for other technologies the centre hopes to test.
While Wi-Fi is getting faster and “everything just loads” at the current rate, higher speeds may be necessary for more data-intensive communication methods, according to Shaw. “There may be the application down the road for things like holoportation … that require extremely fast transmission,” he said.
The centre hasn’t acquired any equipment to holographically project employees to different locations yet, but it’s on the lookout.
“It’s been a great interest of mine to see if we can actually make that happen,” Shaw said.
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Outside of the cone of light that comes from the ceiling unit, the transmission cannot be intercepted.