“Surveillance Society”

Spyware normally associated with the intelligence world is being used by 13 federal departments and agencies, according to contracts obtained under access to information legislation and shared with Radio-Canada.

Radio-Canada has also learned those departments’ use of the spyware did not undergo a privacy impact assessment as required by federal government directive.

The tools in question can be used to recover and analyze data found on computers, tablets and mobile phones, including information that has been encrypted and password-protected.

The major network evening newscasts have failed to report a story that has been reported far and wide elsewhere: the multistate lawsuit against Meta, parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, over complaints that the company failed to protect the privacy of minors thus exposing them to harm.

The European Parliament and the majority of the member states reached a provisional agreement on the establishment of the “European digital ID” or “eID”—the first central and fully digital identification system for all Europeans—on Thursday, November 9th. Conservative lawmakers and cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarms, citing concerns for potential large-scale abuse.

“We are taking a fundamental step so that citizens can have a unique and secure European digital identity,” Nadia Calvino, the Spanish minister for economy and digitalization, representing the European Council’s Spanish presidency, said.

Ottawa is under pressure from Jewish groups to bring forward a long-promised bill to tackle online hate, amid warnings that rising antisemitism is making Jews in Canada, especially on university and college campuses, feel unsafe.

Jewish groups are saying that an upsurge in antisemitic abuse online makes the bill more urgent, saying that some social media platforms are too slow to take down antisemitic insults, comments and abuse, which have escalated since attacks on Israel by Hamas militants set off a Middle East war earlier this month.

I am not for this bill. All such legislation ends up being contorted into censorship of dissent.

An officer looks at a screen showing a network of security cameras from people’s homes and businesses around the city, which can be watched all at once, in real-time. They access areas from which emergency calls come in, or scenes of crimes.

That’s how policing is done in some U.S. cities — and police forces in Canadian cities are looking into it.

“We foresee a progression for the Hamilton police to incorporate this technology in the future, however there are currently no timelines for implementing this,” Jackie Penman, a spokesperson for the police service in Hamilton, told CBC News.

You think you’re always the one making your own decisions? Think again.

For some years now, governments have been using a new tool that allows them to guide our choices furtively, without the need for regulation, coercion, or taxation. It’s the nudge, a technique that mobilizes the cognitive biases of individuals, which is to say the unconscious and emotional part of the human mind, to influence our behaviour.

We are in the space between the emergence of this technological practice and courts having ruled on its constitutionality,” said Alex Marthews, national chair for Restore the 4th, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans’ rights against “unreasonable search and seizure.”

“Geofencing” often begins with an innocent click. Smartphone apps ask if they can access location to improve service. When users say they yes, they often don’t realize that the apps that help them drive, cook, or pray are likely reselling their information to far-flung for-profit entities. This and other information detailing people’s behaviors and preferences is valuable for businesses trying to target customers. The global location intelligence market was estimated at $16 billion last year, according to Grand View Research, which predicts that figure will grow to $51 billion by 2030.

h/t XC

A Canadian tech company that has received millions of dollars in funding from the Ontario government is allegedly implicated in a spy incident involving an Egyptian presidential candidate, according to a new report.

Researchers from The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School shared in a press release Friday that they believe, with “high confidence,” technology produced by the Waterloo, Ont.-based firm Sandvine was used in multiple attempts to infect spyware technology into the device of Ahmed Altantawy, a former Egyptian lawmaker who recently announced his intentions to run for Egypt’s highest office.

It takes the Star about 3/4 of the article to mention the funding came from the Wynne and McGuinty governments.

You may think you’re not worth spying on. But to our government, we’re all terrorists now.

My email was being “held in government quarantine” pending review, a letter from Yahoo! informed me. I was sitting in the computer lab in the German department at New York University. It was September of 2003. I remember because I’d just received an email about a merit scholarship for that semester. The government wants to know about my scholarship? was my first thought. My next one was: Let ‘em. What did I care if the government knew my GPA?

Police have been told to scan every shoplifting CCTV image reported to them through facial recognition technology as figures reveal some forces are failing to identify suspects in as many as two thirds of cases.

Only one in seven shoplifters were charged over the past year across England and Wales, while 54 per cent of cases were closed with no suspect identified and other evidential difficulties led to a further 20 per cent of cases collapsing.

More than 4,000 people join Facebook group encouraging others to report sightings of the vehicles so that they can be targeted

Opponents of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) expansion have started targeting a fleet of camera vans attempting to enforce the rules.

Images posted on social media show some of the vans have been daubed with graffiti, had their cameras covered by bags and their tyres deflated.

One was photographed being rescued by a recovery truck.

When you don’t want to pay the #ULEZ Charge and you hate the #LTNs…#BritishRambo pic.twitter.com/IPI3nkqJLf

— Shahid Qazi (@_ProFreedom) September 11, 2023

This isn’t creepy at all.

This isn’t creepy at all. It’s just the perpetual one-part Kafka, one-part Orwell, and three parts identity politics panopticon that critical race theory claims is the only way to the unachievable goal of true social justice.

The British government decided to leave out the so-called ‘spy clause’ from its upcoming Online Safety Bill at the last minute, but the decision’s only temporary until the technology behind scanning encrypted messages becomes accurate enough, The Register wrote on Thursday, September 7th.

“If the appropriate technology does not exist that meets [certain] requirements, then [the regulators] will not be able to use Clause 122 to require its use,” Stephen Parkinson, a Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport minister said in Westminster on Wednesday. “A notice can be issued only where technically feasible and where technology has been accredited as meeting minimum standards of accuracy.”