Category Digital Rights

News and hard-hitting, insightful, thoughtful, evidence-based, provocative, and progressive analysis of digital rights issues in Canada and around the world.

PayPal and Venmo enforcement procedures threaten First Amendment protected speech

With over 360 million users, PayPal and Venmo "have a staggering amount of influence over the financial lives of these individuals as well as access to an enormous trove of highly sensitive information that should not flow to the government without adequate safeguards."

The Canadian Progressive
June 17, 2021

Google Ad Portal Equated “Black Girls” with Porn

Research by The Markup found that searching Google’s ad buying portal for “Black girls,” “Latina girls,” and “Asian Girls” led to pornographic content, and searching for “White girls” returned no suggestions, indicating "a racial bias that equated people of color with objectified sexualization while exempting White people from any associations whatsoever."

The Canadian Progressive
January 31, 2021

Twitter permanently bans U.S. President Donald Trump

In the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump white nationalists, far-right extremists, white supremacists, QAnon adherents, and ordinary Americans, Twitter permanently banned outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump to reduce “the risk of further incitement of violence”.

Obert Madondo
January 10, 2021

Government surveillance erodes “our dignity and the things that make us human,” says Edward Snowden

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden urges us to continue defending our digital rights in the face of burgeoning digital authoritarianism at home and beyond, because mass government surveillance "robs us of private space, eroding our dignity and the things that make us human."

Obert Madondo
December 31, 2020