A coalition of consumer and privacy groups from the US, Canada and the European Union is urging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to ensure that his company adopts the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) “as a baseline standard” for all Facebook users around the world.
Data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica’s scandalous harvesting and use of Facebook user data highlights the urgent need for robust public debate on the emerging problem of “surveillance capitalism” in our increasingly digital society, suggests Jennifer Cobbe, the co-ordinator of Cambridge University’s Trustworthy Technologies strategic research initiative.
The final communiqué issued by the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance after a recent meeting in Ottawa suggests what might turn out to be a made-in-Canada global encryption backdoor.
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recently thwarted Canadian policing agencies’ insatiable hunger for lawful access and related surveillance powers. For now, our elected officials aren’t convinced that law enforcement and spying agencies urgently need warrantless access to our digital and online lives.
WikiLeaks’ “Vault 7” leak reveals the CIA’s dangerous global hacking arsenal. The dump confirms that encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp remain ordinary citizens’ first line of defence against government spying.
Unites States President Donald Trump’s powerful Executive Order, the “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”, issued at the end of January, jeopardizes the privacy and digital rights of Canadians based in the U.S. Meanwhile, information-sharing agreements between Canadian and U.S. governments already grant the Americans substantial access to Canadians’ online data and lives.
Reporters Without Borders is appalled by recent revelations that Montreal police secretly monitored the mobile phone of La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé. A coalition of Canadian rights groups links the Lagacé case to Canadian police and security services’ growing hunger for new powers and investigative capabilities.
You’re a digital rights activists and are struggling to pick the right Halloween costume? Dave Maass, an investigative researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggests facial recognition paint, stingrays, privacy badger, patent troll, and certbot. A Guy Fawkes mask would do too.
