Surveillance
One of the nation’s leading computer scientists says he refused a six-figure payoff from Chinese agents in what was an obvious “recruitment strategy” targeting Canadian academics. Professor Benjamin Fung of McGill University detailed the scheme in testimony at the Commons science committee.
“I asked them, ‘What do you want me to do?’” testified Fung. “Their response was, ‘You just need to reply to our emails.’”
Fung is the Canada Research Chair at McGill’s School of Information Studies. “My research interests include artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and malware analysis,” he testified. “The Communist Party of China and Chinese state-affiliated companies expressed strong interest in my research in past years.”
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Read More“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler
Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?
Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?
Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?
Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.
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Read MoreThe Washington, D.C., attorney general can compel Meta to reveal users who violated Facebook’s COVID-19 misinformation policies, a D.C. appeals court judge ruled. Critics warn of privacy risks and the chilling of free speech.
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Read MoreThe US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.
The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.
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Read MoreDespite recent reports indicating Canadians’ trust in legacy media is at an all-time low, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is looking to extend its multi-million-dollar mainstream media bailout beyond its initial 2024 end date.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, on Tuesday Trudeau’s cabinet signaled it might soon extend its 5-year $595 million bailout of the mainstream media, an initiative which was supposed to expire in March of 2024. The suggestion comes shortly after a September 6 executive order shows that Trudeau’s cabinet appointed press lobbyist Bob Cox – who was involved in calling for the bailouts in the first place – to the Independent Advisory Board on Eligibility for Journalism Tax Measures.
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Read MoreOn Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights issued a pivotal ruling on mass surveillance that should have implications in the U.K. and beyond. The court found that plaintiffs Claudio Guarnieri and Joshua Wieder, both experts on data protection and surveillance, “reasonably” believed that the GCHQ, the U.K.’s main intelligence agency, had intercepted their data under its bulk data collection regime.
Guarnieri and Wieder originally brought their case to the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal in 2016, in what amounted to a test of the system in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, which exposed the large-scale spy programs of not only the U.S., but also the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand governments. When the Tribunal refused to hear their case, they took it to Strasbourg. Even though the two plaintiffs aren’t U.K. citizens, the court decided they still had some baseline rights to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights.
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Read MoreScientists have engineered a technology that lets people read letters and see objects through walls using Wi-Fi signals.
The system, developed by researchers with UC Santa Barbara, traces the edges of objects on the other side of solid barriers, including English letters of the alphabet. In one experiment, for example, the team used the technology to decipher the word “BELIEVE” from the other side of a wall, with letters imaged one by one.
They used three off-the-shelf Wi-Fi transmitters to send wireless waves in an area. Receivers were mounted on an unmanned vehicle that emulated a Wi-Fi receiver grid as it moved. The receiver measured the signal power, which was then used for imaging based on the proposed approach.
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Read MoreMr. Peter MacKay, who previously led the now-defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, joined us for an interview covering various topics. Over the course of his career, he also held key positions such as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Justice.
Mr. MacKay shared his thoughts on the new Minister of Defense, Mr. Bill Blair, stating, “I think his predecessor, quite frankly, was doing an admirable job in a difficult portfolio. I mean, I can say that with some experience. It’s a big department.”
When the conversation got deeper, MacKay added:
In my opinion, in North America, there’s no greater priority than building up the infrastructure here and the security infrastructure that we need to protect the north. I mean, we saw it even with a Chinese weather balloon, supposedly a surveillance balloon, and how long it took for us to be able to respond.
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Read MoreIn a recent warning, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security highlighted the significant risks associated with the increasing dependence on mobile apps, including data collection and vulnerabilities, which threaten privacy and security.
The Cyber Centre emphasized that while apps like Instagram and Snapchat offer convenience and entertainment, users can become complacent, with potentially serious consequences.
In a world where personal information has become a valuable commodity, the Cyber Centre says there are ways to mitigate the risks associated with data privacy in the digital age.
In its article published in August, “Protecting Your Information and Data When Using Applications,” the centre explains that an application program, generally known as an app, is a software program downloaded to a device “to enable you to be connected, productive, creative, and entertained.”
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