Surveillance
In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court has established a significant precedent for free speech in the digital realm. On Friday, the court unanimously ruled that, under certain conditions, government officials may face lawsuits for violating the First Amendment if they block critics on social media. This decision introduces a critical test for assessing whether officials are acting within their governmental capacity when they silence online dissent.
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Read MoreUnmasking the Bias of “Misinformation Experts”
Exposing the bias of “misinformation experts,” raising critical questions about free speech and the true guardians of truth online.
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Read MoreThe RCMP said it has searched the office of a contractor who worked on ArriveCan.
An RCMP spokesperson said in a Wednesday interview with CBC News it had executed a search warrant on Tuesday at a location listed as GC Strategies’ mailing address in Woodlawn, ON.
The spokesperson said the search warrant was unrelated to an ongoing investigation into ArriveCan.
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Read MoreGC Strategies managing partner Kristian Firth was admonished by the house speaker Greg Fergus in Canadian Parliament, an event that hasn’t happened in over 100 years, and shortly after claimed he suffered from mental health issues which a Liberal MP asked about in an attempt to pause the entire spectacle.
I’m supposed to not participate in any activity that would cause any undue stress as being diagnosed with having acute mental health flare ups,” Firth said before MPs from all parties.
Firth added that he’s “actively undergoing therapy” and on medication.
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Read MoreA Canadian company is creating anti-drunk driving technology that monitors your eye movements and alcohol levels via cameras and infrared sensors that can trigger a kill switch in your car.
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Read MoreGovernor General Mary Simon, who serves as Canada’s official non-partisan head of state and representative of King Charles III, has taken heat for hosting a conference supporting a new federal government bill that could lead to large fines or jail time for vaguely defined online “hate speech” infractions.
On April 11, Simon hosted an event titled “The Governor General’s Symposium: Building a Safe and Respectful Digital World” at her Rideau Hall residence, with the goal to “bring together individuals who experience online violence and experts from across the country to share their experiences, explore solutions, and create allyship and networks of resilience.”
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Read MoreDiscord is looking into potential violations of its terms of use
A publically-accessible website appears to be selling a colossal database of Discord chats to the highest bidder.
The site is called Spy.pet, and claims to have obtained more than four billion public messages, made by roughly 620 million users, logged into more than 14,000 servers.
On the surface, it would seem that there was no foul play, as the data was already public-facing, as Discord is essentially an IRC, meaning that with the right bots and automation, all of the information could be harvested.
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Read MoreConsumer neurotechnology is booming. You can buy a funky-looking headband for $500 on the internet if you want your own personal EEG to track your brain data. But before you click purchase, you might want to check out the device’s privacy policy.
These consumer devices are unlikely to include any protections or restrictions around how companies can employ or sell a user’s neural data, according to a new report from the Neurorights Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the ethical development of neurotechnology.
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Read MoreThe United States government wanted a so-called “backdoor” in to Telegram to potentially spy on its users, according to the messaging app’s founder.
Pavel Durov, who launched Telegram in 2013 and currently serves as its CEO, made the claim during an interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on Tuesday night.
“Backdoor” is a term for a method used to bypass authorization in order to access protected data.
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Read MoreWeb and mobile services try to understand the desires and goals of users by analysing how they interact with their platforms. Smartphones, for instance, capture online data from users at a large scale and low cost.
Policymakers have reacted by enforcing mechanisms to mitigate the risks inherent in tech companies storing and processing their citizens’ private information, such as health data.
Wearable devices are now becoming a more significant element in this discussion due to their ability to collect continuous data, without the wearer necessarily being aware of it. Wearables such as smart watches gather an array of measurements on your wellbeing, such as sleep patterns, activity levels and heart fitness.
Today, there are portable devices to obtain high-quality data from brain activity, eye trackers, and the skin (to detect temperature and sweat). Consumers can buy small devices to measure the body’s responses that were exclusively available only to research institutions a few decades ago.
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