Surveillance
Parliament must mandate disclosure of universities’ dealings with Huawei Technologies and other Chinese partners, the Commons science committee was told yesterday. “We need to stop these terrible deals,” testified one witness. “End them now.”
“We need to know who is working with Canadian research institutions and how much they have been benefiting,” said James Hinton, associate professor at Western University and senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation of Waterloo, Ont. “We really don’t know.”
Hinton listed universities that dealt with Huawei prior to a federal ban on use of the company’s equipment. “I am naming these names so there is no longer a veil of secrecy in these deals,” said Hinton. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
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Read MoreBill C-18 puts the government squarely in the centre of the newsroom.
Canadians deserve unbiased news coverage.
Journalists deserve to function as professionals independent of government pressure.
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Read MorePresident Joe Biden spilled “sensitive” United States intelligence about China to campaign donors at a recent event in California, according to a report.
At the fundraiser in California, Biden revealed to attendees what the U.S. intelligence agencies had learned about the Chinese spy balloon incident earlier this year, reportedly surprising U.S. officials.
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Read MoreWASHINGTON, June 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Amazon.com (AMZN.O) of enrolling millions of consumers into its paid subscription Amazon Prime service without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel, the agency’s latest action against the ecommerce giant in recent weeks.
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Read MoreUnit at French foreign ministry maps disinformation
Part of strategy to counter ‘neo-colonial’ image
Russia and Wagner private army increasingly influential
French unit says it has tracked 100 Russia- or Wagner-linked networks
PARIS/DAKAR, June 21 (Reuters) – After armed men killed nine Chinese nationals at a gold mine in Central African Republic in March, a video circulated on the internet saying France had secretly ordered the attack and planned to discredit Russian mercenary group Wagner in the country.
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Read MoreThe Department of Justice (DOJ) rules should change so that FBI agents lose their jobs when they lie to misuse the government’s spying powers in sensitive investigations, Special Counsel John Durham suggested to Congress.
Durham, who recently released a report on his review of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation, acknowledged that he found conduct that was wrong or “probably criminal,” but would have been difficult to prosecute in a court of law.
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Read MoreThe former director general of global communications for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) said Canada’s membership in the AIIB is inconsistent with its values and does not benefit the country.
“I didn’t find a single tangible benefit to communicate back home here to Canada of what this bank does that is consistent with our values in a way that would benefit Canadians,” Bob Pickard told CBC host David Cochrane in an interview on June 19.
“All we’re doing with our membership in this bank is we’re making China look good as a country able to do multilateralism. We are effectively supporting the Chinese image campaign to show that they are ready to assume world leadership and, frankly, I don’t think that’s the country that we should support, especially in the current political environment.”
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Read MoreDeep mistrust, dysfunction and dissonance characterize the current U.S.-China relationship.
This is bad news as a negative spiral in relations has the potential to intentionally or unintentionally descend into a kinetic conflict that could have consequential ramifications for Japan and the broader Indo-Pacific region.
Source: The Japan Times
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Read MoreIs China hacking western satellites with high-tech laser weaponry, in preparation for a potential nuclear war?
According to a report in Global Defence Technology, satellite imagery of the top secret Korla East Test Site in Xinjiang, China, shows the operation of laser anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) to engage with foreign satellites.
The satellite imagery from geospatial intelligence company BlackSky has uncovered a pattern of behaviour at Korla that is consistent with China’s development of technology to disrupt, destroy or hijack foreign satellites, the report said.
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Read MoreRick Claypool is a level-headed policy analyst and number-cruncher for Public Citizen, who is known for reporting the decline in corporate crime enforcement with each succeeding presidency. (Biden less than Trump.)
His latest report (with Cheyenne Hunt) clearly shows him in an unusually agitated state. Its title is “‘Sorry in Advance!’ Rapid Rush to Deploy Generative AI [artificial intelligence] Risks a Wide Array of Automated Harms.”
Claypool is not engaging in hyperbole or horrible hypotheticals concerning Chatbots controlling humanity. He is extrapolating from what is already starting to happen in almost every sector of our society.
I challenge you to read his report without experiencing cognitive dissonance and throwing up your hands thinking the genie is already out of a million bottles.
Claypool takes you through “real-world harms [that] the rush to release and monetize these tools can cause — and, in many cases, is already causing.”
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