Surveillance
During the public hearing on foreign interference in Canadian elections, it was revealed that Defence Minister Bill Blair, then Public Safety Minister, was made aware of possible foreign interference in the 2019 election of MP Han Dong but was “not concerned” at the time.
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Read MoreThe non-profit Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) handed off over 55,000 signatures to the PMO on Wednesday in opposition to the Trudeau Liberals’ proposed Online Harms Act, which seeks to expand the definition of hate speech and legalize punishment for crimes individuals might commit.
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Read MoreThe director of Canada’s top spy agency says he was “very concerned” by a recent court decision that ruled IP addresses are protected from unreasonable search and seizure.
While speaking to the Public Safety Committee about extremism Mar. 21, CSIS director David Vigneault said the intelligence agency was concerned by the Supreme Court’s finding in its Bykovets decision earlier this year that IP addresses were protected under section 8 of the Charter.
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Read MoreDoctors are crying foul about a law that gives the Nova Scotia government access to its citizens’ medical records.
Passed last week after receiving royal assent, Nova Scotia’s Bill 419 granted the government sweeping access to private medical records, sparking a wave of concern among healthcare professionals and MLAs.
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Read MoreTesla CEO Elon Musk has made a bold prediction about the future of artificial intelligence, claiming that AI will be “smarter than the smartest human” within the next two years.
Futurism reports that in a recent interview with Norway wealth fund CEO Nicolai Tangen, Elon Musk shared his thoughts on the rapid advancement of AI. Musk, who is known for his hype-filled predictions, stated that he believes AI will surpass human intelligence by 2026. “If you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human, I think it’s probably next year, within two years,” he said, as quoted by Reuters. AGI refers to artificial general intelligence, a far more powerful form of AI that generative AI made popular by tools such as ChatGPT.
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Read MorePrime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended his government’s efforts to ensure election integrity at a public inquiry looking into foreign interference in Canada.
He argued that the last two elections were in 2019 and 2021 were “free and fair” and decided only by Canadians.
The inquiry has largely focused on investigating allegations that China meddled in Canadian politics.
India and Russia have also allegedly c
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Read MoreAn official with the CIA told an undercover journalist that members of the FBI were in attendance at the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and also highlighted methods that intelligence agencies use to disempower political opponents.
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Read MoreThe House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing next week on several technology policy bills, including a newly unveiled comprehensive data privacy bill and kids online safety bills, the committee announced late Tuesday.
Wednesday’s hearing will include discussions of the American Privacy Rights Act, which was released Sunday by committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).
The bill would set in place regulations around how companies collect and use Americans’ data, and it would preempt state laws that have been enacted in recent years in lieu of federal guidelines.
The hearing will also consider discussions of an update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). House versions of the bipartisan bills, which advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee in July, were introduced Tuesday led by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.).
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Read MoreSome companies let you opt out of allowing your content to be used for generative AI. Here’s how to take back (at least a little) control from ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and more.
If you’ve ever posted something to the internet—a pithy tweet, a 2009 blog post, a scornful review, or a selfie on Instagram—it has most likely been slurped up and used to help train the current wave of generative AI. Large language models, like ChatGPT, and image creators are powered by vast reams of our data. And even if it’s not powering a chatbot, the data can be used for other machine-learning features.
Tech companies have scraped vast swathes of the web to gather the data they claim is needed to create generative AI—with little regard for content creators, copyright laws, or privacy. On top of this, increasingly, firms with reams of people’s posts are looking to get in on the AI gold rush by selling or licensing that information. Looking at you, Reddit.
However, as the lawsuits and investigations around generative AI and its opaque data practices pile up, there have been small moves to give people more control over what happens to what they post online. Some companies now let individuals and business customers opt out of having their content used in AI training or being sold for training purposes. Here’s what you can—and can’t—do.
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