Musings

Shutterstock Using data during election campaigns is nothing new. But as the Canadian federal election approaches, authorities must be diligent that data tracking doesn’t become surveillance. The upcoming Canadian federal election once again raises the spectre of interference and disruption through the misuse and abuse of personal data. More

By Jon Brodkin 8chan and Daily Stormer now both offline as a cloud provider cuts off access. Getty Images | Mario Tama At an interfaith vigil for victims of a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which killed 21 people. The suspected terrorist gunman had posted to the website 8chan shortly before the tragedy, prompting Web companies to cut 8chan off. 8chan was able to get back online today despite Cloudflare cutting it off, as operators of the controversial website quickly found a new provider of CDN and DDoS protection services. But as of this writing, 8chan is offline again, apparently as a result of a cloud provider cutting off 8chan's new vendor. More Opinion: Let's shoot the messenger. Yeah, that always works. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Kate Cox - The senators want lawbreaking to come with "serious financial consequences." martince2 | Getty Images You can't send corporate "persons" directly to jail, but you can charge them a lot of money. The Federal Trade Commission's recent $5 billion settlement with Facebook largely drew two responses. One holds that $5 billion is objectively a large sum of money, while the other holds that, against Facebook's $55 billion 2018 revenue, the penalty amounts to mere drops in the ocean that will go completely unnoticed within the mammoth company. More

By Ernesto Several industry groups, including the MPAA, have shared their views on how to curb piracy with the US Department of Commerce. According to the submission, the Government can help to combat piracy by taking a variety of actions, including criminal investigations against key players and better copyright protections in trade agreements. More

By Andy A report compiled by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has concluded that presenting Internet users with warnings that they are visiting 'pirate' sites could breach privacy laws. Citizens' traffic can't be monitored without permission so any system would currently need users to opt in, something that would limit the effectiveness of any trial. More

By Shaun Fluker Shutterstock Whooping cranes, a critically endangered species, breed in one location, a wetland in Wood Buffalo National Park. Yet a federal-provincial review panel has approved an oilsands mine that could kill some of the birds. Widespread species decline at the hands of humans is a powerful tale. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, more than 27 per cent of 100,000 assessed species are threatened with extinction. This disappearance is a warning that something is amiss on Earth. More

By Thomson Reuters · Trump's executive order goes well beyond recent sanctions on oil, officials U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States on Monday, sharply escalating a diplomatic and sanctions drive aimed at removing socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power. More

By Kaleigh Rogers · CBC News · Advocacy groups sending the messages are akin to U.S. political action committees The Associated Press Canada Strong and Proud is a new third-party advertiser behind a robotexting campaign in multiple provinces. In June, like many Ontarians, Liberal MP Pam Damoff got a mysterious text from an unknown number. The message started, "Hi, this is Sue from Ontario Strong," before prompting the recipient to respond with the name of the party they intended to vote for in the October federal election. More

By Thomson Reuters Innovative Medicines Canada asks federal government to use 'tools' to stop bulk exports Chris Wattie/Reuters A pharmacist counts prescription drugs at the CentreTown Pharmacy in Ottawa. Innovative Medicines Canada is urging the federal government to get ahead of a U.S. plan to export Canadian drugs in bulk. Canada's main pharmaceutical lobby group has urged the government not to wait for drug shortages before responding to U.S. plans to import Canadian drugs, according to documents seen by Reuters. More

By Amina Zafar · CBC News Three chemotherapy cancer drugs face national shortages, putting pressure on health care providers Gerry Broome/The Associated Press Oncologists say drug shortages are becoming more frequent in Canada. Health Canada told CBC News it 'recognizes the impact that these shortages have on the patients who rely on these important medications and is taking action to address them.' Cancer specialists are concerned national shortages of three vital cancer drugs could lead to a time when they could run out of treatment options for patients in Canada. More

By Ruth Panofsky Diane Pullan; Facebook; special collections Many of the classic books of Canadian literature thrived because of women editors, publishers and agents. Some are profiled here: Anna Porter in the 1970s, Bella Pomer in 2015 and Claire Pratt in 1950. As you indulge in summer reading, consider this fact. If not for the path-breaking women in Canadian publishing, some of Canada’s best-known writers might not have made it: Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, Carol Shields. More

By Alyse Stanley Sean Gallup (Getty) After Greenland spent a good portion of July on fire, last week’s heatwave similarly scorched the country’s ice sheet, triggering a meltdown affecting roughly 60 percent of its surface. On Thursday alone, new data shows the ice shelf lost 12.5 billion tons to surface melting, its largest single-day loss in recorded history, the Washington Post reported. More

By Andrea Carson You don't need to look far to find doom and gloom stories about traditional media in the digital age. Yet linking media hardship to a view that investigative journalism is dying is a misconception. More

Two British aviators, Matt Jones and Steve Brooks, are taking turns to fly the Silver Spitfire on its four-month, 43,500-kilometre adventure westwards around the globe—the first time a Spitfire will ever have circumnavigated the planet. More

By Ryan Whitwam From everything we’ve been able to tell, the Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy. It’s a medium-large spiral with several smaller satellite galaxies, and the disk spans some 120,000 light-years. It can be hard to tell what the galaxy looks like from the inside, though. A new analysis focusing on a class of very bright stars indicates the Milky Way might be stranger than we thought with a warped and uneven central disk. More

By Sean Gallagher "The FBI says they're 'going dark.' Well yeah, because they've been staring at the sun." Drew Angerer/Getty Images US Attorney General William Barr speaks at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University School of Law on July 23, 2019 in New York City. In his remarks, Barr stated that increased encryption of data on phones and encrypted messaging apps puts American security at risk. Barr encouraged technology companies to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted data during certain criminal investigations. On July 23, in a keynote address at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University, US Attorney General William Barr took up a banner that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been waving for over a decade: the call for what former FBI director James Comey had referred to as a "golden key." More Opinion: He must practice stupi...

By John Timmer General trust, but partisan skepticism, and worries about conflicts of interest. Ecole Polytechnique / Flickr Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released an analysis of polling results on Americans' views of science. In general, the poll was good news for the research community, showing a gradual-but-steady rise in the public's view of scientists. But there were a few areas of concern within the data, which showed that the public still worries about issues like scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest. And the numbers reveal a partisan divide on the situations where scientists are trustworthy. More

US Embassy (CC BY-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/DCM31U TPP Signing, February 4th, 2016 The Canadian government has launched a public consultation on expanding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, formerly TPP) to other countries, specifically citing the UK, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand. The consultation could raise significant concerns as the UK would be the first non-Pacific country in the agreement and Taiwan could spark a response from China. Moreover, opening the agreement to new countries must likely factor in the possibility that the U.S. might want to re-enter the agreement if there is a change in administration in 2020. More

By Cory Doctorow Adversarial interoperability is what happens when someone makes a new product or service that works with a dominant product or service, against the wishes of the dominant business. More

By Lily Kuo and Christy Choi in Hong Kong Tensions escalate with swaths of city paralysed by its first general strike in 50 years Tyrone Siu/Reuters Teargas is fired on protesters at Tin Shui Wai. Riot police in Hong Kong have fired teargas and rubber bullets on protesters in at least five locations as demonstrators staged a daylong citywide strike during which two cars rammed the crowds. More