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 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 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

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...

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 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

By Sean Rehaag AP Photo/Marco Ugarte In this June 2019 photo, Central American migrants wait for the departure of a northbound freight train in Palenque, Mexico. The Mexican crackdown on migrants prompted by pressure from the Trump administration has pushed Central American migrants to seek new ways to try to reach the U.S. border. U.S. President Donald Trump regularly asserts that the United States is under attack by foreign invaders and that he is the only one willing to stop them. Who are these invaders? Central American asylum seekers, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. More at The Conversation

By Matthew Pearson · CBC News · Application calls for restitution of all fines paid, cancellation of outstanding debts Jean Delisle/CBC Ottawa-based defence lawyer Michael Spratt says victim surcharges often are imposed on people "who are already struggling." Spratt said that aspect of the application is the most meaningful, because it deals directly with the problems laid out by the Supreme Court last year when it quashed the mandatory victim surcharges for convicted criminals — a fine one Ontario judge referred to as a "tax on broken souls." More at CBC News

By CBC News The Canada Votes newsletter is your weekly tip-sheet as we count down to Oct. 21. Left to right, top row: Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. Bottom row: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet. More at CBC News

By Kate Cox He's tired of "dogmatic announcements that lawful access simply cannot be done." Elijah Nouvelage | Getty Images Graffiti urging people to use Signal, a highly encrypted messaging app, is spray-painted on a wall during a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California. US Attorney General William Barr accused tech firms of "dogmatic" posturing, saying lawful backdoor access "can be and must be" done, adding, "We are confident that there are technical solutions that will allow lawful access to encrypted data and communications by law enforcement, without materially weakening the security provided by encryption." More at Ars Technica Opinion: His guy is a total nut case. Another fine example of the American education system. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Kyla Tienhaara AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad A Pakistani man walks past a shop that was closed due to a recent strike in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani businesses went on strike in a nationwide protest against an increased sales tax, which opposition political parties said was imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s recent $6 billion bailout package for Islamabad. It’s been a rough month for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. It started off with the International Monetary Fund approving a US$6 billion dollar loan to the country. The strict conditions on the loan meant that instead of expanding the welfare state, Khan’s government had to impose “shock therapy” austerity measures. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in nationwide strikes. More at The Conversation Opinion: Austerity always crashes the economy. Don't stop where the ink does.

By John Paul Tasker · CBC News · A decision on the winning bid is not expected until 2022 Jason Franson/Canadian Press A pilot positions a CF-18 Hornet at CFB Cold Lake in Alberta on October 21, 2014. The federal government formally submitted requests for proposals (RFP) today to procure fighter jets to replace the decades-old CF-18s. Four companies are in the running to supply Canada with roughly 80 new jets: Saab of Sweden, Airbus Defence and Space out of Britain, and the American firms Boeing and Lockheed Martin. More at CBC News

By Jim Salter Data brokers like Facebook, Google, and Oracle might know more than you think. Thought using Incognito mode might keep such searching private? Facebook, Google, and even Oracle have more of your Web usage in their sights than you might think. The paper, set to be published in the journal New Media & Society, does an excellent job of backing up the claim that porn usage ends up being tracked by Google and Facebook. Authors Elena Maris, Timothy Libert, and Jennifer Henrichsen used open source tool webxray to analyze more than 22,000 porn sites, discovering tracking code for Google on 74% and for Facebook on 10% of the sites analyzed. Software giant Oracle's Web tracking code also showed up, appearing on 24% of those sites. More at Ars Technica

By Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco Martha Blackburn's bill is everything wrong with 2019 in 13 pages A bi-partisan law bill that promises to give internet users far greater control over their privacy made another appearance in US Congress on Thursday. More at The Register

By Katharine Trendacosta The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, aka the CASE Act. This was without any hearings for experts to explain the huge flaws in the bill as it’s currently written. And flaws there are. More at Electronic Frontier Foundation