This is your Access and Privacy News Summary for Saturday, July 19th.   In Canadian access news, records reveal the Alberta Government literally following lists of most banned books in the United States to create their own book bans. Plus there’s evidence of shortfalls in Indigenous procurement and failures in emergency response.  Canadian Privacy and whistleblower news […]

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s former interim police commissioner is suing Mayor Eric Adams and his top deputies, accusing them of operating the NYPD as a “criminal enterprise.” In a federal racketeering lawsuit filed Wednesday, the ex-commissioner, Thomas Donlon, alleges Adams and his inner circle showered unqualified loyalists with promotions, buried allegations of […]

A major new survey on antisemitism in Ontario schools offers empirical data on the alarming rise of antisemitic incidents, many of which have no direct link to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The findings highlight incidents such as a six-year-old Ottawa student, with one Jewish parent, being told she was “half human.” Support of […]

LONDON (AP) — British governments past and present face allegations of avoiding scrutiny and undermining democracy after the revelation that thousands of Afghans have been resettled in the U.K under a program that was hidden from the media, the public and lawmakers in Parliament. Key information was also kept from the Afghans themselves, who had […]

Some Charlotte County municipalities are working toward wildfire resiliency plans as part of the expansion of the FireSmart Program in New Brunswick.  In April, the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development launched the program, after an announcement from the federal and provincial governments for about $40 million to increase New Brunswick’s wildfire preparedness.  The […]

A $8 billion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company leaders — current and former — begins Wednesday, with claims stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm. Investors allege in their lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would […]

Several of Canada’s federal departments didn’t meet the mandated target for Indigenous procurement in 2023-2024, according to government documents obtained by Canada’s National Observer through an Access to Information request. The policy, introduced in 2021, requires that at least five per cent of all federal spending must go to Indigenous businesses to address economic gaps […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump’s first judicial pick of his second term, voting to approve Whitney Hermandorfer as a judge for the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The confirmation of Hermandorfer, who worked for Tennessee’s attorney general, comes after the Democratic-led Senate under former President Joe Biden confirmed 235 […]

A prominent Jewish organization is pushing for Canada to deny entry to two bands being investigated in the U.K. after their appearance at a popular British music festival last month. In late June the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs asked the ministers of public safety and immigration to bar Irish rap group Kneecap and […]

As far as Norfolk County’s top civil servant is aware, town hall is not a hotbed of corruption. But chief administrative officer Al Meneses still recommended the municipality set up a “waste and fraud hotline”  to allow county employees — and eventually the general public — to  anonymously report “inefficiencies and incidents of wrongdoing involving  […]

Internal emails throw light on the sources used by Government of Alberta staff to search for “inappropriate” materials in school libraries, including an index of America’s most banned books and a website linked to the rise in attempts to ban books in the U.S. Alberta’s Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides announced in May the […]