This is your Access and Privacy News Summary for Saturday, September 13th.   We’re back after a late-summer break, and while we were away, the news didn’t stop. In today’s review, we’ll cover major Canadian access-to-information and whistleblower stories, a worrying update on the Nova Scotia Power cyberattacks, and a hard-hitting Associated Press investigation into how American […]

Nova Scotia’s largest electric utility says the impact of a sophisticated cyberattack in March could be much broader than first thought. Nova Scotia Power said in May that about half of its customers — 277,000 ratepayers — may have had personal information stolen by hackers. But the privately owned utility is now saying all of […]

The federal government says individuals’ email addresses and phone numbers associated with Canada Revenue Agency, Employment and Social Development Canada and Canada Border Services Agency accounts were accessed in a cyberattack. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat says the government was alerted to the cyber incident on Aug. 17 by 2Keys Corporation, the provider of […]

An anticipated Port Moody daycare project has spiralled into a courtroom battle with duelling narratives, contract fights and defamation claims.  On July 15, Acornpomo Early Learning Center owners Ali Farajzadeh and Leila Fahimi Safa filed a civil claim against the Acorn Education Management Group (AEMG) franchise, its founder Navid Morawej, Amin Eskooch, and a network […]

Canada wants to leverage its G7 presidency to shape international objectives on the use of artificial intelligence to understand oceans, documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show.  Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) hoped to host meetings in the fall to develop shared priorities and a global blueprint for action in advancing AI to […]

Any mention of Highway 413, first proposed almost a quarter-century ago as a massive transportation corridor immediately below and through parts of Ontario’s protected Greenbelt, has always been accompanied by a giant question mark. Claimed by supporters to be a solution to congestion in the Greater Toronto Area, the project has been mired in political […]

BEIJING (AP) — The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating with bricks. By then, surveillance was nothing new for the Yang family in rural China, snared in an intricate […]

BEIJING (AP) — Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, the Associated Press has found. AP journalists spoke to more than 100 sources, scoured tens of thousands of documents, and obtained […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday let President Donald Trump remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the latest in a string of high-profile firings allowed for now by Supreme Court. Trump first moved to fire Rebecca Slaughter in the spring, but she sued and lower courts ordered her reinstated because […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is drawing swift condemnation from gun rights groups and LGBTQ advocates alike after floating that it was considering restricting transgender people from owning guns — a move that would all but certainly face immediate constitutional challenges if ever implemented. The discussions come in the wake of the shooting at […]

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s highest court on Thursday removed the last chance for highly decorated veteran Ben Roberts-Smith to clear his name of findings that he unlawfully killed four unarmed Afghans under Australian soldiers’ control more than a decade ago. The High Court said it would not hear his appeal against a federal judge’s […]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gregory Bovino’s distinguished Border Patrol career was in a downward spiral. In August 2023, he was relieved of command of the agency’s El Centro, California, sector, where he rose to be one of 20 regional chiefs across the country. Bovino blamed several perceived transgressions, details of which have not been previously […]