This is your Access and Privacy News Summary for Saturday, October 4th.   It’s another big week on the privacy and access front. Nova Scotia has introduced new legislation that its commissioner warns may actually weaken transparency. We’ll follow that with access stories from across Canada, many powered by the Local Journalism Initiative.  On the privacy side, […]

The lawyer for a man accused of accessing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s banking data says he is still awaiting some information from the Crown in the case. Ron Guertin, counsel for former Royal Bank of Canada employee Ibrahim El-Hakim, told an Ontario court Wednesday the matter is “rather involved” and he expects disclosure of more […]

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Confusion surrounds the state of internet connectivity in Afghanistan, after some networks were apparently restored on Wednesday following an outage that began Monday. The Associated Press earlier reported what claimed to be a Taliban statement denying reports that the blackout was a deliberate move and saying old fiber optic cables are worn […]

The Local Governance Commission in New Brunswick is recommending the provincial government implement mandatory training for municipal leaders and senior staff.  In its first report since being created in the spring of last year, it said this recommendation addressed many of the challenges facing local governments since reform.  “These recommendations are grounded in the experiences […]

SLAMABAD (AP) — The United Nations mission in Afghanistan urged the Taliban on Tuesday to restore internet and telecommunications access across the country, saying the blackout imposed by the government in Kabul has left the nation almost entirely cut off from the outside world. The outage, reported Monday, was the first nationwide shutdown since the […]

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A firearms industry trade and lobbying organization secretly built a database containing the personal information of millions of gun owners and used the data to reach gun rights supporters with political ads dating back to the 2000 elections, according to a new lawsuit. The suit against the National Shooting Sports Foundation, […]

After weeks of scraping by to feed her six children in Gaza, the 38-year-old woman thought she’d found a lifeline. At a shelter, a friend told her about a man who could help with food, aid, maybe even a job. The woman — separated from her husband, and forced to shutter the business that once […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge agreed Monday to temporarily suspend the Trump administration’s plan to eliminate hundreds of jobs at the agency that oversees Voice of America, the government-funded broadcaster founded to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled that the U.S. Agency for Global […]

As Gaza’s humanitarian crisis grows, some women say they have been exploited by local men promising food, money, water, supplies or work in exchange for sexual interaction. For an Associated Press report, six women described their experiences, each speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from their families or the men and because […]

Oxford County has released a few more details regarding what is now being called a “cybersecurity incident,” but very few details are known. “Last week, we shared that Oxford County was responding to a technical incident relating to its information system,” said a Monday afternoon press release. “We shared this update ahead of full information […]

When St. Catharines residents pay their municipal taxes, they expect those dollars to finance services, infrastructure and council supported programs that are deemed to be in the interest of the community. What they do not expect is for those funds to be spent in ways that are difficult to trace or buried in broad budget […]

Internal federal documents reveal that Health Canada is seeking exemptions from the federal government’s mandatory 5 per cent Indigenous procurement target, citing Indigenous capacity gap in scientific and mental health services.  Since 2021, federal departments have been obligated to award at least 5 per cent of their annual contracts to Indigenous businesses to support economic […]