Transparency is a major topic for all tiers of government and the public is ever the more curious about how officials uphold openness to scrutiny in their civil service. With the provincial government’s recent changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), local officials are also keeping the subject open to […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, June 6th. This week, we begin in Alberta, where new FIPA-Ipsos polling shows strong public support for enforceable privacy rules after the exposure of voter information for 2.9 million Albertans.  We’ll also look at Alberta’s new combined ID cards, the federal lawful access bill, connected vehicle data, and […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, May 30th. This week, we begin in Ottawa, where a number of major files moved forward.  The federal government says it will amend parts of its contentious lawful access bill, while civil liberties groups continue warning that Bill C-22 could expand state surveillance without the safeguards Canadians need.  […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, May 23rd. This week, privacy and transparency are colliding with some of the biggest political and public policy questions in the country.  We begin with a network update on Bill C-22, the federal lawful access bill that civil liberties groups are warning could expand surveillance powers and […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, May 16th. This week, we begin in Alberta, where the voter list breach continues to widen—with Elections Alberta warning that the number of people who accessed the data may be incomplete, while privacy, election, and police investigations continue.  We then turn to a network update on political privacy, Bill C-25, […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, May 9th. This week, we begin with the still-unfolding Alberta voter list breach — where nearly three million electors’ personal information may have been exposed through a searchable database tied to separatist organizing.  The latest developments now include investigations by Elections Alberta, the RCMP, and Alberta’s Privacy Commissioner — along […]

ATLANTA (AP) — The federal government doesn’t have to return the 2020 election ballots from Georgia’s Fulton County that were seized by the FBI from a warehouse near Atlanta, a judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee’s decision came after lawyers for the county had argued that the ballots and other election materials, as […]

The U.S. government wants Google to unmask an anonymous Canadian critic of President Donald Trump, a move the American Civil Liberties Union says could have a chilling effect on free speech.  The Canadian citizen who posts anonymous online criticism of Trump has now launched a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the American […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is criticizing the Opposition NDP for not telling her about a massive privacy breach involving a website after the site was demonstrated during a meeting attended by one of her caucus staffers. In a fiery chamber debate Wednesday, Smith insisted the United Conservative Party caucus staffer didn’t realize a database shown […]

Foreign actors are increasingly generating articles, podcasts and social media posts riddled with disinformation about Alberta’s separatist movement, says a new report. The report from a team of researchers, published Wednesday by the Canadian monitoring platform DisinfoWatch, says the campaigns are coming out of Russia and the United States. It says social media influencers with […]

Federal and provincial watchdogs say OpenAI failed to respect Canadian privacy laws when training its artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT chatbot. The conclusion came in a report released Wednesday following a joint investigation by federal privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne and his counterparts from British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, is a popular conversation-style […]

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s chief of staff says a caucus staffer who attended a meeting about what was later found to be a massive data breach thought it was just about a new voter tool. Rob Anderson says in a social media post there’s no way the United Conservative Party caucus staffer could have known […]