A newly launched federal review of the Access to Information system is being greeted with deep skepticism by transparency advocates. The Treasury Board Secretariat announced the government review, which takes place every five years, in a news release late Friday. The release says officials will seek input from a broad range of Canadians, Indigenous groups, […]

Canada’s federal C-2 Strong Borders Act is a sweeping and controversial bill that is currently moving through Parliament. The bill includes ‘lawful access’ provisions, unrelated to borders, that expand state powers to access personal information held by electronic service providers. This is not the first time that lawful access powers have been proposed, and privacy […]

In this Commentary, we discuss Bill C-4, titled An Act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians and another measure. That “other measure” is a series of amendments to the Canada Election Act creating serious impacts on people and their personal information. FIPA is conducting its first joint podcast with Michael Geist and The Law Bytes Podcast.  Join me, FIPA Executive Director […]

Aflac says that it has identified suspicious activity on its network in the U.S. that may impact Social Security numbers and other personal information, calling the incident part of a cybercrime campaign against the insurance industry. The company said Friday that the intrusion was stopped within hours. “We continue to serve our customers as we […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers at cybersecurity outlet Cybernews say that billions of login credentials have been leaked and compiled into datasets online, giving criminals “unprecedented access” to accounts consumers use each day. According to a report published this week, Cybernews researchers have recently discovered 30 exposed datasets that each contain a vast amount of […]

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV warned Friday that artificial intelligence could negatively impact the intellectual, neurological and spiritual development of young people as he pressed one of the priorities of his young pontificate. History’s first American pope sent a message to a conference of AI and ethics, part of which was taking place in […]

More than 300 civil society organizations are calling on the Liberal government to withdraw its new border bill, saying the legislation threatens liberties, refugee and migrant rights and the privacy of all Canadians. Representatives of four major coalitions held a news conference today to ramp up pressure on Ottawa to scrap the proposed Strong Borders […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — California’s two U.S. senators demanded on Wednesday that the Trump administration stop using personal data of millions of Medicaid enrollees — including their immigration status — as part of its sweeping deportation campaign. In a letter to top administration officials, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla expressed alarm over an Associated […]

Inadequate security measures opened the door to a data breach discovered two years ago at genetic testing company 23andMe, Canada’s privacy watchdog says. Privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne and U.K. information commissioner John Edwards released the findings from their joint investigation of the breach, which affected almost seven million people, including nearly 320,000 in Canada. Dufresne […]

An organization that monitors the effect of information flows on human rights says the new federal border security bill appears to “roll out a welcome mat” for expanded data-sharing agreements with the United States and other countries. Researchers with The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto say they want the federal government to reveal […]

A controversial decision last year to substantially increase the number of cougars that can be hunted in Alberta was not based on science, according to government documents obtained by The Narwhal. Instead, expanded cougar hunting was “based on direction from [the] minister last year and input from stakeholders,” according to an internal email between senior […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration this week provided deportation officials with personal data — including the immigration status — on millions of Medicaid enrollees, a move that could make it easier to locate people as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown. An internal memo and emails obtained by The Associated Press show that […]