Ontario will add more beds to its beleaguered jails, which are bursting with inmates, solicitor general Michael Kerzner said Monday. The province intends to add several hundred spots throughout the system as it grapples with a surge of inmates over the past 18 months. “We’re expanding and building facilities that will help front-line staff to […]

Canada’s privacy commissioner is teaming up with his U.K. counterpart to investigate a data breach discovered last year at 23andMe.  Philippe Dufresne’s office says the joint investigation with U.K. Information Commissioner John Edwards will aim to determine the scope of the October 2023 breach at the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. They will also look into […]

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A new Mississippi law requiring users of websites and other digital services to verify their age will unconstitutionally limit access to online speech for minors and adults, a tech industry group says in a lawsuit filed Friday. Legislators said the new law is designed to protect children from sexually explicit material. […]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A jury convicted five Minnesota residents and acquitted two others on Friday for their roles in a scheme to steal more than $40 million from a program that was supposed to feed children during the coronavirus pandemic. The case received widespread attention after someone tried to bribe a juror with a bag […]

The Supreme Court of Canada has partly upheld an appeal from the media about a trial held in Quebec behind closed doors involving a police informant, but the high court insists no “secret trial” ever took place. The trial judge and Quebec Court of Appeal acted correctly in keeping information secret that could identify the […]

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and a former girlfriend testified Wednesday in his gun trial about finding his crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia, and jurors saw photos of the president’s son bare-chested in a bubble bath and heard about his visit to a strip club. As the first lady sat in the front row, the courtroom […]

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A Washington state man who made 20 false reports of bombs and shootings around the U.S. and in Canada, prompting real emergency responses, has been sentenced to three years in prison, U.S. authorities said.  Ashton Connor Garcia, 21, of Bremerton, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday, according […]

The ransomware business is booming in Canada. Recent victims have included large corporations such as retailer London Drugs, as well as the City of Hamilton, Ont., and the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. But the criminals who sometimes brag of their attacks on the so-called dark web don’t seem fussy about their victims, based on […]

Three key agencies lacked the “capacity and tools” to effectively protect Canadians from cyberattacks and tackle the growing threat of online crime, the federal spending watchdog has found. In a report released Tuesday, Auditor General Karen Hogan describes breakdowns in response, co-ordination, enforcement, tracking, and analysis between and across the organizations. Hogan’s review looked at […]

The privacy commissioners of Canada and British Columbia have launched an investigation into a Victoria-based company that performs background checks on tenants and others. They say in a joint statement that Certn is being assessed to make sure it complies with the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and B.C.’s Personal Information Protection […]

Twenty-two British Columbia government email inboxes with sensitive personal information on 19 employees may have been accessed during a cyber attack on the province’s networks, the minister of public safety said on Monday. Mike Farnworth said there’s no indication the general public’s information was compromised and investigators have not identified any misuse of the information […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son was in federal court, prepared to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. The culmination of a sprawling investigation, the deal between Hunter Biden and prosecutors was going to spare him a politically explosive trial in the middle of his father’s reelection campaign and likely prison time.  But it […]