National

National


Hamilton hit by ransomware attack, no timeline to restore services: city manager

A cybersecurity incident that the City of Hamilton has been grappling with since last month has been confirmed as a ransomware attack. The city says it first learned of the attack on Feb. 25. City manager Marnie Cluckie told a media briefing Monday that they don’t believe people’s personal data and information has been accessed. […]

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Police in York Region warn of extortion scams targeting Chinese community

Police north of Toronto say scammers posing as Chinese law enforcement officials are targeting the Chinese community in York Region and demanding money from victims for fabricated legal issues.  York Regional Police are warning the community about a recent surge in police extortion schemes in which scammers make victims believe that they are facing legal […]

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Budget refusal will cause more access-to-information delays: N.S. info commissioner

Nova Scotia’s information commissioner says the province’s rejection of her appeal for more staff will leave citizen requests to access government documents languishing in a years-long wait-list. “I was disheartened and disappointed to learn we did not get any additional budgeted positions, despite our four-year-long backlog of cases to review,” Tricia Ralph said in a […]

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Supreme Court of Canada says a computer user’s IP address deserves privacy protection

The Supreme Court of Canada says police need judicial authorization to obtain a computer user’s internet protocol address, calling the identification number a crucial link between a person and their online activity. The top court’s 5-4 ruling came Friday in a case that began in 2017, when Calgary police investigated fraudulent online transactions from a […]

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How the Toronto library is recovering from a cyberattack, one book at a time

Hundreds of thousands of books have been freed from a months-long purgatory as scores of staffers race to get them out of storage and back on shelves following a cyberattack that felled the Toronto Public Library’s computer systems in October.  Workers at a Scarborough distribution hub have cleared more than 10 tractor-trailers full of boxes […]

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Ontario privacy commissioner looking into UWaterloo vending machines after complaints

Ontario’s privacy commissioner is looking into a southwestern university’s campus-wide installation of more than two dozen vending machines that came equipped with facial analysis technology – a situation that drew concerns from students earlier this month.  The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario said it has received two complaints on the matter […]

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Pornhub operator broke privacy law by failing to ensure valid consent, watchdog finds

The Montreal-based operator behind Pornhub and other pornographic websites broke the law by enabling intimate images to be shared without direct knowledge or consent, the federal privacy watchdog has found. The privacy commissioner’s investigation into Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, followed a complaint from a woman whose ex-boyfriend had uploaded an intimate video and other […]

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No evidence that data was extracted from RCMP during recent cyberattack: commissioner

The head of the RCMP said Tuesday there was no evidence to date that personal or operational information had been pilfered from the national police force’s systems during a recent cyberattack. “Based on information that we’ve gone through, there’s no data that’s been extracted from the systems, which is the good news,” RCMP commissioner Mike […]

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Cape Breton U tripled its international recruitment. Students say they pay the price.

Over the past five years, Navy Nguyen says she has watched thousands of international students arrive at Cape Breton University to find a town that was wholly unprepared for them. From 2019 to 2020, the school more than tripled its efforts to recruit international students, before being forced to scale back as incoming students couldn’t […]

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Vending machines to be removed from UWaterloo campus over facial tech concerns

A southwestern Ontario university will be getting rid of more than two dozen vending machines after students raised concerns about facial recognition technology. The University of Waterloo said Tuesday that it began looking into the issue after seeing students flag it on social media. The university added it was unaware of the technology and has […]

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Health-care AI: The potential and pitfalls of diagnosis by app

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site. ___ If health is a fundamental human right, health-care delivery must be improved globally to achieve universal access. However, the limited number of practitioners creates a […]

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Info watchdog investigating record destruction allegations related to ArriveCan app

The federal information watchdog says she will look into allegations about destruction of records related to the controversial ArriveCan app. In a statement late Friday, information commissioner Caroline Maynard said she has initiated an investigation into matters related to requesting and obtaining records regarding ArriveCan since March 2020. Maynard, an ombudsman for users of the […]

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