Police in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa are being supported by a so-called “virtual backup” team that provides front-line officers with unprecedented amounts of information as they race to service calls.
The unit, known as the the Ottawa Police Strategic Operations Centre (OPSOC), has been active since October 2016. But civil liberties advocates are raising concerns about the project, pointing out that it monitors protesters on social media and is developing ‘predictive policing’ capabilities based on crime data that could contain hidden biases.
Source: Vice Magazine
The RCMP Is Trying to Sneak Facial and Tattoo Recognition Into Canada:
Undeterred, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] went ahead and began working to procure a new AFIS system that could analyze and capture faces, fingerprints, palm prints, tattoos, scars, and irises—all without clear authorization or approval by the country’s federal privacy watchdog, or even a plan to implement it.
So, yeah, the RCMP is trying to bring biometric identification to Canada without anybody noticing.
Source: Vice Magazine
Earlier this year, an Ontario judge ruled that a police request for a “tower dump,” which asked two of Canada’s largest telecom companies to hand over tens of thousands of Canadians’ subscriber information, was overly broad and unconstitutional.
On Thursday, Rogers—which fought the police’s request in court—released its third annual transparency report, which promised in the preamble to break down in greater detail the kinds of police requests for information that it received in 2015, including tower dumps. This kind of breakdown is a first for Rogers.
Unfortunately, the report doesn’t go nearly far enough in disclosing how many similar requests Rogers received and potentially fulfilled in the last year, leaving Canadians in the dark about the flatly unconstitutional police practice.
Source: Vice Magazine
This isn’t the first time somebody has considered surveillance as a solution to the complex social issue of kids being absolutely horrific to each other, and it likely won’t be the last. In 2013, The LA Times noted that the Glendale Unified School District in Southern California reportedly paid a firm $40,000 to monitor kids’ social media accounts to combat bullying. The move raised the ire of privacy advocates in the US then, too.
The point, according to Hinduja, is that bullying isn’t a uniquely digital problem. You don’t solve bullying forever by putting a teacher in every hallway, and you don’t fix crime by putting a cop on every corner.
“Cyberbullying isn’t a technological problem,” said Hinduja. “You can’t blame the apps, the smartphones, or the internet. Instead, cyberbullying is rooted in other issues that everyone has been dealing with since the beginning of time: adolescent development, kids learning to manage their problems, and dealing with stress.”
Source: Vice Magazine
This isn’t the first time somebody has considered surveillance as a solution to the complex social issue of kids being absolutely horrific to each other, and it likely won’t be the last. In 2013, The LA Times noted that the Glendale Unified School District in Southern California reportedly paid a firm $40,000 to monitor kids’ social media accounts to combat bullying. The move raised the ire of privacy advocates in the US then, too.
The point, according to Hinduja, is that bullying isn’t a uniquely digital problem. You don’t solve bullying forever by putting a teacher in every hallway, and you don’t fix crime by putting a cop on every corner.
“Cyberbullying isn’t a technological problem,” said Hinduja. “You can’t blame the apps, the smartphones, or the internet. Instead, cyberbullying is rooted in other issues that everyone has been dealing with since the beginning of time: adolescent development, kids learning to manage their problems, and dealing with stress.”
Source: Vice Magazine
Canada Is Considering Spying on Kids to Stop Cyberbullying:
Cyberbullying is simply awful, and its consequences can be utterly horrific. Canadians have known this all too well since 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide in 2013, after photos of her alleged rape circulated online.
It’s only human to want to put a stop to it. But is it worth spying on kids? […]
Although nothing has been finalized, the government will consider letting the organization spy on kids’ digital communications to do it, Barry McKenna, the Public Safety procurement consultant in charge of the tender, told me.
Is High-Speed Internet a Basic Right? Canada Is Debating That Now
Do all Canadians have a right to affordable, high-speed broadband internet?
That’s the focus of a three-week hearing starting today in Gatineau, just outside Ottawa, where officials and advocates from every side are debating the future of Canada’s connectivity. Given that there’s still a lack of basic internet infrastructure in parts of rural and northern Canada, and the prices we pay for telecom, these are big issues for everyone.
“Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the industrialized world for their internet service and for their wireless service too,” David Christopher, communications manager at OpenMedia, told Motherboard.
Canadian Librarians Must Be Ready to Fight the Feds on Running a Tor Node
Tor is touted as a tool for people, such as journalists, to keep their browsing habits safe from spies and police. But more nefarious traffic, such as drug dealing or child pornography, also passes through the network. A small public library in New Hampshire began operating a Tor node last year, and faced pressure from the Department of Homeland Security to shut it down. The library resisted, and the node is still running.
“If any intelligence agency or law enforcement tries to intervene again, we will do the same thing that we did in New Hampshire: we will rally community support, we will get our very broad coalition of public interest organizations and luminary individuals, and amazing supporters, to support Western,” said Alison Macrina, director of theLibrary Freedom Project and adviser to the Tor project at Western.
“Frankly, in some ways, I would like to see them try,” she said.
Source: Vice Magazine
When Canada Learned It Had Spies:
“The government had constantly denied that Canada was involved in spying or espionage,” Macadam said in one of a series of phone interviews. “I thought it was important to find out if we were.”
If only he had known the depths of the rabbit hole he was about to enter.
Source: Vice Magazine

![The RCMP Is Trying to Sneak Facial and Tattoo Recognition Into Canada:
“Undeterred, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] went ahead and began working to procure a new AFIS system that could analyze and capture faces, fingerprints, palm prints,...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0ae6be9d40611133e1569fda44e2d4fd/tumblr_ob8rxjsRWf1qirtd1o1_500.jpg)
