Tausi Insider

A closed business in downtown Vancouver, on April 19, 2020. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press Ottawa’s contentious use of Canadians’ mobility data early in the COVID-19 pandemic should serve as a warning the government needs to strengthen its proposed new private-sector privacy law, the Toronto internet-security and human-rights organization Citizen Lab says. The report adds to broad criticism from the privacy community of the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, which was introduced as part of Bill C-27 in June. A Citizen Lab report released Tuesday argues the federal government’s use of location data from Telus Corp. and BlueDot Inc. – which allowed Ottawa to track the movement of millions of devices to understand population movements in the era of rolling COVID-19 lockdowns – could create a slippery slope in which such data could restrict human rights. Even though that data about people’s movements had been stripped of identifying information, or “de-identified,” some data sets can be me...

The Canadian dollar CADUSD weakened to a one-week low against its U.S. counterpart on Monday, as anti-lockdown protests in China weighed on investor sentiment and data showed Canada’s current account balance swinging to a deficit. Stocks and the price of oil, one of Canada’s major exports, suffered a broad sell-off as rare protests in major Chinese cities against the country’s strict zero-COVID-19 curbs hit growth expectations in the world’s second-largest economy. U.S. crude prices fell 2.6 per cent to $74.31 a barrel, while the Canadian dollar was trading 0.6 per cent lower at 1.3458 to the greenback, or 74.31 U.S. cents, after touching its weakest level since Nov. 21 at 1.3473. Canada posted a current account deficit of C$11.1-billion ($8.3-billion) in the third quarter after surpluses in the first two quarters of 2022, data from Statistics Canada showed. “We expect deficits to persist into 2023 as trade and income flows return to more normal patterns,” Shelly Kaushik, an economis...

Employees work on the production line at a Beijing Benz Automotive Co factory, in Beijing. FLORENCE LO/Reuters China’s economy lost more steam in November as factory output slowed and retail sales extended declines, both missing forecasts and clocking their worst readings in six months, hobbled by surging COVID-19 cases and widespread virus curbs. The data suggested a further deterioration in economic conditions as lockdowns in many cities, a property-sector crunch and weakening global demand pointed to a bumpy road ahead even as Beijing ditched some of the world’s toughest anti-virus restrictions following widespread and rare public protests. Industrial output rose 2.2 per cent in November from a year earlier, missing expectations for a 3.6 per cent gain in a Reuters poll and slowing significantly from the 5.0 per cent growth seen in October, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed on Thursday. It marked the slowest growth since May, partly due to disruptions in key manu...

Operating and conducting your affairs in private is a fundamental human right – even for businesses. the globe and mail/iStockPhoto / Getty Images Martin Kenney is managing partner of Martin Kenney & Co., an investigative litigation practice based in the British Virgin Islands, specializing in global asset recovery. Across Europe, countries have been switching off public access to what are known as beneficial ownership registers, in response to a ruling from the continent’s top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It’s a move that transparency campaigners are decrying , but which, after a 30-year background in battling economic criminals, I believe is a victory for common sense and the right to privacy. Other jurisdictions should take heed of the decision. Since 2018, a patchwork of systems, which we refer to as ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) registers, have been operating across the European Union. These registers list the names of people who ultimately own a company, an...

Twitter Inc said on Wednesday that there was no evidence that data recently being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability in the company’s systems. Twitter said the data of 5.4 million of the accounts had been compromised by a bug it discovered early last year, which it previously fixed and disclosed over the summer. Another 600 million pieces of user data “could not be correlated with the previously reported incident, nor with any new incident,” Twitter said in a blog post. “There is no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems. The data is likely a collection of data already publicly available online through different sources,” it said. The social media company told users in August last year that a system vulnerability revealed Twitter accounts of users by submitting their email address or phone number, after the company learnt about it through a bug bounty program months earlier. In December, media reports...

Ireland on March 15, 2022 imposed a fine on Facebook parent company Meta for breaching EU data privacy laws. OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images Byron Holland is president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. It seems that surveillance capitalism and hyper-personalized ads have become an inescapable part of our one-sided social contract with Big Tech. But last week, the European Union made clear to Meta (formerly Facebook) that some of its advertising practices won’t be tolerated, ruling that Facebook and Instagram can’t force users to accept personalized ads without their explicit consent. The EU ruling represents a blow to Meta’s surveillance-based business model. Canadians may wonder what it will take for our country to follow other jurisdictions’ lead and place our citizens’ privacy interests ahead of Big Tech’s financial interests. The EU’s landmark privacy legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation, created stronger privacy rights ...