Scarcely 24 hours after U.S. prosecutors sent on the evidence they’d gathered in support of extraditing Meng Wanzhou from Canada to the United States, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wasn’t even trying to put a gloss on the parlous state of Canada-China relations. “It is absolutely the case that we face a challenging situation with China now,” Freeland told reporters as she left cabinet Tuesday. “Our government is extremely focused on addressing that situation.” Read full story here: Canada’s In A Corner Over The Meng Wanzhou Case, With No Good Options | CBC News
Read MoreCategory: United States
1.6 Million Canadian Banking Records Shared With IRS | CBC News
The Canadian government has shared more than 1.6 million Canadian banking records with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service since the start of a controversial information-sharing agreement in 2014, CBC News has learned. In 2016 and again in 2017, the Canada Revenue Agency provided the IRS with information on 600,000 Canadian bank accounts each year. That’s a sharp increase from the 300,000 records shared in 2015 and the 150,000 records shared in 2014, the year the sharing began. Read full story here: 1.6 Million Canadian Banking Records Shared With IRS |…
Read MoreCanada Pushes Back As U.S. Congressman Flags Threats Along ‘Totally Wide Open’ Northern Border | CTV News
Canada is defending accusations from a U.S. Congressman that the United States is ignoring security issues along the Canada-U.S. border. “It is the longest, most successful international boundary — un-militarized international boundary — in the history of the world, and we’re determined to keep it that way,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said in an interview with CTV Power Play Host Don Martin on Wednesday. Read full story here: Canada Pushes Back As U.S. Congressman Flags Threats Along ‘Totally Wide Open’ Northern Border | CTV News
Read MoreUS Judge Rules That Feds Can’t Force Fingerprint Or Face Phone Unlocks | Engadget
Authorities can’t force people to unlock devices with their faces, fingers or irises, a magistrate judge from California has ruled. Forbes has uncovered a nine-page order denying the search warrant for an investigation looking into a Facebook extortion crime. While the judge admits that investigators were able to establish probable cause for the warrant, she called their request to unlock any phone on the premises with biometrics “overbroad.” The request wasn’t limited to a particular person or device, and authorities would’ve been able to get everyone in the house to…
Read MoreT-Mobile, Sprint, And AT&T Still Selling Your Location Data, Report Says | Ars Technica
In June 2018, all four major US wireless carriers pledged to stop selling their mobile customers’ location information to third-party data brokers. The carriers were pressured into making the change after a security problem leaked the real-time location of US cell phone users. Read full story here: T-Mobile, Sprint, And AT&T Still Selling Your Location Data, Report Says | Ars Technica
Read MorePSA: File Your US Tax Return Before Scammers Steal Your Refund | TechCrunch
You might have heard this story before. A scammer starts by spoofing an email pretending to be the chief executive of a company, angrily demanding that someone in accounting or human resources immediately sends over their employees’ W-2 forms “or there will be trouble!” The person doesn’t think twice, not wanting to get told off, and emails back the forms, which spell out exactly how much the employees’ earned and how much the company withheld from your wages in tax for the year. Read full story here: PSA: File Your US…
Read MoreLoonie, One Of The Big Losers Of 2018, Remains ‘Expensive,’ Experts Say | CBC News
It was a rough ride for the loonie in 2018. The Canadian dollar fell nearly eight per cent against its U.S. counterpart last year — with much of its slide worsening in the fourth quarter — plunging almost six per cent since October. In fact, the loonie was the second worst performing major currency in the world against the U.S. dollar in the last quarter, just behind another commodity currency, the Norwegian Krone, according to CIBC. Read full story here: Loonie, One Of The Big Losers Of 2018, Remains ‘Expensive,’ Experts Say | CBC News
Read MorePilot Project Demos Credit Cards With Shifting CVV Codes To Stop Fraud | Ars Technica
US-based PNC Bank is in the middle of a pilot project that aims to test out credit cards with constantly changing card verification values (or CVVs) to reduce online credit card fraud. The dynamic CVV is displayed on the back of such a card in e-ink, and changes according to an algorithm supplied by Visa. Read full story here: Pilot Project Demos Credit Cards With Shifting CVV Codes To Stop Fraud | Ars Technica
Read MoreUS Border Officers Don’t Always Delete Collected Traveler Data | Engadget
Privacy advocates aren’t just concerned about warrantless device searches at the border because of the potential for deliberate abuse — it’s that the officials might be reckless. And unfortunately, there’s evidence this is the case in the US. Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General has released audit findings showing that Customs and Border Protection officers didn’t properly follow data handling procedures in numerous instances, increasing the chances for data leaks and hurting accountability. Read full story here: US Border Officers Don’t Always Delete Collected Traveler Data | Engadget
Read MoreGoogle+ Bug Gave Developers Access To Non-Public Data From 52.5M Users | TechCrunch
Google+ was a bit of a disaster for the company when it was still alive, and now that it’s walking dead, it’s becoming even more of a stone around its neck. After disclosing a major security bug in October that affected just under half a million users, it announced that the service would shut down in August 2019. But things are getting worse. Today, the company announced a new privacy hole, one that it found last month, that left some data from about 52.5 million users up for grabs from…
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