Police across Canada are increasingly using controversial algorithms to predict where crimes could occur, who might go missing, and to help them determine where they should patrol, despite fundamental human rights concerns, a new report has found. From a report: To Surveil and Predict: A Human Rights Analysis of Algorithmic Policing in Canada is the result of a joint investigation by the University of Toronto's International Human Rights Program (IHRP) and Citizen Lab. It details how, in the words of the report's authors, "law enforcement agencies across Canada have started to use, procure, develop, or test a variety of algorithmic policing methods," with potentially dire consequences for civil liberties, privacy and other Charter rights, the authors warn.

The report breaks down how police are using or considering the use of algorithms for several purposes including predictive policing, which uses historical police data to predict where crime will occur in the future. Right now in Canada, police are using algorithms to analyze data about individuals to predict who might go missing, with the goal of one day using the technology in other areas of the criminal justice system. Some police services are using algorithms to automate the mass collection and analysis of public data, including social media posts, and to apply facial recognition to existing mugshot databases for investigative purposes. "Algorithmic policing technologies are present or under consideration throughout Canada in the forms of both predictive policing and algorithmic surveillance tools." the report reads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Average 5G download speeds in the U.S. are 50.9Mbps, a nice step up from average 4G speeds but far behind several countries where 5G speeds are in the 200Mbps to 400Mbps range. These statistics were reported today by OpenSignal, which presented average 5G speeds in 12 countries based on user-initiated speed tests conducted between May 16 and August 14. The U.S. came in last of the 12 countries in 5G speeds, with 10 of the 11 other countries posting 5G speeds that at least doubled those of the U.S. The U.S.'s average 5G speed is 1.8 times higher than the country's average 4G download speed of 28.9Mbps. User tests in neighboring Canada produced a 4G average of 59.4Mbps and a 5G average of 178.1Mbps. Taiwan and Australia both produced 5G averages above 200Mbps, while South Korea and Saudi Arabia produced the highest 5G speeds at 312.7Mbps and 414.2Mbps, respectively.

In the U.S., average download speeds for users who accessed 5G at least some of the time was 33.4Mbps -- that figure includes both their 4G and 5G experiences. This was the second lowest of the 12 countries surveyed by OpenSignal, with the highest speeds coming in Saudi Arabia (144.5Mbps) and Canada (90.4Mbps). The U.S. fared better in 5G availability, the percentage of time in which users are connected to 5G; the U.S. figure in that statistic is 19.3 percent, fifth best, with Saudi Arabia placing first at 34.4 percent and the UK placing last at 4.5 percent. OpenSignal says it collects "billions of measurements daily from over 100 million devices globally."

China is targeting top scientific and technological expertise in the U.S. and other advanced nations through an expanding network of 600 talent-recruitment stations world-wide, a new report partly funded by the U.S. State Department has found. From a report: U.S. officials have long warned that China uses recruitment programs to improperly obtain advanced technology. However, the research conducted by an Australian think tank details the little-known but elaborate infrastructure the Chinese Communist Party uses to recruit scientists from organizations such as Tesla and Harvard University through such programs. Beijing has denied attempting any systematic effort to steal U.S. scientific research, and Chinese state media have said the U.S. is using allegations of intellectual-property theft as a political tool. The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The talent programs, such as the Thousand Talents Plan, are supported by 600 recruitment stations in countries around the world. They include Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, according to the report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank created by the Australian government. The U.S. has the most with at least 146 stations, the report said.

phalse phace writes: Oracle has entered the race to acquire TikTok [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], the popular Chinese-owned short video app that President Donald Trump has vowed to shut down unless it is taken over by a US company by mid-November, people briefed about the matter have said. The tech company co-founded by Larry Ellison had held preliminary talks with TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, and was seriously considering purchasing the app's operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the people said. Oracle was working with a group of US investors that already own a stake in ByteDance, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, the people added.

Microsoft has been the lead contender to buy TikTok since it publicly said in early August that it had held discussions to explore a purchase of the app's US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand businesses. Microsoft has also seriously considered a bid to take over TikTok's global operations beyond the countries it outlined this month, people briefed on the company's thinking have said. The Redmond, Washington-based company is particularly interested in buying TikTok in Europe and India, where the video app has been banned by Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister. ByteDance is opposed to selling any assets beyond those in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, said a person close to the company.

Apple on Monday told retail and customer-support employees that the company is expanding the time period when customers can subscribe to its AppleCare+ service. From a report: Consumers currently have a chance to sign up to the warranty-and-support program within 60 days of buying an Apple product. This subscription window is increasing to up to a year now in the U.S. and Canada. "This gives customers another opportunity to protect their device and have access to all the AppleCare+ benefits," Apple wrote in a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. The company told employees the offer is available to customers who pay for AppleCare+ in full versus monthly payments, or for those that subscribe via installments on the Apple Card credit card.

Apple is expanding its program that provides parts, resources and training to independent repair shops to now include support for Mac computers. From a report: The repair program was first announced last fall, with the goal of making it easier for consumers to repair their out-of-warranty iPhones by allowing them to use third-party shops, including small businesses, that would now have access to official repair parts and other tools. The program was meant to complement Apple's existing network of over 5,000 Apple Authorized Service Providers, like Best Buy, which handle both in- and out-of-warranty repairs. To some extent, the program arose from consumer demand.

Many iPhone users were turning to unauthorized repair shops for a variety of reasons -- perhaps the shop was closer to their home, could fix their device more quickly, or offered more affordable repairs, for example. But this choice could result in an uneven consumer experience as the shops were locked out from using official Apple parts. Since its U.S. launch, the independent repair shop program expanded to over 140 businesses and over 700 new locations. This summer, Apple announced the program would now expand internationally as well, to both Europe and Canada.

"Even with another infusion of cash from Google, you have to wonder just how long Firefox will survive as a viable, mainstream web browser," argues ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: I've been using Mozilla's Firefox browser since it was still in beta. In 2004, for a while, it was my favorite web browser. Not because it was open-source, but because it was so much better and more secure than Internet Explorer. That was then. This is now. Firefox is in real danger of dying off...

Mozilla and Firefox still produced important work. You need to look no further than the JavaScript, Rust, and WebAssembly languages. They were also champions of security and privacy. Projects such as embracing DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and overall security improvements were great, but users didn't care. With the arrival of Google's Chrome browser, users turned from Firefox to Chrome as their favorite browser...

Firefox is on its way to irrelevance. Making matters even worse, Mozilla's just had its second round of layoffs... As technology writer Matthew MacDonald put it, "Mozilla "." Firefox's security and development teams have also been hard hit. This is bad. In January. Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation chairperson, said it let people go because of declining interest in Firefox, and thus reduced earnings, and that Mozilla was looking for more revenue from "sources outside of search" but "this did not happen." It still isn't happening. According to Mozilla's latest annual report, the majority of its revenue is still generated from global browser search partnerships. This includes the deal negotiated with Google in 2017... Baker assured onlookers that Mozilla would "ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams." These include its bookmarking app Pocket; its virtual rooms Hubs; and its $4.99-a-month Firefox VPN. Excuse me if I don't buy any of these new revenue sources....

Firefox will live on in one way or the other. It's open source after all. But Firefox as an important browser, or Mozilla as a significant open-source developer hub? No. I can't see it. Those days are done. Firefox is officially on my endangered species list.
Technology writer Matthew MacDonald ended his Medium essay on a more hopeful note. "If you have the skills and time, the best possible support is to join the Mozilla community and contribute to their code base."

TikTok's US employees are planning to file a lawsuit challenging a Trump administration executive order they say would make it illegal for their employer to pay them. From a report: Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring any US transactions with ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, and its subsidiaries. The language of the order is broad, so it's unclear if it would bar TikTok from paying its employees. The Trump administration didn't respond to questions about how the order would impact TikTok's employees. The order, which would take effect Sept. 20, would effectively ban the short-form video app from operating in the US if ByteDance doesn't sell TikTok. Microsoft has acknowledged it's discussing a deal to buy TikTok's service in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Negotiations could be completed by Sept. 15, which is before the executive order's deadline.

With SoftBank's Masayoshi Son trying to sell ARM, a columnist for the Observer newspaper has a suggestion for the U.K. government (and specifically Brexit Tories), calling the Cambridge-based company "a kind of public-interest commercial company: licensing state-of-the art instruction sets that can be implemented in silicon architecture by everyone. It was in nobody's pocket." Its business, as its chief founder, Tudor Brown, acknowledges, relied on it never betraying its neutrality... A future owner could almost trash Arm in the pursuit of its own commercial ends. Nvidia, reported to be in advanced talks with Son, is just such a possible owner. Rooted in the games industry, it has found to its surprise that its processing units are much in demand as artificial intelligence applications mushroom. Son wanted to sell Arm to an industry coalition that might protect the company's independence and business model. None could be found, so, desperate for cash, given a string of failed and written-down investments (WeWork, Uber etc), he is now having to sup with a buyer that can only destroy Arm.

Nvidia's ambitions are scarcely hidden. Once it owns Arm it will withdraw its licensing agreements from its competitors, notably Intel and Huawei, and after July next year take the rump of Arm to Silicon Valley, just as Google has done with the British AI company DeepMind. Arm, and Britain's hopes to be a player in hi-tech, will be dead.

Ownership is fundamental and the lesson of the story is that unless Britain creates the legal, cultural and institutional framework allowing companies such as Arm (or DeepMind) to have anchor shareholders — or simply allowing founder shareholders to have powerful differential voting rights as in the U.S. and Canada — we are condemned to inferiority. But even now Britain could act. The government could offer a foundational investment of, say, £3bn-£5bn and invite other investors — some industrial, some sovereign wealth funds, some commercial asset managers — to join it in a coalition to buy Arm and run it as an independent quoted company, serving the worldwide tech industry... if Britain is to develop an industrial strategy, this is how it must act...

A successful capitalism is always about framing innovative private dynamism within a fit-for-purpose regulatory and ownership architecture designed by the state, a reality that neither major party has ever understood. The open question is whether Brexit Tories, forced by reality, might change. This kind of audacious deal could appeal to Johnson and Cummings, a statement of intent to match China in our commitment to a decisive presence in 21st-century hi-tech.

Brexit was meant to give Britain the freedom to make this kind of move.

A reader shares a report: The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July, researchers said on Thursday. The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island, in the sparsely populated northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. "Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up," the Canadian Ice Service said on Twitter when it announced the loss on Sunday. "Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice," said Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa who was part of the research team studying the Milne Ice Shelf. The shelf's area shrank by about 80 square kilometers. By comparison, the island of Manhattan in New York covers roughly 60 square kilometers.

"This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it's disintegrated, basically," Copland said. The Arctic has been warming at twice the global rate for the last 30 years, due to a process known as Arctic amplification. But this year, temperatures in the polar region have been intense. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years. Record heat and wildfires have scorched Siberian Russia. Summer in the Canadian Arctic this year in particular has been 5 degrees Celsius above the 30-year average, Copland said. That has threatened smaller ice caps, which can melt quickly because they do not have the bulk that larger glaciers have to stay cold. As a glacier disappears, more bedrock is exposed, which then heats up and accelerates the melting process.

Capital One Financial Corp will pay an $80 million penalty to a U.S. bank regulator after the bank suffered a massive data breach one year ago. From a report: The fine, announced Thursday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, punishes the bank for failing to adequately identify and manage risk as it moved significant portions of its technological operations to the cloud. "Safeguarding our customers' information is essential to our role as a financial institution," said a bank representative in a statement. "In the year since the incident, we have invested significant additional resources into further strengthening our cyber defenses, and have made substantial progress in addressing the requirements of these orders." In July 2019, the bank disclosed that personal information including names and addresses of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were obtained by a hacker. The suspected hacker was a former employee of Amazon Web Services, a cloud provider where the bank had moved some of its data.

Google today unveiled two Pixel smartphones. First is the $349 Pixel 4A, which is available for preorder now and will ship on August 20th. And second, there's the Pixel 4A 5G, which will cost $499 and also ship sometime this fall. From a blog post: With the same incredible camera experiences from Pixel 4 and a redesigned hole-punch design, Pixel 4a brings the same features that have helped millions of Pixel owners take great shots. HDR+ with dual exposure controls, Portrait Mode, Top Shot, Night Sight with astrophotography capabilities and fused video stabilization -- they're all there. The Pixel 4a comes in Just Black with a 5.8-inch OLED display. It has a matte finish that feels secure and comfortable in your hand and includes Pixel's signature color pop power button in mint. Check out the custom wallpapers that have some fun with the punch-hole camera. In addition to features like Recorder, which now connects with Google Docs to seamlessly save and share transcriptions and recordings (English only), Pixel 4a will include helpful experiences like the Personal Safety app for real-time emergency notifications and car crash detection.

Pixel 4a also has Live Caption, which provides real-time captioning (English only) for your video and audio content. New with the Pixel 4a launch -- and also rolling out for Pixel 2, 3, 3a and 4 phones -- Live Caption will now automatically caption your voice and video calls. The Pixel 4a has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G Mobile Platform, Titan M security module for on-device security, 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage with an even bigger battery that lasts all day1. [...] This fall, we'll have two more devices to talk about: the Pixel 4a (5G), starting at $499, and Pixel 5, both with 5G2 to make streaming videos, downloading content and playing games on Stadia or other platforms faster and smoother than ever. Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 will be available in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. In the coming months, we'll share more about these devices and our approach to 5G.

CNBC reports: SpaceX said Starlink, its nascent satellite internet service, has already seen "extraordinary demand" from potential customers, with "nearly 700,000 individuals" across the United States indicating they are interested in the company's coming service. Due to the greater-than-expected interest, SpaceX filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday — asking to increase the number of authorized user terminals to 5 million from 1 million. User terminals are the devices consumers would use to connect to the company's satellite internet network...

SpaceX is beginning a private beta test of Starlink's service this summer, which it says will be "followed by public beta testing." Elon Musk's company told the FCC that Starlink will begin offering commercial service in the northern United States and southern Canada" before the end of this year, "and then will rapidly expand to near-global coverage of the populated world in 2021...."

The western bumblebee is one of around 30 bumblebee species in the western U.S. and Canada. Now a federal review "unveils an alarming trend for the western bumblebee population, which has seen its numbers dwindle by as much as 93% in the last two decades," reports the Associated Press: The find by the U.S. Geological Survey will help inform a species status assessment to begin this fall by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which may ultimately add the insect to its endangered species list. Tabitha Graves, senior author of the study and a research ecologist with the survey, said the trend with the western bumblebee documented between 1998 and 2018 is troubling because of their important role as pollinators...

There are multiple factors at play that are contributing to the demise of the bumblebee, including pesticides, habitat fragmentation, a warming climate and pathogens, researchers say... "This bumblebee that was once very widespread and common is something that people started to see less frequently," said Diana Cox-Foster, research leader and location coordinator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Pollinating Insects Research Unit at Utah State University. "There are localized populations where it is still happy and healthy, but there have been declines in large parts of its previous distributions. ... Asking why these declines are happening is very important."

hackingbear writes: Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, have applied to a Canadian court seeking stays in the proceedings for her extradition to the United States, documents released on Thursday showed. The applications are based in part on what Meng's lawyers allege was a destruction of the integrity of the judicial process by United States President Donald Trump and other senior members of the administration by their intention to use Meng "as a bargaining chip in a trade dispute." As trading with Iran was legal in Canada, the extradition case hinges on whether Meng misled HSBC about Huawei's relationship with a company operating in Iran, putting HSBC at risk of fines and penalties for breaking U.S. sanctions on Tehran. However, Meng's lawyers allege that the United States misled Canada about the evidence in the case against her, by "selectively summariz(ing) information and omit(ting) highly relevant information" about the knowledge that Huawei accurately shared with HSBC about its operations in Iran.

The omissions are "far below the expected standard of diligence, candor and accuracy," the lawyers wrote. Meng's lawyers also cite comments by U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian PM Trudeau on the case as proof of political interventions. "Trudeau described how he asked the U.S. to include the applicant in any trade deal it signed with China: 'We've said that the United States should not sign a final and complete agreement with China that does not settle the question of Meng Wanzhou and the two Canadians.'" "Where the requesting state engages in conduct that offends our Canadian sense of fair play and decency, the court must intervene to safeguard the integrity of the judicial process. This is such a case," Meng's lawyers say in their new submissions.

Mr. Cooper was a retired high school history teacher using what NBC News calls those peer-to-peer networks where "the lack of corporate oversight creates the illusion of safety for people sharing illegal images."
Police were led to Cooper's door by a forensic tool called Child Protection System, which scans file-sharing networks and chatrooms to find computers that are downloading photos and videos depicting the sexual abuse of prepubescent children. The software, developed by the Child Rescue Coalition, a Florida-based nonprofit, can help establish the probable cause needed to get a search warrant... Cooper is one of more than 12,000 people arrested in cases flagged by the Child Protection System software over the past 10 years, according to the Child Rescue Coalition... The Child Protection System, which lets officers search by country, state, city or county, displays a ranked list of the internet addresses downloading the most problematic files...

The Child Protection System "has had a bigger effect for us than any tool anyone has ever created. It's been huge," said Dennis Nicewander, assistant state attorney in Broward County, Florida, who has used the software to prosecute about 200 cases over the last decade. "They have made it so automated and simple that the guys are just sitting there waiting to be arrested." The Child Rescue Coalition gives its technology for free to law enforcement agencies, and it is used by about 8,500 investigators in all 50 states. It's used in 95 other countries, including Canada, the U.K. and Brazil. Since 2010, the nonprofit has trained about 12,000 law enforcement investigators globally. Now, the Child Rescue Coalition is seeking partnerships with consumer-focused online platforms, including Facebook, school districts and a babysitter booking site, to determine whether people who are downloading illegal images are also trying to make contact with or work with minors...

The tool has a growing database of more than a million hashed images and videos, which it uses to find computers that have downloaded them. The software is able to track IP addresses — which are shared by people connected to the same Wi-Fi network — as well as individual devices. The system can follow devices even if the owners move or use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to mask the IP addresses, according to the Child Rescue Coalition.... Before getting a warrant, police typically subpoena the internet service provider to find out who holds the account and whether anyone at the address has a criminal history, has children or has access to children through work.
A lawyer who specializes in digital rights tells NBC that these tools need more oversight and testing. "There's a danger that the visceral awfulness of the child abuse blinds us to the civil liberties concerns. Tools like this hand a great deal of power and discretion to the government. There need to be really strong checks and safeguards."

"Starting today, there's a VPN on the market from a company you trust," Mozilla announced Wednesday.

Mozilla VPN is now officially available for Windows and Android in six countries: the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Singapore, Malaysia, and New Zealand, and it'll be coming to even more countries later this year, reports the Verge: The service is available for $4.99 a month, and, like other VPNs, it's designed to make your web-browsing more private and secure. As part of the move, the service is being rebranded from Firefox Private Network to Mozilla VPN, a change that was announced last month.

Mozilla argues that its VPN service has a couple of advantages over its many competitors. It says it should offer a faster browsing experience in many cases because it's based on a protocol with less than a third of the lines of code of an average VPN service provider. The company is also banking on the reputation it's built up with its privacy-focused browser, and it adds that it only collects the information it needs to run a service and doesn't keep user data logs.

The VPN's launch follows beta trials in the US, which also included tests of a VPN built directly into the Firefox browser. Last month, Mozilla announced that it would be testing asking users to pay $2.99 a month for unlimited usage of the extension, which is designed to mask your traffic within the browser rather than at a system-wide level.

Russian state intelligence is hacking international research centers that are racing to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, the U.K., U.S. and Canadian governments said. From a report: It is unclear whether research facilities have been damaged or if the vaccine programs have been set back as a result of the hacks but officials warned that the cyber attacks are ongoing. In a dramatic statement on Thursday, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said vaccine and therapeutic sectors in multiple countries have been targeted by a group known as APT29, which it said is "almost certainly" part of Russian state intelligence. Security agencies in the U.S. and Canada later issued their own statements backing up the findings. "It is completely unacceptable that the Russian intelligence services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said. "While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behavior, the U.K. and its allies are getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health."

Long-time Slashdot reader kartis writes: Canada's Supreme Court upheld the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) which prohibits under criminal penalty, employers or insurers from demanding or using genetic information. This was a result of a private member's bill in Parliament, which meant it passed without the government's support, and in fact both the Federal government and Quebec government (which had gotten it declared unconstitutional as outside federal powers) argued that it extended criminal powers into a provincial jurisdiction. Well, the Supreme Court has surprisingly upheld it in a 5-4 decision, which means great things for Canadians' privacy, and also suggests a wider ability for federal privacy legislation than many jurists had thought.

Australian and British privacy regulators opened a joint probe into Clearview AI, saying they want to examine how the company's facial-recognition technology uses people's data, just days after the company suspended operations in Canada. From a report: The Australian Information Commissioner and the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office said they will focus on the company's use of "scraped" data and biometrics of individuals. Clearview is facing growing scrutiny of the billions of images it has scraped from social media platforms and how the New York-based company shares those with law enforcement agencies. It suspended a contract with its last Canadian client, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, after regulators there said they were investigating allegations Clearview collected personal information without consent and shared it with police. Clearview will cooperate with the U.K. and Australian regulators, Chief Executive Officer Hoan Ton-That said in a statement. The company searches publicly available photos from the Internet in accordance with applicable laws, he said.