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Content type: News & Analysis
Bloomberg reported today that security researchers have identified FinFisher spyware - "one of the world’s best-known and elusive cyber weapons" - in malicious emails sent to Bahraini pro-democracy activists, including a naturalized U.S. citizen who owns gas stations in Alabama, a London-based human rights activist and a British-born economist in Bahrain.
Analysis of the emails by CitizenLab (a project based within the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs) revealed that…
Content type: Press release
The Council of the European Union today reinforced restrictive measures on EU exports to Iran, banning "exports of equipment and software intended for use in the monitoring or interception of internet and telephone communications by the Iranian authorities".
The Council also added 17 people responsible for grave human rights violations to the list of those subject to a travel ban and asset freeze. An existing ban on equipment for use in internal repression was transferred from the sanctions…
Content type: News & Analysis
Last week the German Federal Constitutional Court overturned a law on the retention of telecommunications data for law enforcement purposes, stating that it posed a "grave intrusion" to personal privacy and must be revised. In their ruling the judges found that the law stands in contradiction to the basic right of private correspondence and does not protect the principle of proportionality, as it fails to balance the need to provide security with the right to privacy. All data on telephone…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the legality of the DNA database, including the retroactive collection of profiles. This decision supports the DNA Identification Act of 1998 and sees the taking of DNA from those who are convicted of serious offences not so much as a search but more as an act that enables identification.
In the case R v Rodgers (2006), decided 4-3, the Court was asked to consider, amongst numerous other issues:
Whether collection of DNA samples for data bank…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia made a call for submissions on whether the USA PATRIOT Act could allow the U.S. authorities to gain access to Canadians' personal information, enabled through the outsourcing of Canadian public services to the United States. The Commission also called for comments on the implications for compliance with Canadian provincial privacy laws, and to see if anything could be done to eliminate or mitigate the risks.
In this submission to the BC…