In the News

Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre, first elected to the House of Commons in 2004, announced 23 January that he would not seek the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. He had served in two cabinet portfolios in the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and most recently has been Opposition finance critic.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has ordered measures to prevent the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in predominantly Buddhist Muslim Myanmar despite its military’s insistence that it was combatting extremists. Thousands of Rohingya have died and more than 700,000 have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during an army crackdown that began in 2017.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ metaphoric Doomsday Clock has ticked 20 seconds closer to midnight, to 100 seconds, the closest it has ever been to the prospect of a global catastrophe. Created in 1947, when it was set at seven minutes to midnight, the iconic marker has shifted back and forth 23 times and had been at two minutes since 2018. The latest shift, announced 23 January, reflects growing concern about the “existential” threats of nuclear war and climate change, which the group says are exacerbated by cyber-enabled information warfare.

A Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport owned by Coulson Aviation (USA) Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of British Columbia-based Coulson Group, crashed 23 January while fighting wildfires in Australia. The three-member crew of American residents died.

Former Alberta MP Ron Ambrose has announced that she will not seek the Conservative Party of Canada leadership. She said on Facebook 22 January that she “struggled” with the decision. Ambrose, who held portfolios in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, including the government's procurement arm, Public Works & Government Services, resigned from the House of Commons in 2017.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Services is being sued for racial and religious discrimination by a longtime employee who alleges that his Muslim faith marked him as a target. File last week in Federal Court, the action alleges a pattern of bullying and prejudice stretching back almost two decades.

The first case of the potentially deadly Wuhan coronavirus in the U.S. has been reported in Seattle. The federal Centers for Disease Control says the patient, in his 30s, had travelled from Wuhan in Hubei province, where the virus first was identified in December.

A lawyer for Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei telecom executive facing possible extradition to the U.S., has accused the U.S. of trying to use Canada to enforce its economic sanctions against Iran. Her counsel said at the beginning of a B.C. Supreme Court hearing that despite the Crown’s claims to the contrary, the case is all about the sanctions the U.S. alleges Meng has tried to circumvent. “We're being asked to impose on Canada an obligation to assist the U.S. in the enforcement of its sanctions — sanctions that we have expressly rejected.”

Draft legislation introduced by a group of senior U.S. Senators could require common operational standards for mobile networking equipment as a way to avoid Chinese providers which the U.S. considers a national security threat. The bipartisan bill has been welcomed by the domestic telecom sector.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is extending the use of facial recognition technology to its optional Global Entry program for frequent travellers. Until now, those “low risk” persons only had to have their passports and fingerprint scanned on entry but CBP says the use of facial biometrics eliminates the passport and fingerprint requirements.

Canadian legislation, which gives U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers the power to question, detain and even strip-search visitors while they are still in Canada, faces growing criticism. The rules permitting the CBP to position officers at Canadian airports ostensibly were designed to enhance border security and facilitate travel but have become increasingly problematic for some.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has used a mass prayer session in Tehran to defend the country’s Revolutionary Guard for having maintained Iran’s security by shooting down a Ukrainian airliner 08 January. Among other things, the cleric used his rare appearance to say that Iran’s “enemies” were “as happy about the plane crash as we were sad,” and called U.S. President Donald Trump a “clown.”

Nearly three years after Turkey blocked access to Wikipedia when the site refused to delete critical material, the country's Constitutional Court has ruled that the ban violated freedom of expression. The articles said, among other things, that Ankara had cooperated with Islamic State and al-Qaeda forces in Syria

U.S. adversaries’ evolving technological capabilities mean that the government needs cyberspace protection, says Glenn Gerstell, who is leaving his position as general counsel to the National Security Agency later this year. He shared his concerns at an American Bar Association event 15 January.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev resigned 15 January shortly after President Vladimir Putin proposed constitutional changes which could keep in him power after his current term expires in 2024. Medvedev said there could be “significant changes” in the balance between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

Ukraine is mounting a coordinated effort to facilitate its joining NATO and the European Union despite what its Dmygro Kuleba, Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, sees as a “discouraging environment. He said during a visit to Washington last month that joining both alliances is vital as his country deals with Russia.

Britain, France and Germany say they do not accept Iran’s defence of its decision to remove all limits on its production of enriched uranium as provided for in a 2015 pact. The U.S. withdrew from the agreement last year and now the European partners, along with Russia and China, are trying to maintain the restrictions on a program Iran insists is for peaceful use.

A U.S. Department of Commerce directive plan to prohibit the purchase of information and communications technologies from “foreign adversaries” is getting some push-back from smaller telecom carriers. One says the executive order might even be illegal.

An Iranian Judiciary official said 14 January that “extensive investigations” into last week’s missile shoot-down of a Ukrainian jetliner has resulted in an undisclosed number of arrests. All 176 persons aboard the Boeing 737-800, including 57 Canadian citizens, died in the crash minutes after Flight PS752 had taken off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport en route to Kiyv, Ukraine.

An emergency Ontario-wide alert that woke thousands to warnings of an unspecified “incident” at the Pickering nuclear station near Toronto 12 January was erroneously sent out during a training exercise. Solicitor General Sylvia Jones says there was no danger to the public or the environment.

Iranian state television has reported that its military "unintentionally" shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 minutes after it took off from Tehran International Airport 07 January on a flight to Kyiv, Ukraine. All 176 persons aboard,  including 57 Canadian passengers, were killed. The report that "human error" resulted in a missile strike came at approximately 10 p.m. EST on 10 January -- early in the morning in Tehran.

Most information of late about U.S. cyber activities has come from unnamed, but likely authorized, government sources. These choreographed disclosures allow the administration to signal to adversaries that it views certain actions as infringing upon U.S. national interests while creating plausible deniability that keeps options open and limits domestic political risks.

Canada has received intelligence indicating an Iranian missile shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight full of Canadians that crashed near Tehran

More than 30 persons died and hundreds have been injured in a stampede as Iranians flocked to the burial of Gen Qassem Soleimani, killed in Iraw by a U.S. drone strike along with several other senior officials. The interment in his hometown of Kerman was postponed.

The cost to the federal government of dealing with natural disasters would indicate that Canada continues to be seriously affected by climate change. Public Safety Canada says the amount was $309.5 million in the 2018-2019 fiscal year compared with $494.9 million a year earlier and $485.8 million in 2016-2017. The average in the five previous years was $360 million, which was triple the average in the five years before that.

U.S. manufacturers of machine learning and artificial intelligence software capable of analyzing satellite imagery face new restrictions under an interim final rule change published 06 January in the Federal Register. Such software is to be classified as a dual-use technology and subject to the same controls as arms exports. Taking effect in early March, the new rule (85 Fed. Reg. 9) applies to software which would “provide a graphical user interface that enables the user to identify objects (e.g., vehicles, houses, etc.) from within geospatial imagery.”

The Austrian foreign ministry has been targeted by a cyber-attack it suspects was launched by a “state actor” in another country. The ministry says the attack was recognized quickly and countermeasures were taken immediately.

The RCMP has confirmed that it uses information posted on social media to profile persons of potential interest. It is responding to concerns expressed by a Toronto woman who learned that she had been profiled after showing up at a leadership debate during the 2015 election campaign, but who was eventually found to be doing nothing illegal. The RCMP says it acknowledges the constitutional right to peaceful protest but says due diligence is required to ensure there is no public safety issue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted in November on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, said 01 January that he was asking Parliament to grant him immunity from prosecution. His announcement comes as the country faces its third general election in 12 months.

Africa's largest mobile operator, MTN, is reviewing allegations that it paid protection money to militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan. The allegations are part of a complaint, filed in a US federal court, that MTN had violated U.S. anti-terrorism laws. It says the company bribed Daesh and the Taliban to avoid having to invest in security for their transmission towers and that the funds underwrote a Taliban-led insurgency that led to the attacks in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017.

Wyze, a Seattle-based producer of “smart” home video cameras, has reported a data breach affecting some 2.4 million of customers whose personal data was held on an unsecured server for several weeks this month.

U.S. military personnel are being cautioned against using widely-advertised consumer DNA kits due to concerns about security risks such as mass surveillance and potential tracking. Joseph Kernan, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, says in a memo that the test are largely unregulated and could expose personal and genetic information with unintended security consequences.

New data on a natural gas well blowout in Ohio in February 2018 indicate that its environmental impact was more significant that previously thought. It spewed an estimated 60 kilotons of methane in only 20 days, more than some European countries release in a year. Methane has a global warming potential 20 times that of carbon dioxide, albeit with a shorter atmospheric lifespan.

An artificial intelligence-controlled unmanned aerial system capable of identifying and tracking targets and maybe even supporting search and rescue missions is the goal of a new U.S. Defense Department program. The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center has issued a request for information to determine whether AI developers and drone swarm builders can collaborate on development.