In the News

Nearly 16 years after the 9/11 Commission released its report on the 2001 attacks on the U.S., the commission’s advice on how to counter terrorism financing evidently has been largely “forgotten”, according to a paper released 10 March by the Royal United Services Institute. Targetting policymakers, law enforcement and the private sector, it urges a more informed and dynamic response to an evolving threat.

No fewer than 161 firearms, 145 of which were loaded, including 62 with a round chambered, were found in passengers’ baggage at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina in one two-week period last month. Also confiscated were at least two 3D-printed guns, which 20 states are trying to outlaw despite a proposed federal policy shift which could increase online availability of designs.

The head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Scott Jones, says it's working on a level of data encryption to enhance government information in the fact of reported increases in privacy breaches and software attacks. “We want encryption when it's being processed so you don't have to decrypt it to do it, and that's something called homomorphic encryption,” he says. “That’s the Holy Grail.”

A U.S. grand jury has indicted Charles K. Edwards, former acting inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security, and Murali Yamazula, his former subordinate, in connection with the theft of proprietary software and databases containing government employees’ personal information for the purpose of defrauding the government.

A reported 40 per cent of Android device users worldwide are said to be vulnerable to hacking because they are no longer protected by security updates though the Google operating system. Devices from a range of original equipment manufacturers were assessed and the main conclusion was that older models were generally more at risk.

The Department of Homeland Security is planning another “biometric technology rally” with a view to having developers collectively test and accelerate emerging automated biometrics. Two earlier events tested tools individually but this year’s evidently will focus on identifying collaborative groups which would lead the DHS efforts.

Having initially denied that it was using facial recognition technology, the RCMP recently confirmed that it had been using it for some time. The program evidently has accumulated large amounts of personal images from social media and in confirming that it has been using the technology, the RCMP said “some municipal police” also use it.

A push by masses of people trying to cross the Turkish border was met 04 March with tear gas and stun grenades fired by Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades. The attempted influx followed Turkey’s announcement that its border with Europe would be wide open.

The Bank of Canada reduced its overnight lending rate 04 March to 1.25 per cent from the 1.75 per cent rate which had prevailed since October 2018, when it was increased from 1.50 per cent. The reduction is part of an international effort to blunt the economic impact of the Covid-19 virus and follows similar action by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says that neither the European Union nor China, having benefitted from their evolving relationship, seeks confrontation or an adversarial relationship going forward. However, in an “insights paper” published 03 March, SIPRI cautions that increasing connection between military and non-military dimensions of security have prompted EU states to develop new ways of addressing potential threats to transport and digital communications networks.

Two former Conservative cabinet ministers generally considered the front-runners in the party’s leadership race, say they are prepared to force a vote of no-confidence in the House of Commons, which could force another general election if the Liberal government was unable to secure the support of other parties. Former defence minister Peter MacKay disclosed his intentions on social media while former veterans affairs minister Erin O’Toole echoed that in an email. A third contender, Ontario MP Marilyn Gladu, vice-chair of the party's aerospace caucus, also has said she would put forward a motion of no-confidence.

The U.S. administration’s campaign against Huawei being involved in the next-generation communications networks is prompting questions about whether the push is over security or trade issues. A senior lecturer at Harvard says that when the White House tries “to play both ends of that”, it undermines relations with allies.

The fourth quarter of 2019 saw the Canadian economy nearly at a standstill and with little signs of recovery due to the global spread of the Covid-19 virus. Real GDP was an annualized 0.3 per cent in the latest three months, albeit subject to revision when current-quarter data are published by Statistics Canada. Growth for 2019 overall was up by a preliminary 1.6 per cent compared with 2.0 per cent in 2018.

The B.C. government confirmed an eighth coronavirus case 29 February, the same day that officials in neighbouring Washington announced that the state’s first Covid-19 death. Meanwhile, three new cases in Toronto area brought Ontario’s total to 11 and one case has been reported in Quebec.

Satellite imagery suggests that China’s emissions of nitrogen dioxide by industry and internal combustion engines have been declining, possibly related to a manufacturing slowdown as part of China’s stop the spread of Covid-19. As the epicentre of the viral outbreak, China itself has reported nearly 80,000 cases, but it has spread to more than 50 other countries.

Thirteen Canadians and two local employees at a Canadian charity in Ethiopia are being detained after they were accused of practising medicine without licence and using dated medications. The Alberta-registered charity, Canadian Humanitarian, confirmed the development on its website 29 February, saying that it had complied with all protocols.

Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is receptive to concerns that widespread use of Social Security numbers leaves millions of Americans vulnerable to data theft. He suggested during a cybersecurity conference that there are more secure alternatives to the nine-digit identifier. A study five years indicated then that up to 80 per cent of registrants had already been hacked.

Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, says stringent measures are being taken to guard against the spread of the Covid-19 corona virus and that they could include a ban on large public gatherings. Meanwhile, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, has suggested that the growing global list of diagnoses “suggest it’s likely that this virus will cause a pandemic.”

The U.S. Congress is being lobbied by a coalition of advocacy groups to “restore the balance of national security powers” between itself and the White House “All Americans have a stake in decisions to go to war, bypass ordinary laws through emergency declarations or sell weapons to foreign regimes,” they say. “However, the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution is broken.”

The U.S. House intelligence committee has been warned that Russia is interfering in the presidential election campaign in an attempt to have Donald Trump re-elected. The president’s allies reportedly countered that his administration has been tough on Russia and strengthened European security. Meanwhile, Russian state media say Trump has benefitted the Kremlin.

Satellite imagery showing extensive Antarctica snow melt over several days in early February has been released by NASA. The images uphold observed surface temperatures which have reached record levels.

The RCMP is investigating reports by a pulp-and-paper company in Richmond, B.C., that its systems have been infiltrated by malware. A spokesperson for Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corp. says communications and some production capability have been affected. 

A former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst faces up to 10 years in prison for sharing classified information with two journalists in 2018. Henry Frese has pled guilty. One of the journalists was his girlfriend at the time, a national security reporter for the CNBC business network. 

At least one element of the European Union’s recently-published draft principles for regulating artificial intelligence falls short of what the U.S. proposes, says Michael Kratsios, a senior White House technology officer. He says the EU white paper “in some ways clumsily attempts to bucket AI-power technologies as either high-risk or not compared with a broader spectrum approach.

Growing reliance on the public cloud as a core element of public- and private-sector transition to an increasingly digital world worries Eric Trexler, vice-president of global governments and critical infrastructure at Texas-based Forcepoint, a company partly owned by Raytheon which develops and markets cybersecurity software. While the trend is expected to give agencies more data storage flexibility, he says it also amounts to an “attractive bullseye” for cyberattackers.

BAE Systems completed its maiden flight of a high-altitude solar-powered aircraft with a 35-metre wingspan. The unmanned platform is designed to fly at an altitude of about 51,000m with a time aloft of more than a year at lower cost than satellites. The project is being underwritten by Britain and Australia., where the first flight took place at the Woomera Test Range.

Continuing a long-running fight with the European Union over subsidies to their aircraft manufacturing sectors, the U.S. plans to hike its tariff on Airbus and aircraft parts to 15 per cent next month. The action targets EU members where Airbus parts are made: Britain, France, Germany and Spain. The EU has long insisted that the U.S. subsidizes Boeing, Airbus’ main competitor in the global commercial aircraft market.

Concerns that Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig have been mistreated during their detention in China since December 2018 are being dismissed as overblown by China’s ambassador to Canada. Cong Peiwu insists their legal rights are protected and that media coverage of their situation is “just hype up of stories.”

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is being urged by one of the sectors it to set up new protections for smartphone users targeted by a scam involving SIM (subscriber identify module) cards. The fraud involves hackers who use pirated information to set up a new account with a service provider which then can be used to gain access to banking and other applications linked to their phone.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian expects that Britain and the European Union will “rip each other apart” as each side strives for advantage in a post-Brexit era. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new government wants “friendly cooperation” but Le Drian, citing huge differences on trade issues and the mechanism for future relations, says “everyone will defend their own interests.”

A planned British visit by an Australian parliamentary committee reportedly has been cancelled due to differences over Huawei’s role in Britain's 5G network but Britain says the change in plans is because Westminster has yet to establish a counterpart committee. Australia has banned the Chinese company outright and is said to be disappointed by its intelligence partner's decision to allow Huawei limited access.

President Donald Trumps’ special envoy for international telecommunications policy, Robert Blair, has indicated that the U.S. won’t change its policy on intelligence-sharing with Britain despite the latter’s decision to allow Huawei access to British 5G networks. Trump had tried successfully to persuade Prime Minister Boris Johnson to exclude Huawei but Blair says “there will be no erosion of our overall intelligence sharing operation.”

Canada’s economic growth during the final quarter of 2019 is expected to be “significantly weaker” than expected, possibly even stagnant, according to Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux. His latest outlook indicates annualized real growth will have been 0.3 per cent compared with his officer’s earlier estimate of 1.6 per cent. Weakness in the resources and transportation sectors are given as the reasons for the rollback.

The personal information of at least 144,000 Canadians has been mishandled by federal departments and agencies in the past two years and not everyone affected by a privacy breach was told about it. The Canada Revenue Agency was the lead offender with more than 3,000 incidents affecting close to 60,000 taxpayers.