Tag: police state

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Defends Mass Surveillance Bill

Canada’s Public Safety Minister, Gary Anandasangaree, wants you to know that Bill C-22 is not a surveillance bill. He said so twice.

“I want to be very clear about what C-22 is not. It is not about the surveillance of honest, hard-working Canadians going on about their daily lives,” Anandasangaree told an audience that included police chiefs and law enforcement officials.

Then, a few sentences later: “We’re not looking for sneaky ways to surveil Canadians. We are doing our part to combat bad actors in both the physical and digital worlds.”

What he described is a surveillance bill.

The Lawful Access Act, introduced this month, compels electronic service providers to retain Canadians’ metadata for a year and gives police and CSIS new mechanisms to access it. That includes location data, device identifiers, and daily movement patterns, all stored in advance, on every Canadian, not just suspects, held ready for law enforcement retrieval.

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GrapheneOS Defies Age Verification Surveillance Laws, Vowing to Protect User Privacy Worldwide

GrapheneOS has a simple answer to the wave of age verification laws moving through US state legislatures and already live in Brazil: no.

The privacy-focused Android fork announced last Friday that it won’t implement the age data collection these laws demand. “GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification, or an account,” the project stated.

“If GrapheneOS devices can’t be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.” That’s a blunter response than most OS developers are willing to give, and it’s worth understanding what it’s actually refusing.

Brazil’s Digital ECA (Law 15.211) came into force on March 17, hitting OS providers with fines of up to R$50 million, roughly $9.5 million per violation, for failing to build age verification into device setup.

California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, AB-1043, signed by Governor Newsom in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2027, goes further: it requires every OS provider to collect a user’s age or date of birth during account setup, then push that data to app stores and developers through a real-time API.

Colorado’s SB26-051 cleared the state senate on March 3 with similar demands. The architecture these laws collectively envision is an age-linked identity layer baked into the operating system itself, present before you’ve opened a single app.

GrapheneOS is developed by the GrapheneOS Foundation, a registered Canadian nonprofit.

California’s AB-1043 carries civil penalties of up to $2,500 per affected child for negligent violations and $7,500 for intentional ones, enforced by the state attorney general. The Canadian nonprofit status provides some distance but not a guarantee.

The stakes grew more concrete after GrapheneOS and Motorola announced a partnership at MWC on March 2, bringing the hardened OS to future Motorola hardware and ending GrapheneOS’s long exclusivity to Google Pixel devices. A GrapheneOS-powered Motorola phone is expected in 2027.

Once a major hardware manufacturer ships devices with GrapheneOS pre-installed, those products need to comply with local regulations in every market where they’re sold, or Motorola will have to restrict sales geographically.

The defiant stance that’s easy for a nonprofit software project becomes a commercial problem for a global device manufacturer.

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Hong Kong Police Can Now Demand Phone or Computer Passwords of Suspects Under National Security Law

Your passwords are no longer safe in Hong Kong.

Ever since Hong Kong returned from British rule to China in 1997, the island has devolved towards the totalitarian ways of mainland China.

In 2020, the National Security Law (NSL) imposed by Beijing crystallized this new reality.

The NSL criminalizes acts of ‘secession, subversion, terrorism, collusion with foreign forces, treason, espionage, sabotage, and external interference’.

With penalties up to life imprisonment, it even allows some cases to be tried on the mainland, and it grants police ‘broad surveillance and detention powers’.

Needless to say, this has curtailed political dissent, free speech, and pro-democracy activities in Hong Kong.

And now, it arises that Hong Kong police can demand phone or computer passwords from suspects under the NSL.

BBC reported:

“Those who refuse could face up to a year in jail and a fine of up to HK$100,000 ($12,700; £9,600), and individuals who provide ‘false or misleading information’ could face up to three years in jail.

It comes as part of new amendments to a bylaw under the NSL that the government gazetted on Monday.”

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Blackburn’s TRUMP AMERICA AI Act Repeals Section 230, Expands AI Liability, and Mandates Age Verification

Senator Marsha Blackburn has introduced a 291-page legislative discussion draft that would reshape how information is allowed to exist online.

The TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, officially titled the “The Republic Unifying Meritocratic Performance Advancing Machine intelligence by Eliminating Regulatory Interstate Chaos Across American Industry” Act, bundles together Section 230 repeal, expanded AI liability, age verification mandates, and a stack of additional bills that have been circulating separately for years.

All of it is wrapped in a national AI framework that claims it is tied to President Trump’s December Executive Order. The bill is framed as pro-innovation, pro-safety, designed to “protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities” while positioning the US to win the global AI race.

What the actual 291 pages describe is a system that centralizes regulatory authority, removes the legal protections platforms currently rely on, and hands new enforcement tools to federal agencies, state attorneys general, and private litigants simultaneously.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The legal foundation of the modern internet is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It shields platforms from being sued for the content that users post. Without Section 230, platforms could become legally responsible for what their users post, which could mean anything controversial, contested, or legally ambiguous becomes a liability they’ll quietly remove rather than defend.

Blackburn’s bill repeals it entirely, after a two-year transition period.

Platforms and AI developers could face lawsuits for “defective design,” “failure to warn,” or deploying systems deemed “unreasonably dangerous.”

AI platforms would be incentivized to heavily monitor users.

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Illinois Cop Fired Over Trying to Help ICE with Social Media Post 

The city of Elgin, Illinois, has terminated a police officer following an internal investigation into a social media post that referenced federal immigration enforcement.

City officials announced that Officer Jason Lentz was fired after an independent review determined he engaged in misconduct tied to a post made in October.

Lentz had been placed on administrative leave after Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley became aware of the post and initiated an investigation.

According to the city, the post included a reference to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and listed locations where the officer sarcastically suggested agents should not conduct enforcement.

The message read, “If I were ICE, I wouldn’t check…” followed by a series of locations.

Lentz included comments alongside each suggestion, such as “definitely none there” and “there’s no way you’d find any there.”

The post also tagged the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

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Citizens In Eastern Ukraine Will Not Be Allowed To Vote, Zelensky Says

President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed that Ukraine and Washington are in talks about holding elections, after earlier this month he much belatedly said while under pressure from Trump that he’s ready to allow national elections, so long as they can be done fairly and freely.

Zelensky indicated current discussions also hinge on the US and other partners helping set the conditions so Ukrainians can vote in safety. He previously stated the country could hold a vote within 60 days – but only if there are security guarantees.

Already over the weekend he erected more barriers to holding a vote, stipulating that citizens in Eastern Ukraine would not be able to participate. 

“Any election in Ukraine can not be held in Russia-occupied parts of the country,” Zelensky has been quoted in international press as saying, and he once again added that a proper voting process can take place only if security is ensured.

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Woman found ‘crawling’ in 3 feet of snow froze to death after 911 dispatcher refused to send help for more than an hour, lawsuit says

An Alaska woman froze to death while stranded outside in temperatures between 17 and 28 degrees Fahrenheit — with nearly 3 feet of snow on the ground — after a 911 dispatcher failed to send help for more than an hour, a lawsuit says.

Alecia Lindsay, 31, was “crawling around” outside when a resident spotted her on Feb. 8, 2024, and called 911 for help after Lindsay knocked on their door, according to a legal complaint filed by her family against the Municipality of Anchorage, which was obtained by local NBC affiliate KTUU.

Court records viewed by Law&Crime show that the complaint was filed last month in superior court against the city, its Emergency Communications Center, emergency dispatchers, and the Anchorage Police Department. The defendants are being sued for negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

According to KTUU, the complaint accuses the dispatcher who handled the call for service on the night Lindsay was spotted outside in Anchorage of wrongly classifying the call as a Priority 3 disturbance rather than a medical emergency. It alleges that the dispatcher assured the resident who called 911 that help was on the way when it wasn’t, KTUU reports.

The dispatcher failed to recognize Lindsay’s urgent need for medical help, including signs that she was suffering from hypothermia after the resident who called 911 and her spouse relayed information that should have made it obvious, the complaint says.

This included saying Lindsay was “shaking extremely because it was cold” and appeared to be “feeling overwhelmed” by the frigid temperatures, according to KTUU.

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EU Admits X’s Open Data Skews Disinformation Findings While Fining Platform for Restricting Researchers

The EU’s own diplomatic service has published a report admitting that X makes its data more accessible to researchers than other major platforms, and then used that admission to brand X the primary channel of “foreign information manipulation and interference” against the bloc.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) put this in writing. The media ran with the conclusion and buried the caveat.

The fourth annual FIMI Threats report, released this month, found that “88% of instances were concentrated on the platform X. The presence of CIB networks, the ease of creation of fabricated accounts, but also more straightforward access to data, explains this concentration.

Most of the major social media platforms restrict access to data that would allow for assessing the magnitude of information manipulation activities.”

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White House AI Framework Pushes Age Verification ID Mandate

The White House has published a National AI Legislative Framework, a set of recommendations to Congress intended to govern artificial intelligence with a single uniform standard rather than, as the document puts it, “a patchwork of conflicting state laws.”

The administration wants federal law to preempt the states. That part is straightforward. What the framework actually proposes is less straightforward.

Alongside a genuine free speech provision, the document contains age verification mandates, chat surveillance requirements, national security carve-outs that would tighten the relationship between AI companies and federal intelligence agencies, and an expansion of the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a law that we have already flagged for lacking adequate safeguards against censorship.

The White House is presenting all of this as part of the same coherent package.

Start with the child protection section: Congress should establish “commercially reasonable, privacy protective, age-assurance requirements (such as parental attestation) for AI platforms and services likely to be accessed by minors.” Age verification on AI platforms. The framework calls these requirements “privacy protective.”  They are not.

There is no version of meaningful age verification that doesn’t require collecting sensitive personal data, and there is no version of collecting sensitive personal data at scale that isn’t a breach waiting to happen.

The only tools platforms have are identity-based checks, government IDs, biometric scans, credit card data, and third-party verification services, or biometric estimation.

The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are.

In October 2025, Discord identified 70,000 users globally who potentially had their photo IDs exposed to hackers.

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Court backs city censorship: Ontario appeal ruling blocks ‘Woman = Adult Female’ ad

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled against the Christian Heritage Party of Canada (CHP) in a high-profile free speech case, siding with the City of Hamilton’s decision to reject a controversial bus shelter ad.

The case stems from a 2023 attempt by CHP to purchase advertising space on Hamilton transit shelters. The proposed ad featured a smiling woman alongside the message: “Woman: An Adult Female.”

City officials blocked the ad, arguing it could offend transit users, a decision CHP challenged through judicial review before ultimately appealing to Ontario’s top court.

That challenge has now failed.

In its decision, the Court of Appeal upheld the city’s authority to control messaging in public advertising spaces even where that control intersects with constitutionally protected expression.

The ruling effectively shuts down CHP’s argument that a political party has the right to publicly promote what it describes as the biological, biblical, and dictionary definition of a woman in a public forum.

CHP leader Rod Taylor blasted the decision, calling it a blow to fundamental freedoms.

He argued that the ruling undermines core Charter protections, including freedom of speech, press, conscience, and association, and warned that ideological pressure is now influencing both legislatures and the courts.

The party says it will continue advocating for what it calls “truth and freedom,” despite the setback.

In today’s Canada, even defining a word can land you in court — and still lose.

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