Facial recognition in public spaces can be 'so damaging,' privacy expert says

Graham Slaughter, CTVNews.ca Writer

@grahamslaughter

Published Monday, November 25, 2019 10:14AM EST
Last Updated Monday, November 25, 2019 10:19AM EST

TORONTO -- Technology capable of scanning a person’s face and linking them to a database of thousands of other people has been introduced in Canadian airports and shopping malls, a fact that a leading Canadian privacy expert considers alarming.

Former Ontario information and privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian says Canadians may not realize just how prevalent the technology is and how that personal information can be used once collected.

“It’s very concerning to me, because your facial image is the most sensitive biometric and can be used to accurately – or, worse – inaccurately connect you with certain events,” Cavoukian, now executive director of the Global Privacy & Security by Design Centre, told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.

Earlier this month, the Vancouver International Airport announced that it would become the first airport in Canada to introduce facial recognition technology for Nexus cardholders who return to Canada from abroad. Facial-recognition kiosks will identify passengers enrolled in the Nexus program, replacing the airport’s existing iris scanners.

Two malls in Calgary came under fire last year after it was revealed that directory kiosks were taking photos of shoppers’ faces. The technology was suspended after the Federal Privacy Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta opened up investigations.

Cavoukian said more consideration needs to be given to just how damaging the technology can be.

She pointed to a recent report from the U.K. that found that facial recognition technology used by police flagged innocent people as suspects four out of five times. 

“Imagine trying to clear your name when police said, ‘No, you’re the one who did this.’ It can just be so damaging,” she said.

So far, no Canadian police force has announced plans to use the technology. Such a move could open up the possibility for innocent people to find themselves wrapped up in police investigations, Cavoukian said.

“If the police are using this, they can get a warrant. If they have probable cause that a crime has been committed, you go to a judge, you get a warrant. It’s not hard to do. Then they’re authorized to investigate.”

Then there’s the issue of stolen identity. With little oversight in Canada, facial recognition could be highly damaging if someone obtained an individual’s facial recognition information.

“When I was commissioner, a number of victims of identity theft came to me saying that their identities had been stolen. Try to clear your name – it’s a nightmare,” Cavoukian said.

Similar concerns were raised last month among concert-goers and musicians in the U.S. after live-entertainment companies AEG Presents and Live Nation revealed plans to scan festivalgoers with facial recognition technology. Both companies stepped away from those plans following widespread criticism.

Canada is increasing its defense spending and its contribution to NATO

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan tells Mercedes Stephenson that his government is increasing its defence spending and is doing more for NATO as promised under an agreement to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defense.

Link to video: https://globalnews.ca/video/6210883/canada-is-increasing-its-defense-spending-and-its-contribution-to-nato/

Calgary man warns others after attempted mail and credit card fraud

Victim came home to stack of mail including two mail-forwarding notices

Pamela Fieber · CBC News · Posted: Nov 14, 2019 4:58 PM MT | Last Updated: an hour ago

A city resident returned from vacation to find two mail forwarding confirmations from Canada Post that he didn't order. (Sarah Leavitt/CBC)

A Calgary man is warning others about a fraud that involves forwarded mail after he narrowly avoided being a victim of identity theft.

The man, who was on a three-week vacation in Europe, returned to a stack of mail that revealed an attempt to forward his mail to an undisclosed address.

"I found two mail forwarding confirmations from Canada Post, one in my name and one in the name of a party I didn't recognize, it was a foreign name," Brian told the Calgary Eyeopener. 

CBC has agreed to use only Brian's first name.

"So I obviously was suspicious. And I phoned Canada Post and I cancelled it. And I was fortunate because I got home two days before the mail forwarding was supposed to take effect." 

Brian said Canada Post would not tell him who had attempted to redirect his mail.

• CBC INVESTIGATES

  How common is mail forwarding fraud? Canada Post won't say

"Canada Post wouldn't tell me that," he said. "Only after I asked repeatedly, they told me it was an address in B.C., but they wouldn't give me that information."

Canada Post advised Brian to contact credit agencies Equifax and TransUnion, which he says he did.

"About a week later, I started getting credit cards in the mail, one in my name and another in the name of the individual, the other individual that was having the mail forwarded from my address," he said. "And when I phoned Visa, I found out that somebody had successfully ordered secondary cards on my credit card. So there were additional credit cards being issued by Visa through a bank in my name and this other name. 

Brian immediately called his credit card company, Visa.

"They wouldn't tell me much, either. It was only through my personal due diligence that I found out that it's pretty easy to get another credit card on your account. What you need is your name, your address, your date of birth, and you need a password."

Brian wants to warn others against a very common password practice.

"My verbal password was the one they asked me for when I originally opened up telephone banking, which was maybe 10 years ago. And it was my mother's maiden name, which was what the banks ask for," he said. "Doing some research, we found that a mother's maiden name is a tradable commodity on the dark web."

Brian says your mother's maiden name is an easily compromised password.

He is relieved to have avoided being a victim but alarmed at how easily it could have happened.

"So if you think about it, you go to a hotel. You give them your passport. You give them your credit card. And then you fill out this form with your address. So I'm just speculating here, but I'm guessing it was an inside job at a hotel where they had all of my critical information," he said. "And they knew we were away."

• Mail-forwarding fraud complaints jump more than 700% in 2016

Had Brian not returned home a couple of days before the mail forwarding was to start, all his mail would have begun to be forwarded — including the credit cards that were ordered by phone through Visa.

"So they would have had my credit cards both in my name and in their name," he says.

CBC contacted Canada Post to ask about this mail forwarding fraud.

An email response from Canada Post's media relations department indicates the agency has many checks and balances.

"For all in-person or online Mail Forwarding requests made, Canada Post follows a multi-pronged identity verification process … To avoid undermining our security approach, we don't publicly discuss the specific measures we take."

The email goes on to say that Canada Post works closely with with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, banks and police, and that issues related to fraud go far beyond Canada Post. 

"For example, someone who successfully manages to reroute someone's mail to an address has likely fraudulently obtained and used personal information, for an item such as a credit card, prior to the Canada Post Mail Forwarding request being made."

Bottom line, if you've received notification of an address change from Canada Post that you did not request, make contact immediately. From there, the case will go to the Canada Post fraud centre, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and credit bureaus to double check credit reports.

Brain, who narrowly avoided being a victim, is not ready to leave it to the system.

"Obviously, this is something that someone was able to do without too much effort," Brain said. "Quite honestly, when I phoned Canada Post, I got, I think, three or four calls from different departments, you know, from the DPL and from head office and from the fraud department. And the left hand didn't really know what the right hand was doing. I certainly didn't have a lot of confidence after talking to Canada Post that they're on the case around security."

Brian thinks it's worth a warning.

"This was easily done. All they need is a driver's licence, from what I can tell, in order to forward someone's mail," he said. "And if you have somebody's vital information, it's pretty easy to get a fake driver's licence."

CBC contacted the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre for more information on this type of mail fraud. 

"Currently the data we collect in relation to ID Fraud involving mail forwarding is incomplete and difficult to collate," a representative wrote in an email. 

An attached summary report indicates that agency received 9,434 complaints of ID theft and 8,836 reports of ID fraud from Canadians in 2018. That's similar to 2017, when the agency received 9,660 and 8,737 reports, respectively. Numbers for 2019 are still being collected, but the report notes that overall, the agency estimates these numbers represent "less than five per cent of the total number of actual victims."

The agency website reminds Canadians not to give out sensitive banking or identity information, including driver's licence number, social insurance number over the phone or the internet, and advises getting a free credit report once a year from Equifax or TransUnion.

More information is available at antifraudcentre.ca or by calling the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501.

Scammers spoofing more than a dozen federal government departments to defraud Canadians

It's a new version of a scam that has ripped off thousands of individuals

Elizabeth Thompson · CBC News · Posted: Nov 06, 2019 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Scam artists are using phone numbers from more than a dozen federal government departments to defraud Canadians — making it look as if the calls are coming from legitimate government agencies and police departments — CBC News has learned.

Some of the calls tell potential victims that their social insurance numbers have been compromised. Others are told that they owe the government money and are in legal trouble.

To deceive potential victims who examine the numbers on incoming calls, the scammers spoof their calls so that they display the phone numbers of the relevant federal government departments. In many cases, a scammer tells a victim they will be getting a call from a police officer — then spoofs the call that comes in a few minutes later so that it appears to be coming from local police.

"It's hitting lots of Canadians," said Jeff Thomson of the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. His own organization has been hit by the scam, with fraudsters pretending to be calling from his office.

"It's inundating police departments and it's inundating us with a number of calls. So it's a huge impact. We've seen a huge spike in the reporting on this fraud."

Thomson said he received four scam calls on his own personal phone inside of one week.

Scam undermining work of federal departments

The scam is having an impact on the ability of government departments to serve the public because they are being bogged down with phone calls from Canadians checking to see whether the calls they're getting are legitimate.

Federal government officials were unable to say just how many departments and agencies have been affected to date by the scam. But CBC News has identified a dozen — including bodies like the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, local RCMP divisions, the Competition Bureau and the Cybersecurity Centre which are supposed to help protect Canadians.

The calls spoofing the phone numbers of several different government departments appear to be part of a newer, more sophisticated version of a scam that has been running since at least 2014. That older scam involves fraud artists claiming to be agents of the Canada Revenue Agency, while the newer scam impersonates more government departments.

In 2018, a CBC Marketplace investigation into the CRA phone scam tracked the calls to a call centre in Mumbai, India.

Since 2014, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has received 78,472 reports from across Canada of scammers pretending to represent the CRA or Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The centre said 4,695 people across Canada have lost more than $16.7 million to the scam.

That doesn't include people like Andrea van Noord of Vancouver, who lost $6,000 last week to the scam.

The series of events that cleaned out her bank account started when she picked up her cellphone to hear a recorded message claiming to come from the CRA.

'I was panicked'

"I do owe them a small sum of money ... so when I heard that not pressing one would be tantamount to not showing up in court to deal with that issue, I was panicked," she said. "So I pressed one."

A woman asked her to confirm her identity, then told her that her social insurance number had been used in a $3 million fraud involving 25 credit cards. When the woman asked if her personal information could have been stolen, van Noord thought immediately of the laptop filled with personal information that had been stolen from her car a year ago.

The unknown woman then volunteered to help by contacting Vancouver police and starting a process to clear her name. Minutes later, when van Noord's phone rang, it displayed the Vancouver police department's phone number, spoofed by the scammers.

A separate woman, claiming to be a Vancouver police officer, told her that a 1998 Toyota Camry registered in her name had been abandoned in North Vancouver with bloodstains on the back seat and the trunk. A house, also registered in her name, was found with 22 pounds of cocaine inside, the phoney officer told her.

"It all just seemed very plausible to me and very scary," van Noord said. "They said at this time there was a warrant for my arrest and I was currently being charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud against the Canada Revenue Agency."

The fake police officer claimed there was a series of bank accounts in her name and asked van Noord about her actual bank accounts and how much money they contained.

'I felt like an idiot'

The fraudster told her she had to withdraw her money within the hour to protect it before the account was frozen. Keeping her on the phone the entire time, the scammer instructed her to take a cab to her bank and coached her as she withdrew the money., then told her to take it to a café with a bitcoin machine (described as a "government wallet safe machine") that would "protect" her money.

It was only later in the day, after she talked with her partner, that she realized she had been robbed.

"I felt like an idiot," she said. "I felt completely invaded. I felt kind of dirty. I felt that this was very much my fault and that I should have recognized the signs."

Van Noord said both of the people she spoke with had accents that suggested they were based in India.

Police told her there wasn't much they could do.

Thomson said van Noord's experience is not unique.

"These calls are very alarming," he said. "The callers will present themselves as a government official. They will sound very official. They will use a badge number. They will say they are an officer or special agent or an official-sounding title to give themselves some credibility.

"They will sound very formal and they will come across as very threatening and ask you to act right away."

Thomson said the centre is still getting reports of scammers claiming to be from the CRA but, increasingly, they have been posing as representatives of other government departments.

He said those behind the scam are based overseas.

• MARKETPLACE

  Police raid Indian call centres linked to 'CRA phone scam' that have victimized Canadians

• MARKETPLACE

  As RCMP raids target India over CRA phone scam, possible Canadian collaborators have reason to be nervous

• MARKETPLACE

  RCMP probe of international CRA phone scam IDs Canadian suspects

"If you have fraudsters operating in one country, targeting consumers in another country and money going to yet a third country, they're clearly organized," he said. "It's organized crime and it's international in scope."

Isabelle Maheu is a spokeswoman for Employment and Social Development Canada, which includes Service Canada. She said the fraudulent calls are affecting the government's ability to provide services to Canadians.

"Wary Canadians who receive a suspicious incoming phone call frequently disconnect the call and call the government to verify the legitimacy of the call," she explained. "This can result in an increase in call volume and caller wait times. Additionally, legitimate phone calls from government departments can be dismissed as fraudulent, leading to the recipient of the call not receiving important information."

Many of the departments whose numbers are being spoofed have put notices on their websites warning Canadians.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has given telecommunications providers until Dec. 19, 2019 to implement a system to block calls in their networks to crack down on nuisance and illegitimate calls.

Here's a list of some of the federal departments, agencies and courts whose phone numbers are being spoofed:

• Service Canada

• Justice Canada

• Federal Court

• Federal Court of Appeal

• Department of National Defence

• Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre

• Canada Revenue Agency

• RCMP detachments in Kingston and Cornwall

• Correctional Service of Canada

• Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

• Privacy Commissioner's Office

• Competition Bureau of Canada

• Financial Consumer Agency of Canada

• Canada Border Services Agency

• Parole Board of Canada

Elizabeth Thompson can be reached at elizabeth.thompson@cbc.ca

Legal cannabis use could still get you banned at the border, U.S. confirms

By Patrick Cain National Online Journalist, News  Global News

Canadians may be banned from entering the U.S. for legally using marijuana in Canada if a border officer decides that they are likely to consume it in the United States, American border officials told reporters Tuesday.

READ MORE: Will legal cannabis users be able to cross the U.S. border? ‘It’s anyone’s guess,’ lawyer says

“If someone admits to smoking frequently in Canada, then that will play into the officer’s admissibility decision about whether they think, on this specific trip, they are also likely to engage in smoking marijuana in the United States as well,” said Todd Owen, a senior official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“It’s now legal in Canada, so it comes down to whether the officer believes they may engage in the same activity while in the United States, based on the intent and purpose of their trip, as opposed to the legal engagement within Canada.”

However, U.S. border officials will make a distinction between whether a Canadian’s past marijuana use was before or after legalization, he said.

“When they are questioned by the officer during the interview process, if illegal drug use comes up, it could come down to pre-legalization or post-legalization, and the officer will make the corresponding decision about admissibility based on that.”

However, Owen also said he “would not expect that officers would be routinely asking people about their marijuana use.”

Owen also said that past marijuana convictions in Canada would continue to be a basis in being banned from the U.S., even if the person had later been pardoned in Canada, or if marijuana convictions were expunged in an amnesty.

“We don’t recognize the Canadian amnesty. That would still make you inadmissible into our country.”

Canadians can be banned from entering the United States for being an ‘abuser’ of marijuana. Asked how officers would decide what level of use constituted abuse, Owen would only say that if would be “based on the facts and circumstances of the inspection, and based on what the officer gleans from the inspection process.”

READ MORE: In major shift, the U.S. says it won’t ban Canadian pot workers

While a growing number of states have legalized recreational marijuana at the state level, it remains illegal at the federal level, and Canadians can be banned from using it in states such as California or Oregon, or admitting at the border that they plan to.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has refused to disclose how many Canadians have been banned from entering the United States due to marijuana use.

People banned at the U.S. border can apply for a “waiver” to let them cross. But the process is time-consuming, expensive — the fee recently rose to US$930 — and the process has to be started from scratch every few years for the rest of the person’s life.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4556304/marijuana-canada-us-border/