Lisa Levesque

ICE takes aim at data held by advertising and tech firms : Agency looks to understand the extent of identifying information available to its masked agents

Privacy is patriotic!

Use a VPN. Install an ad blocker. Quit Google and Meta, use privacy-forward alternatives like Proton, Duck Duck Go, and the fediverse instead. Throw out your “smart” devices. Use Permission Slip to request data deletion from corporations.

If not for yourself, then for America

Opinion | The Globalization of Canadian Rage

🇨🇦 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇩🇰 🇳🇴 🇸🇪 🇪🇸 🇦🇺 🇳🇿 🇬🇱 🇫🇮 🇱🇺 🇨🇭 🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇬🇷 🇮🇸 🇮🇹 🇵🇱 🇵🇹 🇱🇻

“The West is feeling its betrayal turn into rage. The world is waking up to both its vulnerability and its value. But better late than never: We’re all Canadian now.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

404 Media has published the full user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE to bring up addresses for deportation targets. @evystadium.bsky.social has more.

Scoop here by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

Scrolling through the photos of Pam Bondi's "Minnesota rioters," it's just hero after hero. Every photo includes a cowardly DHS agent with their back to the camera.

Bondi thinks she's going to win the propaganda war with this shit, but it's never been more clear that they're losing.

It’s the big day! The appeal hearing @cycletoronto.bsky.social’s successful Bill 212 case is being heard at Ontario’s Court of Appeal. Time permitting I’ll try and live post the proceedings, like I did for the Ottawa convey injunctions back when #lawtwitter was a thing.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

How migrants "act as responsible community members leave substantial data trails: paying taxes, purchasing utilities, [etc]....law-abiding immigrants are encouraged to integrate into society. But the more they do, the greater the risk of being id'd by Accurint and of deportation"
- Needle & Ruben

For law library people, the data sources of this tool are discussed at minute 9+ and include CLEAR, which they indicate is likely the Thomson Reuters product, the parent company of Westlaw. This reporting is important for understanding the mechanics of ICE raids and the data behind it.

Redmob generates 5,580,909,119 pings per month from devices in Canada [5,411,826,014 events with IP-derived location data and 169,083,105 events with GPS-derived location data]. Given Canada’s population of 41 million...CND devices are pinged on average 136 times per month or 4.5 times per day."

...for 1.5 billion devices covering 123 countries to provide clients with real-time insights on consumers’ country, city, latitude and longitude, location accuracy in meters, IP address, browser language, gender, year of birth and MAID (Mobile Advertising ID) (Datarade and Redmob 2024)...

Once again, I'm astounded at the scale of data collection by brokers. From a recent dissertation: "Profits Over Privacy"

"With data brokers, many focus on a select few attributes. For example, Redmob, a Singapore-based location and demographic data broker collects data from more than 50 sources...

Thanks for giving me something to ponder today as I've been shovelling snow @aramsinn.bsky.social

It's like when my archives prof told us about a researcher who requested access to a pocket sized book, not so they could read it but so they could learn about historic pocket sizes. But in this case we have data on how you've interacted with your friends online repurposed to destroy democracy.

The secret life of data : navigating hype and uncertainty in the age of algorithmic surveillance | WorldCat.org "In The Secret Life of Data, Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact

I've really enjoyed The Secret Life of Data and would recommend it to anyone learning about surveillance.

A central idea is that “data, fundamentally, have no fixed meaning,” which is why your metadata can be coopted by powerful entities.

search.worldcat.org/title/139077...

It's so interesting to see the renewed interest in zines. There are several learning to make zines events in my periphery right now and several zines specifically about ICE!

Act Now: End the CCAA Exit Loan Controls — Let LUFA bargain freely Join LUFA in calling on the government and the Laurentian University Board of Governors to lift the remaining CCAA Exit Loan Agreement restrictions to allow for free and fair collective bargaining.

Act now: email the Ontario government telling them to remove the unnecessary limitations on @lufappul.bsky.social's right to free and fair bargaining. Send your letter here: actionnetwork.org/letters/act-...

There’s nothing like banning a pop culture phenomenon to radicalize the youth

"The sheer amount of records that data brokers are accessing almost defies comprehension....[t]housands of data broker companies exist worldwide and their surveillance capacity only grows with each new technological development." - Kanwal & Walby

We're talking trillions of data points.

Grok is being used to remove clothes from random peoples' photos. Journalists think they got the chatbot to 'apologize'. What are you doing? An LLM cannot apologize. It doesn't know what is happening. A journalist doing this is a form of AI psychosis. Full ep here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT9l...

Adding my own void of fluff to this trash news day.

A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet Trump has staged an unscheduled, midair rapid disassembly of the global system of trade. Ironically, it is this system that prevented all...

The video that will make your day better: A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet by @doctorow media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-pos...

When you have no librarians left to do collection development due to chronic underfunding, it's easy to imagine some institutions turning to book ban automation tools like the one described here.

"This long-running war on knowledge [represented by book bans] and expertise has sown the ground for the narratives widely used by AI companies and the CEOs adopting it. Human labor, inquiry, creativity, and expertise is spurned in the name of 'efficiency.'"

Luxury Surveillance — Real Life People pay a premium for tracking technologies that get imposed unwillingly on others

"The twin modalities of luxury and imposed surveillance may look different on the surface, but they represent two faces — carrot and stick, if you will — of a challenge to the bases of democracy and social freedom." - Gilliard & Golumbia, "Luxury Surveillance" reallifemag.com/luxury-surve...

New Issue Alert: Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (#EPLIP; Vol. 20 No. 4 (2025)) is Now Available Online journals.library.ualberta.ca/eblip/index.... #libraries #librarians

This year, I have seen a glimmer of hope: people are ditching a life led on screens for the real thing | John Harris Whether it’s nightclubs banning phones or a drop in online dating, there are signs that we’re rediscovering the joy of being in the moment, says Guardian columnist John Harris

This year, I have seen a glimmer of hope: people are ditching a life led on screens for the real thing | John Harris

"Every doctrine of inevitability carries a weaponized virus of moral nihilism programmed to target human agency and delete resistance and creativity from the text of human possibility" - Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Or, what I wish I'd said about AI inevitability on a panel last week.

I've been reading about data surveillance non-stop, and my 2026 goal is to share more of what I've learned. If I'm horrified, you need to be horrified.

In Surveillance Capitalism, Zuboff asks for a "rebirth of astonishment and outrage" at the scale of data surveillance. Outrage is back, baby!

Doctorow does such a good job explaining Internet issues simply

Harbord-Hoskin Celebration Ride Poster

Join us for a Harbord-Hoskin Celebration Ride this Sunday at 2pm.

RSVP & find out more:
www.cycleto.ca/Harbord-Hoskin

Podcast: Zines Are Back Our new zine; a very strange change at Instagram; and the creator of ICEBlock is suing the U.S. government.

Our new zine; a very strange change at Instagram; and the creator of ICEBlock is suing the U.S. government.