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Published letters will appear in print and/or online at insidehalton.com OPINION TO LEARN HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR OWN CONTENT VISIT INSIDEHALTON.COM EDITORIAL Canada's federal NDP wants the Liberal government to place a moratorium on the use of controversial Clearview AI pending an investigation into the facial recognition company. This is one NDP suggestion the Trudeau Liberals need to accept. In recent years we have become used to the slow but steady erosion of our personal privacy to various technological advances. If we are not completely inured to ubiquitous video surveillance and the unauthorized col- lection and monetization of our personal data by big tech, we're getting close. But Clearview AI is not another brick in the wall. It is much bigger than that and we should be worried. The American company says it has collected a data- base of billions of photos by scraping the web. It may have done this with no permission. Then the company uses artificial intelligence to match people's images in that database. So if police have a photo of a person of interest, they merely run the image through Clearview AI to find matches and all the information that goes along with a match. You can certainly see the appeal from a law enforce-You can certainly see the appeal from a law enforce-Y ment perspective. So what's wrong with that? What's wrong is that Clear- view AI has photos of billions of regular folks, too. It can glean information about their movement, who they hang out with, where they stay, what they do, who they're close to ... you get the idea. This unauthorized collection of personal information without knowledge or consent could be a massive vio- lation of Canada's privacy laws. NDP MP Charlie Angus put it this way in a letter he sent to Justice Minister David Lametti, which was obtained by The Toronto Star. "Until strong standards to protect Canadians' privacy are developed, I urge you to implement a moratorium in Canada on the commercial and public sector use of this technology in public spaces, and wherever explicit con- sent cannot be feasibly obtained," Angus wrote. Angus and the NDP are right. Over the past several months it has come to light that many police departments, including in Halton, Hamilton, Niagara and many others have been experimenting with using Clearview AI. The RCMP has dabbled, as has the OPP. To be fair, it appears all police agencies stopped their dabbling once concerns were raised, and there no evidence at this point that this faceprinting technology has been operationalized.faceprinting technology has been operationalized.f Whether or not Clearview AI did anything legally or ethically questionable is something Canadian privacy commissioners are investigating. At minimum, the tech- nology needs to be kept off the market until we know. But there are other, bigger questions also, which point to the need for Canada to develop more sophisticated privacy protections as other jurisdictions (the EU for example) have done. It's not just police forces, either. Private sector players tested Clearview's services. Ottawa needs to put the brakes on this, at least until we know what we're dealing with. FACEPRINTING TECHNOLOGY PROTECTION NEEDED SNAPSHOT A snowy owl soars along Bronte Harbour. Got a great local photo you'd like to share? Send it to sleblanc@metroland.com, along with a brief description. Mervyn Sequeira photo Young Ontarians are in- creasingly using and be- coming addicted to nico- tine vaping products, put- ting their health at risk. We've heard directly from concerned parents who grow more worried each and every day about the health of their kids. I understand these concerns myself, as a father of four young daughters. We know there's a clear case for action to curb the alarming increase in youth vaping. Following exten- sive consultation, Ontario is taking further action to protect children and youth from the health risks of vaping, while maintaining adults' access to smoking cessation options. Our government is pro- posing regulatory changes that would limit where fla- voured and high nicotine vapour products are sold. At the same time, the prov- ince will expand preven- tion initiatives and services to quit vaping. Ontario is taking a balanced approach to protect our youth while also avoiding fueling an un- derground market for un- safe vapour products. We have consulted with health-care experts, indus- try partners, parents and youth to develop protective measures to help keep chil- dren and youth safe. The proposed changes include: 1. Increasing access to services to help people quit vaping by expanding Tele- health Ontario; 2. Restricting the sale of flavoured vapour products to specialty vape stores and cannabis retail stores, which are restricted to peo- ple aged 19 and over; 3. Restricting the sale of high nicotine vapour prod- ucts (more than 20mg/ml) to specialty vape stores; 4. Working with major online retailers of vapour products and stakeholders to promote the implemen- tation of age-based sales re- strictions for online sales; 5. Requiring specialty vape stores to ensure that va-vape stores to ensure that va-v pour product displays, and promotions are not visible from outside their stores;from outside their stores;f 6. Expanding mental health and addiction ser- vices and resources to in- clude vaping and nicotine addiction; and 7. Establishing a Youth Advisory Committee to provide ongoing advice on vaping. Ontario expects that the proposed regulations will come into effect on May 1, except for the regulatory amendment to restrict the sale of high nicotine vapour products, which the prov- ince expects to come into ef- fect on July 1 to align withfect on July 1 to align withf the federal changes to label- ing of nicotine on products. Stephen Crawford is the MPP for Oakville. PROTECTING YOUTH FROM DANGERS OF VAPING HERE'S WHAT PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT IS DOING TO SAFEGUARD OUR CHILDREN, WRITES STEPHEN CRAWFORD STEPHEN CRAWFORD Column