CSI Blog & Newsroom

Photographer: Priscilla Westra

“Scotiabank’s record-setting $800 million deal for the naming rights to the building that houses Toronto’s Maple Leafs and Raptors is a major move that shifts the sports marketing landscape, but it isn’t without risks, experts say,” wrote Pete Evans for CBC News on September 4, 2017.

Evans continued, “Under terms of the deal announced last week, the bank will pay a reported $40 million a year for the next 20 years to rename the building known as the Air Canada Centre to the Scotiabank Arena.

The price tag is enormous — more than 10 times what Air Canada paid for the inaugural rights nearly two decades ago — and head and shoulders above similar deals elsewhere in the country.

But it’s a premium price for a premium product, branding and marketing expert Tony Chapman said in an interview with CBC News. “I’m a big fan of this deal,” he said. “Sports is one of the last remaining franchises for live eyeballs, and people pay a big premium to be attached to any kind of sport — especially something like hockey in Canada.”

Scotiabank has been tying its brand to hockey for several years, with sponsorships of kids’ hockey programs, a presence with Hockey Night in Canada, and other naming deals with NHL barns in Ottawa and Calgary.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Christopher Flowers

“Global dietary guidelines should change to suggest people can eat more fat than previously thought, with a view to preventing overconsumption of carbohydrates, according to a new international study led by Canadian researchers,” wrote Nicole Ireland for CBC News on August 29, 2017.

Ireland continued, ” “Our findings do not support the current recommendation to limit total fat intake to less than 30 per cent of energy,” said the paper published in the Lancet on Tuesday. “Individuals with high carbohydrate intake might benefit from a reduction in carbohydrate intake and increase in the consumption of fats.”

Scientists from McMaster University in Hamilton and other researchers used questionnaires to document the fat, carbohydrate and protein intake of 135,335 people in 18 countries, then followed them over an average of about seven years.

The research team, led by Mahshid Dehghan, a nutrition epidemiologist at McMaster, was set to present the results of the study at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Nicolas Brown

“Ma’am, I’ll hold your purse.”

“Sir, hang on tight, we’ve got ya.”

“There was no way the gushing skies and culverts of Twin Oaks just outside Houston were going to wash away that famous southern politeness,” wrote Adrienne Arsenault for CBC News on August 29, 2017.

Arsenault continued, “These weren’t the voices of soldiers, police or firefighters. They were a concrete worker and a woman in a sopping Harley-Davidson shirt, and the young woman with somehow impeccable makeup and an even more impressive sense of decency.

The U.S. is well supplied with official first responders, and authorities generally don’t want citizens wandering into harm’s way, even with good intentions. 

Volunteer efforts can be disjointed, dangerous and go horribly wrong. It can be hard to tell what areas have and haven’t been cleared. There’s a litany of reasons to keep unofficial helpers away. But then there’s the reality of this beast named Harvey.

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Michal Jarmoluk

“A Winnipeg couple who say they were pickpocketed in Mexico are out $6,600 after someone apparently used the PIN on their credit card to make fraudulent purchases, and their credit card company says that’s enough reason to not reverse the charges,” wrote Kristin Annable for CBC News on August 22, 2017.

Annable continued, “Rick and Andree Jolicoeur were in Cancun in February when a routine bus trip to get groceries ended with him realizing his wallet had been stolen sometime during their travels.

Since then, they’ve been in a months-long fight with Walmart Canada Bank, which issued their MasterCard. The company says it won’t reverse the charges because it appears the person who used the card knew the four-digit PIN, and the cardholder agreement states a consumer must protect the code.

“If someone has a MasterCard, they won’t realize that this can happen to them — this is atrocious,” Rick Jolicoeur told CBC News.

“We did everything that we are supposed to do.”

Credit card PINs can be stolen

Frances Lawrence, who’s with the Credit Counselling Society, said a PIN can be stolen with the use of a pinhole camera at an ATM or other bank machines. Credit card information can be accessed using a device such a “shimmer” — a new smaller, more powerful and practically impossible to detect kind of skimmer. Shimmers fit inside a card reader and can be installed quickly by a criminal who slides it into the machine while pretending to make a purchase or withdrawal. 

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Linda Xu

“People from all over the world converged Monday on St. Joseph, Mo., a town nestled along the Missouri River just north of Kansas City, to watch an event that many said comes once in a lifetime: a total solar eclipse,” wrote Nicole Mortillaro for CBC News on August 22, 2017.

Mortillaro continued, “Instead of the expected — and usual — sunny August day in the city of about 77,000, the thousands who gathered at Rosecrans Memorial Airport on the edge of town got cloud cover and nearby thunderstorms. 

About 10 minutes before totality, the rain stopped. The crowd erupted in a cheer. The sun, a mere crescent, popped out from behind the clouds.

The jubilation was like a tide: cheers, followed by quiet as the clouds covered the dwindling sun. Then cheers again, as the ever-shrinking sun emerged.

But then it was as if night had descended: the area was thrust into darkness. To the eclipse watchers in the shadow of the moon, it was as if there was a sunset around them in every direction.

Twelve-year old Ava Byrd travelled 18 hours by car from Jacksonville, Fla. with her mother Alicia. She donned her glasses, head craned, hoping for just a glimpse of the sun’s corona. And then, through a break in the clouds, she got it. 

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Marc Mueller

“Imagine losing your smartphone or leaving your laptop behind on a train or bus. How much could someone learn about you — your interests, your lifestyle, your habits — based on what they could access on the device?,” wrote Matthew Braga for CBC News on August 15, 2017.

Braga continued, “What conclusions could someone make when the photos you’ve taken, the apps you’ve installed and the websites you’ve visited are laid bare? 

According to the Supreme Court of Canada: quite a few.

Unlike a briefcase or a filing cabinet, judges have found, a smartphone can contain “immense amounts of information” that touch a person’s “biographical core.”

They’ve acknowledged that laptops create detailed logs and trails of data that can be used to retrace a person’s steps in ways that physical documents can’t.

And lawyers have successfully argued that smartphones and laptops, far from being static stores of information, are in fact portals to the near-limitless volumes of data stored in the cloud — from social media profiles to email accounts and file-sharing apps.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Matthew Henry

“Don Paton spends most of his days pricing new jobs around the factories and industrial sites of Hamilton, or in hands-on work making the electrical connections for the cranes his company installs and repairs,” wrote Kate MacNamara for CBC News on August 13, 2017.

MacNamara continued, “The rest of his time he spends at a computer, usually tackling administrative work for his business, Ontario Crane Service. But last week he sat down to give Bill Morneau, Canada’s finance minister, a piece of his mind.

“To me it’s like, they’re trying to pit one part of society against the other part. Anybody who owns a business is a bad person, because they’ve got money in the bank, or they’ve got a rainy day fund,” he says.

His gripe is the federal government’s proposal to close what it calls tax loopholes that private businesses use. Practices, the government’s literature says, used to “gain unfair tax advantages.”

Paton, and a growing number of business owners across the country, disagree.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Rawpixel.com

“iRobot, the makers of the popular automated vacuum, the Roomba, could share the data it collects about people’s houses to tech companies that create “smart” home tools: corporations like Amazon, Apple, or Google. As Reuters described, the data that iRobot might share elsewhere is “of the spatial variety” – that is, information such as the distance between walls or furniture, the sort of details that might make a device that heats a room more efficient, or might allow someone to market missing items to future customers. Is that weird?,” wrote Colin Horgan for CBC News on August 3, 2017.

Horgan continued, “Privacy advocates think so. Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, a U.K. online rights nonprofit, told the Guardian that iRobot’s decision to share data is a “particularly creepy example of how our privacy can be undermined by companies that want to profit from the information that smart devices can generate about our homes and lives.” Companies ought to treat data about people’s homes as if it were personal data, he said, “and ensure that explicit consent is sought to gather and share this information.”

But even if it were treated as personal data, would anyone be more careful with it?

Reading the terms and conditions

The Roomba’s terms and conditions already carry a clause that states that owners allow data collected to be shared with “other parties in connection with any company transaction, such as a merger, sale of all or a portion of company assets or shares,” as well as in a few other instances. Do company assets include the data the vacuum cleaner collects? Probably. Is that enough of a hint to tell Roomba owners what might happen to the mapping data their vacuum cleaner will collect? Most consumers would likely say no.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Andrew E Weber

“Canada’s national police force is looking to launch a study into the mental and physiological markers for depression, addictions and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in its officers,” wrote Stephanie Taylor for CBC News on August 8, 2017.

Taylor continued, “Details of the study are outlined in a request for proposal listed on the federal government’s buy and sell website, which shows the RCMP is looking to hire a multidisciplinary team of experts, including psychologists, clinicians and psychiatrists, to conduct the research. 

“These specialists will collaborate with the RCMP starting at the cadet level, and then conduct a longitudinal experimental study that will follow those cadets over the next 10 years,” Cpl. Annie Delisle, a spokesperson for the RCMP, wrote in an email response to CBC News.

CBC was told an interview could not be accommodated by the time of deadline. 

New treatments

Researchers would be required to focus on identifying the psychological and physiological markers for operational stress injuries like PTSD in officers.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Negative Space

“Physicians are being advised by their insurer that patients could record them using smartphones — with or without permission,” wrote Vik Adhopia for CBC News on July 30, 2017.

Adhopia continued, “The Canadian Medical Protective Association, which among other legal services, insures doctors against malpractice, recommends physicians consider setting recording policies for their clinics.

Dr. Douglas Bell, managing director of the CMPA, said some doctors aren’t sure what to say when patients want to record either audio or video of them.

“We’re starting to receive more and more calls about recordings by patients,” he said.

Under Canadian law, consent isn’t required to record another person. But it gets complicated if that material is posted online. For example, YouTube will consider removing a video if a person feels it violates their privacy. But only if the individual in the video is, what the company calls “uniquely identifiable,” which may be a matter of opinion.”

Read the full article here.