Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.
I’m looking forward to an iPhone upgrade year and leapfrogging to AirPods Pro 3 — hopefully this time I can get a good fit without needing third party ear tips!
I’m also curious about Apple’s new crossbody straps. Not for my phone — I haven’t used a case in years — but maybe as an adjustable strap for my smaller cameras.
There’s got to be someone who’ll review this use case, right? And if not… consider this my open call.
Back in February 2022, I made a commitment to myself. I set out to add a bit more positivity to the internet by reaching out to writers whose work inspired me, or photographers whose images resonated with me. I wanted to thank them for their efforts and let them know their work was appreciated.
It is all too common for people to move through life without peers, friends, or family recognizing the importance of their work or the ways they’ve shaped others’ lives. In my personal life, it was only after my father died that many of the kids he’d mentored reached out to me to share how he had positively affected the course of their lives. His Facebook feed was filled with comments from people who had benefitted from his generosity and kindness. But I was left wondering: had they ever told him directly about his impact? And if they had, might he have avoided his death of despair?
And I’ve seen the power of professional recognition–and felt the cost of its absence. Years ago, after a major project wrapped up, I realized I had forgotten to recognize the exemplary contribution of a junior staff member. I went back into the room to point out how critical their work had been. That small moment of recognition, as it turned out, had a profound impact on their career trajectory. And it was only after I left my last professional job that people contacted me from around Canada about how the work I produced had influenced them, their practice, and their thinking. I’ll be honest: when I left that job, I felt like I’d been writing into a void. Almost no one ever directly recognized the work I was producing or the value they placed in it.
On Glass, I try to leave a couple of comments on other photographers’ work each month. Sometimes those comments are short, like “Love the composition!👏👏👏 ,” or “Great use of tonality across the frame! 👏👏👏” Other times, when I have more bandwidth, I write longer, more substantive reflections on what I see in their images.
I think this kind of recognition matters. Too often, we wait until it’s too late to share it. Positive, explicit recognition can motivate people who may not have received much encouragement otherwise. It’s one of the many reasons why I support Neale James’ Photowalk Podcast and the community of kindness that he fosters with every single episode.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how to take this further. For me, the next step has been to begin collecting prints or zines from photographers whose work or practice I deeply admire. I’m not buying prints from the famous names you see in galleries–no Martin Parrs for me!–but photographers working in niches that speak to me. Owning their prints feels special. It’s not just me saying “great work,” it’s me saying, to them, “I value this enough to want it in my home.”
There are practical challenges with purchasing other people’s work. As we know, shipping expenses, cost of making physical artefacts, and the economic realities facing both buyers and artists can impede purchasing other creatives’ work. We can’t all afford to purchase prints regularly. But even buying one piece every year, every few years, or even once a decade can make a meaningful difference. It’s a way of supporting creativity and giving artists recognition that lasts.
What’s powerful about this isn’t only the financial support. It’s the intimacy of having someone’s work become part of your everyday life. Unlike a gallery exhibition, which is temporary and public, a print hanging in your home or office is permanent and personal. It shapes the space you live in, and every time you see it you’re reminded of the artist and the respect you have for their work.
That, to me, is one of the most profound ways we can support and recognize each other as creators. It’s something that I continue to do, and I appreciate the works of others that I have the privilege of viewing on a regular basis.
In closing, if a creator’s work inspires you then I’d strongly encourage you to leave a comment, send a note, or even consider acquiring a print. It might mean more than you know.
I’m an amateur Toronto-based documentary and street photographer, and have been making images on the street for over a decade. In the fall of 2023 I purchased a used Leica Q2. I’d wanted the camera for a while, but it wasn’t until late 2023 that I began running into situations where I’d benefit from a full-frame sensor. Since then I’ve been going out and making images with it at least once a week for hours at a time and have made tens of thousands of frames in all kinds of weather.
In this post I discuss my experiences using the Leica Q2 in a variety of weather conditions to make monochromatic JPG images. I tend to exclusively use either single-point autofocus or zone focusing, and either multi-field or highlight-weighted exposure modes, generally while using aperture priority at 1/500s to freeze action on the street. My edits to images have, previously, used Apple Photos and now rely on the Darkroom app on my iPad Pro. You can see the kinds of images that I’ve been making on my Glass profile.
A new study from the London School of Economics highlights how AI systems can reinforce existing inequalities when used for high risk activities like social care.
Writing in The Guardian, Jessica Murray describes how Google’s Gemma model summarized identical case notes differently depending on gender.
An 84-year-old man, “Mr Smith,” was described as having a “complex medical history, no care package and poor mobility,” while “Mrs Smith” was portrayed as “[d]espite her limitations, she is independent and able to maintain her personal care.” In another example, Mr Smith was noted as “unable to access the community,” but Mrs Smith as “able to manage her daily activities.”
These subtle but significant differences risk making women’s needs appear less urgent, and could influence the care and resources provided. By contrast, Meta’s Llama 3 did not use different language based on gender, underscoring that bias can vary across models and the need to measure bias in LLMs adopted for public service delivery
These findings reinforce why AI systems must be valid and reliable, safe, transparent, accountable, privacy-protective, and human-rights affirming. This is especially the case in high risk settings where AI systems affect decisions linked with accessing essential public services.
The global pivot away from AI safety is now driving a lot of international AI policy. This shift is often attributed to the current U.S. administration and is reshaping how liberal democracies approach AI governance.
In a recent article on Lawfare, author Jakub Kraus argues there are deeper reasons behind this shift. Specifically, countries such as France had already begun reorienting toward innovation-friendly frameworks before the activities of the current American administration. The rapid emergence of ChatGPT also sparked a fear of missing out and a surge in AI optimism, while governments also confronted the perceived economic and military opportunities associated with AI technologies.
Kraus concludes his article by arguing that there may be some benefits of emphasizing opportunity over safety while, also, recognizing the risks of not building up effective international or domestic governance institutions.
However, if AI systems are not designed to be safe, transparent, accountable, privacy protective, or human rights affirming then there is a risk that people will lack trust in these systems based on the actual and potential harms of them being developed and deployed without sufficient regulatory safeguards. The result could be a birthing or fostering of a range of socially destructive harms and long-term hesitancy to take advantage of the potential benefits associated with emerging AI technologies.
While much of the attention around Canada’s Bill C-2: An Act respecting certain measures relating to the security of the border between Canada and the United States and respecting other related security measures has focused on its lawful access and interception aspects, one notable change has flown under the radar: amendments to the Oceans Act that quietly expand the Canadian Coast Guard’s mandate to include intelligence functions.
Specifically, the bill proposes updating the Coast Guard’s responsibilities to include:
security, including security patrols and the collection, analysis and disclosure of information or intelligence.1
This language, paired with provisions granting the Minister explicit authority to collect, analyze, and disclose intelligence,2 marks a meaningful shift. The update would echo the U.S. model, where the Coast Guard is both a maritime safety organization and an intelligence actor. The U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence (CG-2) has long played a dual role in maritime domain awareness and national security operations.
There are a few strategic implications:
1. NATO and National Security Alignment: The expanded role may help Canada meet NATO funding expectations, especially where the Coast Guard is deployed to conduct maritime surveillance and to maintain an Arctic presence.
2. Statutory Authority: These changes might establish a legal basis for intelligence collection practices that are already occurring, but until now may have lacked clear legislative grounding.
3. Redundancy and Resilience: With global intelligence sharing under strain, having a domestic maritime intelligence function could serve as a backstop if access to allied intelligence is reduced.
4. Northern Operations: Coast Guard vessels, which are not militarized like Royal Canadian Navy warships, are well-positioned to operate in the Arctic and northern waters, offering intelligence capabilities without the geopolitical weight of a military presence.
To be clear, this wouldn’t transform the Canadian Coast Guard into an intelligence agency. But it would give the institution statutory authorities that, until now, have not explicitly been within its official purview.
It’s a small clause in a big bill, but one worth watching. As researchers, journalists, and civil society take a closer look at Bill C-2, this expansion of maritime intelligence authority could (and should) draw more attention.
Western policy makers, understandably, often focus on how emerging technologies can benefit their own administrative and governance processes. Looking beyond the Global North to understand how other countries are experimenting with administrative technologies, such as those with embedded AI capacities, can productively reveal the benefits and challenges of applying new technologies at scale.
The Rest of the World continues to be a superb resource for getting out of prototypical discussions and news cycles, with its vision of capturing people’s experiences of technology outside of the Western world.
Their recent article, “Brazil’s AI-powered social security app is wrongly rejecting claims,” on the use of AI technologies South American and Latin American countries reveals the profound potential that automation has for processing social benefits claims…as well as how they can struggle with complex claims and further disadvantage the least privileged in society. In focusing on Brazil, we learn about how the government is turning to automated systems to expedite access to service; while in aggregate these automated systems may be helpful, there are still complex cases where automation is impairing access to (now largely automated) government services and benefits.
The article also mentions how Argentina is using generative AI technologies to help draft court opinions and Costa Rica is using AI systems to optimize tax filing and detect fraudulent behaviours. It is valuable for Western policymakers to see how smaller or more nimble or more resource constrained jurisdictions are integrating automation into service delivery, and learn from their positive experiences and seek to improve upon (or avoid similar) innovation that leads to inadequate service delivery.
Governments are very different from companies. They provide service and assistance to highly diverse populations and, as such, the ‘edge cases’ that government administrators must handle require a degree of attention and care that is often beyond the obligations that corporations have or adopt towards their customer base. We can’t ask, or expect, government administrators to behave like companies because they have fundamentally different obligations and expectations.
It behooves all who are considering the automation of public service delivery to consider how this goal can be accomplished in a trustworthy and responsible manner, where automated services work properly and are fit for purpose, and are safe, privacy protective, transparent and accountable, and human rights affirming. Doing anything less risks entrenching or further systematizing existing inequities that already harm or punish the least privileged in our societies.
There’s a lot happening, legislatively in Ontario. One item worth highlighting concerns the requirement for Ontario colleges and universities to develop security research plans.
The federal government has been warning that Canadian academic research is at risk of exfiltration or theft by foreign actors, including by foreign-influenced professors or students who work in Canadian research environments, or by way of electronic and trade-based espionage. In response, the federal government has established a series of guidance documents that Canadian researchers and universities are expected to adhere to where seeking certain kinds of federal funding.
The Ontario government introduced Bill 33, Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025 on May 29, 2025. Notably, Schedule 3 introduces requirements for security plans for Ontario college of applied arts and technology and publicly funded university.
The relevant text from the legislation states as follows:
Research security plan
Application
20.1 (1) This section applies to every college of applied arts and technology and to every publicly-assisted university.
Development and implementation of plan
(2) Every college or university described in subsection (1) shall develop and implement a research security plan to safeguard, and mitigate the risk of harm to or interference with, its research activities.
Minister’s directive
(3) The Minister may, from time to time, in a directive issued to one or more colleges or universities described in subsection (1),
(a) specify the date by which a college or university’s research security plan must be developed and implemented under subsection (2);
(b) specify the date by which a plan must be provided to the Minister under subsection (4) and any requirements relating to updating or revising a plan; and
(c) specify topics to be addressed or elements to be included in a plan and the date by which they must be addressed.
Review by Minister
(4) Every college or university described in subsection (1) shall provide the Minister with a copy of its research security plan and any other information or reports requested by the Minister in respect of research security.
Japan has passed legislation that will significantly reshape the range of cyber operations that its government agencies can undertake. As reported by The Record, the law will enable the following.
The broader result of this legislative update will be to further align the Japanese government, and its agencies, with its Five Eyes friends and allies.
It will be interesting to learn over time whether these activities are impaired by the historical stovepiping of Japan’s defence and SIGINT competencies. Historically the strong division between these organizations impeded cyber operations and was an issue that the USA (and NSA in particular) had sought to have remedied over a decade ago. If these issues persist then the new law may not be taken up as effectively as would otherwise be possible.
John L. Young, founder of Cryptome, has died.
John’s work at Cryptome was inspirational for much of the work that I did during my doctorate and time at the Citizen Lab. His unwavering commitment to transparency and efforts to hold the powerful accountable was an early and important light, showing how digital archives could be used to promote real change.
While we never met, his commitment to transparency and accountability will live on with me and many others.
You can learn about the history of Cryptome on Wikipedia.
Excited Pixels