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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
April 29, 2023 - 29 avril 2023
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NDP calls for Liberals to block extradition of Dr. Hassan Diab | |
ICLMG: Canada must protect Hassan Diab | |
Alex Neve and Robert Currie: Up to Canada to end 15 years of injustice for Hassan Diab | |
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Law360 Canada 25/04/23 - Writing in Law360 Canada on March 30, on the eve of an in absentia trial opening in France against Dr. Hassan Diab, a Canadian academic accused of carrying out a horrific 1980 terrorist bombing outside a Parisian synagogue, we wrote of the many surreal Kafkaesque layers to the case. We highlighted that both the French and Canadian governments had the ability and responsibility to press for this labyrinth of injustice to end.
We wrote with hope that justice would prevail. At the same time, unfortunately, we knew there was a very likely prospect it would not. That is because, at almost every turn over the past 15 years, justice has been relegated to the back seat. Sadly, that has once again been the outcome. In a brief ruling delivered at 5:30 p.m. on April 21, just one day after the three-week trial concluded, Hassan Diab was found guilty and sentenced to a life prison term.
It defies belief.
There is no new incriminating evidence that has come to light since Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger’s 2011 extradition ruling in which he concluded that, “the case presented by the Republic of France against Mr. Diab is a weak case; the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial, seem unlikely.” There is no new incriminating evidence that has surfaced since January 2018 when the two French judges tasked with digging into the case concluded, after three years of investigating, that there was no evidence to justify even laying charges and proceeding with a trial.
Quite the contrary, over those years, the evidence against Diab — particularly the handwriting analysis relied upon by French prosecutors — was convincingly further discredited, and the French investigatory judges also compiled evidence corroborating his consistent assertion that he had been writing his university exams in Lebanon at the time of the bombing.
But 42 years of a complete failure of accountability for this calculatingly cruel terrorist crime has been such an indictment of the French justice system. A betrayal of justice for families and survivors. The pressure and expectations for there to be a conviction, seemingly of anyone, has become an irresistible force. And on April 21 that did indeed carry the day.
What next?
The very likely possibility is that French authorities will make a second request of Canada for Diab’s extradition. The first time, despite Justice Maranger’s evident misgivings, the extradition went ahead after a six-year legal battle, because the threshold set under Canada’s Extradition Act is so unbelievably low. Justice was clearly not served.
When Diab was eventually released after three years of solitary confinement in France and returned to his family in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted, in hindsight, that what had happened to him should never have happened and should never happen again. Indeed, it should never happen again, which will necessitate saying no to France. This time Canada can and must get it right. Read more - Lire plus
'The ordeal' is not over for Hassan Diab after French court sentences him to life in prison
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ICLMG testifies on cybersecurity and cyberwarfare at the National Defence Committee | |
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ICLMG 05/04/23 - Our national coordinator, Tim McSorley, testified on March 31, 2023, at the Standing Committee on National Defence for their study of cybersecurity and cyberwarfare.
ICLMG recommended that:
- Strict separations be established between the CSE’s signals intelligence and cybersecurity activities, including restrictions on information sharing
- Greater restrictions be placed on the collection, retention and use of both metadata and so-called “publicly available information”
- Stricter requirements be placed on foreign intelligence and cybersecurity authorizations, as well as approvals of active and defensive cyber operations, to ensure the CSE’s compliance with its obligations towards oversight and review bodies; this includes reporting on the impact of previous activities
- The CSE immediately implement a system to allow NSIRA to access its records
- A full review of the CSE’s active and defensive cyber activities take place, with a particular view to compliance with international law and Canada’s role in escalating the promulgation of cyberwarfare activities
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The government review and restrict the CSE’s international mass surveillance activities Read more - Lire plus
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ICLMG: Privacy, technology and surveillance: What to watch for | |
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CAUT 02/2023 - It’s no secret that governments and corporations have been collecting, using and analyzing our data. The tools they employ have been rapidly increasing in number and complexity — from spyware to social media crawlers to algorithmic analysis. Canadian laws, however, have struggled to keep pace with technology. The ability to detect and punish the unlawful collection and use of our personal information has fallen behind. There is an urgent need for new legislation to counter unethical surveillance.
Unfortunately, it’s not just private companies, but government bodies — including national security and intelligence agencies — who have taken advantage of gaps in legislation and privacy protections, and even lobbied for them to be entrenched in legislation. This winter and spring, privacy, technology and surveillance are finally being debated on Parliament Hill. With academics at the forefront of important research on sometimes controversial subjects, they may be particularly vulnerable to unwarranted censorship or sanction. Below are some key areas to watch in the coming months.
Facial recognition technology (FRT)
In 2020, news reports revealed US firm Clearview AI’s illegal practice of scraping social media to create databases of billions of facial images for use by law enforcement around the world. This included the RCMP and various police services across Canada. An investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) found that Clearview AI had broken Canadian law and that the RCMP’s use raised serious concerns. However, the OPC also pointed out that there are only a patchwork of laws governing facial recognition in Canada; essentially, nothing would prevent another Clearview AI from setting up shop in Canada, or force law enforcement to regulate its use of FRT to protect basic rights. It’s imperative that the federal government consult with the public and introduce legislation to address this problem. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Privacy, Ethics and Access to Information also called for legislation following their months-long study of FRT, and even suggested a moratorium on the police use of FRT until new rules were in place. The government is required to table a response to the committee’s report but has not done so yet.
Encryption
Strong encryption is essential to protecting our personal information online, including from fraud and theft. Safe internet banking, medical platforms, online messaging and video conferencing apps would not be possible without it. For years, the Canadian government was a strong proponent of encryption. Recently, though, in line with its Five Eyes partners of the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, Canada started arguing that encryption must be weakened to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to our private communications. Beyond the fact that there is no legitimate reason for government agencies to have that kind of access, it also ignores that any backdoor created to read our encrypted messages would be readily available to authoritarian regimes, and eventually to hackers. It is imperative that the federal government change course through both public statements and legislation.
Social media surveillance
As government agencies work to find ways to access our private, encrypted communications, they have already begun the mass surveillance and analysis of our public communications. Using tools like Babel X, the RCMP engages in social media surveillance to monitor for threats, arguing that social media content is public information, so does not constitute spying. However, posting or sharing on social media does not equate to consent that it be used in other ways, and even publicly shared information can constitute personal data. Furthermore, multiple pieces of information, shared separately, can together paint a very detailed (and privacy intrusive) picture. In 2019, the government adopted new legislation that allows federal intelligence agencies like CSIS to collect “publicly available information” — a term not defined in the law. Privacy advocates have called for clarity, to no avail.
Facebook owner Meta is currently suing Voyager Labs, a social media surveillance firm, for creating 38,000 fake Facebook profiles to scrape data from some 600,000 users, in order to identify individuals who pose a “security threat” — information it then licensed to US law enforcement agencies. The company’s argument? That their analysis is based on publicly available information. While we have no evidence of Canadian law enforcement using such invasive tools, we know the RCMP has created fake Facebook profiles in the past to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in Toronto. Little would stop them from also turning to this powerful form of social media surveillance, and even lying to us about it.
Bill C-27
The government introduced Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act in 2022. It is a substantial, long overdue bill that would heavily modify federal private sector privacy laws. Perhaps the strongest part of the bill is its proposal to finally grant the OPC order-making powers that are backed up by monetary penalties (although subject to approval by a problematic new tribunal). The bill fails, however, to firmly entrench privacy as a fundamental right, which would ensure that our personal information received the protection it merits.
The bill also includes the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) to regulate the use of AI tools in the private sector — including, for example, the development of facial recognition and algorithmic surveillance tools. However, it leaves the bulk of the definitions and rules to be determined by regulation after the bill is adopted. The bill also contains a blanket exception for the use of any AI tools by national security bodies or any other department prescribed by regulation. Opposition parties have taken note of the AIDA’s dangerous flaws and are threatening to kill that part of the bill. While regulation of AI is urgently needed in Canada — to limit surveillance, among other things — entrenching such a bad piece of legislation would be worse than no bill at all.
It will be important that the public and civil society groups engage with government officials on these questions in the coming months. This includes academics, students and staff who rely on academic freedom, and freedom of expression and association so keenly for their work, and who have been and remain staunch defenders of these fundamental rights. Source
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What happened to women, teens missing from repatriation flight? Family receives proof of life from Syria | |
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CTV News 19/04/2023 - After two weeks of nightmarish silence, one Edmonton family finally received proof of life from their loved ones who disappeared from a detention camp in northeast Syria. The two women, who are sisters-in-law, and three teenage daughters had been detained at the Al-Hol camp and were supposed to be on a repatriation plane that flew out of Syria on April 5. The five Canadians never made it to the meeting point.
According to lawyer Zachary Al-Khatib, who represents the Edmonton mother of one woman who went missing, his client received a call from an unknown number at 6:02 a.m. MDT on Tuesday. When she picked up the phone she heard her daughter's voice.
"(She said) they were alive and had been in prison for the last 11 days and mistreated by Kurdish guards - that they were in need of medical attention. All their personal belongings were confiscated and they had nothing but the clothes on their back," said Al-Khatib. Al-Khatib says the conversation between the detainee and her mother lasted four minutes. Then the phone call was abruptly "cut off."
An incomplete mission
The five were part of group of 19 Canadians that Global Affairs Canada agreed to bring home after they sued the federal government in federal court. The women and children have been languishing for years in sprawling camps run by Kurdish forces. The camps hold wives, widows and children of foreigners who are suspected of joining the Islamic State during the Syrian civil war. The GAC settlement was reached in January, but there didn't appear to be movement on the matter until RCMP officers visited the camp at the end of March.
The plan, according to Al-Khatib, was for the group of five to be driven from Al-Hol to meet up with a larger group detained at Al-Roj camp. From there, all 19 Canadians would be taken to a nearby airstrip where they would transported out of the region on a U.S. military plane to Germany. In Germany, the detainees were to be transferred onto flights to Canada. Al-Khatib says the two sisters-in-law were given assurances by Global Affairs that repatriation would take place. They identified themselves to Kurdish authorities for transfer as directed by Global Affairs. Then they went missing.
The Red Prison
Al-Khatib says the family learned through backchannels that the women and teen girls, all under 18 years old, were taken to two separate prisons in the area, including one with the ominous nickname "the red prison." According to human rights workers, Al-Hol camp is one of the most dangerous detention camps in the area. Letta Tayler is an associate director at Human Rights Watch who researches the Islamic State. Tayler last visited Al-Hol camp last year. She says there are areas of the camp still controlled by ISIS that security forces are too afraid to patrol. Tayler says "the red prison" is likely a red-brick-coloured tower surrounded by barbed wire in Al-Hol, which is operated by the Asayish Internal Security Forces. Tayler says detainees are taken to the building for questioning before they are transferred elsewhere. "It's used for interrogation. Some women have alleged they were mistreated and in some cases tortured inside," Tayler said. Some women and boys have recounted being physically mistreated in latrine cubicles used as detention cells. [...]
In her conversation, Mast told the Edmonton woman last week that it may take two more months before Global Affairs can arrange another flight. Al-Khatib says Global Affairs has now confirmed to the family that the detainees have been moved to the safer Al-Roj camp. Al-Roj is also closer to the U.S.-owned airstrip used for flights. The lawyer says the Canadian government needs to account for this failed repatriation. "We need assurances now that they really are safe… The government has not, up until this point, fulfilled its commitments to them," said Al-Khatib. "We need a timeline for their immediate repatriation." Read more - Lire plus
ACTION: Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now!
ACTION: Call/Write to Ensure Ottawa Obeys Court Order to Bring Canadian Detainees Home from Syria ASAP
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Reasonable Cause to Suspect by Sally Lane review – my son, the enemy of the state | |
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ICLMG 27/03/2023 - A mother’s frank and heartfelt tale of trying to free her son – labelled ‘Jihadi Jack’ by the press – from a Kurdish jail is the stuff of nightmares. It is nearly a decade since Sally Lane received the phone call that changed her life for ever. It came from her elder son, Jack Letts, then 18, who had been travelling in Jordan on a gap-year trip from their home in Oxford. “Mum, I’m in Syria,” Jack said, beginning a chain of events that saw Lane lose her home and her job and, for a time, her freedom. Jack was calling from Raqqa, where he had gone in search of a Muslim caliphate he had fatefully, adolescently, come to idealise, before the horrors of Islamic State were known to the world.
“It is difficult to describe the terror of knowing your child is in the most dangerous place on earth and there is nothing you can do about it,” Lane writes in her frank and clear-eyed account of the years that followed. Her book is a tale of survival and an account of the legal process that consumed her and her husband, John Letts, in the name of counter-terrorism. The thread that runs through the story is Lane’s maternal refusal to give up on a son who became known as a pariah across the world (“Jihadi Jack” as he was christened in 2016 by a Sunday Times journalist) and who was subsequently stripped of citizenship by a government more concerned with headlines than justice. A son who remains to this day in a Kurdish prison, long convicted in the public mind, with scant evidence, of association with crimes against humanity.
If Lane’s night-terrors about Jack’s chosen fate were not enough, she and John were persecuted and eventually prosecuted for their efforts to save their son. A £6m investigation – “Operation Kilojoule” – into their limited interactions with Jack after he was trapped, willingly and then unwillingly behind IS lines, saw them brought to trial at the Old Bailey in 2019, for “funding terrorism”. Their crime? Sending – against conflicting official advice – a little more than £200 in 2015 to try to get Jack out of Syria (and for him to replace a pair of broken glasses). I sat through some of that trial and subsequently wrote about Lane and Letts. It was hard not to conclude that they had been used by the Prevent programme as extreme evidence of its “even handedness”. If this white, liberal, middle-class couple – he was a heritage wheat farmer, she worked for development charities and the NHS – could be in the dock, how could the anti-terror programme be criticised for unfairly targeting British Muslims?
Lane details the consequences of this process as it spread through their lives: first they were abandoned by fearful friends and colleagues, then John lost his business, then their bank accounts and all assets were frozen, their computers and phones seized and their search history deconstructed. They were trashed on social media, targeted by hate groups. One judge locked them up and another bailed them in the belief that they were “two perfectly decent people who have ended up in custody because of love of their child”. [...]
In 2017, hope that he might return home to face justice emerged after Raqqa fell and he escaped alive; it was dashed when they discovered he was being held in a cell built for five people with 30 others; that he spent months in a solitary space not large enough for him to lie down. In that period the UK government allowed at least 400 IS volunteers to come back, often without sanction, but decreed that Jack and Shamima Begum – the two prisoners who had made the most tabloid headlines – must lose their British citizenship.
Lane – whose story continues to attract more judgment than sympathy – records every circle of despair and false hope with heartfelt candour. After her relationship with John broke down, she moved to Ottawa – on a cargo ship because she is on a no-fly list – where she continues to campaign for her son to be repatriated in Canada. Her book is a compelling expression of that determination – one that awaits its final chapter. Read more - Lire plus
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'A chilling effect': Muslim charities fall prey to Canada’s double standards | |
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MEE 25/04/2023 - In March 2017, ISNA Islamic Services of Canada, a Muslim charity that operated in Ontario, was sent a notice that its charitable status was being revoked and that in 30 days it would be shut down without any other recourse. The Notice of Intention to Revoke (NITR) was the result of a years-long audit, in which the CRA said the organisation failed to meet the necessary requirements to be constituted for charitable purposes, including failing to devote resources to charitable activities and maintain adequate books and records. The CRA also accused the organisation of possibly funding a Pakistani militant group.
By May of that year, it ceased to be a charity operating in Canada. But while the news coverage at the time largely focused on alleged terror links, experts in the charity sector say charities like this one have been a part of a decades-long clampdown on Muslim charitable organisations, in which they were unfairly targeted due to Islamophobic bias and then given an unequal appeals process. Middle East Eye looked through the audits of dozens of charities over the last decade, and while most were given ample time and space to object to being shut down, none of the Muslim charities seen by MEE were given the same opportunities to object to and delay the revocation of their charitable status.
The Canadian government’s conduct highlights the discrepancy between how some charities are treated during and after being audited and how the Canadian government treats Muslim charities, researchers, and practitioners in the charity sector have told Middle East Eye. "This isn't fair because it's not the same way other faith groups or other sectors operate," said Mahmuda Khan, executive director of the charity, Human Concern International, a Muslim charity that was not shut down but was suspended. "The fear that we have, the extra cautiousness that we have, the levels of due diligence and compliance that we're thinking of doing. [In] having forums and dialogues with others in the sector, I don't see that fear in others."
Middle East Eye looked at 63 Notices of Intention to Revoke (NITRs) that were sent to Canadian charities between 2015 and 2019. Of those charities, 38 were allowed the opportunity to object and delay their revocation by submitting a response, while 25 were not given the same chance and would have had to obtain an order from the federal appeals court. However, MEE also viewed NITRs that were sent during that same period to five Muslim charities, all of which were told that regardless of whether they filed an objection, their charitable status would be revoked unless they received an order from the appeals court.
"It seems unfair. If you're giving this notice of intent, and then basically saying, well we're going to revoke whatever you do anyway, where's the fairness? I mean, there should be some process," said Faisal Kutty, a lawyer and associate professor at Southwestern Law School who has advised dozens of Muslim charities and groups trying to apply for charitable status in Canada. [...] Kutty told MEE that even though Muslim charities are given some type of option to oppose being shut down, the actual reality of fighting back is incredibly difficult.
"The theory is you can oppose these things, you can fight these things. But the practical reality is that once this is out, people are not going to even give you money to do a legal challenge to fight it," Kutty told MEE. "The challenge is not like you just stand up and challenge. You're going to end up mounting a legal challenge, a PR challenge. So where do you get money for that now? We've had cases where the funds are frozen."
The CRA told MEE that as a "general rule", charities can file an objection to the agency's appeal branch within 90 days of receiving a letter saying they intended to revoke their status. But charities like the Ottawa Islamic Centre and Assalam Mosque, ISNA Islamic Services of Canada, The Canada Islamic Trust Foundation, the Islamic Shia Assembly, and the Anatolia Cultural Foundation all received letters saying that their statuses would be revoked after 30 days, regardless of whether they objected to it or not. "The Muslim charities who were faced with audits and revocations were never granted the opportunity to delay the revocation of their status," Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG), told MEE.
Middle East Eye asked the CRA why during the years between 2015 and 2019 there appeared to be an inconsistency in how Muslim charities were treated versus other organisations. The CRA told MEE it can't discuss specific cases, but added that it has two types of revocations, a 90-day revocation and a 30-day one. "Consideration is always given to proceeding with a 90-day Notice of intention to revoke, unless an organization has demonstrated egregious non-compliance," the CRA said. But in the cases where a 30-day notice is given, the CRA will "not hold the revocation in abeyance given the seriousness of the non-compliance", unless it receives an order staying publication of the notice of revocation from the Federal Court of Appeal within 30 days. Yet in four of the NITRs seen by MEE that were sent to Muslim charities, the option to obtain a court order to prevent revocation was not outlined in the letters. Read more - Lire plus
The "pro-Israel" smear campaign to cancel a global charity: The terrorism allegations were false, but the nonprofit still lost access to banking and financial tools
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NDP plans humanitarian exemption amendment for bill easing aid restrictions
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The Hill Times 19/04/2023 - The New Democrats say they will be pushing for an exemption on humanitarian grounds to a government bill that is attempting to allow Canadian aid groups to operate in terrorist-controlled areas and not run afoul of criminal law. Aid organizations have been calling for a humanitarian carveout so they can work in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover.
The government’s response to the call, Bill C-41, creates a process by which aid groups can apply for exemptions to Canada’s prohibition of work that could benefit a terrorist group. The bill, tabled on March 9, is currently in front of the House of Commons Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The proposed framework requires an application to the ministers of foreign affairs or immigration, which would then be followed by a security review by the minister of public safety. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) defended the approach at an April 17 House Justice Committee meeting, while opposition MPs criticized the proposed framework as being time consuming and creating additional barriers to the delivery of aid.
NDP MP Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, Alta.), her party’s foreign affairs and international development critic [called] Bill C-41 “bad legislation.” Following the April 17 committee meeting, McPherson told The Hill Times that she will be moving an amendment for a carveout for humanitarian organizations that are already given protection under international law, noting that she will also try to strengthen the legislation for “international development and other activities.” That carveout would preclude humanitarian organizations from the security review. “The very least we expect is a humanitarian carveout,” she said, adding that opposition MPs are still in discussions regarding proposed amendments, but that there is “widespread” support for the proposal.
A humanitarian carveout is the approach that Doctors Without Borders Canada is hoping for, having called for a standing humanitarian exemption. “We should remove humanitarian actions from the scope of criminality within the Criminal Code,” said Joe Belliveau, executive director of Doctors Without Borders Canada. “With a few tweaks and a few changes to the language, that could be done. You could still have your bill. That bill would still be applicable to certain types of actions and responses, it just would not be applicable where international humanitarian law already applies.” Doctors Without Borders has been among the loudest voices opposed to Bill C-41 as currently written.
Belliveau said he’s concerned with the potentially long bureaucratic timeline before an applicant would be approved, as well as the effect of being seen as an organization that is approved by the Canadian government. “What Bill C-41 would do—because it places humanitarian organizations under such intense, unprecedented government scrutiny and control—it would compromise our independence. It would essentially be tantamount to the government cozying up to humanitarian actors to decide whether or not we can provide the life-saving activities that we intend to provide.” He said the process will also compromise aid organizations’ neutrality, which he said is essential for them to negotiate with armed actors. “If they see us as being an extension, essentially, of the Canadian government, or any other government, they won’t see us as neutral and we will lose our ability to negotiate that access,” he said.
Belliveau said the proposed framework would subject organizations and individuals to a “high amount” of scrutiny from intelligence agencies. “Essentially, it would provide an intelligence windfall to security agencies in a manner that they would otherwise not have a reason to be collecting the personal data and personal information,” he said. “We also find that level of invasiveness highly problematic.” He said there is a “very strong security bias running through this whole process.” If the bill passes as is, Belliveau said his organization might not take part in the authorization. “At this stage, we’re looking at the options if Bill C-41 goes through as is. I think that, given the compromises to humanitarian action and the constrictions [and] inconsistencies with IHL [international humanitarian law] proposed through this process, it would be very difficult for us to comply,” he said. [...]
Immigration and refugee lawyer Maureen Silcoff said the focus should be on streamlining the process so that aid can be delivered expeditiously, and called for the government to adopt a non-prosecution policy as the bill goes forward and the new framework is implemented. “That is something that needs serious and urgent attention,” she said. Silcoff said the framework that has been proposed could lead to lengthy processing times. “A simple application for a visitor’s visa … can take months,” she said. “This is far more complex. Security issues appear to be top of mind in this bill.” “I can’t imagine this is a quick process,” she said. “The concern is the scheme, as it is set up, really lends itself to delays in processing. Given that we can anticipate those delays now, we have to rethink the scheme.” Source
Charities find loopholes in 'broken' terror laws to help Afghans as MPs study bill
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Canadian Surveillance Under the Microscope | |
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The Tyee 24/04/2023 - Miller’s latest film, Manufacturing the Threat, screening at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 5, comes from a desire to tell another untold story. The documentary follows the lives of Amanda Korody and John Nuttall, who goes by the name Omar in the film. In 2013, after the couple had converted to Islam, they were arrested for plotting to bomb the B.C. legislature.
Although a jury found the couple guilty in 2015, the charges were put on hold as a B.C. Supreme Court judge later ruled that Korody and Nuttall had been entrapped by undercover police officers guiding the couple into plotting a terrorist act. Miller views the Korody and Nuttall entrapment as a catalyst to examine the history of surveillance in the Canadian government. And how undercover agents could use similar tactics to infiltrate movements led by other minority groups in the future. Ahead of the festival, The Tyee caught up with Miller to talk about her new documentary and the power of film to hold organizations and people accountable.
The Tyee: What inspired you to create Manufacturing the Threat?
Amy Miller: The main inspiration was the fact that no one had told this story. My buddy Alex Popovic wrote a book called Produire la menace (Manufacturing the Threat) and the film’s inspired from the book. He documents different cases about state surveillance as agent provocateurs. I thought, “Wow, who has made the film that talks about this?’ So often [the discussion] comes down to “this happens in the States, with the FBI or the CIA using agent provocateurs.”
We know about cases where that happens, where they target activists. But who’s looking at Canada? As a producer, it’s not the smartest move because it limits your market in terms of who’s going to buy your film. The U.S. is a way bigger market. But in terms of popular education for the people here, it’s so important.
No one had made that film, and I have doubts if I hadn’t made it in five years, nevermind 10 years or 15 years, nobody else would. [...]
The Tyee: The film begins with people speaking about the history of the RCMP and Canadian surveillance, before getting into the Nuttall and Korody case. What was your decision-making process behind that introduction?
Amy Miller: The whole idea is to show that this is not just one example, but there’s a systematic process to this. I’m not trying to create paranoia in people, but I’m trying to say: Look at how it’s been done historically. It’s definitely part of the main thesis of the film. We have to understand this as being a pattern. [...]
The Tyee: What do you hope viewers take away from the documentary?
Amy Miller: I hope that it creates a bit of a jolt. Collectively, I feel like we’re sleepwalking a little bit as a nation. Our discussion around what is national security needs to be broadened — housing for all, food sovereignty. We really need to start deconstructing this notion of who is a terrorist. There has been such brainwashing for the last 25 years that Islam is the problem. In the film, we talk about the different interventions around white supremacy, how that radicalized hate is so marginalized in the media, and how we understand what is a threat to national security.
Climate change has to be understood as an existential threat. I would argue the fossil fuel industry, the extractive industry are holding our whole society hostage. But they still get the subsidies and all the corporate media fall in line. That conversation needs to be broader, and there has to be an understanding and discussion around security and for whose interests it’s for. A paradigm shift needs to happen. Read more - Lire plus
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Ben & Jerry’s wants this contentious RCMP unit abolished | |
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The National Observer 21/04/2023 - Ben & Jerry’s Canada is joining a chorus of Indigenous leaders, human rights groups and others calling for the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) to be disbanded.
On Wednesday, the ice cream giant signed onto an open letter detailing allegations against the C-IRG that urges Canada, British Columbia and the RCMP to suspend all of its activities. The C-IRG is a contentious unit, as thoroughly documented by APTN, formed in 2017 to specifically police energy and resource projects. It has most famously been deployed against protesters trying to stop old-growth logging at Fairy Creek and Wet’suwet’en resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline being built through the nation’s unceded territory. While the RCMP’s oversight body, called the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, launches a systemic investigation into C-IRG, the open letter says reforming the unit won’t go far enough.
“There is no set of reforms that would make it acceptable for Canada to have a paramilitary force designed specifically to manage the assertion of inherent and constitutionally protected Indigenous rights in the face of unwanted development,” the letter reads. “The C-IRG should not exist, and it needs to be disbanded entirely.” That letter was delivered to the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa on Wednesday following a brief demonstration outside. It was signed by Wet’suwet’en hereditary Chief Na’moks and Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ as well as over 50 groups, including Tiny House Warriors, Idle No More, Indigenous Climate Action, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, MiningWatch Canada, Greenpeace Canada and others. The RCMP did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ben & Jerry’s Canada confirmed its support for abolishing the C-IRG to Canada’s National Observer. “The Community-Industry Response Group was established to quash Indigenous resistance along pipeline routes, and as a result, has literally been evicting Indigenous peoples off their own land,” said Maryam Adrangi, the company’s Canadian activism manager. “They have since expanded and demonstrated that they are willing to use an egregious amount of force against people protecting their land… Speaking out against C-IRG and alongside impacted peoples, legal associations, and social justice organizations to shed light on these abuses is completely aligned with our core values as a company.”
In a statement, Union of BC Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip threw his support behind the movement to abolish C-IRG. “Corporate and colonial greed is what drove the C-IRG to unceded territories; lands that the provincial and federal government do not have jurisdiction to,” he said. “We cannot allow colonial actors to continue enacting colonial violence on First Nations people on First Nations lands.” Source
Webinar: Stop RCMP C-IRG violence against the frontlines
ACTION: Abolish CIRG
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Azeezah Kanji: Charges Against Stop Cop City Protesters Continue Terror of “Anti-Terrorism | |
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Truthout 22/04/2023 - With the mass filing of “domestic terrorism” charges against 42 Stop Cop City protesters, the state compounds the violence of the Cop City project itself: a massive 85-acre police training facility; to be built atop one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, the forest known by the colonized Muscogee people as the Weelaunee; in a city that already boasts the most concentrated surveillance in the country, as well as “dozens” of backlogged cases of police brutality; including the fatal shooting of Stop Cop City environmental activist Tortuguita while they were sitting with their hands up, judging from an independent autopsy.
The absurdity of the terrorism charges, based on the accused having “mud on their shoes” and a legal aid hotline number on their arms, reflects the absurdity of the U.S.’s “war on terror” as a whole. In this “war,” the criteria generally proffered to define its central term, terrorism, as a legal category — that it involves (1) exceptionally indiscriminate violence, (2) against civilians, (3) committed by ideologically motivated “radicals,” (4) to terrorize the public, therefore (5) necessitating an exceptional response — bear no correspondence to its application in reality.
Violence vs. Non-Violence
Contrary to dominant representations, the primary function of “anti-terrorism” is not the penalization of violence, but of acts with no necessary relationship to violence at all.
Fifty-four percent of U.S. terrorism prosecutions since 2001 have been for purported “material support”: for example, letting an acquaintance store a suitcase of socks and ponchos in one’s apartment (sentence: 15 years); releasing, as a civil rights lawyer, a public statement from a client imprisoned for terrorism (sentence: 10 years); and smuggling cigarettes (sentence: 30 years, reduced on appeal from 155 years).
Even being legally deemed “not a terrorist” is no bar to being criminalized as a terrorist. Sabri Benkahla, for instance, was given a 10 year “enhanced” terrorism sentence, despite the judge’s own finding that none of his actions had in fact “directly involved or intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.” This was following a trial in which even Arabic words such as salaam, meaning “peace,” were classified as terminology “connected to radical Islam.”
Punishment vs. “Prevention”
Due to the pervasiveness of the presumption of guilt, the ambit of criminalization extends easily to punishing people for crimes they haven’t even yet managed to commit. Seventy percent of all U.S. terrorism convictions since 2001 have been “preemptive prosecutions” and another 23 percent partially preemptive, as determined by a comprehensive 2019 analysis by the Coalition for Civil Freedoms and Project SALAM.
For example, Rezwan Ferdaus was ensnared by an entrapment “security” operation while experiencing psychiatric and physical disabilities, including seizures, hallucinations, depression, and loss of bladder control so severe he was required to wear diapers, as Human Rights Watch has documented. He was sentenced to 17 years for an FBI-concocted bomb plot: over three times longer than was Thaddeus Murphy for actually bombing an NAACP office (on his own initiative), while mosque firebomber Cody Seth Crawford received no prison sentence at all.
Thus continues the use of the criminal law to punish the disenfranchised, the demonized and the dispossessed — not for what they’ve done, but for who they are. Terrorism trials of Muslims have frequently featured the graphic airing of “inflammatory evidence about [incidents of] terrorism in which defendants played no part,” as Human Rights Watch notes. This is a practice of collective inculpation that U.S. judges have acknowledged would be unacceptably unfair if applied to any other type of offence.
Similarly, activists like Joshua Harper of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign have been convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” not for their own actions, but the “illegal” tactics imputed to others. The minor detail that “Harper’s personal conduct [did] not cross the line of illegality,” as the court itself admitted, was no impediment. Incredibly, it is the Stop Cop City forest defenders with mud on their shoes — not the cops with blood on their hands — who are charged with terrorist guilt by association: a predictable result when the primary source of terror defines, investigates, and prosecutes the crime. Read more - Lire plus
Police Shot Atlanta Cop City Protester 57 Times, Autopsy Finds
EVENT: Stop Cop City (a War Industry Resisters Network webinar) - May 3rd
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Oregon Domestic Terrorism Law Targets the Far Right. Here’s How It’ll Backfire. | |
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The Intercept 24/04/2023 - When Oregon Democrats introduced a new state domestic terrorism bill in February, civil rights groups were reminded of a similar piece of legislation — and began sounding the alarm.
Georgia expanded its state domestic terrorism statute in 2017 in response to the mass shooting perpetrated by white supremacist Dylann Roof against Black churchgoers in neighboring South Carolina. Atlanta legislators claimed that broadening their own state’s domestic terror laws to include certain attacks on property would somehow keep the public safe from far-right violence.
Critics of the legislation in Georgia said at the time that it could be used to target environmentalists and anti-racist activists as well. They were right. Last month, 42 activists were indiscriminately arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in Georgia for participating in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement to stop Cop City. The flimsy arrest warrants cited the protesters for little more than having mud on their shoes.
With this sort of law enforcement abuse in mind, organizers in Oregon are currently fighting to stop the domestic terrorism bill, House Bill 2772, from passing in their state, even as it moves through the legislature with broad bipartisan support. “Prosecutors providing assurances that a new terrorism law will only be used in the most narrow and responsible ways in Oregon doesn’t ease my worries in the least,” said Nick Caleb, a staff attorney at the climate justice advocacy group Breach Collective. Breach is part of a robust coalition of organizations — including the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, the Civil Liberties Defense Center, Imagine Black, and the Sunrise Movement PDX — fighting to stop the legislation being passed.
Oregon’s proposed legislation may not be as obviously open to misuse as the Republican-sponsored Georgia equivalent. The bill’s Democratic backers insist it is narrow in scope and finely tuned to address extremist attacks against “critical infrastructure” — a particular concern, they stress, following a spate of attacks on power grid infrastructure last year in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, a number of which are believed to have been linked to neo-Nazi groups. Heading into the 2024 election year, concerns about a rise in January 6-style attacks are only further heightened.
It takes a fanciful view of law enforcement, however, to imagine that any such law is resistant to misuse against climate activists and Black liberationists. Like all domestic terrorism laws on the books in the U.S., Oregon’s proposed legislation is both unnecessary and potentially dangerous. Read more - Lire plus
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The US and the War Crimes in the War on Terror
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Counterpunch 25/04/2023 - For the past two decades, the International Criminal Court has concentrated on the war crimes and criminals who have operated in Africa. Over the past month, however, the court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner or Children’s Rights. Our own Department of Justice is even considering a federal indictment of Syrian leaders responsible for the torture and execution of an American human rights worker, Layla Shweikani. The war crimes of Syrian President Basher al-Assad are well known, but this would mark the first time that the United States has criminally charged Syrian officials with human rights abuses. There is no indication, however, that the ICC or the Department of Justice will take on the war crimes committed by the United States during its Global War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington.
The mainstream media has been giving increased attention to the issue of war crimes as well as the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, but there has been no attempt to link the issues. The war itself could be labeled a war crime or a “crime against the peace,” which was the charge against Germany introduced at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946. The most prominent war crimes were the Central Intelligence Agency’s detentions and renditions program as well as the sadistic program of torture and abuse, which have been devoid of any accountability whatsoever. One of the leaders of the program, Gina Haspel, even became Donald Trump’s CIA director.
Nor has there been any focus on the U.S. military’s role in renditions and detentions, including the detaining of individuals suspected of involvement in 9/11. There are many reasons for closing down the wartime prison at Guantanamo Bay, but the obvious one deals with prisoners there who have never been charged with a crime over a period of 20 years and/or were subjected to numerous forms of torture and abuse. It was Vice President Dick Cheney who convinced President George W. Bush to locate the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in an effort to put it out of reach of the U.S. legal system. A federal appeals course is still dealing with the issue of whether the Gitmo prisoners have due process rights under the Constitution, but the relevant opinions have not been released because they reportedly contain classified information. Once again, we are witnessing the application of security classifications to hide embarrassing information. Read more - Lire plus
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Leaked tape reveals how spy camera firm used ex-U.S. official to cover up Uyghur abuses | |
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The Intercept 21/04/2023 - In the western territory of Xinjiang, known as the Uyghur Autonomous Region, China has created intense surveillance networks to monitor and persecute the population. Cameras line the streets, as well as the doors of homes and mosques, anchoring a system of repression that has led to the mass detention of thousands of people.
Hikvision’s cameras make up a large part of this system. But the world’s largest security camera manufacturer has always denied their complicity in the violation of human rights against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. In 2019, facing increasing U.S. sanctions, Hikvison commissioned a human rights review of its five largest police projects in Xinjiang, which has a population of over 25 million. The company hired Pierre-Richard Prosper, the former ambassador-at-large for war crimes in the Bush administration State Department and a war crimes prosecutor at the United Nations in the late 1990s.
The full review remained secret, but Hikvision released one sentence saying the company did not knowingly engage in human rights abuses. A recent leaked recording, however, illustrated how much more Hikvision actually knew — and that these Hikvision projects were connected to companies that the U.S. just sanctioned. [...] The contracts were explicit about their use against Uyghur communities, for example, in Moyu County, with a population of over half a million in southwestern Xinjiang. “Uyghurs account for about 97%, and most of them believe in Islam,” according to a Hikvision contract obtained by The Intercept. “Moyu County has a strong religious atmosphere since its history, and the enemy social situation is relatively complicated.”
At the conference, Prosper talked about the project in Moyu. “The most concerning on paper was the Moyu project,” he said. “It was most concerning because of the language in the contract. And the language identified terrorism, identified Uyghurs, and then basically explained that they want to look at various facilities and all that, religious facilities.” Prosper failed to mention that the Moyu project included panoramic cameras for its “re-education” centers — internment camps that Amnesty International has decried as “places of brainwashing, torture and punishment” — as well as a camera at every entrance of Moyu’s nearly 1,000 mosques. Documents have also previously shown that over 300 citizens of Moyu were sent to detention centers.
Human rights groups have been sounding the alarm about the scale and intrusion of the surveillance schemes and data they collect. “The surveillance systems have increased the speeds and empowered authorities in the ability to control a large population quickly,” said Maya Wang, associate director in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “It was really quite unprecedented I think in human history.” Read more - Lire plus
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‘Chilling’ arrest of French publisher by UK counter-terrorism police condemned | |
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The Guardian 20/04/2023 - The French publishing house whose employee was arrested on terror charges on his way to London book fair has said it is “chilling” that he was asked by British detectives about the authors published by his company.
Ernest Moret was approached by two plainclothes officers at St Pancras station on Monday evening, after arriving by train from Paris. He was arrested, after six hours of questioning, for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer.
In a joint statement his employer Éditions la Fabrique, based in Paris, and the London-based publisher Verso – whose senior editor Sebastian Budgen’s house Moret was to stay at – confirmed that Moret had been released on bail but expressed concern about the questions he was asked by police.
The foreign rights manager was “interrogated for several hours and asked some very disturbing questions”, said the publishers, including about his view on pension reform in France, as well as his opinion on the French government and president Emmanuel Macron. Macron has faced protests over the use of his constitutional executive powers to push through an unpopular increase in the pension age. “Perhaps most seriously, during his interrogation he was asked to name the ‘anti-government’ authors in the catalogue of the publishing house La Fabrique, for which he works,” said the statement from the publishers. “None of these questions should be relevant to a British police officer.”
Éditions la Fabrique and Verso said that to “ask the representative of a publishing house questions, in a counter-terrorism framework, about the opinions of its authors, is to take the logic of political censorship and repression of dissenting currents of thought even further. “In a context of the authoritarian escalation of the French government faced by social movements, this element is chilling." The Metropolitan police confirmed Moret had been bailed but said they would not discuss or confirm what may have been raised during the police’s interviews. Moret’s phone and computer were seized by police, and remain in their custody, and he will have to return to London in May. The publishers demanded “no further action be taken against its foreign rights manager, and that his phone and computer be immediately returned”. Read more - Lire plus
Version française du communiqué de presse des éditions La Fabrique et Verso Books
MEPs condemn Suella Braverman over arrest of French publisher
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Turkey: Hands off the HDP | |
Myanmar's "counter-terrorism" by-laws must be denounced for what they are – illegal | |
AccessNow 20/04/2023 - Last month, the Myanmar military issued a slew of new by-laws pursuant to the country’s 2014 Counter Terrorism Act – all of which give the junta vast and unchecked powers to control, monitor, and target any resistance to their ongoing brutality on the ground. These rules are anything but legal, however, offering only a veneer of authority to the military’s authoritarian attacks against the people of Myanmar. The international community must denounce this latest in a long line of measures designed to censor, curtail, and control people’s online activities.
Since seizing power in 2021, Myanmar’s military has entrenched their digital dictatorship, throttling internet and mobile connections, seizing control of the telecommunications sector, expanding surveillance infrastructure, and inciting violence and hate speech across social media and messaging services. The regime has also set about dismantling press freedom and stifling any vestiges of civic space, including through indiscriminately restrictive laws.
The military amended the Broadcasting Law to criminalize media outlets, radio and television broadcasters, and social media platforms for any content it deems “unacceptable.” They updated the Electronic Transaction Law to criminalize “fake news” and facilitate access to people’s personal data. And they attempted to resurrect a widely-panned draft Cybersecurity Law with the intent to criminalize VPN use and force internet service providers and online platforms to hand over people’s personal data on demand. Then came the regulatory orders for mandatory registration of all mobile devices’ IMEI numbers and SIM cards, opening the door to unfettered tracking of people’s locations, communications, and personal contacts.
The introduction of these new “counter-terrorism” by-laws are the latest in this dystopian deluge. They were drafted by the Central Committee for Counter Terrorism (CCCT) – whose current members were appointed by the military after the 2021 coup – under the pretext of “preventing and stopping terrorism and terrorism financing.” Section 14 (articles 79 to 85) of the regulations empowers them to arbitrarily order the “interception, blocking, and restriction” of mobile and electronic communications or “location verification.” This effectively allows the military to not only order furnishing of personal data from network providers on people’s location, communications and networks, but also to actively intercept their communications, emails, browsing history or other activities online.
And who are deemed as “terrorists”? Apparently anyone trying to access education for their children. In 2021, the military designated representatives of the ousted Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) and National Unity Government (NUG), along with the affiliated People’s Defence Forces (PDF), as “terrorist groups.” In a country where more than 400,000 academic workers resigned in protest or were suspended by the military, and where the military continues to ruthlessly attack children and order airstrikes on schools, online education has been, for many, the only option out. Under the new by-laws, any online schools supported by the NUG are now deemed “terrorist” entities, and authorities are already persecuting those who are even vaguely associated with them.
In mid-March, a 72-year-old woman from Sagaing region was charged under the new rules after she signed her grandchildren up to NUG-linked online education classes. Shortly after, 15 teachers from the Federal School of Aung Myay Thar Zan in Mandalay were arrested under the counter-terrorism law, with the military warning that they would be “punished severely” and that “parents and children would also be targeted.” Earlier this month, three public school teachers from Indaw township in Sagaing region, who participated in anti-military strike action, were charged under the same law, and sentenced to life imprisonment. And just last week, four 15-year-old students were found guilty under the law of accessing NUG-supporting online lessons, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Ten other students arrested with them are still awaiting sentencing.
Even before these news by-laws were introduced, the restrictive impact of the counter-terrorism law was clear. Access Now has seen reports showing that, between February 2021 and December 2022, more than 17,800 cases were filed under the law, with more than 7,000 of these leading to sentences. We expect these numbers to rise astronomically now that the new by-laws have been rolled out. This counter-terrorism law must be denounced for what it is: illegal. The terror that needs to be countered is that being waged by the military – not the Myanmar people. Source
Military violence in Myanmar is worsening amid fierce resistance and international ambivalence
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Monitor reporter’s trial opens: Why India treats journalists as terrorists | |
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CSMonitor 19/04/2023 - Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah appeared before a packed Jammu courtroom on April 13 via video conference, looking frail and frustrated. Editor of The Kashmir Walla and longtime contributor for The Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Shah has spent more than a year in jail, detained on various terrorism charges. The primary case stems from an article published on his site 11 years ago. Police say the opinion piece provoked terrorism in Kashmir, a heavily militarized Himalayan region that India has systematically stripped of its freedom in recent years.
On screen, Mr. Shah stood next to scholar Aala Fazili, author of the offending article. Both are booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), often referred to as India’s terrorism law, and have been waiting months for their day in court.
Proceedings lasted about 20 minutes, and Mr. Shah did not get a chance to speak. Instead, he pleaded not guilty in a statement prepared from Kot Bhalwal jail. The trial picks back up May 22, when witnesses will be called to testify.
The start of Mr. Shah’s trial draws attention to India’s far-reaching anti-terror law. Indeed, Mr. Shah is one of several journalists waiting for justice under the stringent UAPA, which critics say uses national security fears to sidestep justice and silence government critics. Kunal Majumder, India representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, says the number of incarcerated journalists in India is at a 30-year high, and the majority are being tried or investigated under UAPA.
“This clearly indicates a pattern,” he says. “In some instances, like with Mr. Shah, multiple investigations under UAPA have been opened against journalists, making it immensely difficult for them to get bail.” Journalist Geeta Seshu from Free Speech Collective has seen UAPA used liberally against journalists since 2018. “They operate without a shred of evidence, provide little or no chance of bail, and finally, after long years of struggle, result in poor conviction rates,” she says. “Each instance erodes press freedom, case by case.”
An escalating trend
In 2010, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) booked journalist Shahina KK under UAPA after she interviewed two witnesses in the bomb blast that took place in Bangalore in 2008. Her report highlighted lapses in the police investigation. “Shahina KK was one of the first journalists in the country who was accused of violating UAPA in relation to her reporting,” says Mr. Majumder. “She is still trying to clear her name after 12 years.”
Media watchers say this trend has ramped up in recent years. In 2018, photojournalist Kamran Yousuf was arrested under UAPA. He was acquitted by the terrorism court last year. Rupesh Kumar Singh of Jharkhand was arrested twice under UAPA for alleged Maoist links – first in June 2019, then again in July 2022 under the same charges. In 2020, journalist Siddique Kappan from Kerala was arrested while on his way to report on the gang rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh. The police arrested and charged him under UAPA before he could report the story. That same year, at least three other journalists were charged under the UAPA.
In October 2021, photojournalist Manan Ahmad Dar was arrested under terrorism charges, though he recently got bail, with the court calling the charges against him “mere assumptions.” It can take years to get bail under the UAPA, an act which criminal lawyer Areeb Uddin Ahmed argues does not follow normal tenets of India’s justice system. He says provisions in the UAPA make it notoriously difficult for courts to grant bail. “As a principle of law, bail is a rule not an exception. Whereas in this act, bail is a rare exception,” he says. “The sole objective is to restrict their personal liberty.” Mr. Shah has posted bail twice for UAPA-related charges, only to be immediately re-arrested under the same law. From February to May last year, he was arrested a total of five times.
Supporters of the anti-terror law reject accusations of abuse, saying Mr. Shah’s case follows due process. “When you misuse your cover as a journalist to work against the state, militate against the state, to create discontent against the state, obviously the state is going to react,” says Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser with the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. Read more - Lire plus
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China Reveals It Arrested Taiwan-Based Book Publisher on National Security Charge | |
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VOA 27/04/2023 - After days of speculation about the whereabouts of a Taiwan-based book publisher, Beijing revealed that authorities arrested the China critic for allegedly "endangering national security."
Shanghai security officers arrested Li Yanhe, a book publisher and radio host for the Taiwanese public broadcaster Radio Taiwan International, while he was visiting relatives in the city.
Li traveled to China last month. Reports that he was missing emerged about a week ago. China's Taiwan Affairs Office announced Li's arrest at a Wednesday news conference, when spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said Li was under investigation for "conducting activities endangering national security." Zhu added that Li's rights would be respected during the investigation.
Li, who uses the pen name Fucha, was born in China but moved to Taiwan in 2009. In Taiwan, he established Gusa Press, which has published books critical of Beijing.
The publisher also hosts the show "Seeing China This Way — Time with Fucha" on Radio Taiwan International, where he discusses Chinese politics. The free-expression group PEN America urged China to immediately release Li.
"His detention is an attack on free expression and another example of the Chinese government's belligerence towards anyone who stands for the free and open exchange of ideas," PEN America China researcher Angeli Datt said in a statement.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom group, also urged China to drop the charges against the publisher. "Chinese authorities must stop pinning national security charges on both foreign and local journalists," Iris Hsu, CPJ's China representative, said in a statement. Beijing has targeted book publishers in the past. Read more - Lire plus
Overseas Hong Kongers fear long reach of national security law
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Australia - Protester who defaced Frederick McCubbin painting fights counter-terrorism charge
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The Guardian 24/04/2023 - An artist who defaced one of Australia’s most famous paintings during a gas company protest will fight a counter-terrorism charge over access to her electronic devices, labelling it “state-sanctioned overreach”.
Joana Veronika Partyka, 37, pleaded not guilty on Monday in the Perth magistrates court to one count of failing to obey a data access order after she declined to cooperate with authorities. Her lawyer, Zarah Burgess, said Partyka would mount a reasonable excuse defence during the one-day trial scheduled for 11 September in the same court.
The Australian Greens communication adviser’s home was raided in late February by counter-terrorism police, who seized her mobile phone, laptop and other belongings.
Partyka was ordered to provide access to the electronic devices by early March, which she declined to do. “We have always maintained that Ms Partyka had a reasonable excuse to not give police full access to her devices,” Burgess said. “Particularly as they contain sensitive organisational information relating to the political party for which Ms Partyka works, as well as personal data of that party’s members, donors and supporters.”
The raid came about a month after Partyka pleaded guilty to criminally damaging Frederick McCubbin’s work Down on His Luck at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
During the protest in January, Partyka spray painted a Woodside Energy logo on to a clear plastic sheet protecting the oil on canvas work painted in 1889. She was fined $2,637 and ordered to pay the art gallery $4,821.08 in compensation. Partyka on Monday said the raid and data access order that followed was anti-democratic and a gross infringement on her human rights.
“Given the matter resulting from my protest action at the Art Gallery of WA has been dealt with in the judicial system, it is clear that these heavy-handed bullying tactics have the sole intention of intimating me and other climate activists,” she said. “Acts of dissent are central to a strong civil society, to our democracy, and to the political process.” Partyka said she would not be intimidated by the “unjustified, state-sanctioned overreach, and [would] continue to defend both our climate and my democratic rights”.
Activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub has called for industrial development on the Burrup Peninsula – about 30km west of Karratha in the Pilbara region – to be stopped, including Woodside Energy’s expansion of the Pluto gas plant. The Burrup peninsula, known as Murujuga to traditional owners, contains the largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs in the world. Source
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Here Come the Militarized Robots (But There Go Our Civil Liberties) | |
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MAPA 14/03/2023 - While the nation was busy coping with Covid, several dystopian trends seem to have sprung from a Pandora’s box. I confess that they escaped my notice and the more I continue to research high-tech weaponry as a journalist, the more concerned I find myself getting.
Now, looking more deeply into these trends, it’s easy to wonder if we’re living in one of those dystopian sci-fi movies. One of these concerning trends is the advent of the robotic dog, an ugly and malevolent-looking device that looks not unlike a giant, malformed, metallic insect. This trend should concern peace advocates for many reasons but, at the very least, because the development of these machines has its roots in the defense sector and started right here in Massachusetts with a company called Boston Dynamics.
Founded as an MIT spin-off, Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013, underscoring Google’s deep ties to the defense industry. The Waltham-based company (now with a different owner) went on to develop a sophisticated array of highly mobile robots, including “Spot”, a product released in 2019. The company developed Spot and other products with funding from the Naval Air Warfare Center and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Early Uses and Abuses
One of the first uses for robotic dogs was for Covid-related crowd control, often coupled with the use of drones. Robot dogs from Boston Dynamics were used by the Singapore government to patrol public parks to ensure Covid compliance. Since that time, here in the US, there have been numerous ill-advised public sector experiments — fortunately with significant levels of pushback from the local citizens involved. The cities that appear to have most enthusiastically adopted robotic dogs are Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Robotic dogs are part of a new high-tech technology explosion that’s radically altering weapons systems. However, this trend has significant crossover implications when domestic use is involved. It’s important for peace activists to appreciate the implications of this trend in terms of issues such as social justice, mass surveillance, the loss of civil liberties, and the still increasing militarization of police forces happening nationally. Militarism and the militarization of culture are both amped up through such efforts.
The use of robotic dogs should not be seen as an isolated development but also needs to be contextualized in terms of the surveillance state. In February 2023, a groundbreaking article appeared in the Boston Globe describing how pervasive military-style surveillance and control systems have become in the Boston area. The article methodically detailed how law enforcement agencies here operate a huge apparatus of drones, license plate readers, and devices called cell-site simulators.
Robots and More Robots
With this cheery background in place, here’s a quick summary of some history and developments:
- In November 2022, San Francisco approved the use of lethal force for their police robots. There was a huge city-wide backlash and the following month they quickly reversed the decision. It’s now under consideration again.
- In 2021, as reported by WBUR, Honolulu police used a robotic dog purchased with federal Covid relief money to take the temperatures of people at a homeless camp. The ACLU called for an end to this practice describing it as “dehumanizing”.
- Robotic dogs have been used in Boston as health care “intake workers”. The Globe reported that, in 2020, a Boston Dynamics dog was purchased by Brigham and Women’s Hospital to process Covid patients.
- The Department of Homeland Security has plans in place to deploy robotic dogs at US borders.
In December 2022, the ACLU weighed in on this topic stating: “Our overarching position is that the police should be prohibited from using robots to enact violence. Robots should not be used to kill, subdue, push, constrain, or otherwise control or harm people.” The ACLU further tied this trend to the nationally publicized problem of excessive violence in policing, leading in many cases to the horrific and unnecessary deaths of black citizens. Because of this vigorous and principled public pushback, Boston Dynamics was forced to state that it would not arm its robots or support customers that chose to do so. However, another manufacturer, Ghost Robotics, has already built robots equipped with rifles which are being marketed to the military.
Whether armed or not, there are other aspects of the use of these devices related to the inappropriate control of social behavior through fear or intimidation. I agree with the ACLU that domestic uses of robotic dogs are fundamentally dehumanizing and would further suggest that they contribute strongly to the militarization of culture and strengthening the power of the surveillance state. Source
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Homeland Security’s domestic surveillance program needs thorough overhaul | |
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The Hill 30/03/2023 - Earlier this month, the House committee charged with overseeing the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation into a newly disclosed DHS domestic intelligence program, citing “potential violations of Americans’ fundamental civil liberties.” Under the program, first revealed by Politico, the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis gathered information from detainees in U.S. prisons and jails without the detainees’ lawyers present. Parts of the program were paused after a number of DHS officials raised concerns about its legality, but the fact that this program even existed is deeply troubling — and is just the latest evidence that the department’s intelligence operations urgently need reform.
The program revealed by Politico is the latest of many abuses by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, or I&A. I&A’s role is to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on threats to the country, and although it is permitted to collect only information that is publicly available (like social media posts) or through openly acknowledged conversations with human sources, its officers have repeatedly misused their authorities.
I&A’s social media surveillance often dwells on targets’ political views and is frequently of little legitimate value. Most infamously, during racial justice demonstrations in Portland, Ore., in 2020, I&A officers broadly monitored social media and accessed immigration, travel, and other, undisclosed databases to assemble dossiers on protestors to share with law enforcement. They also compiled intelligence reports on journalists covering the government response to the protests. Using a nakedly political proclamation issued by President Trump that depicted graffiti and vandalism as a threat to “domestic tranquility,” I&A claimed authority to surveil activists protesting confederate monuments. More recently, I&A has surveilled Americans discussing abortion online, and DHS promised a program to trawl the internet for dangerous “narratives and grievances.”
Too often, I&A puts protest and other forms of core political speech in the crosshairs of its intelligence officers. I&A generates and shares largely unsubstantiated — and, indeed, sometimes outright false — information with thousands of police departments nationwide that at times have taken DHS at its word and targeted people based on their political views.
The agency homes in on events — such as the public’s response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade — that it speculates have the potential for national security threats and then monitors Americans’ “reactions” and “reflections.” This dragnet approach sweeps up a huge volume of political information that ultimately drowns out whatever tiny amount of potentially relevant data is obtained, wasting valuable government resources and undermining civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. As my Brennan Center for Justice colleague Faiza Patel and I explain in a new report, these abuses persist thanks to permissive authorities and policies and inadequate safeguards.
Guidelines meant to ensure that I&A does not abuse its authorities or violate constitutional rights include broad exceptions in cases where a proposed action furthers one or more of I&A’s missions. But these missions are so expansive — covering terrorism, drug trafficking, threats to infrastructure, major disasters, and more — that they can easily serve as cover for a range of illegitimate government activities, as occurred during Portland. I&A claims to have extra safeguards in place to protect Americans’ information. But these too basically hinge on I&A’s assessment of whether it furthers its mission.
Internal oversight technically exists, but I&A leadership has worked to sideline DHS offices tasked with overseeing its impact on civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy, and at times has simply ignored legal counsel.
Safeguards for Americans’ constitutional rights are weak at best. The First Amendment gets only a passing treatment in the preamble to the guidelines that suggests I&A can monitor core political speech and activity so long as it asserts a mission purpose to do so. Under this framework it is all too easy for I&A officials to concoct a pretext for snooping, as we saw with the Trump administration’s targeting of racial justice protestors on the premise that they threatened national security. The guidelines also permit intelligence activities that target people on the basis of traits that the Constitution’s equal protection clause safeguards, such as race or gender, mixed with “other information,” which they fail to specify.
What is the path forward? Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas should permanently end interviews in environments like jails, where subjects are not in a strong position to assert their own rights. But there’s much more to be done. He should also end I&A’s easily abused practice of disseminating intelligence derived from Americans’ social media. The secretary should also establish an intelligence oversight office that is genuinely independent, and put policies in place to increase transparency and accountability. And Congress must act to focus I&A’s sprawling missions and narrow the discretion it so often abuses. Read more - Lire plus
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EU: European Union must protect human rights in upcoming AI Act vote | |
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Amnesty International 26/04/2023 - Ahead of the European Parliament’s vote on the AI Act in May, the European Union (EU) has a significant opportunity to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in order to protect and promote human rights, said Amnesty International in an open letter to Members of Parliament’s leading committees.
“The AI Act offers EU lawmakers an opportunity to put an end to the use of discriminatory and rights-violating artificial intelligence (AI) systems,” said Mher Hakobyan, Advocacy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence Regulation at Amnesty International.
“The EU must ban the use of discriminatory AI systems which disproportionately affect people from marginalized communities, including migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Such technologies profile people and communities, claiming to ‘predict’ crimes, or ‘identify’ people who supposedly pose a security risk, even leading to them being denied the right to asylum. EU lawmakers must not miss this opportunity to prohibit the use of certain AI-based practices and protect the rights of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers against harmful aspects of AI.
“Use of mass surveillance technologies, such as retrospective and live remote biometric identification tools must also be banned. The proposed law must also ban discriminatory social scoring systems that prevent people from accessing essential public and private services, such as child support benefits and education. “The AI Act should also address the development of European technologies that are exported to third countries. Firstly, AI systems that are prohibited in Europe should not be allowed to be exported abroad. Secondly, permitted high-risk technologies that are exported must meet the same regulatory requirements as high-risk technologies sold in the EU.”
“Strong accountability and transparency measures must also be enforced when public and private bodies use AI systems in the EU. These actors must disclose their use of high-risk AI systems, and publish thorough human rights impact assessments. This is important, so that people harmed by AI systems can seek redress. The AI Act should establish a mechanism for this purpose. Read more - Lire plus
General Purpose AI Poses Serious Risks, Should Not Be Excluded From the EU’s AI Act | Policy Brief
As AI Act vote nears, the EU needs to draw a red line on racist surveillance
MEPs seal the deal on Artificial Intelligence Act
Webinar - Will the AI Act #ProtectNotSurveil people on the move?
Clearview AI used nearly 1m times by US police, it tells the BBC
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Security and the Politics of Exclusion | |
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Rethinking Security 20/04/2023 - If security is such a broad concept, why does security policy so often seek to exclude the most vulnerable from protection? Leonie Mills-Woanya looks at the UK’s approach to international development, border control and policing and finds it consciously polarising and exclusive, not so much from a lack of resources as a lack of political will.
Security is a multi-faceted concept that is difficult to define precisely because it covers so many elements. Paradoxically, despite this conceptual breadth, security can also be characterised as quite exclusionary in certain aspects. There has been a push to make it inclusive, both theoretically by widening the perspectives considered and practically by including various actors outside of the ‘traditional’ sphere of ‘hard’ national security.
Specifically, in theoretical approaches, there has been a push to diversify the epistemological basis of security: how we understand it, and who that ‘we’ is. This has led to calls to decolonise security, as there is an acknowledgement that for too long security has been defined by those in the Global North from a heteronormative patriarchal perspective. In practical application, there are also increasing efforts to expand what is considered security, with a broader range of issues such as the climate, housing, education, food and generally a better quality of life.
While the striving for greater inclusivity is necessary as security affects everyone globally, is security inherently an exclusive concept? It depends on whose security is being prioritised and what the threat is considered to be. Security can be seen as finite, or a ‘zero-sum game’, as resources, including money, manpower and technology, must be allocated to building or upholding it. There may also be trade-offs between different aspects of security, such as border security (which emphasises the rights of an established, contained community) and human security (which tends to emphasise the common rights of humanity). In this framing, security can be seen as limited by the availability of resources and the need to prioritise certain goals over others. [...]
BORDERS AND THE DEMONISATION OF OUTSIDERS
Security presents itself as exclusive if there is a defined inside and outside group. This exclusivity has become abundantly clear when it comes to issues of borders. Borders are seen as a way to maintain territorial sovereignty in the interests of those who are considered insiders, whereas those seeking safety can be deemed as outsiders and therefore threats, making the border a source of security contestation rather than protection.
Since the initiation of the hostile environment by Theresa May in 2012, there has been a devastating impact on refugees and asylum seekers who are asserting their human rights under the Refugee Convention to seek safety. Between 2014 and 2020, over 20,300 migrants went missing, presumed dead, while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to the EU (then including the UK), which bore responsibility through the reinforcing of its border security at the expense of asylum seekers’ lives. Tens of thousands more remain stuck in limbo, or even slavery, in camps in Libya and the Sahara. Refugees and asylum seekers are extremely vulnerable and yet are positioned as threats before they have reached the UK border.
Since they are considered outsiders and a threat, asylum seekers have been confronted with cruel and inaccessible systems once they reach the UK. This has been codified into law through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which has been described as one of the most draconian pieces of legislation. There have been numerous instances of violations of human rights and international law, including inhuman living conditions, obstructive bureaucracy and attempts at deportation to Rwanda. The government continuously cites that the security of the nation supersedes the security of certain individuals. Yet these marginalised groups do not inherently pose such threats and in fact, require extra care to ensure their security needs are met. Read more - Lire plus
Why We Need to Abolish Borders: Arun Kundnani in Conversation with Harsha Walia (podcast)
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UPDATED Canada must protect Hassan Diab!
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Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now! | |
On January 20, 2023, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown ruled that Canada must repatriate Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria. On February 6, 2023, the Canadian government filed an appeal and asked that the Brown ruling be set aside and placed on hold while the appeal plays out. This is unacceptable.
Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts, including bombing by Turkey’s military. United Nations officials have even found that the conditions faced by Canadians in prison are akin to torture. Please click below to urge the federal government to repatriate all Canadians illegally & arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay.
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20 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now! | |
Canada must protect encryption! | |
Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.
Click below to send a message to urge Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!
Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir
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Protect our rights from facial recognition! | Facial recognition surveillance is invasive and inaccurate. This unregulated tech poses a threat to the fundamental rights of people across Canada. Federal intelligence agencies refuse to disclose whether they use facial recognition technology. The RCMP has admitted (after lying about it) to using facial recognition for 18 years without regulation, let alone a public debate regarding whether it should have been allowed in the first place. Send a message to Prime Minister Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair calling for a ban now. | |
OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
July to December 2022 - Juillet à décembre 2022 | |
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In case you missed it, we've published our biannual summary of activities last month. Here are the legislation and issues we worked on from July to December 2022:
- Bill C-20, Public Complaints and Review Commission Act
- Bill C-26, An Act respecting cyber security & amending the Telecommunications Act
- Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022
- "Online harms" proposal
- Countering terrorist financing & prejudiced audits of Muslim charities
- International Assistance and anti-terrorism laws
- Justice for Dr Hassan Diab & reform of the Extradition Act
- CSIS accountability and duty of candour
- Facial Recognition Technology (FRT)
- Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
- Justice for Moe Harkat and abolish security certificates
- Canada’s armed drone purchase
- Listing of Iranian Canadians
- Ongoing No Fly List problems
For more details on each issue, click here. And here are the issues we plan to work on in the first half of 2023:
- Advocating for changes to anti-terror laws that prohibit Canadian organizations from providing international assistance in Afghanistan and other regions in need;
- Ensuring that the Canadian government’s proposals on “online harms” do not violate fundamental freedoms, or exacerbate the silencing of racialized and marginalized voices;
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Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for privacy law reform;
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Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility;
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Ensuring Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada’s extradition law;
- The return of the 40+ Canadian citizens indefinitely detained in Syrian camps, including more than 20 children;
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The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities;
- Pushing for Canadian government action on behalf of Iranian Canadians negatively and unjustly impacted by the US terror listing of the IRGC;
- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency;
- Greater transparency and accountability for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service;
- Advocating for the repeal of the Canadian No Fly List, and for putting a stop to the use of the US No Fly List by air carriers in Canada;
- Pressuring lawmakers to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security and the “war on terror”, as well as keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest;
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And much more! Read more - Lire plus
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Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | |
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THANK YOU
to our amazing supporters!
We would like to thank all our member organizations, and the hundreds of people who have supported us over the years, including on Patreon! As a reward, we are listing below our patrons who give $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
James Deutsch
Bill Ewanick
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
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