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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

October 1, 2022 - 1er octobre 2022

Press release: Civil Society groups highlight concerns with ‘deeply problematic’ Cybersecurity Bill C-26 ahead of Commons debate

ICLMG 28/09/2022 - The federal government’s cybersecurity legislation, Bill C-26, is deeply problematic and must be fixed. That’s the verdict of Canadian civil society organizations and experts who set out a series of detailed concerns in an open letter to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino ahead of a House of Commons debate on the legislation expected soon.

Noting that “All residents of Canada can agree on the need for cybersecurity,” the group warns that Bill C-26 in its current form “risks undermining our privacy rights, and the principles of accountable governance and judicial due process which are the fabric of Canadian democracy.” Bill C-26 grants the government sweeping new powers not only over vast swathes of the Canadian economy, but also to intrude on the private lives of Canadians. The letter calls on Parliament to amend the legislation to ensure these powers are strictly delimited and accompanied by meaningful safeguards and reporting requirements to protect privacy, accountability, judicial transparency, and digital rights.

Concerns about the bill include:

Opens the door to new surveillance obligations: Bill C-26 empowers the government to secretly order telecom providers “to do anything or refrain from doing anything.” This opens the door to imposing surveillance obligations on private companies, and to other risks such as weakened encryption standards — something the public has long rejected as inconsistent with our privacy rights.
Allows termination of essential services: Under Bill C-26, Canadian companies or individuals risk being cut off from essential services by secret government order, without explanation. Bill C-26 fails to set out any explicit regime, such as an independent regulator for dealing with the collateral impacts of these orders.
Undermines privacy: Bill C-26 empowers the government to collect broad categories of information from designated operators, which may enable it to obtain identifiable personal information and subsequently distribute it to domestic, and perhaps foreign, organizations.
Lacks guardrails to constrain abuse: Bill C-26 lacks mandatory proportionality, privacy, or equity assessments, or other guardrails, to constrain abuse of the new powers it grants the government — powers accompanied by steep fines or even imprisonment for non-compliance.
Secrecy undermines accountability and due process: Bill C-26 enables the government to shroud its orders in secrecy, with no mandatory public reporting requirements. While there is a need for some degree of confidentiality in this sphere, the public must have a sense of how these powers are being exercised, how often, and to what effect, if decision-makers are to be held to account.
Permits unknowable orders to trump public regulation: Bill C-26 tilts the balance so far toward secrecy, its orders and regulations may take precedence over decisions previously issued by regulatory agencies — rendering the security-related rules currently in effect unknowable for members of the public.
Authorizes the use of secret evidence in Court: Even if Security Orders are subjected to judicial review, Bill C-26 could restrict applicants’ access to evidence. Bill C-26 also does not include any consideration of security-cleared advocates to be appointed on applicants’ behalf. While such provisions are an imperfect solution for due process, they do provide at least a minimal level of protection for applicants’ rights.
Grants power without accountability for the CSE: Bill C-26 would let the CSE — Canada’s signal intelligence and cybersecurity agency — obtain and analyze security-related data from federally-regulated companies that Canadians entrust with their most sensitive personal information. The CSE’s use of this information is not constrained to the cybersecurity aspect of its mandate, and any uses would be largely subject to after-the-fact review rather than real-time oversight, resulting in a significant deficit in democratic accountability.
Lacks Justification: Although the government claims that such sweeping and secretive new powers are required it has not published any sufficiently comprehensive data establishing the necessity and proportionality of the proposed powers.

Bill C-26 was first published in June, and is expected to be debated by the House of Commons in the coming weeks, before moving to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for more detailed study.

Tim McSorley, National Coordinator, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group: “Time and again, we’ve seen federal governments try to grant themselves the power to intrude on our private lives in the name of ‘security’ — and time and again, people in Canada have come together to push back. Let’s fix Bill C-26 so that it delivers strong cybersecurity, while ensuring accountability and upholding our basic rights.” Read more + Share on Facebook + Twitter

Communiqué de presse: Des groupes de la société civile expriment leurs préoccupations concernant le projet de loi C-26 en matière de cybersécurité + Partagez sur Facebook + Twitter

Media coverage: Federal cybersecurity bill threatens privacy, transparency, civil society groups say

Beyond Surveillance Data videos: Lopsided Surveillance featuring ICLMG's Tim McSorley

Surveillance Studies Summer 2022 - Canadian MPs, Privacy Commission and Civil Liberties representatives, along with academic experts, discuss key points from the report "Beyond Big Data Surveillance: Freedom and Fairness". Each of 5 videos is just over 6 minutes long, neatly capturing vital takeaways from the May 2022 Ottawa Big Data Surveillance conference. The first addresses the "Big Picture" and the others, “Lopsided Surveillance,” “Tangled Surveillance,” “Inadequate Instruments,” and “Exposed Groups.”

These are excellent discussion-starters about surveillance today—especially using smartphones—for use in high schools, colleges, universities, workplaces, labour unions, and community groups of all kinds. And of course, representatives of such groups can refer to the Report (Français) itself for further detail and relevant readings. Watch - Visionner

ICLMG: Key bills and legislative proposal we’ll be taking on this fall

ICLMG 20/09/2022 - Parliament is back with a packed agenda and a new leader of the official opposition with a track record of supporting some of the most regressive anti-terrorism laws in Canadian history.

Our small team has been hard at work monitoring national security activities, defending civil liberties and preparing for parliament’s return.

There are some key bills and legislative proposals that we’ll be taking on this fall:

Protecting our Privacy at the Border (Bill S-7)
Independent Review for the CBSA (Bill C-20)
Protecting our Privacy in the Private Sector and Regulating Artificial Intelligence (Bill C-27)
Online Harms and the Fight Against Expanding “Anti-terrorism” Powers (upcoming legislation)

WHY ARE THESE BILLS IMPORTANT?

Protecting our Privacy at the Border (S-7)

Earlier this year, we had an important victory when our advocacy efforts secured amendments to a new border search bill, known as S-7. These amendments will help protect the private information on our cell phones and laptops at the border. We successfully argued to the Senate to do away with a new, incredibly low threshold proposed by the government that would have allowed border agents to search electronic devices on a whim, in favour of a stronger, known standard. This fall, S-7 will be coming to the House of Commons for debate and study by MPs, and the government could try to reverse the Senate improvements in favour of their original plan. We’re preparing to continue the fight to make sure the stronger standard sticks and that we don’t need to worry about excessive snooping when travelling to Canada.

Independent Review for the CBSA (C-20)

Before the summer break, the government introduced Bill C-20, which would reform the RCMP’s current review body and expand it to also include the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Independent review of the CBSA is desperately needed, and has been a priority in our coalition’s advocacy work. But this is the third CBSA review bill proposed by this government, with the other two never making it further than second reading. We need to make sure that independent review comes to the CBSA, and we need to make sure it’s done right. We’ve convened a network of groups to develop proposals for strengthening the bill, and will be bringing our concerns to MPs and the government this fall.

Protecting our Privacy in the Private Sector and Regulating Artificial Intelligence (C-27)

In the coming weeks, Bill C-27 will also be back before MPs. This massive piece of legislation will update Canada’s laws regulating how the private sector handles our personal information. Unfortunately, it keeps in place broad loopholes that allow companies to collect, use and disclose our personal information on vague “national security” grounds. It also proposes sorely needed rules for regulating the use of Artificial Intelligence in the private sector. Surprise, though: it exempts all AI tools under the “direction or control” of Canada’s national security and defense agencies from these new rules. This is unacceptable, and we plan to be at the forefront of closing these loopholes and putting privacy and rights protections first.

Online Harms and the Fight Against Expanding “Anti-terrorism” Powers (upcoming legislation)

While not yet a bill, the government is gearing up for legislation to regulate content online to prevent the spread of material that incites hatred or violence and that causes harm. We believe in greater accountability for social media platforms on how they operate and profit from material that promotes racism, violence, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Unfortunately, the government’s original proposal would have introduced new, broader definitions of “terrorist content;” deputized social media platforms to surveill all content uploaded to their sites and require them to report back to law enforcement and intelligence agencies; and granted broad new warrant powers to CSIS. We helped to force them back to the drawing board, but with new legislation likely coming in the next few months, we need to keep up the pressure. Read more - Lire plus + Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Matthew Behrens: UN Slams Canada’s Failure to Repatriate Citizens Illegally Detained in Syria; Detainees Face Life-Threatening Conditions

"We survived ISIS, we were the lucky ones… But can we survive the camps?” asks Canadian detainee Kimberly Polman, who marks her 4th birthday under Canadian-funded arbitrary detention in Syria at the end of September.

Homes Not Bombs 27/09/2022 - In a stinging critique of the Trudeau government’s complicity in the arbitrary detention in Northeast Syria of 44 Canadian Muslim men, women and children, a group of United Nations Special Rapporteurs has called on Ottawa to stop violating international law and to repatriate all of its citizens. In addition, the Rapporteurs also slammed Canadian support for and investment in the very infrastructure of arbitrary detention which holds these 8 Canadian men, 13 women and 23 children – among tens of thousands of other foreign nationals who traveled to the region for a wide variety of reasons in the 2010s – under conditions tantamount to torture.

Given the apparently intentional effort to prevent their return, one might very well name the archipelago of Syrian camps and prisons for what they are: Canada’s Guantanamo Bay, a torturous world of indefinite detention for a group of Muslim-Canadian citizens who, to serve the political and state security agenda of Canada’s “intelligence” apparatus, have been left to die absent a significant intervention. The UN report, released in late August 2022, focuses on the case of one of the longest held detainees, 26-year-old Canadian Jack Letts, who as a teenager went to Syria to contribute as a humanitarian volunteer during the Arab Spring uprising against the brutal Assad regime. Despite his very public opposition to the Daesh (aka ISIS) occupiers of a significant swath of Syria and Iraq, Letts wound up detained, tortured by proxy via questions from the UK, and libeled in a relentless media campaign built around Islamophobic tropes and information gleaned from that torture.

The UN’s broadside is the latest in a lengthy series of studies documenting serious human rights violations imposed on tens of thousands of people arbitrarily detained by the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava, or AANES), a Canadian ally in the war against Daesh. While Canada refuses to lift a finger for its illegally held citizens, countries from Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Netherlands, Albania, France, the USA, the UK, Germany, Iraq and Russia have repatriated at least some of their citizens. Ironically, Canada itself is spending $2.9 million to repatriate Iraqi citizens at the same time it has forced families of the Canadian detainees to head to Federal Court later this year seeking an order for their return.

With the US State Department, United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, an all-party committee of Canadian Parliamentarians – not to mention the Kurdish captors themselves – all calling for repatriation, why has Canada chosen to look the other way from this clear humanitarian crisis? An affidavit connected to the upcoming court case reveals that Canada underwent a serious about-face on repatriation in 2018, described in a sworn statement of British MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle who, along with high-ranking British Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, travelled to the camps in 2018.

“I learnt from those officials at the DFNS [Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, which holds the detainees] that there had been extensive discussions between Canadians and the DFNS officials,” Russell-Moyle testified. “The DFNS and the Canadians together had taken steps towards the repatriation of all the Canadians …. They were, the DFNS understood, only about ‘a week from the Canadians going home’. I was informed there was a ‘Heads of Terms’ document between the Canadians and the DFNS about how that transfer would be completed. I asked for copies of this document. To the consternation of the DFNS officials, the official Canadian interest in repatriating their nationals, including their children, suddenly went cold without explanation and the DFNS felt they could not share further documentation with me regarding this case. Whilst I have no confirmation of this fact from the British government, it was my understanding that this happened as a result of British intervention with the Canadian government”.

That conclusion appears to dovetail with comments in a landmark report by Human Rights Watch, in which Kurdish foreign affairs official Abdulkarim Omar shared that Canada was the first country to be in touch regarding repatriation back in 2018. In a 2020 interview, Omar told the human rights group that Canada “sent us application forms and travel document papers. Canadians [detained in northeast Syria] filled out all of it and we sent back scanned versions. We got to the point of them coming to pick up their citizens, then everything stopped. We don’t know why. This was two years ago. … We would love a meeting with Canada on this issue.” Read more - Lire plus

TAKE ACTION: Children Forced to Eat Sand: Free Jack Letts & 43 Canadian Kids, Women & Men in Syria

CSIS’s role in the Syrian trafficking operation must come to light

The Globe and Mail 19/09/2022 - The renewed global interest in CSIS’s role in running a covert source operation in Turkey, which led to the smuggling of British citizens into Syria, is running high. Why, in 2015, 15-year-old British citizen Shamima Begum decided to join the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria and Levant is still unknown. Whatever the reasons, she should not have been trafficked by a Canadian government source into a war zone. At the centre of this controversy is Mohammed al-Rashed, a Syrian refugee claimant to Canada. He was arrested the same year by Turkish authorities, where he divulged his CSIS handler’s name and the specifics of two years of supporting the Islamic State under CSIS’s direction. Video footage actually shows him directing the girls to take their luggage from his car as he bids them farewell.

The fact that al-Rashed broke cover, revealing his intelligence connections, is a stain on how CSIS runs international operations. After serving a seven-year sentence, Mr. al-Rashed is now allegedly in Canada. If true, Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino would have had to approve the entry of the ISIS child trafficker. CSIS is now deeper into this scandal. Many security experts argue that Mr. al-Rashed’s role as a smuggler for the terrorist group was a necessary cover to infiltrate and gain credibility, in order to gather information about ISIS’s intentions and capabilities. And it is true that the best sources are the ones steeped in terrorist group activities. But the buck must stop there. Every ethical and legal consideration should have been made by the source, his alleged handlers, law enforcement and security officials to ensure these minors were not trafficked into a war zone. If a source does not comply with direction, he is to be cut loose, and his relationship is to be immediately terminated.

In his new book, The Secret History of the Five Eyes, Richard Kerbaj claims that CSIS became aware that al-Rashed smuggled the girls before reporting it to his handlers. Britain subsequently allegedly conspired with Canada to cover up the role of CSIS in the case. While it is reassuring that CSIS was not initially aware of the smuggling of the minors, we still don’t know what decisions and actions took place in the aftermath and when information was shared between Britain’s MI5 and CSIS, and later London’s Metropolitan Police Service. We cannot begin a proper assessment without knowing all the facts and circumstances of this case. Still, international criticism of Canada will continue to mount as Ms. Begum’s case goes to British court in November. That is why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should immediately call for an independent, impartial inquiry into allegations that a CSIS source smuggled underaged girls to Syria. The 2004 Commission of Inquiry Into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar (sent to Syria by the Americans, with complicity from Canadian officials, to be tortured for 10 months) is an example of how the government can investigate the role of the security service officials while simultaneously protecting and preserving sensitive government information and methods.

Mr. Trudeau has committed to investigating CSIS’s role in the Begum case. That is a positive step. However, he noted existing review mechanisms, likely referring to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, or NSICOP. The committee came under fire in 2019 owing to its lack of transparency after the firing of two scientists at the National Microbiology Lab and the stripping of security clearances from them. Executive impartiality was at the heart of the House of Commons debate, resulting in calls for a legislative review of the NSICOP, scheduled for 2023. Now, if Mr. Mendicino did in fact permit the child trafficker into Canada, government impartiality would again be at issue. For seven years, British teenage girls, their families, and lawyers have been looking for answers to urgent questions about how and why these youth ended up in Syria. They deserve answers from Canada. Read more - Lire plus

Ottawa won’t say if CSIS operative who trafficked teens to Islamic State militants is now in Canada

CSIS persuaded Turkey to hide recruitment of operative who trafficked teens to Islamic State

‘Ministers Can Make it Mean Anything they Want it to’ The Realities of Citizenship-Stripping in the UK

‘Time is past urgent’: legislation needed to help Canadian aid groups work in Afghanistan, says Sen. Omidvar

The Hill Times 28/09/2022 - An Independent Senator is calling on the government to bring forward legislation to allow Canadian aid organizations to work in Afghanistan without running afoul of Canadian anti-terrorism laws. The work of Canadian non-government organizations in providing humanitarian assistance to Afghans is being restricted due to Canadian law that bars direct or indirect financial support to a terrorist entity, such as the Taliban. Criminal penalties include up to 10 years in prison.

Given the dire situation in Afghanistan, Independent Senator Ratna Omidvar (Ontario) said the government needs to move expeditiously to pass legislation to align itself with allied nations who have provided humanitarian exemptions so their own aid organizations can distribute needed assistance. “The law has to be amended,” she said, noting that Canada’s support for the Afghan people should be separate from how Canada views its government. “The legislation has to be changed for Canadian NGOs to engage in humanitarian efforts. It’s as simple as that.”

“Time is past urgent,” she said. “Urgency was two, three, four months ago, and we’re still dragging on. This is unconscionable in my view.” She said it would be “much better” for the government to move amending legislation. If the government can find another solution that would allow Canadian NGOs to operate in Afghanistan without legislation, Omidvar said she would be “happy to look at it.” “But my information is that the legislation needs [to be] amended,” she said. She said she is “hoping” it is the government that will move legislation, as it would “simpler” than pursuing it through a Senate or private member’s bill. “It is in the interest of the government to clear up their own house on this matter instead of leaving it up to an independent Parliamentarian,” she said. Without action, Omidvar said it is the Afghan people who will continue to pay the price. Read more - Lire plus

Canada terror rules unchanged as Afghans face humanitarian crisis and winter looms

Ottawa advocates plead for intervention after Afghan rights worker's application to come to Canada is rejected

Ottawa Citizen 28/09/2022 - Ottawa supporters of an Afghan women’s rights activist say they are outraged that her application to come to Canada was rejected. Farzana Adell Ghadiya, who is in an undisclosed third country, was rejected for a visitor’s visa when she had actually applied for a Temporary Resident Permit for Protection (TRP), say her supporters. “She did not apply for a temporary resident visa. She applied for a TRP,” said Matthew Behrens, co-ordinator of the Rural Refugee Rights Network. TRPs are only issued in “exceptional circumstances,” according to the Government of Canada’s website. If such an application is successful, the recipient could then apply for permanent residency.

It was shocking that immigration officials seemed not to have fully read Adell Ghadiya’s application, which laid out the threats she faces if she returns to Afghanistan, said Behrens. Adell Ghadiya helped build girls’ schools and maternity hospitals and worked as chief of staff for the UN Commission on the Status of Women in the office of former Afghan president Asraf Ghani. Her life is threatened if she returns to Afghanistan, said Behrens. “She has already been beaten to within an inch of her life by the Taliban.”

Adell Ghadiya’s supporters include a core group of Ottawa-area advocates who have been working to bring her to Canada since late last year and are calling on Immigration Minister Sean Fraser to intervene immediately to provide her with a TRP as a pathway to safe and permanent residence in Canada. The TRP is a perfectly legitimate route for refugees to get to Canada, said Behrens, one that has been used in the past by the Rural Refugee Rights Network. The group can also file for a judicial review, but it might take a year or longer, and Adell Ghadiya doesn’t have that long, he said.

Bessa Whitmore, a retired Carleton University social work professor, has offered Adell Ghadiya a place to stay for free if she is permitted to come to Ottawa. Whitmore can’t understand why the file was rejected. “Presumably, they’re overwhelmed. But they didn’t even read the application properly,” she claimed. Other efforts have also failed. Adell Ghadiya’s situation has attracted more than 30,000 signatures on a change.org petition. “We have met with a number of MPs and there has been nothing. The minister has the discretion to approve the application,” said Whitmore. “It’s very discouraging.”

The country in which Adell Ghadiya is now in hiding can’t be named because it might make her a target for deportation. She was there when Kabul fell in August 2021 because she was delivering equipment and materials for a trade school for women. Her visa to remain in that country expires at the end of the year. Because Adell Ghadiya can’t work in that country, her supporters have been sending her money for rent, food and other necessities. But her skills and expertise are what Canada needs, said Whitmore. Behrens raises questions about the slowness of the government’s efforts to bring Afghans to Canada. Read more - Lire plus

RCMP Refuses to Respond to Gidimt’en Lawsuit, Continue Surveillance and Harassment of Land Defenders as Coastal GasLink Poised to Drill Headwaters

Gidimt'en Access Point 21/09/2022 - It has been three months since we filed our lawsuit suing the RCMP and C-IRG, Minister of Justice for B.C., Coastal Gaslink Pipeline LTD., and private security contractor Forsythe for loss and damages. Over these three months, the RCMP have refused to respond to our lawsuit. So, our lawyers have provided legal notice that we intend to apply for a default decision against the RCMP. Coastal GasLink and Forsythe have responded to our lawsuit, basically denying their violence and refusing to provide any justification for their constant surveillance and harassment on the Yintah.

In the colonial legal system, a lawsuit for loss or damages caused to another person or another person's property is known as a civil claim. In June 2022, Janet Wiliams and Lawrence Bazil on behalf of themselves, and Molly Wickham on behalf of herself as well as the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation filed a notice of claim in BC’s Supreme Court to start the civil legal action. In this lawsuit, we are holding the RCMP and C-IRG, Minister of Justice for B.C., Coastal Gaslink, and Forsythe accountable for invading our privacy, intimidation, intentional infliction of mental distress, malicious and wilful misconduct, assault and battery, false arrest, trespass, violations of the Charter, and more.

We know that this legal system is not built for us. But because we are right and our ancestors are with us, we have won in their courts before. The authority of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary house and clan system was verified in the historic Delgamuukw and Red Top court decisions. Our Hereditary Chiefs have maintained their use and occupancy of their lands and hereditary governance system despite generations of colonial policies and big industries that aim to remove us from this land, assimilate our people, annihilate our culture, and ban our governing system.

We will not let the RCMP and C-IRG, B.C, Coastal GasLink, and Forsythe go unchallenged in their attempts to clear the lands for this pipeline project and their capitalist, colonial extraction. Every day, the government, industry, and police are invading our Yintah. Coastal GasLink’s equipment is currently in a position to drill beneath the sacred headwaters of Wedzin Kwa. It is the resistance of our people and our many allies that has delayed the pipeline construction for the past several years. Under ‘Anuc niwh’it’en (Wet’suwet’en law) all Hereditary Chiefs of the five clans of the Wet’suwet’en have unanimously opposed all pipeline proposals and have not provided free, prior, and informed consent to Coastal Gaslink to drill on unceded and surrendered Wet’suwet’en lands. They are trying to drill under the Wedzin Kwa river, the sacred headwaters that feeds all of Wet’suwet’en territory and gives life to our nation. The pipeline, spanning 670 kilometers, will transport fracked gas to the proposed LNG Canada processing plant, which is the largest single private sector infrastructure project and one of the largest energy investments in Canadian history.

When we rise up to defend the Yintah, we are criminalized. For many months and many years, we have face militarized raids of our village sites on the Yintah. In three large-scale police actions in January 2019, February 2020, and November 2021, a total of 74 people were arrested and detained, including legal observers and members of the media. Since February 2022, RCMP and C-IRG have entered our village sites and home sites multiples times a day – hundreds of times in total. RCMP and C-IRG have continuously harassed and intimidated our people and our guests and disrupted our cultural practices and ceremonies. This affects our rights to hunt, trap, fish, gather, and conduct ceremony on our Yintah. They have shone high beams and spotlights into our residential buildings and awakened sleeping residents. The RCMP and C-IRG have also demanded our identification and arrested us, including with the use of pepper spray. The RCMP and C-IRG have illegally seized and destroyed our Gidimt’en property. They have committed assault and battery, and prohibited and blocked our movement on our own lands. This is a 24/7 campaign of surveillance and terror. The very creation and mandate of C-IRG in this province is to protect corporate resource and energy sectors by quashing and criminalizing Indigenous resistance. But we will never stop defending our Yintah. We live out our laws and cultural practices on our lands. Our medicines, our berries, our food, the animals, our water, our culture are all here since time immemorial. We will never allow our sovereignty to be violated. Read more - Lire plus

TAKE ACTION: RCMP off the land!

Did Canada use facial-recognition software to strip two refugees of their status? A court wants better answers

The Toronto Star 19/09/2022 - Canadian authorities can’t just brush off allegations that they are using facial-recognition software to discredit asylum-seekers, a court has ruled. The decision by the Federal Court comes in a case that has cast a spotlight on the possible use of the technology by the Canada Border Services Agency — a practice the agency denies. At the centre of the case are Asha Ali Barre and Alia Musa Hosh. The pair claimed to be Sunni Sufi Muslims, who fled sectarian and gender-based violence from Al-Shabaab and other militant Islamist groups in Somalia. They were accepted by Canada as refugees in May 2017 and July 2018, respectively.

In 2020, border officials moved to strip their refugee status before the Refugee Protection Division tribunal, alleging in part through photo comparisons that they were in fact Kenyans, a claim the women denied. Barre and Hosh lost their refugee status, and have appealed in court. At issue was the alleged use of facial recognition technology, but also the privilege that authorities enjoy in withholding the source of their photo comparisons — and their investigative methods — under the Privacy Act. “The RPD gave a cursory nod to the Respondent’s Privacy Act argument and failed to engage in the necessary consideration of balancing the alleged protection of privacy rights with the Applicant’s procedural fairness right to disclosure,” Judge Avvy Go wrote in a recent ruling in favour of the women’s joint appeal.

“The RPD’s swift acceptance of the Minister’s exemption request, in the absence of a cogent explanation for why the information is protected from disclosure, appears to be a departure from its general practice.” Last year, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien found that the RCMP committed a “serious violation” of Canadians’ privacy by conducting searches of Clearview AI’s facial recognition database, which contains billions of photos of people scraped from the internet, including from social media sites.

Facial recognition technology has been used in Canadian immigration settings to verify the identities of incoming travellers through automated kiosks at airports, but border officials have maintained they don’t use it in immigration enforcement. Lawyer Quinn Campbell Keenan, who represented Barre and Hosh, was pleased with Go’s decision. “It sent a clear message to the minister and the Canada Border Services Agency against the use of photo comparison or matching software to single out individuals for possible deportation on the basis of this very dubious photo matching technology,” she told the Star. Read more - Lire plus

Canadian Law Professors Are Speaking Out in Support of Palestinian Human Rights Defenders

Jacobin 20/09/2022 - On August 18, 2022, the Israeli military raided the offices of seven Palestinian human rights and humanitarian organizations in Ramallah. The groups reported that troops busted down doors without warning and seized property. This latest move follows Israel’s decision, in October 2021, to designate six of the seven groups as fronts for terrorism. No credible evidence for the charge has ever been produced. An independent investigation found no basis for concern. European donors have continued to fund the organizations’ important work.

Yet remarkably, Israel has suffered no diplomatic, legal, or other consequences for its brazen lie. The failure of allies to call out the Israeli government and press for a reversal gave it a green light to take its repression to the next level. The office raids will likely be followed by increasingly violent and menacing action. With no defense and meek international support, a veteran human rights community now faces the likelihood of obliteration as the world stands by watching, doing nothing. On November 4, 2021, a group of Canadian law professors sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Attorney General David Lametti, and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, urging them to take action to protect the targeted Palestinian human rights organizations. We asked the leaders to leverage Canada’s relationship with Israel and its professed commitment to democratic values to defend the work of the listed organizations. We pointed out that the human rights fact-finding, advocacy, and legal-aid work they do is rooted in the same values and commitments that Prime Minister Trudeau’s caucus claims to champion.

Sixty full-time law professors from across the country signed the letter to the government leaders. Up until recently, no political leader had been willing to hold the Canadian government to account for its betrayal of Palestinian human rights defenders. Then, on August 26, 2022, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Jagmeet Singh, laid out the party’s position on Israel in an email: “We believe Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is at the centre of the challenges facing the Palestinian and Israeli people.” Singh listed thirteen demands of Trudeau’s minority Liberal government, which is currently being supported by the NDP. The demands include denouncing Israeli violations, defending Palestinian human rights, and a call to “condemn the Israeli government’s attacks on civil society in Israel and Palestine, including the recent designation of six Palestinian human rights groups as ‘terrorist.’” The government has thus far given no indication that it intends to shift its current policy of inaction. As Israel widens its assault on the Palestinian human rights sector, the message of the law professors’ letter to government leaders is more important than ever. It is reproduced, in part, below. Ten months later, we are still awaiting a response. Read more - Lire plus

With mounting evidence of Israeli responsibility, Canada must support an ICC investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

CJPME 22/09/2022 - Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is reiterating its call for Canada to support an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, amid growing and overwhelming evidence of Israeli responsibility. In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had called for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, but Israel’s recent military probe has failed to find any responsibility, despite admitting that Israeli forces most likely killed her. CJPME argues that Canadian support for an ICC investigation is necessary due to the inability and unwillingness of Israel to hold itself accountable.

“The evidence that Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by Israeli forces is overwhelming and undeniable. This was an assassination,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “If Canada’s words are to mean anything, it must give its full support to the efforts by Abu Akleh’s family and others to seek justice at the ICC,” added Bueckert. Earlier this month, an Israeli military probe admitted that there was a “high probability” that Israeli soldiers killed Abu Akleh, but declined to open a criminal investigation. In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid reaffirmed that he would “not allow” any soldier to be prosecuted. Meanwhile this week, Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq published the results of a forensic investigation which concluded that Israeli soldiers had targeted Abu Akleh “deliberately and explicitly,” and found that there were no Palestinian gunmen or crossfire in the area – completely debunking Israel’s claims that the incident could have been an accident. These findings reinforce the conclusions of previous investigations by Bellingcat, CNN, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press, which indicated that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli forces on purpose.

In another development this week, an official complaint over Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing was submitted to the International Criminal Court by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), and Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), on behalf of Abu Akleh’s family. Similar initiatives have previously been announced by the Palestinian foreign ministry and Al Jazeera. CJPME notes that while Canada has formerly opposed the ICC investigation into alleged war crimes in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), it has offered enthusiastic support to the ICC’s investigation in Ukraine, including by sending a team of RCMP officers. CJPME urges Canada to drop this double standard and accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over the OPT, and to give its full support to an ICC investigation into Abu Akleh’s death. Read more - Lire plus

Joint investigation finds Abu Akleh’s killing ‘deliberate’

Shireen Abu Akleh’s family submits complaint to ICC

Iran sanctions, terrorism listing unlikely to pressure regime, experts say

CBC News 27/09/2022 - As members of Parliament debate how to stop Iran's violent crackdown on human rights, experts say Canada has limited leverage to pressure the regime. Large protests have erupted across Iran since Mahsa Amini died in police custody earlier this month. Iran's morality police had detained the 22-year-old, allegedly because her head scarf was too loose.

In response, women have burned their hijabs during large scale protests across the country that have prompted Iranian security forces to push back with a brutality unseen for years. At the same time, the regime has been beset by a drought and soaring inflation, while its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is bedridden. On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will sanction senior Iranian officials, including those working for the morality police. No list of sanctions targets had been published as of Tuesday afternoon. The Conservatives have urged Ottawa repeatedly to follow through on a motion the House of Commons adopted in 2018 to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is part of the country's army, as a terror group. But experts argue neither policy will do much to pressure the Iranian regime.

Thomas Juneau, a University of Ottawa international affairs professor specializing in Iran, said the IRGC has undoubtedly committed terrorism in Iran and abroad. But he said the parliamentary motion was unenforceable. "It's symbolic politics. It's not actually getting something done," he said. That's because Iran has conscripted millions into the corps over time. The list would include people such as a man who served as a cook in the corps for two years in the 1990s, Juneau said, adding that Canada would have no interest in extending a terrorist designation to every person who has been a part of the group.

Trying to limit sanctions to those who have taken part in terrorism would require identifying the individuals and monitoring them, Juneau said. Ottawa would either need to spend vastly more money or let other sanctions go unmonitored. "The drain on resources would be massive, and the reality is we are nowhere near a point where we can do that," he said. He suspects that's why the Liberals haven't gone ahead with the terrorism designation. But both Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly refused to provide an explanation when asked multiple times on Monday. Read more - Lire plus

ICYMI: Conscription Into Revolutionary Guards Haunts Iranian Dual Nationals Decades Later

Pressure Cooker

CBC 28/09/2022 - [...] as the case made its way through B.C.‘s courts, new details emerged about the unusual lengths police went to control the suspects (or “targets,” as they’re called in police files). The operation, codenamed Project Souvenir, turned out to be controversial within the RCMP from the early stages. In July 2016, a judge ruled that the RCMP manufactured the crime, and the couple was freed. It was the first terrorism case in Canada where entrapment arguments succeeded in overturning a verdict.

A lawsuit recently filed against the RCMP and prosecutors is seeking damages for the suffering Project Souvenir caused Nuttall and Korody. The civil suit claims police “came to totally dominate and control Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody” over the course of the investigation, and inflicted serious mental harm in the process. “There would not have been any plot except for the actions of the RCMP,” said Nathan Muirhead, an attorney representing Nuttall and Korody in the civil action. The case will argue that police violated the couple’s religious rights — a first of its kind in Canada. CBC’s reporting digs deep into the RCMP’s investigation, revealing in greater detail how the Mounties manipulated their targets, lied to the media and public and misrepresented findings internally — and what all this says about the integrity of the national law enforcement agency. [...]

Amarnath Amarasingam, a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., who studies extremism and social polarization, says that at the time, Canadian law enforcement agencies were fixated on the phenomenon of Canadian-born men leaving the country to join fighters in places like Syria and Afghanistan. Amarasingam says that “basic increases in religiosity” — like growing out a beard, dressing conservatively or expressing concern about Palestinians — became potential markers of extremism. “I think there’s a massive religious illiteracy in the national security apparatus,” he said. “Everyone became a potential foreign fighter, and that kind of framework meant that you cast the net wider than it potentially should be cast.” Extreme videos of ISIS members threatening or killing hostages spread on social media. As goofy meme accounts of the Harper era pointed out, Canadians were several times more likely to be killed by a moose than in a terrorist attack. But the climate of fear persisted.

Meanwhile, Muslim communities in Canada experienced unprecedented levels of hate and harassment as Islamophobic rhetoric became mainstream. Amarasingam says Canadian police sought to plant a flag in the global battle against terrorist forces. “They wanted to make a big show of it — that they’re also part of this international War on Terror.” Ayesha Choudhry, a professor of Islamic and gender studies at the University of British Columbia, points to Nuttall and Korody’s isolation from the wider Muslim community as an abuse of police power. When you convert to Islam, “you’re not joining an idea or a text. You’re joining a living community,” Choudhry said. “And to isolate anyone from a community that they’re trying to join sounds to me like classic abusive behaviour, right? Like, that’s what you do when you want to … exert undue influence over somebody.” [...]

Nuttall’s defence team argued he failed to complete steps that would prove he was capable of carrying out an attack. “They’re constantly setting tasks for my client — tasks that require work and steps and planning,” said Sandford. “And he is constantly demonstrating that he is incapable of any such thing.” Korody was quiet for much of the planning. “I was just so sick with anxiety all the time. I didn’t want anything to do with this,” she told CBC. Throughout the operation, Nuttall asked Abe if their mission went against their religion. He brought up a passage of the Quran that equated killing one innocent person to killing all of humanity. Nuttall asked to speak to an imam or sheikh. Abe told Nuttall to follow what’s in his heart, and that everything else was up to Allah to decide. “Because my client looked to him as his spiritual adviser, this was extremely dangerous,” said Sandford. Nuttall’s lawyers in the civil action will argue that the RCMP violated his right to practise religion. “The RCMP fed a false ideology of violence to John and Amanda,” Muirhead said. [...]

Sandford said the operation was controversial within the RCMP. According to meeting notes submitted as evidence, officers questioned why B.C.‘s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) was investing resources in “weird targets.” “There were lots of voices who were pointing out the problems with what was happening,” Sandford said, but “those voices were being disregarded and marginalized.” Stephen Matheson, the corporal responsible for designing the undercover scenarios, raised the issue of entrapment after Nuttall’s failed train plan and cautioned against pressuring Nuttall to go back to the drawing board. “The last thing we want to tell the target is that he needs to go away and come back with a real plan,” Matheson wrote in an email on May 8, 2013. “The target may come back with another plan simply because we told him to. This would be coercion at best, and at worst it would be making a terrorist out of someone who might not otherwise be.” Kalkat was unhappy with Matheson’s work on the file and eventually took over the role of developing undercover scenarios. A judge called it an unprecedented move in undercover operations.[...]

Project Souvenir’s full budget has never been publicly released, but requests under freedom of information legislation have revealed $90,000 in expense claims and $900,000 in overtime pay to officers. U of T’s Alex Luscombe said police should be pressed for more detailed financial figures. He said the RCMP in particular has a poor record when it comes to transparency, and it’s gotten worse in recent years. “The RCMP has basically given up on upholding its responsibilities under the Access to Information Act,” Luscombe said. He said other democratic countries like the U.S. and U.K. seem to routinely disclose similar information without compromising investigations. “It’s just not done in Canada.” [...]

UBC’s Choudhry goes further in her assessment of the damage done. “It’s just interesting to witness a white supremacist state, an institution like the RCMP, deploy an officer of colour, a Muslim officer, to entrap two white converts to Islam,” she said. Choudhry says that racialized suspects likely would have faced harsher punishment. “[Whiteness] allows your humanity to be witnessed and held in the judicial system.” She says the presence of government informants and undercover operators in Muslim spaces is still a concern two decades after 9/11. “I think these cases really bring to light how problematic these roles can be and how they can … reintegrate more violence, rather than actually making things better.”[...]

Nuttall and Korody, who never testified at their criminal trial, hope their story will ensure an investigation like Project Souvenir is never repeated. Their lawyers are confident the courts will agree. “I think it’s very important to the public to understand what happened here,” said Muirhead. “To make sure the RCMP do not engage in this conduct again.” Read more - Lire plus

2 AANES Officials Killed In Turkish Drone Strike In Syria’s Qamishli

North Press Agency 27/09/2022 - Two officials of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) were killed on Tuesday in a Turkish drone strike of a car in the eastern countryside of Qamishli, northeastern Syria.

The AANES Executive Council said, Each of Zaynab Sarokhan and Yilmaz Rasho, the co-chairs of the AANES Justice and Reform Office, lost their lives in the Turkish drone strike. “Sarokhan and Rasho were doing a regular check on the centers affiliated with their office,” the council added. Sarokhan served as the head of the AANES Women Board for years, before moving to her new office.

Earlier today, local sources present at the targeted site told North Press that a Turkish drone struck a car at the turn-off of the village of Deir Jamal near the town of al-Qahtaniya in the eastern countryside of Qamishli. In addition, Turkish forces shelled Tuesday afternoon the town of Zirgan (Abu Rasin), north of Hasakah Governorate, killing two people and wounding four others. Read more - Lire plus

Two children killed in Turkish Army attack on town in northeastern Syria

UNICEF condemns attack on school in Koya, Kurdistan Region of Iraq and calls on all parties to respect the Safe Schools Declaration

Turkey Shells Syria’s Kobani, Civilians Injured

AANES call on international community to take a clear position on attacks of Turkish occupation

ACTION: Tell the US State department: No More F-16’s to Turkey!

ACTION: Biden: Stop Turkey's invasion

Guantanamo: Biden appoints senior diplomat to oversee detainee transfers, report says

MEE 19/09/2022 - The Biden administration has appointed a senior diplomat to oversee the transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, in a quiet step towards fulfilling a campaign promise to finally close the prison, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Biden's new special representative is Tina Kaidanow, a former ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The administration has also signalled that it will not interfere with plea negotiations that could resolve the long-stalled prosecution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants. There are currently 36 men being held at Guantanamo Bay, 20 of whom have been approved for transfer, while five are in indefinite detention. Ten are awaiting trial and two have been convicted, including Majid Khan, who has finished his sentence and is in need of a country to be transferred to. As for the other detainees not eligible for transfer, a lengthy military commissions process has been in place for the past two decades. Many experts previously told Middle East Eye that this process has failed to achieve justice, neither for the victims of the 9/11 attacks nor the men who were brought to the prison.

Around $540m of US taxpayers' money is spent each year to hold the prisoners at Guantanamo, equal to $13m per prisoner, according to a 2019 report from The New York Times. Some critics of the Biden administration's policy on Guantanamo say that its efforts to close the prison have been delayed by other issues, including newer crises that have been occupying the national security staff. "Holding people without charge or trial for years on end cannot be reconciled with the values we espouse as a nation, and has deprived the victims of 9/11 and their families of any semblance of justice or closure," Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin told the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is moving ahead with a project to build a third courtroom at Guantanamo Bay at a cost of $4m, even though no additional trials are expected at the naval base, which has raised concerns that Biden's goal of closing the prison will not be fulfilled.

A military commissions spokesman told the Wall Street Journal an "extensive expansion" of Guantanamo's trial facilities, including a new courtroom, would allow military judges to hold "simultaneous multi-defendant, lengthy trials". Despite its stated goal of closing the prison, late last year the Biden administration issued a statement criticising certain restrictions regarding Guantanamo. The White House said that a number of provisions in the annual defence spending bill "unduly impair the ability of the executive branch to determine when and where to prosecute Guantanamo Bay detainees and where to send them upon release". The Guantanamo provisions in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which have been in place for years, say that Biden cannot use funds to transfer detainees to "certain countries". Those countries are Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Read more - Lire plus

Libyan national cleared for Guantanamo release: reports

Lawyer for Malaysian in Guantanamo slams US authorities over slow trial

Completely unnoticed, CIA torture victim Abu Faraj al-Libi has his ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial approved by a Guantanamo Review Board

Drone debt: U.S. refuses to help wounded survivor of wrongful attack in Yemen

The Intercept 19/09/2022 - The U.S. military claimed that Adel Al Manthari and the others in the vehicle were “terrorists” from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but independent inquiries said otherwise. There is no evidence to suggest that the United States ever reinvestigated the strike. And every day for the past four years, Al Manthari has paid the price for America’s shoot-first-ask-no-questions-later system of remote warfare. The irreparable damage to his body left Al Manthari unable to walk or work, robbing him of dignity and causing his daughters — ages 8 and 14 at the time of the strike — to drop out of school to help care for him. The psychological impact of the strike has been profound, leaving Al Manthari traumatized and in need of treatment. And the financial impact has been ruinous. Read more - Lire plus

The Global War on Terror doubles as a war on peace building

Ink Stick Media 12/09/2022 - Twenty-one years have passed since the United States declared a Global War on Terror in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Much has been written about the wide-ranging impact of the post-9/11 wars. But beyond even the lives lost and the dollars spent on the war itself, there is an additional consequence that has not received enough attention but must be urgently addressed: the chilling impact that US counterterrorism has had on peacebuilding, humanitarian work, and civil society itself.

One of the biggest blows to peacebuilding work came in 2010 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. In this case, the court broadly interpreted statutes prohibiting “material support” to terrorism to include any form of training or expert advice, even if such engagement was in furtherance of peaceful resolutions to conflicts. Quite simply, direct engagement with warring parties is critical for peacebuilders to be successful in their work, even if one of those parties is considered a terror group by the US government. In fact, peacebuilding is especially necessary in such cases, in the hopes that terror groups will abandon violent tactics and resolve their disputes peacefully. This, in effect, is what successful counterterrorism should look like. But current material support legal frameworks are blocking peacebuilders from doing their jobs.

There are numerous examples of where peacebuilders are facing obstacles when it comes to carrying out their work. In Nigeria, material support provisions posed a major roadblock to US support for girls who were rescued after their harrowing kidnapping from Boko Haram in 2014. After a peace agreement was reached in 2016 in Colombia, the material support prohibitions still effectively barred US peacebuilders from lending their considerable expertise to the peace process until the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list in November 2021.

In Somalia, a growing chorus of foreign policy analysts are calling for diplomatic engagement with al-Shabaab, rather than doubling down on military approaches that have thus far failed to bring peace and stability to the country. But opportunities for civil society to engage in peacebuilding and dialogue are limited so long as al-Shabaab remains designated as an FTO and material support laws continue to follow the failed status quo. Further, broad-based sanctions make humanitarian work incredibly difficult in areas controlled by militant groups such as al-Shabaab, as thick layers of bureaucracy and legalese pose nearly insurmountable hurdles for humanitarian organizations attempting to provide direct help on the ground. The US government says such sanctions are meant to curb terrorism. But all evidence shows that terrorism in Somalia and the Sahel has only increased in the wake of US intervention, and that innocent civilians are the ones who truly pay the price of sanctions. Afghanistan has become the latest and most extreme example of how US counterterrorism measures can shrink civil society and hurt innocent civilians while doing nothing to curb terrorism. Read more - Lire plus

UK: Creeping Authoritarianism - The next threat to our civil liberties

Declassified UK 02/09/2022 - It is creeping authoritarianism in a very British way – the government is steadily but quietly eroding democratic accountability, including the right to challenge arbitrary executive diktats. As Boris Johnson’s premiership draws to a close, the Conservative government has set in motion four Bills before Parliament to limit the role of the independent judiciary, increase secret courts, repeal the Human Rights Act, and restrict the freedom of the press.

The Bills contain dangerously loose and deliberately ambiguous language – what for instance, is “legal but harmful” online content? Some cabinet members would even like to extract the UK from the European Human Rights Convention, an international treaty that is enshrined in Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement. The government defends its plans with truly Orwellian arguments. Suella Braveman, the attorney general, asserted last month in a speech to the right-of-centre Policy Exchange think tank that there is a “serious risk that the fight for rights undermines democracy”. With sinister echoes of 1984, she tried to turn Orwell on his head, blaming “fringe campaign groups…often with vastly inflated salaries and armed with a Newspeak dictionary”. Braverman says they have “created mighty citadels of grievance across the public sector and made huge inroads into the private sector”.

To fight this supposed threat, the government plans to restrict judicial reviews, which are court hearings that allow citizens to challenge the legality of decisions taken by the executive. “Judicial review is what protects us, the individual, from the overbearing might of the state. It exists to ensure that, however venal, corrupt or malign the politicians who govern us, we are treated equally and according to the law”, said the best-selling author known only as The Secret Barrister. They warned: “The government’s claims to be restoring trust in democracy by rolling back these checks and balances mask an audacious power grab, allowing them to govern unlawfully and without accountability”. Ministers want to cherry pick decisions by the courts they do not like, including those by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which covers the activities of the security and intelligence agencies.

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill reflects growing intolerance among ministers of individuals and what they call “lefty lawyers” questioning the way the government has taken decisions and the way judges have responded. One notable case was the ruling by the Supreme Court ruling that Boris Johnson’s decision in 2019 to prorogue – suspend – Parliament was unlawful. The proposed “bedroom tax”, the “VIP lane” for suppliers of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) during the Covid pandemic, and police operations using facial recognition technology, are among many decisions declared unlawful as result of judicial reviews.[...]

The National Security Bill – some of whose dangers Declassified has already highlighted – further increases the government’s ability to shield its activities from independent and democratic scrutiny. Sections 5 and 6 of the Bill refers to “prohibited places”, described as the country’s “most sensitive places”. “Unauthorised entry” into such places for whatever purpose, “prejudicial” or not, could be a criminal offence as would photographing and “inspecting” them on the internet. Such measures could include photographing demonstrations outside military bases or locations deemed “sensitive”, as well as military convoys. The list of “prohibited” sites could be expanded without alerting parliament while prosecutions could be heard in secret. Read more - Lire plus

Narendra Modi’s BJP bans Indian Islamic group for ‘terrorist’ links

The Guardian 29/09/2022 - An Islamic organisation that says it fights discrimination against minorities in India has disbanded after the government declared it and its affiliates unlawful, accusing them of involvement in terrorism. The government of Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) accused the Popular Front of India (PFI) group of having been involved in “terrorism” and “anti-national activities”. The ban, under a strict anti-terrorism law, came amid a crackdown in which 300 PFI leaders and activists have been arrested. The PFI branch in the southern state of Kerala said that it had worked only “for the socio-economic empowerment of the downtrodden people”.

“But as law-abiding citizens of our great country, we accept the home ministry’s decision (to ban the PFI). We also inform all that the PFI has been disbanded,” the statement said.

PFI leaders have previously said that the terrorism accusations were baseless. “These cases against us are all fabricated. We are victims of a political vendetta by the BJP-led government,” Anis Ahmed, the general secretary of PFI, said just before he was arrested last week. Muslims, who make up more than 15% of India’s 1.4 billion population, often complain of persecution in the Hindu-majority country, and note that the marginalisation of the community has been increasingly prominent under the BJP. The BJP and the government deny the accusations.

Founded in 2006 in Kerala, the PFI claims to fight for the rights of minorities and low-caste Hindus. On its website, the organisation calls itself a movement that aims to establish an “egalitarian society where everyone enjoys freedom, justice and a sense of security”. The PFI supported the protest against a 2019 citizenship law that according to its critics discriminated against Muslims. It also supported this year’s protests in the southern state of Karnataka by Muslim girls who demanded their right to wear hijab in educational institutions. [...]

According to the government gazette notification, “there is evidence that the group has a connection with the international terrorist group Isis”. PFI leaders rebutted the charge. “There are mainstream media reports describing how our top leaders condemned the Isis. The allegation that this organisation had links with the Isis is ridiculously false,” one Kerala-based leader said on condition of anonymity. “We are confident, all major charges against the PFI and its leaders will be found to be false if the trials in the court are conducted properly.” Security expert Swaran Ram Darapuri, a retired police services officer, said the allegations against PFI seemed to be preconceived as “no related specific charge or crime has been investigated or proved” in the cases. Read more - Lire plus

Geneva Declaration: international community unites to end spyware abuse

AccessNow 29/09/2022 - It’s time to make a collective commitment to human rights, and stop the dangerous, unchecked, and proliferating use of spyware technology. Access Now, the Government of Catalonia, the private sector, and civil society from across the globe are demanding concerted global change to this uncontrolled industry through the Geneva Declaration on Targeted Surveillance and Human Rights.

“Digital technologies have the power to advance human rights. Surveillance technology does the opposite — it robs people and communities of privacy, agency, and freedom,” said Laura O’Brien, Senior UN Advocacy Officer at Access Now. “We must put an end to the deployment of these treacherous tools, and demand the immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, servicing of, and use of digital surveillance tech. Collectively, we must uphold the Geneva Declaration on Targeted Surveillance and Human Rights.”

Members of the international community are calling for an end to the proliferation of surveillance technologies used to target individuals and communities engaging in protected activities, such as exercising their right to protest. They are also pressuring governments, in coordination with civil society and the private sector, to implement a moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, servicing, and use of targeted digital surveillance technologies, until rigorous human rights safeguards are put in place to regulate such practices.

Signatories to the Geneva Declaration commit to, and call on multilateral organizations, governments, and the private sector to, among others:

Implement an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, servicing, and use of targeted digital surveillance technologies until rigorous human rights safeguards are put in place;
Establish a legal and policy framework that makes the acquisition of surveillance tools subject to robust public oversight, consultation, and control;
Hold companies developing and distributing these technologies accountable for their failure to respect human rights;
Publicly report any detected misuse of cybersurveillance products and services resulting in human rights violations; and
Ensure that digital transformation works for, not against, democracy and human rights.

“Governments’ reckless use of spyware is nothing less than abuse,” said Rand Hammoud, Surveillance Campaigner at Access Now. “And it must be addressed as such. Today, through the Geneva Declaration, the international community has laid out in black and white the concrete commitments that authorities must make to ensure human rights are at the core of any and all digital transformations.”

The Declaration officially launched today, September 29, 2022 at the UN Human Rights Council’s 51st session side event Spyware: A Threat to Human Rights and Democracy organized by Access Now and the Government of Catalonia, in Geneva, Switzerland. This event featured opening remarks from Clément N. Voule, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association. Read more - Lire plus

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NEW Write a letter: Militarizing the Sky: Opposing Canada’s Armed Drone Purchase

The Canadian government is moving nearer to obtaining armed drones, worth $5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars. Now is the time to say stop the procurement.

Armed drones threaten people’s lives around the world. Rather than making the world safer, they are used in extrajudicial executions, surveillance of targeted populations and other violations of human rights.

Take one minute to write to the Canadian Minister of Defence. Tell her it is time to stop militarizing the sky.