International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
July 12, 2024 - 12 juillet 2024
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ICLMG to Public Safety Minister: Stop Mohamed Harkat's deportation to torture once and for all! |
ICLMG 26/06/2024 - On the occasion of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26th, which marks the moment when the Convention Against Torture came into effect in 1987, we have sent the letter below to the Public Safety minister urging him to stop the deportation to torture of Mohamed Harkat, and to finally put an end to 22 years of injustice:
Dear Minister LeBlanc,
I’m writing today on behalf of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, a coalition of 46 civil society organizations that since 2002 has worked to defend civil liberties in Canada in the context of anti-terrorism and national security activities, to raise urgent concerns about the case of Mohamed Harkat.
This year marks 22 years since Mr. Harkat was placed under a security certificate (ironically, on Dec. 10th – International Human Rights Day), and the beginning of the ordeal which has continuously undermined his fundamental rights.
We believe it is urgent that you act on Mr. Harkat’s case. Having been recognized as a refugee in Canada, Mr. Harkat has lived here since 1996 without ever being charged or convicted of a crime. Yet, because of the security certificate based on secretive information of questionable origin, Mr. Harkat continues to face deportation to Algeria where he will be at risk of prolonged solitary confinement, forms of treatment that constitute torture or other ill treatment, and an unfair trial based on the fact that he has been publicly identified and described by Canadian officials as a terrorism suspect and security threat.
Our coalition has long decried the use of security certificates, which undermine the rights of the targeted individual by allowing information not normally considered “evidence” to be used against them, and preventing them or their counsel from accessing the whole case brought against them – essentially eliminating any hope of mounting an adequate and full defense.
We believe that security certificates should ultimately be eradicated from Canada’s legal system, and that instead the government should focus on prosecutions under the Criminal Code, which would serve to protect the rights of the accused as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international covenants, and in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Despite this, security certificates were in fact significantly worsened through changes brought about with the adoption of the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015. Disappointingly, your government declined to address these issues in the recently passed National Security Act, 2017, and decided to in fact further restrict what information can be withheld from those named in a security certificate and their counsel in the recently passed Countering Foreign Interference Act.
More immediately, we are writing because, as the Minister of Public Safety, Mr. Harkat’s fate is in your hands. Under section 42.1(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Minister of Public Safety is granted the power to allow Mr. Harkat to stay in Canada where it is not contrary to the national interest. The courts have consistently relaxed Mr. Harkat’s bail conditions over the years, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has deemed it unnecessary to even file a risk assessment during Mr. Harkat’s previous hearings. As his work colleagues and supporters have attested, and as court assessments and psychiatrists have demonstrated, Mr. Harkat is committed to leading a peaceful life and letting him stay would not be contrary to Canada’s interests. Moreover, deporting a man to a risk of imprisonment and torture is clearly against Canada’s national interest, as well as its international obligations.
We have closely followed the case of Mohamed Harkat since it came to the public eye in 2002. Under the very problematic security certificate regime, Mr. Harkat was imprisoned in maximum security for 43 months, spent years under house arrest, and faced some of the strictest bail conditions in Canadian history. The original “evidence” against Mr. Harkat was destroyed and the allegations against him are based on the testimony of an informant who failed a lie detector test and was never cross-examined in court. Mr. Harkat has never been charged with, let alone convicted, of a crime.
Life under a security certificate has also had a profoundly negative impact on Mr. Harkat’s well-being. His arrest and time in solitary confinement, the severe conditions of his release and the threat of deportation to torture have resulted in chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and insomnia. Sophie Lamarche-Harkat, Mr. Harkat’s wife, has also spoken of the stress upon her, their household and their family of living with constant Canada Border Services Agency surveillance and the threat of losing a loved one. Throughout all this, Mr. Harkat has gained a community that cares about him deeply. For them, he is simply “Moe,” a loving and soft-spoken man who is always ready to help those around him. They have been living in constant fear since deportation proceedings began in 2015.
Beyond the current impacts of living under a security certificate on Mr. Harkat’s well-being, he faces a credible threat of imprisonment, abuse and torture if, as your government is seeking, he is deported to Algeria.
Amnesty International has noted that the Algerian Code of Criminal Procedure allows those charged under anti-terrorism laws to be detained for up to 12 days without access to legal counsel or charge, creating a window for abuse, and does not prohibit the use of confessions obtained under torture. Amnesty International has also reported on a 2018 case where a journalist was reportedly beaten and waterboarded, held in solitary confinement for over one month. More recently, human rights advocates have shared reports of abuse and torture in Algerian prisons during an ongoing crackdown on civil liberties using overly broad “anti-terrorism” laws.[1] In March 2024, it was reported that an Algerian national who spent 20 years of imprisonment and torture in Guantanamo Bay prison, without ever being charged, was returned to Algeria, only to be arrested, held incommunicado for 12 days, and forced to provide false confessions under duress.[2]
It is also important to note that courts in other countries, such as the UK in 2016[3] and Ireland in 2017,[4] have recognized these concerns and barred their governments from deporting individuals to Algeria as the individuals concerned faced a substantial risk of torture.
On October 26, 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau clearly stated: “I hope people remember to demand of governments, this one and all future governments, that nobody ever has their fundamental rights violated either through inaction or deliberate action by Canadian governments. Nobody ever deserves to be tortured. And when a Canadian government is either complicit in that or was not active enough in preventing it, there needs to be responsibility taken.”
Consequently, we urge you, Minister LeBlanc, to use your unique position and the discretion afforded to you under the law to exempt Mr. Harkat from deportation, end this 22-year ordeal and allow him to stay with his wife and community in Canada.
Doing so would send a clear message that defending human rights and eliminating mistreatment and torture go hand in hand with protecting the safety of people in Canada. It would also ensure that Canada upholds its commitments as a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture. We do not want this government, or its successors, to have to once again apologize and pay compensation because your government refused to take the right action today.
We would appreciate a timely response to our letter, and if you would like more information or have any questions, we would be happy to meet with you to discuss it further. Sources + Share on Facebook + Instagram
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John Price & Midori Ogasawara: Rushed Passage of C-70: An Urgent Wake-Up Call
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rabble.ca 02/07/2024 - “In the context of ever-increasing police budgets and weak oversight agencies, the public should be very alarmed about the further erosion of our civil liberties and human rights through the passage of C-70,” warns Meghan McDermott, policy director of the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA).
“The rapid enactment of these new laws without any kind of scrutiny is devastating for social movements in BC and across Canada,” she said in an exclusive interview last week. The Countering Foreign Interference Act (Bill C-70) received royal assent on June 20 after being rushed through the House of Commons and then stampeded through the Senate in three days. Now that it is the law of the land, the government must bring down specific regulations and appoint a Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner.
The mad dash to pass the legislation is extremely alarming given that C-70 is in many ways an omnibus bill, amending the Canadian Security Intelligence Act, the Security of Information Act, the Criminal Code, the Canadian Evidence Act, and introducing a new act, the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act. Realizing the gravity of criticism directed at Bill C-70, Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands and Green Party leader, said last week in parliament, “I think we’ve made a mistake in not allowing the bill to be properly studied. There are a lot of concerns being raised now.”
Among those criticizing the new law are the BC and Canadian Civil Liberties Associations, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Amnesty International, the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council and Independent Jewish Voices Canada. In a joint statement, they say C-70 “will likely have significant impacts — both directly and in the form of a chilling effect — on freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and on privacy, and it could well be used to profile people on political, racial, religious, or nationality grounds. The law will allow the undermining of academic freedom, freedom of the press, the right to protest and engage in dissent, and efforts at international cooperation and solidarity.”
Among the controversial provisions are section 20 (1) “Every person commits an offence who, at the direction of, for the benefit of or in association with, a foreign entity or a terrorist group, induces or attempts to induce, by intimidation, threat or violence, any person to do anything or to cause anything to be done (a) that is for the purpose of increasing the capacity of a foreign entity or a terrorist group to harm Canadian interests; or (b) that is reasonably likely to harm Canadian interests.”
The Canadian Bar Association (CBA)’s Criminal Justice Section advised the Senate that equating “a foreign entity” with a terrorist group when there was “nothing inherently criminal about a foreign entity” raised concerns about the “potentially overbroad and vague nature of the new criminal offences created in Bill C-70.” “This is particularly worrisome given the potential life sentences that attach to these offences and the statutory bar against multiple sentences running concurrently,” stated Kyla Lee in the CBA’s submission to the senate.
Independent Jewish Voices of Vancouver spokesperson, Neil Naiman, also weighed in, stating “the hastily crafted and dangerous Bill 70 raises serious concerns about freedom of expression and the silencing of legitimate dissent.” Pointing to the BCCLA’s work to defend peaceful protesters who were violently attacked by police last month, Meghan McDermott emphasizes that “social and political dissidents across Canada will bear the costs of the hasty and irresponsible enactment of these heavy-handed new laws. We are very concerned that communities across Canada that already face discrimination will be further silenced and criminalized by the new foreign interference laws.” BC senator Yuen Paul Woo’s amendment to remove some of the vagueness of the legislation was defeated in the senate, 54-17.
Tim McSorley of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group has said his group and the Centre for Free Expression will set up a “web portal where individuals can report instances where they believe their rights to privacy and their internationally-protected and Charter rights to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, or freedom of association have been violated.” Further countermeasures may also be necessary as conservative forces gather behind the new legislation.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) itself has been lobbying for increased powers for a decade, and last November the government signalled it was listening, publishing a public consultation paper to give CSIS greater authority. CSIS has parroted US intelligence agencies allegations regarding China for the past five years, refusing to heed warnings about threat exaggeration from US senator Bernie Sanders, economist Jeffrey Sachs, or Congresswoman Judy Chu.
Mainstream media unfortunately have been hammering the theme of foreign interference. For example, the Globe and Mail has been campaigning for a foreign influence registry for over a year. Likewise, its reporters have unabashedly used CSIS leaks to engage in sensationalist reporting, failing to verify CSIS information. This has created a political maelstrom to the benefit of CSIS.
The mood has turned ugly in what academics call a discursive crisis, or what Naomi Klein calls “shock doctrine,” allowing C-70 to pass without serious scrutiny. CSIS’s long history of spying on social movements, its sexism and racism, and its targeting of racialized communities have been swept aside as a perilous McCarthy-like tide takes hold.
Behind the scenes, the Five Eyes spy network (Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US) has pressured Canada to harmonize with their members’ foreign influence registries yet those who have lobbied for this in Canada fail to mention that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have exposed the Five Eyes as a dangerous espionage network. In a widely cited interview, Snowden described it as “a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries.”
Also pushing for the new legislation has been the Business Council of Canada. Last fall they published a major report calling for economic security to be central to Canada’s national security strategy. The report called for an expansion of CSIS powers, increasing CSIS resources to train “private sector entities,” developing a foreign influence registry, joining AUKUS – the trilateral nuclear alliance of the US, the UK, and Australia, and developing a “NATO for trade.”
The passing of C-70, major increases in military spending, involvement in the war in Ukraine, continuing support for Israel’s deadly war against Palestine, and an increasingly aggressive stance towards China suggest that Canada is developing both the structures and ideology of a “National Security State” that generates perpetual enemies and permanent preparedness for war.
C-70 may be the wake-up call necessary to bring social movements together to counter this shift towards authoritarianism and build the alliances necessary for justice, peace and planetary survival. Source
Foreign interference bill could have ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of expression
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Dimitri Lascaris: Is Canada's parliament concealing embarrassing information about Canada's allies | |
Blog 30/06/2024 - Earlier this month, the Canadian Parliament’s National Security and Intelligence Committee (NSICOP) released an 84-page, special report on alleged foreign interference in Canada’s “democratic processes and institutions”.
Initially, the committee delivered its special report to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on March 22 of this year.
As a result of mounting controversy around allegations of foreign interference in Canada, NSICOP then publicly released a heavily redacted version of its special report.
How can an evidence-free report be “damning”?
Predictably, Canada’s corporate media described the report as “shocking“, “explosive” and “damning“. They did so despite the fact (which the media ignored) that the report is totally devoid of evidence.
I’ve read the report twice. I did so from the perspective of a litigator. That is, to assess whether NSICOP’s allegations were supported by persuasive evidence, I brought to bear my extensive experience in evaluating evidence. Despite those efforts, I’ve been unable to identify a shred of objectively reliable evidence anywhere in NSICOP’s report.
At the outset of its report, NSICOP discloses that:
This report is composed of an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion, the Committee’s findings and recommendations, and four annexes. The four chapters are almost exclusively based upon classified documentation, mostly summary assessments intended for senior officials or ministers and classified briefings, but also specific reporting from various security and intelligence organizations. This is especially true of Chapter 2 and parts of Chapter 3, where the Committee summarizes trends or specific instances and issues of foreign interference. Readers should note that the Committee has fully or partly redacted references to much of this source material to avoid injury to Canada’s national security, national defence or international relations.
NSICOP’s defenders might argue that the committee was obliged to withhold all the evidence underlying its conclusions and recommendations because its report was “almost exclusively” based on “classified documentation”. That argument begs two key questions: who decided that this documentation should be classified in the first place, and how do we know that the decision to classify the documentation was based on legitimate reasoning?
In effect, NSICOP is asking the public to accept that there was no relevant evidence that it could release to the public without harming Canada’s national security. Given the nature and number of the allegations in NSICOP’s report, that proposition is highly dubious.
Moreover, NSICOP reveals that the classified documentation it reviewed consisted “mostly” of “summary assessments for senior officials”. What does the committee mean by “summary” assessments? Does that mean that the reports which the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) had provided to senior government officials contained little evidence, and simply set forth the conclusions CSIS analysts had reached based on evidence that only they had reviewed?
Whatever the answers to those questions may be, NSICOP’s special report can be reduced, in essence, to two words: ‘CSIS says…’. Why? Because the committee cites CSIS as a source more than 160 times, and does so far more than it cites all other sources combined. Essentially, NSICOP is asking the citizenry to ‘just trust CSIS’. That, however, is something that no sensible citizen would do.
Why CSIS cannot be trusted
NSICOP’s obsequious reliance on CSIS leaves no doubt that the committee regards CSIS as a highly credible source, but CSIS destroyed its own credibility long ago. In 2016, thousands of pages of secret files obtained by the CBC revealed how CSIS knew that three Canadians were being tortured in Syrian jails in a post-Sept. 11 crackdown, and that CSIS co-operated with Syrian officials in their interrogations.
Maher Arar, another Canadian arrested and tortured in Syria in the wake of the September 11 attacks, received an apology and a $10.5-million settlement from Canada’s federal government in 2007. Documents revealed that, within two days of Arar’s deportation from the United States, CSIS suspected that the CIA had shipped Arar somewhere to face possible torture, but did not alert its political masters.
There’s more.
In 2020, a Federal Court of Canada judge slammed CSIS for lying in closed hearings, where CSIS representatives have an extra special “duty of utmost good faith in the representations it makes to the court.” The Court noted that CSIS — in the name of fighting alleged “terrorism” — engaged in illegal activities, including “provision of money” and “provision of personal property” to a person “known to be facilitating or carrying out terrorist activity.”
In addition, Aljazeera reported last year that, in its zeal to root out alleged Chinese interference in Canadian politics, CSIS had smeared two veteran Canadian police officers. Finally, last October, another Federal Court judge chastised CSIS over concerns related to judicial warrants and the disclosure of information about Canadians. According to the Court, “CSIS’s failure to live up to its obligations in this regard appears to have been an institutional failing, rather than a failing of any particular individual or individuals”.
The incidents mentioned above are by no means an exhaustive list of CSIS’s acts of deception. These incidents are nonetheless sufficient to demonstrate that CSIS cannot be trusted. Consequently, if CSIS is unwilling to disclose to the public the evidence upon which its foreign interference allegations are based, then no rational citizen would simply assume CSIS’s claims to be true.
The un-redacted special report
In theory, NSICOP’s un-redacted report (which the public has not seen) could contain sufficient evidence to substantiate CSIS’s claims of foreign interference, but a recent interview of Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May suggests otherwise. To gain access to the un-redacted report, May (who is a lawyer) fulfilled the onerous requirements that MPs must satisfy to view classified information. She then read the un-redacted NSICOP report.
After reading it, May gave a lengthy interview to The Hill-Times. When asked by a Hill Times reporter about the report’s reliability, May stated:
…it’s not the equivalent of evidence, it’s not hard facts. There’s a tremendous amount of analysis that goes into what we collect through our intelligence operations as a country and I think it’s very reliable…”
So just giving a bit more context, this is not black and white stuff in the sense that this is evidence, nor is it clear at what point anyone has crossed the line, whether a foreign agent or a proxy of a foreign government or an elected person in Canada, at what point have they crossed the line toward something that would actually have some element of criminality…
During the Hill Times interview, May also questioned the veracity of CSIS. She recounted that a former Canadian Solicitor General had assured her, based on an assessment provided to him by CSIS, that Maher Arar was “a really bad actor”. May acknowledged that CSIS’s false assessment of Arar (which May generously characterized as a “mistake”) had persuaded her that representations from CSIS should be treated with caution. [...]
NSICOP’s unnamed villains
A careful reading of NSICOP’s report reveals that it has concealed the identities of several states that it believes to be engaged in serious misconduct in Canada. Predictably, Canada’s corporate media have ignored NSICOP’s concealment of this critical information. [...]
The true objectives of NSICOP’s report
If NSICOP truly prioritized the integrity of Canada’s democratic discourse and the protection of its democratic institutions, the Committee would not give a free pass to any states which manipulate political discourse in Canada or interfere in its democratic institutions.
All states engaging in such behaviour should be named and shamed, especially if Canada’s Government deems those states to be ‘allies’ of Canada. Canadians have a right to know whether its supposed ‘allies’ engage in conduct that undermines Canadian democracy.
NSICOP’s unjustifiable concealment of this important information suggests that its ultimate objective is not to protect Canadian democracy. Rather, by manufacturing hysteria around alleged foreign interference by the West’s official enemies, the Committee and its accomplices in the intelligence community and corporate media seek to generate public support for three objectives:
1. the West’s increasingly belligerent (and dangerous) posture toward Russia, China and Iran;
2. increased government spending on ‘national security’ and the military; and
3. censorship, particularly censorship in regard to Canadian foreign policy.
With regard to censorship, it’s no coincidence that NSICOP’s report has been released to the public at the same time that the Trudeau government has advanced two extremely repressive bills.
As I explained here and here, the Government’s Online Harms bill (Bill C-63) and its Countering Foreign Interference bill (Bill C-70) deter dissent – particularly criticism of Canada’s morally bankrupt foreign policy – by using broad, ambiguous language and imposing Draconian penalties on those who run afoul of the amorphous legislation. In short, a Committee that was established for the ostensible purpose of protecting Canadian democracy is, in reality, an accomplice in the suppression of Canadians’ democratic rights. Read more - Lire plus
Yves Engler: The foreign interference behind Canada's foreign interference act
Video: Bill C70 and the Foreign Interference Panic
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Public Safety Saw No Evidence Linking Palestine Rallies To ‘Hamas Call’ Even Though There Was An Attempt To Conflate These Protests With Support For Hamas
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The Maple 04/07/2024 - The federal ministry in charge of public safety knew that early pro-Palestine rallies held across Canada in response to Israel’s attack on Gaza last October showed no signs of “mobilizing to violence” at the behest of an unconnected call to action put out by a former Hamas commander.
But a minister in the Trudeau government and other politicians continued to falsely portray the protests as “advocating for violence in Canada” in response to the Hamas-linked call to action anyway — a narrative that would help set the tone for smears against pro-Palestinian demonstrations for the next eight months, and preceded a ramping up of policing efforts against activists in some cities.
Internal communications obtained by The Maple through an access to information request show that in mid-October, Public Safety Canada (PSC) focused on pro-Palestine rallies, with less attention paid to those held in support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
The ministry was also told by law enforcement that some pro-Palestinian events had already gone ahead peacefully and without any incidents. None of these facts were reflected in the ministry’s public statements, which came at a time when some prominent pro-Israel voices had called for other pro-Palestinian rallies to be pre-emptively banned over alleged safety concerns.
In a joint statement co-signed by PSC before rallies on October 13 took place, public safety ministers across the country falsely suggested that the upcoming demonstrations amounted to “supporting terrorism or advocating for violence in Canada.” The statement added: “Our law enforcement and security partners remain vigilant in the face of these potential disruptions and are monitoring the situation closely to ensure the safety of all Canadian citizens.”
On its website, the federal ministry framed the quote as a response to “calls for global protest and unrest from the terrorist organization Hamas.” The statement made no distinction between the Hamas-linked call and independently organized peaceful protests in Canada.
The following day, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc cited a “Hamas-led call for mobilization around the world” and suggested protests in Canada, which included Jewish organizers and activists, posed a direct danger to Jewish people. The minister said he was in regular contact with senior leadership of the RCMP “to remain apprised of their efforts to keep the Jewish communities and their institutions safe.”
LeBlanc’s statement also did not distinguish between the Hamas-linked call and independently organized protests.
At that time, deputy ministers and assistants at PSC were keeping an eye out for any signs of trouble on Canadian streets in coordination with the RCMP and CSIS, Canada’s spy agency. Despite the rhetoric used in official statements, the ministry reported no evidence connecting the rallies to any Hamas-linked call to action.
On the same day as LeBlanc published his statement, senior assistant deputy minister Patrick Boucher, of PSC’s national and cyber security branch, reported to the deputy minister and other assistants that “there are no indications of domestic mobilizations to violence (same as in the U.S.A.) relating to the [Hamas] call for protest.” Boucher listed three protests due to be held in Windsor, Ont., Hamilton, Ont. and Montreal. Boucher’s assessment matched that of several Canadian police forces, which told news outlets at the time there were no signs of any specific threats to communities in cities across Canada.
Boucher warned the deputy minister and assistants that “the threat could manifest itself from both the IMVE [Ideologically motivated violent extremism] and RMVE [religiously motivated violent extremism] milieu,” but did not identify any specific group or individual that might engage in such actions, or connect such actions to the pro-Palestine protests in Canada. CSIS similarly told The Canadian Press in May that “violent rhetoric” from “extremist actors” could “impact certain individuals’ intent to mobilize to violence.” However, the wire service’s account of the spy agency’s warning was short on specifics. [...]
Aggressive Policing
The October protests ultimately went ahead peacefully. At later protests, police attempted to charge some organizers and other participants with hate speech and other alleged offences. Bueckert said that while it is tricky to identify specific national trends in policing of pro-Palestinian activism, there have been clear examples of attempts to repress such actions at local levels.
In Calgary, police arrested a pro-Palestinian activist and charged him with causing a disturbance with hate as a motivation after he led chants of, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The charges were eventually stayed. The chant in question is often and falsely described as a call to kill all Jewish people in Israel. In fact, it calls for equal democratic rights for Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In Vancouver, an activist was arrested for leading chants of “Long live October 7!” in April, but was released. According to The Tyee, no charges had been laid as of May 29.
In Toronto, 11 protesters were charged with mischief and criminal harassment after leading a protest action at an Indigo bookstore over the company owner’s involvement in a foundation that provides funds for people who volunteered to join the Israeli army. In May, charges were quietly dropped against four of those protesters. Some supporters of Israel have also been charged with making threats and engaging in violent actions against pro-Palestine demonstrations across the country.
In some cases, police have engaged in violence against pro-Palestine demonstrators, and other protests have been approached by alleged members of the Jewish Defence League, a far-right group that is listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. This spring, police forces violently stormed peaceful pro-Palestinian encampments held at some universities, where students called on their school administrations to disclose investments in Israeli companies and to divest.
As reported by The Breach, a heavily-resourced “Hate Crime Unit” within the Toronto Police Service has aggressively cracked down on the city’s Palestine solidarity movement, including with pre-dawn raids, snatching people on the street, attempting to recruit informants and showing up at university lectures.
As well, The Breach revealed that a secretive committee within Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General has given “politically-motivated” support to the Toronto police’s targeting of pro-Palestine activists, and has sought to increase the severity of charges laid against those activists. Read more - Lire plus
Secretive committee in Ontario ministry pushed crackdown on pro-Palestine activism
Canadian Federation of Students' statement of solidarity with the pro-Palestinine student encampments at the University of Toronto, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the University of Waterloo
McGill shuts down Gaza camp, but cannot silence students
CJPME condemns the smear campaign against Birju Dattani, the incoming chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission
Kathleen Ruff: Does Canada uphold binding international law? The answer is No.
NEW Ottawa protest: End the Occupation Now! Sat July 13 at 2PM
NEW When Nothing Else Works to End Israeli Genocide of Gaza, Urge Governments to Use UN General Assembly Res 377 “Uniting For Peace” for Peace in Palestine
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Press release: Fight continues against secret hearings in challenge to CSIS spying on environmental groups | |
BCCLA 10/07/2024 - The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) has appealed a recent Federal Court decision related to our 10-year fight for government accountability and transparency following our complaint against the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for secretly and illegally spying on Indigenous land defenders and environmental groups. If the decision is upheld, CSIS would be allowed to use secret evidence in court to oppose our ongoing judicial review of the Security Intelligence Review Committee’s decision to dismiss our complaint.
The Federal Court ruled against the BCCLA June 5, 2024. The Court held that the unredacted record could be disclosed to the judge hearing the judicial review, even though it would continue to be withheld from the BCCLA. The Court also upheld the redacting of names of petroleum companies that participated in hospitality events with CSIS.
The decision being appealed relates to a complaint, filed in February 2014, which alleged that CSIS was monitoring Dogwood Initiative, ForestEthics (now Stand.earth), Sierra Club BC, Leadnow.ca (who were opposed to the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal), and the Indigenous #Idlenomore movement, and sharing this information with the National Energy Board (NEB) and petroleum companies. The BCCLA further alleged that this spying activity was deterring individuals from associating with environmental groups and expressing their opinions, arguably creating a chilling effect that interfered with Charter-protected rights to freedom of expression and association.
In 2019, the BCCLA was able to publicly release thousands of previously secret documents. While still heavily redacted, these documents showed that CSIS had investigated specific targets who were opposed to pipelines, including those named in our complaint. In addition, CSIS had shared information they had gathered about the targeted groups with the NEB and petroleum companies.
We are deeply concerned by the idea of secret hearings in our judicial system. Open courts are a cornerstone of our democratic system of constitutional government and the rule of law.
Vibert Jack, Litigation Director of the BCCLA
This is part of an ongoing pattern that reveals a disturbingly close relationship between our governments and the fossil fuel industry — from illegal spying on peaceful activists and land defenders, to American gas companies teaming up with CSIS to push for changes in Canadian law to access intelligence. We need to stop the spread of fossil fuel influence that is corroding our democracy and blocking critical climate action.
Alexandra Woodsworth, Director of Organizing at Dogwood
Secret court hearings are antithetical to the democratic rule of law and erode public trust in our court systems. Further, we remain deeply concerned that without an open judicial review and fair document disclosure, Canadians may never learn the extent to which CSIS engaged in illegal spying on peaceful protestors to provide information to wealthy multinational oil corporations—companies that already have a disproportionate and dangerous influence on government decision-makers.
Shanaaz Gokool, Executive Director of Leadnow
The BCCLA is represented in this case by Paul Champ and Bijon Roy of Champ & Associates. Source
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Lost Childhoods: The Ongoing Plight of Children in Detention Camps in Northeast Syria | |
ICCT 18/06/2024 - Between 2012 and 2019, a significant number of foreigners travelled to Syria and Iraq, many to join ISIS and live under what came to be the so-called caliphate. Their backgrounds and journeys are as diverse as their nationalities. One such individual was Amanda, a 23-year-old Swedish woman. She converted to Islam in her teenage years, became radicalised, married a man who became known as the most notorious Swedish terrorist, and travelled to Syria with their four children, all under the age of four, to live under ISIS’s rule. In Syria, she gave birth to three more children.
Much of the information about childhood in the so-called caliphate derives from ISIS’s own propaganda, which sheds light on the group’s unprecedented exploitation of children as soldiers, martyrs, and executors. When it comes to the foreign fighters, many travelled to Syria and Iraq without children but became parents during their time with ISIS. Consequently, most of the children of foreign fighters were born there and thus very young during their time in ISIS-held territory and never trained in combat or were directly involved in acts of violence. However, the lives of the youngest children of ISIS fighters were far from safe.
Amanda’s seven young children survived bombardments and indescribable violence, including the airstrike that killed Amanda, and the shooting that killed their father. In their short life, the children were displaced multiple times, including to Baghouz, known as the last stronghold of ISIS. As with the many family members of ISIS fighters, when the so-called caliphate fell, the seven orphans were brought to the makeshift detention camp al-Hol. They were ultimately rescued by their grandfather, and successfully returned to Sweden where they have been reintegrating well.
The case of Amanda’s seven orphaned children highlights the urgent need for international action regarding the children remaining in Northeast Syrian detention camps, emphasising both their precarious situation and potential for recovery if evacuated and given a new chance in life. This analysis uses the example of these children to demonstrate the possibility for successful repatriation and reintegration of children remaining in Northeast Syria, and challenges perceptions that these children should be viewed as imminent ‘ticking time bombs’. It is based on the author’s direct experience in this repatriation process and continued engagement with this work, including with the family. Read more - Lire plus
ACTION: Call to save and repatriate Jack Letts and other Canadians illegally detained in NE Syria!
ACTION: Email to urge Canada to repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now!
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‘I’m bored, so I shoot’: The Israeli army’s approval of free-for-all violence in Gaza | |
+972 Magazine 08/07/2024 - In early June, Al Jazeera aired a series of disturbing videos revealing what it described as “summary executions”: Israeli soldiers shooting dead several Palestinians walking near the coastal road in the Gaza Strip, on three separate occasions. In each case, the Palestinians appeared unarmed and did not pose any imminent threat to the soldiers.
Such footage is rare, due to the severe constraints faced by journalists in the besieged enclave and the constant danger to their lives. But these executions, which did not appear to have any security rationale, are consistent with the testimonies of six Israeli soldiers who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call following their release from active duty in Gaza in recent months. Corroborating the testimonies of Palestinian eyewitnesses and doctors throughout the war, the soldiers described being authorized to open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians.
The six sources — all except one of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — recounted how Israeli soldiers routinely executed Palestinian civilians simply because they entered an area that the military defined as a “no-go zone.” The testimonies paint a picture of a landscape littered with civilian corpses, which are left to rot or be eaten by stray animals; the army only hides them from view ahead of the arrival of international aid convoys, so that “images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out.” Two of the soldiers also testified to a systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on fire after occupying them.
Several sources described how the ability to shoot without restrictions gave soldiers a way to blow off steam or relieve the dullness of their daily routine. “People want to experience the event [fully],” S., a reservist who served in northern Gaza, recalled. “I personally fired a few bullets for no reason, into the sea or at the sidewalk or an abandoned building. They report it as ‘normal fire,’ which is a codename for ‘I’m bored, so I shoot.'”
Since the 1980s, the Israeli military has refused to disclose its open-fire regulations, despite various petitions to the High Court of Justice. According to political sociologist Yagil Levy, since the Second Intifada, “the army has not given soldiers written rules of engagement,” leaving much open to the interpretation of soldiers in the field and their commanders. As well as contributing to the killing of over 38,000 Palestinians, sources testified that these lax directives were also partly responsible for the high number of soldiers killed by friendly fire in recent months.
“There was total freedom of action,” said B., another soldier who served in the regular forces in Gaza for months, including in his battalion’s command center. “If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain — you just shoot.” When soldiers see someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” B. continued. “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”
B. went on to describe an incident in November when soldiers killed several civilians during the evacuation of a school close to the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, which had served as a shelter for displaced Palestinians. The army ordered the evacuees to exit to the left, toward the sea, rather than to the right, where the soldiers were stationed. When a gunfight erupted inside the school, those who veered the wrong way in the ensuing chaos were immediately fired at. “There was intelligence that Hamas wanted to create panic,” B. said. “A battle started inside; people ran away. Some fled left toward the sea, [but] some ran to the right, including children. Everyone who went to the right was killed — 15 to 20 people. There was a pile of bodies.” [...]
Ambiguity about the identity of victims meant that, for A., military reports about the numbers of Hamas members killed could not be trusted. “The feeling in the war room, and this is a softened version, was that every person we killed, we counted him as a terrorist,” he testified. “The aim was to count how many [terrorists] we killed today,” A. continued. “Every [soldier] wants to show that he’s the big guy. The perception was that all the men were terrorists. Sometimes a commander would suddenly ask for numbers, and then the officer of the division would run from brigade to brigade going through the list in the military’s computer system and count.” [...]
A. noted the irony that part of what motivated Israelis’ calls for revenge was the belief that Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced in the death and destruction of October 7. To justify abandoning the distinction between civilians and combatants, people would resort to such statements as “‘They handed out sweets,’ ‘They danced after October 7,’ or ‘They elected Hamas’ … Not everyone, but also quite a few, thought that today’s child [is] tomorrow’s terrorist. “I, too, a rather left-wing soldier, forget very quickly that these are real homes [in Gaza],” A. said of his experience in the operations room. “It felt like a computer game. Only after two weeks did I realize that these are [actual] buildings that are falling: if there are inhabitants [inside], then [the buildings are collapsing] on their heads, and even if not, then with everything inside them.” [...]
“I saw a lot of [Palestinian] civilians – families, women, children,” S. continued. “There are more fatalities than are reported. We were in a small area. Every day, at least one or two [civilians] are killed [because] they walked in a no-go area. I don’t know who is a terrorist and who is not, but most of them did not carry weapons.” [...] Last month, Guy Zaken, a soldier who operated D-9 bulldozers in Gaza, testified before a Knesset committee that he and his crew “ran over hundreds of terrorists, dead and alive.” Another soldier he served with subsequently committed suicide. Read more - Lire plus
Gaza toll could exceed 186,000, Lancet study says
Save the Children: Countless children are missing in Gaza
Israel ordered thousands to ‘safe’ areas in Gaza City — then bombed them
‘More horrific than Abu Ghraib’: Lawyer recounts visit to Israeli detention center
Israel's war on Gaza is the deadliest conflict on record for journalists: Attacked in the field, in the office, and at home, 1 in 10 reporters in Gaza have been killed in Israel’s military campaign
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Spencer Ackerman: Biden Must Abolish War on Terror Now or We Risk Trump's Political "Retribution" Campaign | |
Zeteo 09/07/2024 - The day before the U.S. Supreme Court transformed the presidency into something more like an elected emperor, Donald Trump, on whose behalf the Court majority did it, was busy re-posting his intentions about how he’d use such an extraordinary gift.
Trump amplified posts from supporters on his Truth Social platform that urged him to imprison his political rivals in an example of the "retribution" he has promised them. One of them singled out the former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney. The New York Times wrote that the post "invoked the dictatorial imagery of a televised military tribunal, which would strip Ms. Cheney of her right to due process similar to the military courts used to prosecute terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay."
Irony would not begin to capture it if Liz Cheney finds herself on the receiving end of the War on Terror she launched her political career by championing. In 2010, Cheney, daughter of War on Terror architect Dick Cheney, co-founded an entity called Keep America Safe, with the goal of pressuring then-President Barack Obama to preserve as much of her father's security legacy as possible, which turned out to be a push on an open door. One tactic they used was to smear seven Justice Department appointees who had represented terrorism defendants as "the al-Qaeda Seven." Cheney presumably has developed more respect for due process of law in recent days.
But however much poetic justice might apply to Liz Cheney experiencing a Guantanamo Bay show trial, the point of such tribunals – and of Guantanamo Bay itself – is that there would be no actual justice. The joke would get old very fast, considering how many people could fall under Trump's promised, and now Court-sanctioned, retribution.
Joe Biden's recent debate performance may cost him reelection. More fundamentally, whoever wins the election, and future ones, is now formally beyond the reach of the law. That is the bequest of the Supreme Court deciding last week that the president enjoys "absolute immunity" for his official acts. If Biden truly means it when he says his rationale for running for president is to preserve democracy, he needs to act like he has six months to dismantle the War on Terror before Liz Cheney is merely the first into the still-open cages of Guantanamo Bay.
If you think the War on Terror no longer exists, I don't blame you. Even before Biden pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, politicians in both parties spoke of turning the page on the 9/11 era. Only they never got around to dismantling the authorities, institutions, and even many operations of the War on Terror. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, which gave the president the authority to wage war anywhere on earth, remains. So does the Department of Homeland Security, whose use of counterterrorism tools to crack down on migrants prefigured their use against left-wing protesters in Portland in the summer of 2020 – and which Trumpist operatives are looking to purge of anyone not affirmatively loyal to Trump. The Costs of War Project at Brown University last November tallied U.S. counterterrorism operations in 78 countries during Biden's tenure.
But far and away the most significant application of the Court's promise of absolute presidential immunity for official acts will have to do with the most consequential bequest of the War on Terror: mass surveillance. Source
“A King Above the Law”: Supreme Court Rules Presidents Have Broad Immunity from Prosecution
Outlining Potential Abuse Of Executive Emergency Powers, Elizabeth Goitein Hopeful For Reform
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Eric Wemple: Assange deal undermines claims that leaks cause harm | |
The Washington Post 05/07/2024 - Following one of WikiLeaks’ epic 2010 document dumps, then-Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) struck a tone common in official circles: “This is worse even than a physical attack on Americans, it’s worse than a military attack.”
At a plea hearing last week for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Northern Mariana Islands, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona addressed the implications of those disclosures and many others: “The government has indicated there is no personal victim here. That tells me the dissemination of this information did not result in any known physical injury.”
Journalists, take note: For decades, big shots atop U.S. agencies have tried to stifle, delay or reshape certain sensitive stories by telling editors and reporters that their publication will compromise national security. Now, considering the Assange findings, we must apply steroidal skepticism to any such claims.
“They overdo it,” James Risen, who covers such matters for the Intercept and formerly for the New York Times, said of national security officials working the media. “And no one ever goes back to scrutinize.”
The WikiLeaks saga was a bottomless affair. In July 2010, for instance, the anti-secrecy group dropped more than 75,000 documents from its so-called Afghan War Logs, some of which included “the names of human sources who were vulnerable to retribution by the Taliban in Afghanistan or the insurgency in Iraq,” per a June 2020 indictment. A member of the Taliban later told a reporter: “We will investigate … whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are … we know how to punish them.”
The New York Times, the German magazine Der Spiegel and Britain’s Guardian newspaper received early access to WikiLeaks’ Afghan documents and edited out names of those who could have been at risk. Yet WikiLeaks’ spotty approach to redaction drew warnings from government officials. “The irresponsible and reckless behavior of WikiLeaks has of course caused damage — and will continue to be damaging in the months and years to come,” said a spokeswoman for James R. Clapper Jr., then the director of national intelligence. Similarly bleak assessments were easy to find in news accounts at the time, alongside occasional reporting that the harm was being blown out of proportion.
But when it comes to foretelling doom, the national security establishment is turning into an emperor with no clothes. These riffs about unspecified damage are familiar to Beltway journalists on the national security beat, such as Risen, who has heard many versions and proved them wrong.
As Risen worked on a 2003 story about what he called a “harebrained” scheme to foist flawed nuclear-weapon blueprints on Iran, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was determined to kill the story. According to talking points cited by Risen here, Rice believed that putting the information in the “wrong hands could easily lead to the death of a U.S. citizen … and conceivably contribute to the deaths of millions of innocent victims of a foreign nuclear weapons program.” Though the Times didn’t publish the Iran nuclear story, Risen put it in his book “State of War.” Rice’s doomsday scenarios haven’t materialized.
As Risen and his colleague Eric Lichtblau reported a story on warrantless surveillance in 2005, President George W. Bush told Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. he’d have “blood on your hands” if the paper proceeded. When asked what harm came of the story, which the Times published after a long delay, Risen responded: “zero.”
And then there was the pushback against a 2006 story about how the CIA and other agencies sifted through international bank data as part of an anti-terrorism campaign. Publishing the piece, said the government, “would lead to the collapse of the international banking system,” Risen shared with me. It would take two more years for that system to crash, he joked, though not because of his work.
Risen’s scoops concerned matters of much greater sensitivity than your average WikiLeaks document, which were heavy on diurnal reports of “significant activities” in the Afghanistan and Iraq war theaters, as well as State Department cables. Yet the government’s response in all of these cases is uniform: Denounce, fulminate, exaggerate. Read more - Lire plus
Julian Assange’s Release “Averted a Press Freedom Catastrophe” But Still Set Bad Precedent: Jameel Jaffer
From Afghanistan to Hillary Clinton’s emails: WikiLeaks major document dumps
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More than 10 years later, the Senate Torture Report is still secret: I filed a lawsuit to obtain the 6,700-page report with “excruciating detail” about the CIA’s abuses | |
The Intercept 27/06/2024 - The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence submitted its 6,700-page “torture report” about the CIA to the White House in April 2014. More than 10 years later, the full report remains secret after a federal appellate court dismissed a lawsuit I filed in the hopes of forcing its release.
The document “includes comprehensive and excruciating detail” about the CIA’s “program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques,” the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Senate intelligence committee at the time, wrote in a 2014 summary.
For years, there have been calls to release the full report, including from human rights watchdogs, one of its authors, and even Feinstein and some high-ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee.
“The full report details how the CIA lied to the public, the Congress, the president, and to itself about the information produced by the torture program,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has fought to obtain CIA records. “We need to know our real history so we don’t repeat its crimes.”
So far, efforts to obtain the torture report using the federal Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful. In late 2016, despite the CIA director’s objections, former President Barack Obama placed a copy in his presidential papers. But that copy is not subject to FOIA until 2029 — 12 years after Obama left office.
The CIA and a handful of federal agencies also have copies of the torture report, although the Trump administration returned several of these to the Senate intelligence committee vaults in 2017.
The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations all fought strenuously against FOIA requests for these agencies’ copies. In 2017, the Supreme Court declined to consider a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union. A law professor’s attempt to obtain the report under FOIA is currently pending before the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, following oral argument last fall.
In 2021, my lawyer, Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors, tried a different tack. We sued the Senate intelligence committee itself and its current chair, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., for a copy of the full torture report.
FOIA explicitly does not apply to Congress. Instead, McClanahan argued that the public is entitled to the committee’s copy of the torture report under the common law right of access, a doctrine that is well developed when it comes to court records but less so regarding the records of Congress. “It is high time that this critical piece of American history is made public,” McClanahan said.
The district court rejected this argument in 2022, ruling that it had no jurisdiction to order the committee to disclose the report because of the U.S. Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from being sued for legislative activities. Last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
“In sum, we conclude that the report is a legislative document, and that the Speech or Debate Clause therefore protects it from compelled disclosure,” wrote Judge Cornelia Pillard for the unanimous panel.
If courts continue declining to wade into the matter, Congress could also take steps to make the torture report available before 2029. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who still sits on the intelligence committee, has previously called for it to be declassified. “I’m not holding my breath,” Blanton said. Source
Gitmo Detainee Can’t Escape Terrorist Charges Despite Torture
Negotiations are underway for Guantanamo's "forever prisoner" from Gaza to be released
Taliban in talks with US over Gitmo prisoner 'exchange'
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Civil Rights Advocates Achieve the Nation’s Strongest Police Department Policy on Facial Recognition Technology | |
ACLU 28/06/2024 - Civil rights advocates announced today a settlement in the lawsuit brought on behalf of Robert Williams, who was wrongfully arrested by the Detroit Police Department in 2020 after the department relied on incorrect results from facial recognition technology. The groundbreaking settlement agreement achieves the nation’s strongest police department policies and practices constraining law enforcement’s use of this dangerous technology. The agreement will also lower the likelihood of wrongful arrests, especially for people of color and women, who are substantially more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology.
Mr. Williams is a Black man who was wrongfully arrested at his Farmington Hills home in front of his wife and two children for allegedly stealing watches from a Detroit store. His case is one of three known wrongful arrests where Detroit police relied on facial recognition technology. All three who were wrongfully arrested were Black.
Key components of the settlement include:
- Police will be prohibited from arresting people based solely on facial recognition results, or on the results of photo lineups directly following a facial recognition search.
- Police will also be prohibited from conducting a lineup based solely on a facial recognition investigative lead without independent and reliable evidence linking a suspect to a crime.
- Police training on facial recognition technology, including its risks and dangers and that it misidentifies people of color at higher rates.
- An audit will be conducted of all cases since 2017 in which facial recognition technology was used to obtain an arrest warrant.
The court will retain jurisdiction to enforce the agreement for four years. Under the terms of the settlement, Detroit will also pay monetary damages to Mr. Williams and attorneys’ fees.
“The Detroit Police Department’s abuses of facial recognition technology completely upended my life,” said plaintiff Robert Williams. “My wife and young daughters had to watch helplessly as I was arrested for a crime I didn’t commit and by the time I got home from jail, I had already missed my youngest losing her first tooth and my eldest couldn’t even bear to look at my picture. Even now, years later, it still brings them to tears when they think about it.
“The scariest part is that what happened to me could have happened to anyone,” continued Williams. “But, at least with this settlement, it will be far less likely to happen again to another person in Detroit. With this painful chapter of our lives closing, my wife and I will continue raising awareness about the dangers of this technology.”
“This settlement finally brings justice to Detroit, and the Williams family, after years of fighting to expose the flaws of this dangerous technology,” said Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan. “Police reliance on shoddy technology merely creates shoddy investigations. Under this settlement, the Detroit Police Department should transform from being a nationwide leader in wrongful arrests driven by facial recognition technology into being a leader in implementing meaningful guardrails to constrain and limit their use of the technology.”
“The multiple wrongful arrests by police in Detroit and other American cities show that face recognition technology is fundamentally dangerous in the hands of law enforcement,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “The most effective way to avoid abuses is for lawmakers to ban police use of the technology, as city councils from Boston to Minneapolis to San Francisco have done. But in jurisdictions where lawmakers have yet to act, police departments should look to Detroit’s new policies, which will seriously mitigate the risk of further false arrests and related harms.”
“We hope this groundbreaking settlement will not only prevent future wrongful arrests of Black people in Detroit, but that it will serve as a model for other police departments that insist on using facial recognition technology,” said Michael J. Steinberg, director of the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative at the University of Michigan Law School. “We are also thrilled that Mr. Williams, who has become a face of movement to stop the misuse of facial recognition, will receive some measure of relief.” Read more - Lire plus
Amazon-Powered AI Cameras Used to Detect Emotions of Unwitting UK Train Passengers
Following similar pushback in the EU, Meta now faces daily fines if it uses Brazilian Facebook and Instagram data for AI training
Need for independent national market surveillance authorities under the AI Act
Ontario Bill 194: Strengthening Cyber Security and Building Trust in the Public Sector Act
Fostering a Federated AI Commons ecosystem
ACTION: Canada: Remove the national security exemptions from Bill C-27!
ACTION: Protect our rights from facial recognition
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More than 40 activists jailed for life in UAE for 'terror' offences | |
BBC 10/07/2024 - A court in the United Arab Emirates has handed life sentences to 43 activists after finding them guilty of terror offences. State media said the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal convicted the defendants of "creating a terrorist organisation". United Nations experts and human rights groups have severely criticised the mass trial.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said more than 80 human rights defenders and political dissidents - known as the "UAE 84" - were put on trial. Last January, the UAE's prosecutor general referred the defendants to the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal on charges of "establishing another clandestine organisation for the purpose of committing acts of violence and terrorism on UAE soil" known as the "Justice and Dignity Committee".
He said most of the defendants were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UAE since 2014. Its local affiliate, the al-Islah party, is also banned. According to the official WAM news agency, on Wednesday the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal "sentenced 43 defendants to life imprisonment for the crime of creating, establishing, and managing a terrorist organisation". In addition to the 43 life sentences handed out, 10 other defendants were jailed for 10 to 15 years in prison on the charges of "co-operating with al-Islah" and money laundering, WAM said. One defendant was acquitted and 24 cases were ruled inadmissible, it added.
The bulk of the defendants have been in prison for more than a decade after they were jailed as part of the "UAE 94" trial in 2013, according to HRW and Amnesty International. Many had already completed their sentences. But UAE authorities said the latest charges were "materially distinct" from those brought in 2013, which did not include accusations of financing a "terrorist organisation", AFP news agency reported. According to Amnesty International, the indictment, charges, defence lawyers and names of defendants were "kept secret by the government". It said details were only known through "leaks".
HRW identified three of those sentenced to life in prison were Nasser bin Ghaith, Abdulsalam Darwish al-Marzouqi and Sultan Bin Kayed al-Qasimi. Prominent activist Ahmed Mansoor was among the defendants, it added. Reacting to the sentencings, Amnesty International’s Devin Kenney urged the UAE to "urgently revoke this unlawful verdict" and called on those sentenced to be released. "The trial has been a shameless parody of justice and violated multiple fundamental principles of law, including the principle that you cannot try the same person twice for the same crime, and the principle that you cannot punish people retroactively under laws that didn’t exist at the time of the alleged offence."
Khalid Ibrahim of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, on whose board Ahmed Mansoor sits, said: "It is a real tragedy that so many activists and human rights defenders will remain in prison for decades, deprived of watching their children grow up, for no other reason than calling for a better future for Emiratis."
Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East and promoting high-tech sectors and innovations, the UAE remains restrictive on political activity. The federation of seven emirates, which include Abu Dhabi and Dubai, has no official opposition and bans political parties. In 2013, almost 70 Islamists were given jail sentences over an alleged plot to overthrow the government. Source
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Hong Kong's biggest national security trial: Mitigation pleas begin for 47 democrats | |
Reuters 25/06/2024 - The 47 democrats were among those arrested in early 2021 for taking part in an unofficial, non-binding poll to select candidates for a legislative election. They were charged with "conspiracy to commit subversion" under a China-imposed national security law.
Mitigation pleas for Hong Kong's biggest ever national security trial against the city's democratic opposition kicked off on Tuesday, in what is expected to be the final stage before sentencing that could see some defendants jailed for life.
The 47 democrats were among those arrested in early 2021 for taking part in an unofficial, non-binding poll to select candidates for a legislative election. They were charged with "conspiracy to commit subversion" under a China-imposed national security law.
The marathon case has drawn criticism from countries including Britain, the US and Australia, which say the national security laws have been used to stifle dissent and curb freedoms guaranteed when the financial hub was handed back to China in 1997.
Most of the democrats have been denied bail and remanded in custody for more than three years in what critics say has been a departure from common law traditions. The mitigation proceedings come around one month after 14 democrats were found guilty with two acquittals. Several others had earlier pleaded guilty.
The 45 convicted democrats will make mitigation pleas in six batches over the next six weeks, before the sentencing that could range from three years for active participants in the conspiracy, to life for "principal offenders”. Read more - Lire plus
Hong Kong court affirms national security committee decisions not amenable to judicial review
The National Security Law in Hong Kong: adverse impacts and increased risk of reprisals
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Does the Terrorism Prevention Branch prevent terrorism? | |
Twitter 26/06/2024 - Our new report on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB) is out.
For those of you too busy to read 19,000 words (rude!) here’s a serene spoken word summary AND a thread. Four years ago, Ali & I wrote the Safer World discussion paper analyzing the impact of counterterrorism at the United Nations.
But there was a slight omission in that piece: we didn’t really cover the UNODC’s Terrorism Prevention Branch (TPB). And so we are rectifying that wrong. And honestly, it’s about time someone wrote about the TPB. The last time, from what we found, was 2009. I’d link to the thread for that piece, but Twitter barely existed & I don't think threads were a thing.
So what did we find in our research? We spoke to UN staff, donors, independent experts and diplomats and many felt the TPB has a value-add in the UN CT architecture with a clear niche compared to other UN entities. This was based on six observed good practices:
1. Presence in the field
2. Expertise in criminal justice and the rule of law
3. Robust training and capacity-building programming
4. Application of UN Human Rights Due Diligence Policy
5. Independent evaluations within UNODC
6. Transparency with donors
But good practices appeared to be ad-hoc, and not uniform across the wider TPB portfolio. Many felt there was room for improvement in the TPBs work and highlighted some important shortcomings:
1. Inconsistent engagement with civil society and the wider community
2. Stretching expertise?
3. Is the 'engage to change' strategy apolitical or not?
4. Lack of human rights monitoring and risks of 'blue-washing'
5. Measuring management success, not whether terrorism is being prevented
6. Insufficient external transparency
The limited scope of our research meant that we were unable to do detailed evaluations of every case study of TPB programming - but one that stands out from what we were able to dig into was the engagement in Sri Lanka in 2020/2021 (see page 24-25 for full overview). The TPBs engagement in Sri Lanka appears to have been a poorly designed engagement based on an unrealistic risk evaluation and - at worst - was a clear case of a Government using the UN to blue-wash human rights abuses.
For those waiting for us to answer the title of our piece - we do not present a deterministic evaluation of the title of our report in the end. Honestly, we are not sure if they - or other parts of the UN counterterrorism architecture - can answer that question themselves!
Instead we end the report with three critical dilemmas for the TPB:
➡️Sticking to expertise vs staying relevant
➡️Committing to an inclusive approach vs staying close to authorities
➡️Human rights as a calling card vs human rights as compliance
Ultimately, we believe that the TPB will need to make a clear choice on each dilemmas, or risk waning influence, reduced impact, and support from traditional donors. These choices will decide what the TPB becomes over the coming years.
And an NGO report wouldn't be a report without some recommendations would it? Here we present seven realistic recommendations that we believe that Member States and the TPB would benefit from implementing:
1. Move beyond human rights compliance
2. Develop a go/no-go framework to protect against the risk of blue-washing
3. Invest in dedicated senior capacity on human rights, gender and youth
4. Develop a civil society strategy
5. Produce a collaborative community engagement policy
6. Commit to inclusive programme evaluations
7. Embrace improved Read more - Lire plus
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OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC | |
Uphold rights and liberties at protests and encampments across Canada! | |
Please join us in calling for the following:
- Officials must stop equating Charter-protected expression and dissent with “support for terrorism,” and refrain from calling for law enforcement to forcibly end or prevent protest activities.
- Law enforcement agencies must refrain from acting against protesters exercising their Charter-protected rights, including at encampments.
- The Ontario legislature must immediately reverse the keffiyeh ban.
- Canada must call for a permanent ceasefire and to halt all arms sales, transfers and military aid to Israel.
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Canada: Remove the national security exemptions from Bill C-27! | |
Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, has been introduced by the federal government with the promise that it would enhance privacy protections, adequately regulate artificial intelligence (AI) and protect human rights. The bill, however, is not up to the task. Please join us in denouncing the dangerous national security related exemptions in the bill. | |
Canada: Do not purchase armed drones | |
The ICLMG is a member of the No Armed Drones campaign | |
In the government's proposal seeking bids for its drone program it laid out disturbing scenarios for Canadian military drone use: One scenario described drones being used to surveil activists protesting a (theoretical) G20 Summit in Quebec, helping the security team intercept and identify the occupants of a vehicle, who are “anti-capitalist radicals” intending to “hang a banner concerning global warming.” Another scenario modeled after US drone strike programs features a drone bombing “Fighting Age Males” in the Middle East after spotting one of them “holding a small radio or cell phone." The initial cost estimate is $5 billion with billions more to operate the drones over their 25-year lifespan. | |
CSIS isn't above the law! | |
In recent years, at least three court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.
Send a message to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable, and for parliament to support Bill C-331, An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (duty of candour). Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.
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Canada must protect Hassan Diab! | |
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. | |
December to June 2024 - Décembre à juin 2024 | |
Thanks to the support of our members and donors, so far in 2024 we have been able to work on the following:
- Bill C-20, Public Complaints and Review Commission Act - which would FINALLY create an independent watchdog for CBSA
- Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 - which includes the very problematic Artificial Intelligence and Data Act
- Advocating for the protection of international assistance from anti-terrorism laws after the adoption of Bill C-41
- Bill C-63: The very concerning Online Harms Act
- Bill C-70: The new and highly controversial Foreign Interference legislation
- Parliamentary study on Transparency of the Department of National Defence
- Biometrics guidance & other privacy issues with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- Palestine and the right to dissent
- Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
- Repatriation of all Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
- Justice for Dr Hassan Diab
- Mohamed Harkat & Security certificates
- Canada’s 4th Universal Periodic Review
- Work with the international Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- The UN Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) Canada assessment
- The UN Cybersecurity Treaty & the EU AI Convention
What we have planned for the rest of 2024!
- Pressuring lawmakers and officials to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security as well as opposing the discourse of “countering terrorism” to repress dissent, such as protests and encampments in support of Palestinian rights and lives.
- Opposing the weaponization of concerns around foreign interference to unnecessarily increase national security powers, which will greatly affect rights and liberties of Canadians, and will most likely lead to more harassment and xenophobia
- 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 good privacy law reform
- Addressing the lack of regulation on the use of AI in national security, including proposed exemptions for national security agencies
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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
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The return of the rest of the Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
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The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities
- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency
- Greater accountability and transparency 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
- Keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest
- Publishing a collection of essays written by amazing partners on the work of the ICLMG for our 20th anniversary
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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. | |
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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