News Digest - Revue de l'actualité: ICLMG: Why CBSA needs a watchdog + comments on "Federal judge says US terror watchlist is unconstitutional" & "NHS reports protester to Prevent for joining Extinction Rebellion"; Canada must not criminalize protest

International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

6 septembre 2019

Tim McSorley: Border guards without boundaries: Why CBSA needs a watchdog

CCPA Behind the Numbers 05/09/2019 - On May 7, less than 30 days before the House of Commons was set to rise for the summer, the federal government introduced Bill C-98 , “an Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.” The legislation would rename the CRCC the Public Complaints and Review Commission (PCRC) and give it jurisdiction over the CBSA. Individuals would be able to file complaints about CBSA officers, and the review body would have published an annual review of the border agency’s work.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad piece of legislation. Bill C-98 largely reflected the decade-long call from civil liberties groups for a CBSA review body. I’ve switched to the past tense because the legislation died in on the Senate’s order paper after being rushed through a House of Commons vote and cursory parliamentary committee study that did not hear from a single witness. There was no way that this bill was ever going to make it through the parliamentary process before the summer recess. The government had three and a half years to bring in a CBSA review body, as promised in the 2015 Liberal election platform, and waited until the last possible moment to do so.

In the coming federal election there will be a lot to debate about the border. Rhetoric is ramping up around who is a legitimate newcomer to Canada. More spurious accusations are flying about “fake refugees” flocking to our borders. Day by day, there is a stronger case to do away with the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. Canada must also face its own use of immigration detention centres and the deaths that have occurred there under the CBSA’s watch. It is federal policy here, too, to detain children and families. We need stronger rules, regulations and training to do away with racial profiling at the border and in immigration decisions.

As of July 17, the CBSA’s national security activities can be reviewed by the new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA). But this only covers part of the CBSA’s activities and does not allow the public to file complaints. What’s more, the NSIRA is tasked with examining the work of nearly 20 other departments that carry out national security activities, so the level of focus it can or will place on the CBSA is still unknown.

Whoever forms the next government will need to commit to a strong, independent review agency that can shine a light on problems at the CBSA, whether or not that takes the form of a re-tabled Bill C-98. The rights of travellers, and especially of refugee claimants and newcomers to Canada, depend on it. Read more - Lire plus

Following release of BC activist Rita Wong, Amnesty International calls on governments across Canada to avoid criminalization of protest

Amnesty 05/09/2019 - Following poet and activist Rita Wong’s release from prison on September 3, 2019, Amnesty International reiterates its call on the BC government and all governments across the country to take deliberate action to avoid unjustified criminalization of protest. In particular, the organization again expressed concern about the use of criminal contempt prosecutions against individuals accused with defying the court injunction against protests connected with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

On Aug. 16, BC Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck sentenced Rita Wong to 28 days in prison for defying a court injunction against protests linked to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. She served two-thirds of her sentence before her statutory release on Sept. 3. Rita Wong describes the protest, which took place at the Westridge Marine Terminal on Aug. 24, 2018, as involving about 30 minutes of song, prayer and seated ceremony. There have reportedly been over 200 arrests related to the injunction since a change last year from primarily relying on civil contempt proceedings to enforce the injunction and instead regularly pursuing criminal contempt prosecutions. Penalties in other cases have included hours of community service, fines of as much as $4,000 and prison sentences of up to fourteen days. The 28-day sentences received by Rita Wong and, in March of this year, lawyer David Gooderham, are the most severe punishments to date. Amnesty International is concerned about the apparent disproportionate nature of those sentences, particularly given that there were no acts of violence, or threats of harm.

“There is no denying that Rita Wong, and other protesters who have defied the Trans Mountain protest injunction are acting out of conscience and are deeply concerned about the urgent global climate crisis, environmental degradation, disregard for the rights of Indigenous peoples and other related injustices,” said Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. “Those are imperatives that go to the very heart of why safeguarding rights associated with peaceful protest is so crucial. Protecting -- not criminalizing -- that right is a responsibility that all governments must take exceptionally seriously.” Read more - Lire plus

Federal judge says terrorist watchlist is unconstitutional

Ars Technica 05/09/2019 - A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that the government's terrorism screening database (TSDB) is unconstitutional because people on the list are not given an adequate opportunity to contest their inclusion. The ruling is a victory for a group of almost 20 Muslim Americans who sued the government over the list in 2016. "There is no independent review of a person's placement on the TSDB by a neutral decisionmaker," Judge Anthony Trenga wrote on Wednesday. "Individuals are not told whether or not they were or remain on the TSDB watchlist and are also not told the factual basis for their inclusion." As a result, the judge concluded, the watchlist system is unconstitutional.

The government maintains several different lists for suspected terrorists. These include the no-fly list, which, as its name implies, prohibits certain people from flying in the US. The TSDB is a larger list believed to hold more than a million names . People on the list aren't prohibited from flying, but they can face unpleasant consequences when they travel, especially internationally.For example, in 2015, one of the plaintiffs, Anas Elhady, returned to the United States by car after a visit to Canada. According to Wednesday's decision, the American citizen "was surrounded by [Customs and Border Patrol] officers, handcuffed, and then escorted to a room where he was held for more than ten hours and repeatedly interrogated about his family members and other associates." During his interrogation, Elhady "required emergency medical attention" so he was taken in handcuffs to a nearby hospital, treated, and then taken back in handcuffs.

This was at least the third time Elhady had faced multi-hour detentions when trying to cross the border. He wasn't charged with a crime after any of the interrogations. The government's position is that it can't tell Elhady if he's on the terrorism watchlist because doing so would compromise its counterterrorism efforts. If he is on the list, he doesn't have any way to find out why he is on the list or to provide the government with information to clear his name—for example, by demonstrating that the government has him confused with another person with the same name. That, the judge said, violates the Constitution, which guarantees due process before someone can be deprived of his rights—including the right to travel. The current system "provides no notice concerning whether a person has been included or remains in the TSDB, what criteria was applied in making that determination, or the evidence used to determine a person's TSDB status." The judge concludes that the current system "does not provide to a United States citizen a constitutionally adequate remedy under the Due Process Clause." Read more - Lire plus

Read the full ruling

Refresher: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

ICLMG's comments on the news of the ruling calling the US terrorist watchlist unconstitutional

Twitter 05/09/2019 - This is a very important decision about the unconstitutionality of US terrorism watchlists, and which raises serious implications for Canada as well. We know that at least part of this database - up to 680,000 people - is shared with Canada, through the Tip-off US/Canada (TUSCAN) system , and used to screen people at the border/coming to Canada. But with the US sharing the entire 1.2 million records in the Terrorist Screening Database with more than 60 other countries (according to statement of facts contained in the ruling), it is hard to imagine Canada isn't one of them. The Canadian government needs to be clear about how and when these US watchlists are being used in Canada. And it must take action to both stop using tools that violate rights, and to create a system that allows individuals the ability to fully challenge their listing. Source

NHS reports protester to Prevent for joining Extinction Rebellion

The Guardian 01/09/2019 - A retired doctor who took part in non-violent environmental protests was visited by police at his home after his local NHS trust reported him to the government’s counter-terrorism programme. Lyn Jenkins, 69, joined the Extinction Rebellion environmental campaign after he became convinced that urgent action was needed to avert climate breakdown. His local NHS trust referred him to Prevent , the government’s flagship programme designed to stop people from becoming terrorists.

Jenkins had sought help from the trust as he wanted to overcome his claustrophobia and believed he might experience panic attacks in a police cell if he was arrested. He had explicitly told the trust that he wanted to be arrested during Extinction Rebellion protests. Jenkins criticised Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust for referring him to the anti-terrorism programme when he was merely involved in a non-violent group that sought to raise awareness about the threat of climate chaos and could not in any way be considered a terrorist. He said: “Extinction Rebellion is, above all, a non-violent movement. Labelling peaceful protesters as terrorists leaves them, and the world as a whole, in a more perilous position.” Read more - Lire plus

Police investigate officer who infiltrated environmental groups

ICLMG's comments on: "NHS reports protester to Prevent for joining Extinction Rebellion"

Facebook 04/09/2019 - Unacceptable! And this will be more and more frequent as the climate crisis worsens and political leaders refuse to act. In Canada as well: we already know how environmental organizations and protectors are being spied on and criminalized; and the new National Security Act (C-59) continues to allow the sharing of information between about 20 departments and agencies - including Health Canada - for a myriad of activities that do not threaten people's safety. C-59 even got rid of the exception for protest, art and advocacy present in C-51 thus violating our right to privacy, free speech and dissent, while the planet is burning. Source

Leaving the War on Terror: A Progressive Alternative to Counter-Terrorism Policy

TNI 03/09/2019 - Britain’s counter-terrorism policies do not work. They do not work for the British people, who wish to live free of terrorism. They do not work for the various communities in the UK whose experience of counter-terrorism has been one of stigmatisation and criminalisation. And they do not work for the people of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, whose human rights have been systematically violated in the War on Terror. Just over two decades ago, the Irish and UK governments signed the Good Friday Agreement, the culmination of a negotiated peace process involving Republican and Loyalist armed groups in Northern Ireland. Principles of human rights, community consent and peace were key to achieving a dramatic reduction in lives lost to political violence. Indeed, by that measure, the Good Friday Agreement was the most successful instrument of counter-terrorism policy-making in recent history.

But the lessons of this success were not registered. The year after the Agreement was signed, Tony Blair’s government introduced the first of the fifteen new Terrorism Acts that have been passed since then in what has become a near-annual parliamentary ritual. Each Act ratcheted up the powers available to the police and intelligence agencies, creating a shadow criminal justice system in which legal principles applicable in other spheres were dispensed with. Alongside this legislative agenda, norms shifted in other ways: the use of surveillance and propaganda was expanded and deepened; military force and extra-judicial killing as counter-terrorist methods became routine; and complicity with torturers was normalised. Intelligence agencies, police forces and the military doubled or tripled their counter-terrorism budgets and held onto this funding even as other sectors were ravaged by austerity measures. The logic of counter-terrorism was spread into every sphere of public life in Britain as workers across government services were expected to become the eyes and ears of national security surveillance.

The definition of the threat was itself transformed: no longer simply a matter of individual acts of violence but a much broader danger, understood in terms of clashes of culture, ideology and values, and informed by the Islamophobic principle that Muslim political organisation and dissent should be cast as forms of extremism. Concerns for human rights, for avoiding the stigmatising and criminalising of communities, or for basing policy on clear statements of goals and evidence of effectiveness were ignored. The number of civilian lives lost in ostenisbly fighting “jihadist” terrorism were many times greater than those that have ever been lost or could have been lost due to “jihadist” terrorism itself. Even on the narrowest measure of success – the reduction of terrorism – the record of UK counter- terrorism over the last twenty years is a poor one. [...] This report offers an account of the failures of current counter-terrorism policies, an analysis of the reasons why they do not work and an outline of a progressive alternative that we hope will be the basis for a future Labour government’s approach. Read more - Lire plus

Live-tweets from the Leaving the War on Terror Report launch

EU to regulate face recognition as privacy threat

The Times 23/08/2019 - The EU is planning to rush through strict rules on the use of facial recognition technology to address fears about threats to civil rights . A leaked European Commission document obtained by The Times says that the planned legislation will lay down EU-wide rules to limit its use because “artificial intelligence applications can pose significant risks to fundamental rights”. It adds: “Without an EU-level regulatory framework, non-compliant AI goods and services raising ethical issues and potential infringements of fundamental rights will emerge on the European market, causing direct harm for consumer and businesses alike.” Source

UK privacy activist to appeal after facial recognition case fails

Digital civic space under attack

accessnow 29/08/2019 - We don’t have the defensive capacity, let alone the means or desire for offensive operations. And even if we did, there is little or no chance at attribution. So often, we have little idea how to find out who the attacker is. It is therefore almost impossible to respond, to mediate, or to remediate. In the few cases where civil society manages to identify those responsible, securing remedy is elusive. The surveillance tech sector operates in legal shadows, hiding in cracks to avoid accountability, while their government clients turn a blind eye. Add to this the fact that civil society has so few resources dedicated to tackling this problem. The cybersecurity sector is a multibillion dollar industry, and yet the blogger, the journalist, the freedom movement, and the peace activists have access to almost none of it.

Without budget or clear rules on attribution, we also face another digital roadblock – the internet shutdown. Governments are increasingly exerting unilateral control over the space. When in doubt about rising tensions, or the sharing of information, governments often seek to turn the internet off entirely. Using the weaponization of information, disinformation, and terrorist content as justification, governments forced over 196 internet shutdowns last year. The valiant #KeepItOn coalition of almost 200 NGOs fighting this trend doesn’t rest, because it doesn’t have the luxury to do so. And when we are connected, the security of our communication channels is under attack, with attempts the world over to weaken encryption and insert backdoors making it easier for malicious hackers to gain access to personal communications, to data and location.

Increasingly, some states are also trying to take control of the content, location and jurisdiction of data centers, arguing that this is for their own “ digital sovereignty, ” leaving civil society further isolated. These threats to the security and accessibility of communications platforms are part of a broader trend of closing digital civic space. We need to understand now that civic space in the digital realm is shrinking and increasingly vulnerable, as a whole and in more targeted ways. Recent reports detailing the onslaught against the Uighur community in China are a portentous reminder of what lies ahead. The focus should not be on legitimizing cyber attacks or new forms of cyberwarfare, but on ensuring that all efforts are put on de-escalation and an international legal framework that is observed globally. Read more - Lire plus

Israel eases rules on cyber weapons exports despite criticism

The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance”

The Intercept 25/08/2019 - On the southwestern end of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation, roughly 1 mile from a barbed-wire barricade marking Arizona’s border with the Mexican state of Sonora, Ofelia Rivas leads me to the base of a hill overlooking her home. A U.S. Border Patrol truck is parked roughly 200 yards upslope. A small black mast mounted with cameras and sensors is positioned on a trailer hitched to the truck. For Rivas, the Border Patrol’s monitoring of the reservation has been a grim aspect of everyday life. And that surveillance is about to become far more intrusive.

The vehicle is parked where U.S. Customs and Border Protection will soon construct a 160-foot surveillance tower capable of continuously monitoring every person and vehicle within a radius of up to 7.5 miles. The tower will be outfitted with high-definition cameras with night vision, thermal sensors, and ground-sweeping radar, all of which will feed real-time data to Border Patrol agents at a central operating station in Ajo, Arizona. The system will store an archive with the ability to rewind and track individuals’ movements across time — an ability known as “wide-area persistent surveillance.” CBP plans 10 of these towers across the Tohono O’odham reservation, which spans an area roughly the size of Connecticut. Two will be located near residential areas, including Rivas’s neighborhood, which is home to about 50 people. To build them, CBP has entered a $26 million contract with the U.S. division of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest military company.

Tohono O’odham people used to move freely across these lands, Rivas says, but following years of harassment by Border Patrol agents, many are afraid to venture far from their homes. “Now we won’t be able to go anywhere near here without the big U.S.-Israeli eyes monitoring us, watching our every move,” she says. Fueled by the growing demonization of migrants, as well as ongoing fears of foreign terrorism, the U.S. borderlands have become laboratories for new systems of enforcement and control. Firsthand reporting, interviews, and a review of documents for this story provide a window into the high-tech surveillance apparatus CBP is building in the name of deterring illicit migration — and highlight how these same systems often end up targeting other marginalized populations as well as political dissidents. Read more - Lire plus

Orwellian Surveillance of Tohono O’odham Nation – A Test Case for Entire US Border? (video)

Border Patrol Has Killed At Least 97 People Since 2003. Hear Some of Their Victims’ Stories

Democracy Now! 31/08/2019 - U.S. Border Patrol agents have killed 97 people since 2003, including at least six Mexicans on Mexican soil. Democracy Now! traveled to the borderlands of Arizona earlier this month to cover one of these killings: the death of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, who was gunned down by a Border Patrol agent in 2012. We met with Richard Boren of the Border Patrol Victims Network in Nogales, Arizona, at exactly the spot where agent Lonnie Swartz pointed his gun through the border wall to shoot and kill José Antonio. At this site, Richard Boren displayed a banner with images of José Antonio and other victims of Border Patrol and told us their stories. Read more - Lire more

‘I Can’t Feel My Heart:’ Children Separated from Their Parents at US-Mexico Border Showed Increased Signs of Post-traumatic Stress

PBS 04/09/2019 - Separated from his father at the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the little boy, about 7 or 8, was under the delusion that his dad had been killed. And he thought he was next. Other children believed their parents had abandoned them. And some suffered physical symptoms because of their mental trauma, clinicians reported to investigators with a government watchdog. “You get a lot of ‘my chest hurts,’ even though everything is fine” medically, a clinician told investigators. The children would describe emotional symptoms: “Every heartbeat hurts,” or “I can’t feel my heart.”

Children separated during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy” last year, many already distressed in their home countries or by their journey, showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated, according to a report Wednesday from the inspector general’s office in the Department of Health and Human Services. The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal. Some cried inconsolably. Some were angry and confused. “Other children expressed feelings of fear or guilt and became concerned for their parents’ welfare,” according to the report. The child who believed his father was killed “ultimately required emergency psychiatric care to address his mental health distress,” a program director told investigators. Child psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert Kliman, who interviewed dozens of migrant children in shelters after zero-tolerance took effect, told FRONTLINE and AP that the kids can move on with their lives after reunifying with parents but may never get over it. Read more - Lire plus

Turkey has sentenced 321 lawyers to 2,000 years in jail since 2016 - report

Ahval 02/09/2019 - Turkish courts have convicted 321 lawyers to 2,022 years in prison in an ongoing crackdown that has seen more than 1,000 lawyers prosecuted on terrorism charges since 2016, volunteer organisation the Arrested Lawyers Initiative said in its 2019 judicial year report . Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government launched a crackdown against legal professionals after a failed coup attempt in July 2016. “As of today, more than 1,500 lawyers have been prosecuted and 599 lawyers arrested. So far, 321 lawyers have been sentenced to 2,022 years in prison on the grounds of membership of an armed terrorism organisation or of spreading terrorist propaganda,” the report said.

Tens of thousands of civil servants, academics, soldiers and judicial workers have been prosecuted for alleged links to the Gülen movement, an outlawed religious group the government blames for the coup attempt. Many others have been charged with links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed militant group that has fought for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey for more than three decades. The government says the purges and arrests are vital to safeguard the country against security threats and says its former allies in the Gülen movement infiltrated the judiciary and used their positions to try to capture the state from within. But the government has used the anti-terrorism legislation “to oppress its dissidents, particularly lawyers, journalists and politicians,” the Arrested Lawyers Initiative said.

“Laws with an overly broad definition of terrorism and membership of a criminal organisation and the judiciary’s tendency to stretch them even further is not a new problem in Turkey, as attested in numerous judgments of the European Court of Human Rights,” Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović said in a report in July. The problem has reached unprecedented levels in recent times as Turkish courts regularly consider “lawful and peaceful acts and statements protected under the European Convention on Human Rights” as proof of criminal activity, she said. Meanwhile, legal safeguards that protect lawyers from pre-trial detention and require the Justice Ministry’s authorisation to prosecute them have been ignored, the Arrested Lawyers Initiative said. Lawyers have also routinely been prosecuted due to the identity or affinity of their clients, the report said, citing the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Read more - Lire plus

Bangladesh may 'force' 100,000 Rohingya to resettle on uninhabited island

DW 03/09/2019 - It is here, on Bhasan Char, or the "floating island" as locals named the silt island that only recently emerged from the sea, that the government of Bangladesh is planning to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Possibly, as DW has learnt, against their will. After lengthy negotiations with government officials, DW was taken to Bashan Char in a carefully managed visit by Bangladesh's navy, which is overseeing the construction works. Throughout the stay several naval officers accompanied DW. Plans to build housing for refugees on the uninhabited island in a cyclone-prone area have been in the making since as early as 2015.

But, following an influx of more than 730,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh from August 2017, the decision was taken by Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to forge ahead with the plan. The Rohingya, a Muslim minority, were fleeing an army clampdown that had intensified following coordinated attacks on several police stations by militants, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, a militant group led by a small cadre from the Rohingya Diaspora in Saudi Arabia. The army of Myanmar responded with force, burning and bombing villages in what the UN human rights chief has labelled a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing." Talk to refugees here, and all have harrowing tales of rape and murder. Read more - Lire plus

Body of Michigan Man Deported to Iraq Is Returned to the U.S.

New York Times 31/08/2019 - A coffin arrived in Detroit from Iraq on Friday with the remains of 41-year-old Jimmy Aldaoud, whose death this month prompted bipartisan efforts to curb the Trump administration’s deportation of Iraqi nationals. Mr. Aldaoud, whose parents were Iraqi, was born in a refugee camp in Greece, entered the United States legally in 1979 when he was 6 months old and grew up in the Detroit area. His life was unsettled: He battled depression and diabetes and also had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He was in and out of jail, with at least 20 criminal convictions over the past two decades, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. After being arrested on a larceny charge, he was deported to Iraq on June 2 with very little insulin, no money and no knowledge of Arabic. His sisters did not know he had been deported until he called from the city of Najaf. Mr. Aldaoud was found dead in a Baghdad apartment on Aug. 6 after days of vomiting blood and begging to return to the United States. He died of a “diabetic crisis,” according to Representative Andy Levin, a Democrat who represents the Michigan district where Mr. Aldaoud used to live. “Jimmy was a sweet person with a good heart,” Mr. Aldaoud’s sisters said in a statement. “We hope Jimmy’s story opens people’s eyes and hearts to understanding that we should not be deporting people to their death overseas.” Mr. Levin coordinated with government officials and funeral homes in Iraq and Michigan to secure the return of Mr. Aldaoud’s remains. Read more - Lire plus

ICYMI: The Tragic Story of Jimmy Aldaoud, Deported From the Streets of Detroit to His Death in Iraq

What we've been up to!

What we've been up to so far and what's to come for the second half of 2019!

ICLMG - 2019 has been very busy so far, and it's not looking to slow down for the second half of the year!

As I write these lines, we are continuing to work on, among other things:

The immediate public release of the report from Murray Segal's external review of the case of Hassan Diab, and the launch of public inquiry into Dr. Diab's case and the Extradition Act overall.

Stopping Mohamed Harkat's deportation to torture and getting the Public Safety minister to allow him to stay in Canada.

Obtaining a strong and effective review mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency, and more restrictions on the collection of Canadians' data by military intelligence.

The repeal of the Canadian No Fly List, as well as putting a stop to the use of the US No Fly List by air carriers in Canada for flights that do not fly over the US, let alone land there.

An information card detailing how the different federal parties have voted on national security legislation since 2001, and calling on federal parties to commit to protecting human rights and civil liberties in the context of national security. Campaign coming soon!

Check out what we've been up to and how you can contribute here!

Voyez ce que nous avons fait à date et ce qui est à venir pour 2019, et comment vous pouvez contribuer!

ACTIONS & EVENTS

Justice for Hassan Diab: Webcomic and Campaign!

Hassan Diab, a Canadian university professor and father, was extradited to France based on weak, confusing evidence, where he spent more than three years in prison, without charge or trial. He is thankfully free and back in Canada, but justice hasn't been served. Dr. Diab deserves answers and we need changes to Canada's broken extradition act.