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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

March 11, 2022 - 11 mars 2022

ICLMG: RCMP violates national security disclosure rules, potentially placing thousands at risk

ICLMG 24/02/22 - In late February, the latest annual review on national security-related information sharing was published to little fanfare. While it found that, overall, rules were being followed, it revealed a significant problem that deserves greater scrutiny and raises concerns about how the RCMP treats sensitive, personal information.

The study, conducted jointly by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), revealed that in 2020 the RCMP disclosed to the Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces (DND-CAF) a dataset with the biometric information of thousands of individuals — men, women and children — who have been “detained by a third party on suspicion of being members or supporters of a terrorist organization.” The disclosure was made proactively by the RCMP, on the basis that they believed it fell within the scope of the DND-CAF’s counterterrorism mandate and because the CAF was active in the region where the individuals were detained.

While not explicitly stated, it is almost certain that this dataset relates to the thousands of individuals who continue to be detained in camps and prisons in North Eastern Syria by the Kurdish administration on allegations that they support and/or are members of Daesh (also known as ISIS). There is simply no other ongoing situation that meets the description provided and that, plausibly, would be of interest for DND-CAF based both on their own counterterrorism activities and on where they were active. It’s important to note that the individuals detained have not faced trial or even been formally charged. There are ongoing efforts to have those who are not citizens of Syria repatriated to their home countries for reintegration and, if deserved, to face trial. Currently more than 40 Canadians, including nearly two dozen children, are in those camps and prisons. The families of 26 of those Canadians initiated a lawsuit last year to force the Canadian government’s hand to protect its own citizens and aid them in returning to Canada. While some countries have made efforts to bring their citizens home, more than 40,000 foreigners are estimated to be in the camps. [...]

In this case, while the RCMP removed any information related to Canadians in the dataset, it shared the remainder details of thousands of individuals with DND-CAF. However, NSIRA and the OPC discovered that when the RCMP originally received the dataset, it was meant to be accompanied by a detailed description of the dataset, including crucial information related to how the information was obtained, and caveats on its use. However, that detailed description apparently never arrived. Months later, the RCMP still went ahead and shared the dataset with DND-CAF proactively — there was no request for the information — without the supporting description of the dataset.  The report finds that because of this failure to share important supporting information, it would be impossible to adequately evaluate the privacy impact on the individuals listed, especially given the fact that it meant that they are linked to a terrorist organization. Therefore, the disclosure was not compliant with SCIDA.

It is extremely troubling that the personal biometric information relating to thousands of individuals was shared without taking every precaution to ensure accuracy and the protection of privacy. This is especially important given the accusations being laid against these individuals, and the already precarious position that they are in. [...] The RCMP, though, has astonishingly said it only “partially accepts” the review’s findings, stating that despite not having received key details about the information from their trusted partner, they were “satisfied that the disclosure would not affect any person’s privacy interest more than was reasonably necessary in the circumstances.” How this is possible is not clear, and raises serious questions about how the RCMP assesses information it shares with partners. [...] At least a third of the RCMP’s disclosures (3 out of 9) did not meet the requirements set up in SCIDA. [...] The report also found that the RCMP has failed to fully update its policies since SCIDA was enacted in 2019, whereas most other departments covered by SCIDA have. This is especially troubling, because the entire reason for the introduction of SCIDA was to try and make up for the lack of safeguards included in its predecessor, the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. And yet the RCMP, the largest law enforcement agency tasked with national security, has still yet to fully update its policies. [...]

When CSIS reached out verbally to the agency for information, instead of following the formal protocols under SCIDA, the agency simply shared the information verbally. Shortly thereafter, the agency did consult with the Justice Department, and a more detailed written disclosure did follow SCIDA regulations. However, why did CSIS — which is fully aware of the rules — not formally request information with the appropriate guidelines in the first place? And if SCIDA disclosures are to be used more broadly, as was the hope when the rules were adopted, what will stop this from happening more frequently? While some may argue it is unlikely, it is entirely possible that other verbal disclosures that did not require follow-up have already been made and would not have been caught by this review. [...]

Happily, this report shows that most departments take their duties to limit the information disclosed to that which is necessary, and to even destroy information that is disclosed to them if they find that it is not compliant with the law. IRCC, which made the single largest number of disclosures, seemed to take this particularly seriously, limiting what information it shared, placing caveats on it, and destroying information that was non-compliant.

However, we still harbor deep reservations about aspects of SCIDA, and will continue to advocate for reforms, including its overly-broad definition of “threats to the security of Canada." Read more - Lire plus + Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Out of sight, but not out of mind: Laying bare the RCMP’s efforts to evade public transparency

CFE 22/02/22 - For its persistent efforts to impede the free flow of information to the public, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been selected as the 2021 recipient of the Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy in the law enforcement category. The Mounties received an unprecedented double-citation this year. The first citation was bestowed on the RCMP for their efforts to impede journalists from covering public opposition to the logging of an old-growth forest at Fairy Creek, on Vancouver Island. In particular, their  efforts to obstruct journalists' access to the area through the use of illegal exclusion zones and other methods of obstruction. “This summer multiple journalists, equipped only with pens, notebooks and camera equipment, were treated like criminals by the RCMP as they did their job, which was to document police activities and to tell a story of significant public interest,” said Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ). “This year’s Code of Silence jury agreed that the efforts demonstrated by the RCMP to suffocate press freedom and the public’s right to know about events taking place at Fairy Creek deserves the spotlight.”  

Late last year, Fairy Creek surpassed Clayoquot Sound as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, as nearly 1,200 arrests have been made. Reports from December 2021 reveal the RCMP has spent more than $6.8 million enforcing a court injunction at Fairy Creek — enforcement which saw journalists erroneously obstructed from accessing the area to report on the story. In July, the CAJ, in partnership with a coalition of news organizations, applied to modify the injunction instructing the RCMP not to interfere with journalists’ access absent a bona fide operational reason for doing so. The request was granted by the B.C. Supreme Court, with the presiding justice reminding the RCMP of the media’s “special role in a free and democratic society, and the necessity of avoiding undue and unnecessary interference with the journalistic function.”

This year’s Code of Silence award to the RCMP also cited its outstandingly poor performance with respect to adhering to the rules of Canada’s federal Access of Information Act.  

According to the materials provided, the RCMP ranked among the worst federal agencies in fulfilling access to information requests in accordance with mandated timelines. In its deliberations, sponsors of the Code of Silence awards reviewed multiple examples of requests that exceeded the legislated 30-day time limit and where the agency failed to provide notice of time extensions, in direct contravention of Canada’s Access to Information Act. “The unwillingness of the RCMP to meet basic requirements of transparency—to which they are legally obligated—is sadly nothing new,” said Jolly. The force was recognized for its excessive secrecy in 2017, after failing to respond to a single request for information filed under the Access to Information Act.

“The opportunity that lies at the feet of users, however, is to work together to re-imagine what a better, functional, and more transparent system, with teeth, would look like — and to push those plans forward is long past due,” said Jolly. The Code of Silence Awards are presented annually by the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University (CFE), and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). The intent of the awards is to call public attention to government or publicly-funded agencies that work hard to hide information to which the public has a right to under access to information legislation. This award completes this year’s Code of Silence program. In addition to the RCMP, Stratford City Council(municipal), the  government of British Columbia (provincial), and Indigenous Services Canada (federal) headlined this year’s “winners.” Read more - Lire plus

RCMP Spending to Protect CGL Pipeline Tops $21 million

Steven Zhou: Don’t use post-9/11 vocab in future online regulations

The Hill Times 23/02/22 - Just a year before a gunman killed six Muslim worshippers in a Quebec City mosque, media research company Cision documented how intolerant speech on social media rose 600 per cent among Canadians between November 2015 and November 2016. Muslim advocacy groups in particular have called for better regulation of online spaces to protect their communities and others, while also being on the receiving end of too much heavy-handedness and even discrimination from law enforcement. It’s a rather useful experience to draw upon while trying to strike the right balance between better online regulations and protections of civil liberties. The federal government recently presented community groups with legal frameworks for possible future online regulations. In the summary guide of the government’s approach is a section that includes vague language about referring certain kinds of “potentially terrorist and violent extremist content” to law enforcement or CSIS, on a case-by-case basis.

On the surface that might sound reasonable, until one considers how broad and vaguely defined terms like “terrorist activity,” “terrorist content,” or “terrorism” (all used in the proposed regulations) are clearly derived from a post-9/11 language that has disproportionately helped criminalize, prosecute, and incarcerate Muslims in the past 20 years. Ottawa can’t risk worsening that pattern in the name of national security, particularly in a time when the Emergencies Act has been invoked. Marginalized communities exercising their right to advocate and speak must be protected from that kind of fire power, should the security establishment aim it their way at some point.

The securitization of Muslims, who are enduring online hate and mass murder, is made possible by a vocabulary that helps conflate community or individual advocacy with extremism. That’s the sad truth about our post-9/11 past. We have to move away from it and not double down on the same positions. People who want to advocate for or talk openly about Palestine, Afghanistan, or other global issues or movements shouldn’t have to worry about a visit by CSIS or the RCMP. Muslims across the country have gotten plenty of these visits, including university students with zero connections to terrorism. This happened so much that groups set up a hotline for students to call for help when CSIS visited. There’s a clear difference between spirited discussion and advocacy over hot-button topics and growing hateful spaces that need to be regulated. Just look at what some mass shooters consumed as part of their online diet.

The judge who sentenced the Quebec City gunman pointed to how the latter binged anti-refugee material. His lawyer confirmed that he read and watched Islamophobic content, mostly to help justify his actions. Similar mass murderers, from the 2019 Christchurch shooter who killed almost 50 Muslim worshippers, to the 2011 Norway attacker who killed more than 70 people, all published online manifestos replete with Islamophobic sources, rhetoric, and memes. The latter’s manifesto helped inspire the former. The scapegoating of swarthy foreigners and dodgy Muslims have helped grow entire online ecosystems for far-right actors eager to blame all sorts of problems on an external Other. This has helped fuel murder thanks to a lack of online regulations. But future rules in this Wild West must be cognizant of recent history. Inherently broad terms like “terrorism” have been weaponized against Muslim Canadians like Maher Arar or Omar Khadr who spent years being tortured in foreign prisons. There’s no reason for Canada to extend this dark tradition by recycling the same muddy language in laws that are supposed to protect its citizens from hate, intolerance, and violence. Read more - Lire plus

Ken Rubin: Federal, city inquiries into occupations and blockades too limited

The Hill Times 02/03/2022 - With the end of the emergency declarations and the Emergencies Act’s use, authorities are starting to examine what went wrong and the causes that brought on the siege and blockades. But be forewarned, authorities will limit what they want examined; they rarely want the whole truth to come out, or to hear from the public, and respond to their needs. Starting with Ottawa, the city council and the police board have said they want studies done on what went wrong with slow city and police response to Ottawa’s occupation by a trucker convoy, including examining internal turmoil at city council and in police ranks. The city-led review is expected to be delivered by May. These reviews will be limited to consultant reports and not be like the more thorough review underway in the provincial-called inquiry into Stage 1 of Ottawa’s light rail network, the Confederation Line. The LRT inquiry is headed by a judge with subpoena powers to get records and compel witnesses to testify.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and his allies on council, as well as the LRT partners, did not want an independent inquiry that is reviewing costly failings. No doubt his and the police’s handling of the siege will feature large in the upcoming fall Ottawa council elections.

Federally, what is getting underway are required reviews under the Emergencies Act, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revoked last week. The first is a quicker joint parliamentary committee review that was suppose to get underway once the Emergencies Act was invoked. But its start was slowed down by politicians quibbling over its composition. The bigger problem will be that its hearings will be conducted almost all in-camera, it will not have access to sensitive security records or cabinet confidences, and its terms and review could be limited. Not all potential witnesses—from the prime minister, his ministers, or provincial premiers—will want to willingly appear. It’s also concerning the hearings could drag on, be too partisan, and that its findings—with some members likely looking to justify invoking the act—may be too facile. The irony is that this joint parliamentary committee called for under the Emergencies Act may be too late in starting to be that relevant. It was intended to be more of an active monitoring safeguard assessment intervention check point during the time the act remained in place

The look of the longer inquiry review, to be established after an emergency ends, is not defined in the act. The act only sets out that the inquiry has to be established within 60 days after revocation, and that it must issue a report to Parliament 360 days after that revocation. However, it is unclear if the inquiry will be broad enough or just an in-house review of emergency events led by an eminent establishment consultant whose work is done in private, with that examination limited and its findings partly secret. That was what ended up happening in the consultant-led inquiry Justice Canada commissioned to review the controversial extradition of Hassan Diab and his forced jailing in France for over three years. A former deputy attorney general of Ontario, Murray Segal, was hired and his terms limited to the extradition itself and the role Justice Canada played, with the evidence coming primarily from insiders. His much-delayed report was greeted as a “whitewash” by some members of the public, including Diab, who refused to take part. Hassan and others continue to call for a full-scale inquiry in his quest for justice and compensation.

What would be a far better federal course is to call within 30 days a full-scale broader public judicial-led inquiry under the federal Public Inquiry Act, not limited to just examining why the Emergencies Act was invoked and used. A fuller inquiry would do its work and hold its public hearings within a year, and have the authority to collect records and compel witnesses to come before it, and within three months after that, issue a report. It would not duplicate the more limited and secretive parliamentary monitoring exercise or the narrower inquiry to be set up. But it would help give the public greater confidence that a more thorough examination in public of events will be done. It would still face challenges, including getting certain records like audio, drone, intercept surveillance, as well as informants’ testimonies, foreign-obtained records, and cabinet confidences. The government, however, may only want lesser reviews with a softer narrative, and done in secret. But that would not be very credible and the end results will produce more limited analyses. Read more - Lire plus

Ontario extends anti-blockade police powers: Premier has previously said he wants to make some temporary measures permanent

What could Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act mean for the future of Indigenous direct action?

Endless Exile: The Tangled Politics Keeping a Uyghur Man in Limbo

Exonerated after four years in Guantánamo Bay, Ayoob Mohammed is still unable to join his family in Canada

The Walrus 10/03/2022 - On March 2, 2010, twenty-six-year-old Ayoob Mohammed put on a new suit—a navy jacket and cream pants—and drove through the blooming poppies of Tirana, Albania’s capital, toward the country’s international airport. He felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach as he paced in front of the arrivals screen. Soon, Mohammed spotted a young woman in a headscarf and heavy coat emerge through the gate; her father accompanied her. They had travelled from their home, in Montreal, where the cold was still biting. Mohammed steadied himself and gazed at Aierken Mailikaimu (who goes by Melike, meaning “princess” in Uyghur), his fiancée, in the flesh for the first time. He handed her a bouquet of red and white roses.

The couple had first connected in early 2009, on the social-networking website Hi5. One day, as Mohammed was browsing the platform, a message popped up in his inbox. Mailikaimu asked if the figs in Mohammed’s profile picture were from the city of Artux. Mohammed confirmed that the figs—known for their distinctive fragrance and yellowish colour—were indeed from the Uyghur homeland, which lies in China’s northwest. Mohammed wrote that he was from Artux. Mailikaimu responded that she was as well.

After several weeks of small talk, they began chatting frequently. They soon telephoned each other and discovered they held common values and shared a devotion to their Muslim faith. “Ayoob’s letters, the way he treated me, it made me feel very special. And his kindness, his honesty, it appealed to me,” Mailikaimu says. Perhaps most meaningfully, they felt less alone in each other’s presence: both Mohammed and Mailikaimu are Uyghur—a largely Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group native to Xinjiang, a region Uyghurs often refer to as “East Turkistan”—whose treatment by China Canada’s Parliament recently recognized as genocide. Together, they ruminated on the agony of what they’d left behind in the homeland: the aromatic tomatoes; the traditional pulled-noodle dish called Laghman that, even if replicated elsewhere, never tasted quite the same; and their mothers.

When Mailikaimu asked Mohammed more personal questions, like how he had ended up in Albania, where there was no sizable Uyghur community, he felt he could confide in her about his cruel fortune: he’d been sold to the United States for bounty as an alleged terrorist in post-9/11 Pakistan, held for four years at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and finally exonerated and resettled in Albania, a former communist state in the Balkan Peninsula that he hadn’t known existed and could not have found on a map. Mailikaimu wasn’t put off by Mohammed’s story: she felt only sympathy for his suffering. A few months after they connected, he proposed marriage. “If you say yes,” he wrote, “I will take care of you my whole life.” To Mailikaimu’s delight, her father, a former Uyghur activist, understood Mohammed’s plight and was supportive of their union. She accepted his proposal and his story. “I love you 365 days a year,” he wrote to her.

Some sixteen years after his release, the spectre of Guantánamo still follows Mohammed like a shadow. Invisible geopolitical forces have bent his story to their will—a story that has become so tangled and intractable that it is no longer his. How he landed in Guantánamo—so far from his birthplace in China—has been repeatedly scrutinized by media, researchers, and authorities, and is rooted, in part, in the history of Uyghur repression by the Chinese state. This repression has included the construction of a terrorist narrative to justify China’s mistreatment of the Uyghur people. Still, decision makers charged with Mohammed’s fate have yet to demarcate evidence from propaganda.

The day after Mailikaimu arrived in Albania with her father, she and Mohammed married. Despite the limitations on Mohammed’s freedom of movement—he is prohibited from travelling outside Albania—she hoped that Canada, the country that had recently granted her citizenship, a place she held up as a beacon of law and justice and sanctuary, would also welcome her husband. That initial optimism gradually waned. Since Mailikaimu’s first attempt to sponsor Mohammed almost eight years ago, Canadian authorities have consistently denied his resettlement for security reasons, claiming he is a member of a terrorist organization. The United States, which boasts the greatest intelligence-gathering operation in the world, determined that no such evidence existed against Mohammed. Why does Canada insist otherwise? [...]

The decision not to resettle the former Guantánamo Uyghurs, according to Mehmet Tohti, a Uyghur Canadian activist, is “merely political.” For Canada to not welcome the men and unite them with their families is a moral and humanitarian crisis. Dixon, Mohammed’s first lawyer, echoes Tohti. “There is not a serious, credible argument that the Uyghurs detained at Guantánamo were terrorists or were a threat to anybody. To suggest that they’re a national security threat to Canada is laughable. It discredits the integrity of the Canadian government to suggest that these men pose a threat to anybody,” he says. “They suffer stigma, which is used and invoked by countries that don’t want to accept them. They are labelled as dangerous or terrorists. And that is done for political convenience.” [...]

Mailikaimu and the children were living full-time in Montreal, where she could work and access child-care support from her family and the children could build their futures. Mohammed found that the physical distance created a barrier in his relationship with his kids. He would alter his schedule to wish them a good day before they went to school and speak on WhatsApp video when they came home. His daughter would cry after seeing her father onscreen. His son would throw fits and could sometimes muster only the words “I miss you.” The boy, who felt abandoned, would look to the sky when a plane passed overhead and ask if it was his father arriving. Read more - Lire plus

‘Surveillance’ doesn’t begin to describe what Beijing is doing to Uyghurs

Turkey rejected Uyghur citizenship applications over "national security" risks

SOARING: The Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet

World Beyond War 23/02/2022 - As the Trudeau government plans to buy 88 new fighter jets for a price tag of $19 billion, the second most expensive procurement in Canadian history, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF) Canada is sounding the alarm.

WILPF Canada is releasing a new 48-page report Soaring: The Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet. The report examines the past and present harmful impacts, including environmental, climate, nuclear, financial, socio-cultural and gender-based, of fighter jets and the air force bases where they are stationed.

With this report, WILPF Canada is calling on the federal government to be transparent with Canadians and with Indigenous communities about the adverse impacts and the full costs of a new fleet of fighter jets. We are asking the federal government to conduct and publicize a full life-cycle cost analysis, an environmental assessment, a public health study and a gender-based analysis of the fighter jet procurement before any final decision is made.

Along with the report, is also a 2-page summary in English and a 2-page summary in French. We are encouraging Canadians to sign Parliamentary petition e-3821 to let Members of Parliament know that they are opposed to the purchase of new costly, carbon-intensive combat aircraft. Read more - Lire plus

What I Told Congress about U.S. Lethal Strikes

The Intercept 17/02/2022 - My organization, the ACLU, and our partners represent the survivors of the 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, killed by the U.S. drone strike in Kabul last August. I’ve heard from my clients, the fathers of those children, the horror of having to gather up their children’s body parts. I’ve listened to one of my clients struggle to breathe through her despair at the death of three of her sons, one of her grandchildren, and her husband, an aid worker for the American humanitarian organization Nutrition and Education International. My clients’ grief is compounded by the fact that, for 19 days, our government kept up false and stigmatizing allegations about their loved ones, wrongly asserting the strike was “righteous” and “successful” against ISIS operatives. The Pentagon later admitted its mistake, but the damage is done. The falsehoods are still widespread in Afghanistan today and my clients remain in daily and imminent danger. Months ago, the U.S. government promised to evacuate them. They are still waiting.

For most Americans, this kind of fear, horror, and life-long grief are unimaginable. To civilians in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere, it has been their daily life. This is because for more than two decades, presidents of both parties have adopted a costly war-based approach to national security and counterterrorism policy that still has no clear endgame in sight. Taken as a whole, the shortsighted approach has violated the constitutional separation of powers, damaged the rule of law, set a dangerous precedent for other nations, fueled conflicts, and diverted limited resources from more effective approaches. In the words of Garrett Reppenhagen, the executive director of Veterans for Peace:

“We are tired of our country using military force as a tool of first resort and the enormous physical and psychological toll this has caused for service members, as well as civilians harmed by our country’s actions abroad. An entire generation of veterans and lost civilian lives later, it’s past time for a new way forward.”

Indeed, we need not remain in this harmful, counterproductive, and costly state. This nation has a robust array of diplomatic, law enforcement, peacebuilding, development, and other resources to mitigate actual security concerns abroad and at home. Congress can and must pull us out of this endless war-based spiral—with its serious human, legal, and policy costs—and chart a new path forward.

First, it’s imperative that Congress use its oversight powers to demand that executive branch officials testify and make public their legal and policy justifications for lethal force where Congress did not authorize it. Secret law is anathema to democratic principles and accountability, as is secret lethal force, and there is no place for them if the United States is to live up to the values it professes. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing was a start in the right direction and Senators from both parties expressed strong concerns, including about the executive branch’s secrecy, lack of responsibility for civilian harm, and the need for Congress to rein in the executive branch’s claims of war-based powers. Congress also needs to question top officials about specific strikes that appear to violate the laws of war and possible war crimes that have occurred in the last 20 years such as this one, and keep demanding systematic overhaul of U.S. counterterrorism strategy, as 50 members of Congress recently did.

Second, Congress should use its Article I power of the purse to deny funding for unauthorized, unlawful use of force. Congress used this power to accelerate the end of the Vietnam War and should take similar action now for unauthorized uses of force. Indeed, twice in the last administration, Congress used the War Power Resolution’s expedited procedures to convey that the president did not have congressional authorization to wage wars. Using the power of appropriations is a logical next step.

Third, Congress must restore our constitutional system of checks and balances and reverse the executive branch’s power grab on matters of war and peace. Under Article I of the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war, except in exceptional circumstances, to repel a sudden attack, or when the nation is in truly imminent peril, and there is no time for the president to seek authorization from Congress. The framers vested the extraordinary decision to use force and go to war in our system’s deliberative body to ensure democratic accountability. Yet over decades, through unilateral executive branch legal opinions and actions, successive presidents have written Congress out of this life and death equation. And Congress has, shamefully, gone along with it.

Fortunately, there is bipartisan legislation in both houses that, if passed, would be a generational recalibration to restore a healthy separations of powers and put the United States on a stronger democratic, legal, and rights-respecting footing as it faces the global challenges of the next 20 years. Among other important provisions, it includes an automatic funding cut-off in the event that, after responding to a genuine emergency, a President fails to come to Congress for continuing authority to use force. With these steps, the United States can start to craft a new path rooted in the rule of law and democratic accountability. It must be a path that ensures no more families will suffer the kind of anguish and trauma my clients and so many others have faced because of militarized, rights-violating policies. Read more - Lire plus

The Intercept 03/03/2022 - More than 20 years after September 11, family members of those killed in the 2001 attacks have a message for the U.S. government: Release Afghanistan’s central bank assets before millions of civilians die of starvation. “There is not only a moral imperative in doing this, there is also a national security interest in doing this and preventing Afghanistan from sliding into total collapse,” said Terry Rockefeller, whose sister died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Rockefeller is a member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization formed by family members of those killed on 9/11 to oppose the war in Afghanistan.

In February, the Biden administration announced that it would split over $7 billion in Afghan assets held in the New York Federal Reserve Bank between a pool for potential settlements for families of 9/11 victims and an ambiguously defined trust fund “for the benefit of the Afghan people.” The White House has yet to clarify when and how it will release the money, wary of the perceived legal and political repercussions that accompany transferring cash to the Afghan central bank, lest it be seen as giving money to the Taliban. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on February 15 that the administration was incapable of releasing any of the frozen funds until pending litigation has ended, but legal experts have dismissed that claim. On Friday, the Treasury Department issued a new general license to allow economic transactions with a suite of Afghan entities, including the country’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, signaling a potential first step toward unfreezing the funds.

The White House did not respond to a request from The Intercept to clarify whether it stood by Psaki’s comments. The State Department reiterated the administration’s intentions to divert $3.5 billion into a trust fund but would not specify whether it believed that the administration had the power to immediately release those funds. “I think the Biden administration should have been more courageous and said that it was their position that this was not Taliban money and they would get it to the Afghan people,” Rockefeller said. [...] Rockefeller sees the Biden administration’s equivocation on recapitalizing the central bank as the final act of the United States’s failed war on terror in Afghanistan. Peaceful Tomorrows “had a long campaign for years that led to some payments for civilian casualties and payments for hospital care for innocent civilians who had been injured in America’s bombing attacks to bring down the Taliban,” she told The Intercept. “It was our position then that there is no way that you can have a war against terrorism. You can’t end terrorism by producing more civilian victims, and this is just what is happening now, more Afghan civilian deaths even after 20 years of war.” [...]

Lawyers and lobbyists have stepped up their efforts to secure their cut of the $3.5 billion in funds set aside by the Biden administration. Andrew Maloney, one of the attorneys leading the effort to cash in on the frozen Afghan assets, justified his position by telling the BBC, “The reality is, the Afghan people didn’t stand up to the Taliban. … They bear responsibility for the condition they’re in.” Phyllis Rodriguez, a founding member of Peaceful Tomorrows, disagrees. Rodriguez told The Intercept that the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan is counter to both her own values and those once held by her son Greg, who was killed on 9/11. “He had wonderful values. We didn’t always agree on everything, but one thing we always agreed on was that war is evil and killing is evil and victimizing is evil. He was an empathetic person who would have certainly thought that millions starving to death is evil,” Rodriguez said.

“The identity of being a 9/11 victim is something I’ve tried to avoid because people assume victims want all these harsh outcomes,” Murphy told The Intercept. “I was at Guantánamo viewing pretrial hearings of those accused of planning the attacks, and I traveled with the victims assistance group, and it was like we were seen as victims that the prosecution wanted us on their side, and they wanted the death penalty. Our principles and our beliefs haven’t changed since September 10, 2001,” said Rodriguez. “We were supposed to be vengeful. I want people to understand that we are not, and that we don’t have to be. This money belongs to regular people in Afghanistan. It’s their money, and it should go to them.” Read more - Lire plus

C.I.A. Black Sites Are State Secrets, the Supreme Court Rules

The New York Times 03/03/2022 - The Supreme Court on Thursday shut down efforts by a detainee at Guantánamo Bay to obtain information from two former C.I.A. contractors involved in torturing him, ruling that the inquiry would impermissibly expose state secrets. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for a badly fractured court, said the main question was whether the information sought by the detainee, known as Abu Zubaydah, would confirm the location of a C.I.A. black site, which is widely known to have been in Poland.

The justices split 6 to 3 on the question of whether the case could proceed. In dissent, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said the government sought to avoid “further embarrassment for past misdeeds.” “The facts are hard to face,” he wrote. “We know already that our government treated Zubaydah brutally — more than 80 waterboarding sessions, hundreds of hours of live burial and what it calls ‘rectal rehydration.’ Further evidence along the same lines may lie in the government’s vaults. But as embarrassing as these facts may be, there is no state secret here. This court’s duty is to the rule of law and the search for truth,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “We should not let shame obscure our vision.”

Abu Zubaydah sought to subpoena the contractors, James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, in connection with a Polish criminal investigation. The inquiry was prompted by a determination by the European Court of Human Rights that he had been tortured in 2002 and 2003 at secret sites operated by the C.I.A., including one in Poland. When the case, United States v. Husayn, No. 20-827, was argued in October, David F. Klein, a lawyer for Abu Zubaydah, said he was not seeking testimony about the location of the black site. “I’m not planning to ask, ‘Did it happen in Poland?’” he said. Rather, Mr. Klein said, he sought information about his client’s treatment. “What happened inside Abu Zubaydah’s cell between December 2002 and September 2003?” he asked, giving the dates during which his client was understood to be held in Poland. “How was Abu Zubaydah fed? What was his medical condition? What was his cell like? And, yes, was he tortured?”

Justice Breyer wrote that questions like those “would inevitably tend to confirm or deny whether the C.I.A. operated a detention site located in Poland.” In a concurring opinion endorsing Justice Breyer’s bottom line but not his reasoning, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that the executive branch was entitled to even more deference than the majority had given it. Justice Elena Kagan, in a partial dissent in the case, said she agreed that the location of the black site must be protected but said the case could nonetheless proceed. “I would allow Zubaydah to amend his requests to remove all Poland-specific references,” she wrote, “so that he can obtain testimony about his detention — in whatever country it took place.”

In his dissent, Justice Gorsuch, who had defended the Bush administration’s detention policies as a Justice Department official in 2005 and 2006, said there was no point in barring testimony about the location of the site. “We should not be ignorant as judges of what we know to be true as citizens,” he wrote. “The location of the C.I.A.’s detention site has been acknowledged by the former Polish president, investigated by the Council of Europe, and proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ to the European Court of Human Rights,” he wrote. “Doubtless, these disclosures may have done damage to national security interests. But nothing in the record of this case suggests that requiring the government to acknowledge what the world already knows to be true would invite a reasonable danger of additional harm to national security.” Read more - Lire plus

What Really Happened to Abu Zubaydah at Notorious Polish Black Site Stare Kiejkuty?

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Amid Murky Investigation, Key Defender Asks to Quit 9/11 Case

Supreme Court Sides With F.B.I. in Case on Spying on Muslims

The NY Times 04/03/2022 - The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously rejected an argument that could have limited the sweep of the state secrets doctrine in a case arising from the surveillance of Muslims in Southern California in 2006. [...] It concerned surveillance undertaken by Craig Monteilh, an F.B.I. informant, that failed to produce any public evidence of wrongdoing. To the contrary, after Mr. Monteilh started talking about jihad and violence at a mosque in Irvine, Calif., a community leader contacted the F.B.I. to report him.



Three of the men Mr. Monteilh spied on sued the F.B.I. and the agents responsible for directing him, claiming, among other things, that their right to exercise their religion had been violated. The government moved to dismiss those claims, invoking the state secrets privilege and saying that disclosure of the information it needed to mount a defense to the lawsuit would threaten national security. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2019. The appeals court said that a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, established procedures for considering national security information and that the trial judge should have used them instead of dismissing the case after the government invoked the state secrets doctrine.

“Congress intended FISA to displace the state secrets privilege,” Judge Marsha S. Berzon wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the court, said that was an improper reading of FISA. There was no indication, he wrote, that Congress had meant to affect the privilege. “FISA makes no reference to the state secrets privilege,” he wrote. “It neither mentions the privilege by name nor uses any identifiable synonym, and its only reference to the subject of privilege reflects a desire to avoid the alteration of privilege law.” The statute, moreover, serves a different purpose than the privilege, he wrote. Under FISA, he wrote, “the central question is the lawfulness of surveillance.”

But, he added, “we have never suggested that an assertion of the state secrets privilege can be defeated by showing that the evidence was unlawfully obtained.” Justice Alito wrote that several important questions remained to be decided by the appeals court in the case, F.B.I. v. Fazaga, No. 20-828, including the fundamental one of whether the state secrets privilege applies. Brian R. Frazelle, a lawyer with the Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed a brief supporting the Muslim men subjected to surveillance, said the ruling could have been worse. “While we are disappointed that the court did not recognize that FISA displaces the state secrets privilege,” he said in a statement, “we’re relieved that the court stopped there, leaving other questions open in a way that may allow for accountability in this and other cases.” Read more - Lire plus

Nazar 04/03/2022 - In 2015, the United Kingdom passed the Prevent Duty as part of its Counterterrorism and Security Act. The policy puts a legal responsibility on those in the public sector, including schools and healthcare providers, “to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” and “look out for signs of radicalisation”. Since then, the Home Office claims Prevent has been “instrumental in turning people’s lives around…and keeping our communities safe”. But a new People’s Review of Prevent rejects narratives that Prevent is saving anybody by shedding light on how nefarious the program is. Throughout its existence, Prevent, which can be traced to 2003, has surveilled Muslims in every aspect of life. Following rising criticisms over Prevent’s methodology, the Home Office announced a review of the program in Sept. 2019. Layla Aitlhadj, the People’s Review co-author and director of Prevent Watch, an organization supporting those directly impacted, told NAZAR by email, “The Prevent policy is supposed to be independently reviewed by the government in order to ensure that overreach and abuse does not take place.”

There were problems with the Home Office’s plan from the jump. Despite labeling it an ‘independent’ review, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Home Office originally appointed Lord Carlile to head the effort. In Dec. 2019, Carlile was removed after Rights Watch UK launched legal action over his past support of Prevent. Then, many were dismayed when William Shawcross was appointed to lead the long-delayed report last year. Aitlhadj described Shawcross as “deeply invested in counter-extremism and connected to Islamophobia networks in the UK and the US.” The Guardian reported that in 2012, while serving as director of the Henry Jackson Society, Shawcross said, “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future.” And per the People’s Review, Shawcross chaired the Charity Commission “between 2012 and 2018 when it carried out lengthy and discriminatory investigations of Muslim charities”.

Following Shawcross’s appointment, hundreds boycotted the review. [...]

Nobody expected the UK to facilitate a through review of its own policy from the start. But with Shawcross’s appointment, Aitlhadj said, “Everyone agreed that we needed a different process.” Rather than wait for a report from the state, why couldn’t the people draft their own review of Prevent? And it seemed that Prevent Watch was perfect to help with the task. “We sit on the largest resource of documented Prevent cases and we felt that our contribution to an alternative review would have to focus on the people impacted by Prevent directly, especially young people,” Aitlhadj told NAZAR. With these resources, Prevent Watch assisted in developing the People’s Review which “finally had the voices of these people rather than the voices of the pro-Prevent practitioners who benefit financially.” Central to the People’s Review is an examination of Prevent’s surveillance of families as the government uses it to “forc[e] their version of what is ‘in the child's best interests’,” Aitlhadj wrote. The report honed in on Prevent’s targeting of youth, especially children, stating Prevent “undermines the proper safeguarding obligations of social workers, teachers and health professionals” by “bringing children and young people under an extraordinarily extensive net of surveillance.”

This is achieved through several ways. For example, before a child is formally referred to a local Prevent Panel, they are interviewed by counter-terrorism officers and social workers. Because the child hasn’t actually done anything and cannot be charged, the entire process operates in a nebulous pre-criminal space. It leaves children uniquely vulnerable as officers don’t have to follow normal safeguards about interacting with them — like notifying a child’s guardian before interrogations. Take Adam, an eight-year-old in a Prevent Priority Area (PPA) with a large demographic of Muslims, whose interactions with Prevent officials is detailed in the report. During school, Adam was interrogated by two counter-terrorism officers and a social worker. Per the People’s Review, Adam was asked to recite the Qur’an and questioned on the verses meanings. His parents were unaware of the interrogation. “Children are facing questions from counter-terrorism officers with no adult present to protect them,” Aitlhadj told NAZAR. These officers, she continued, “often ask leading questions or take statements of belief out of context.” The children’s services workers present tend to “take a back seat, thus abandoning their professional and moral judgements while counter terrorism officials take the lead.”

In addition to funneling children into a pre-criminal space, Prevent operates as a form of data criminalization. The review notes that Prevent is “an abuse of individual rights to privacy and the protection of data and information held about them, especially in the case of children.” The report cites eleven-year-old Amir, a South Asian student, as an example. His school made a Prevent referral without alerting his mother. While the official who vetted the referral didn’t take it any further, Amir’s information was still stored in a police database. It took a year for Amir’s mother to get his data removed. Fundamentally, Prevent abuses children and so it has significant, lasting impacts on them. Young children, Aitlhadj said, “are fearful, mistrustful, and even traumatized by what they have been through.” Prevent Watch has recorded incidents of “bed-wetting, the development of OCD, and also greater than average mistrust of authority.” Among young adults, “students are certainly self-censoring in the classroom, and the unspoken pressure to only practice a certain ‘good’ Islam poses troublesome questions around identity and belonging.” Read more - Lire plus

Muslims still bear the stigma of the ‘Trojan horse’ scandal. Maybe that’s what was intended

ACTIONS & EVENTS

Wed, March 23, 2022, 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM EDT on Zoom. Register here

While many studies address contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, few have focused on the toll this takes on Muslim communities, especially among younger generations. Based on in- depth interviews with more than 130 young people, youth workers, and community leaders, Jasmin Zine's ethnographic study unpacks the dynamics of Islamophobia as a system of oppression and examines its impact on Canadian Muslim youth. Covering topics such as citizenship, identity and belonging, securitization, radicalization, campus culture in an age of empire, and subaltern Muslim counterpublics and resistance, Under Siege provides a unique and comprehensive examination of the complex realities of Muslim youth in a post-9/11 world. Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, Zine reveals how the global war on terror and heightened anti-Muslim racism have affected a generation of Canadians who were socialized into a world where their faith and identity are under siege.

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!

NOUVEAU Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir

Reform Canada's extradition law + Justice for Hassan Diab!

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!

NOUVEAU Version française: Le Canada doit réformer la loi sur l'extradition! + Partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Phone PM Justin Trudeau

TAKE ACTION: Justice for Hassan Diab!

Just Peace Advocates' action: Write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau: Say “No" to a second extradition of Hassan Diab

PM Trudeau: Stop CBSA's Treatment of Egyptian Refugee Families

Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers officers, based in Vancouver, have targeted Egyptian refugee families and denied them an opportunity to seek refugee protection in Canada because of their affiliations with political organisations in Egypt. Egyptian asylum seekers are not only denied protections but also facing risk of deportation to torture and cruel and unusual punishments. We are writing to you as a group to demand that the Minister of Public Safety intervenes and directs CBSA to withdraw these unfounded accusations against these families. 

Parliamentary petition against the purchase of fighter jets

We call upon the House of Commons to:

1. Cancel the competition to purchase new combat aircraft;

2. Include all of the emissions from the military vehicles and operations in the government’s emission reduction plan and net-zero plan; and

3. Invest in a conversion plan to create thousands of jobs in the green, care economy to transition Canada away from fossil fuel and armed forces.

Also sign: NDP must oppose F-35 purchase + Stop Killer Robots

+ NEW Halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

Tell President Biden: Close Guantanamo

Now, with growing support in Congress, President Biden has an opportunity to end these ongoing abuses by closing the detention center. Help us close Guantánamo and ensure the transfer of all cleared detainees to countries where their human rights will be respected. 

Act Now to tell President Biden to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility!

Canada: Condemn Israeli Silencing of Palestinian Groups

Send an email urging Canada to:

1) Condemn Israel’s wrongful designation of these human rights groups, and

2) Demand Israel rescind such labels over the Palestinian organizations

Protect Human Rights Defenders in Palestine!

Free Cihan Erdal

Cihan Erdal is a Canadian permanent resident, queer youth activist, doctoral student, and coordinator of the Centre for Urban Youth Research at Carleton University in Ottawa. He was unjustly detained in Turkey on unfounded charges in September 2020, after being swept up in a mass arrest of politicians, activists, and academics in Istanbul. Send a message to Canadian officials now the Canadian government can take to help bring Cihan safely home.

How to Help Afghans in Afghanistan and Canada

Muslim Link - The people of Afghanistan are in dire need of humanitarian aid and Canada has committed to accepting 20,000 Afghan refugees.

How can you help? Click below for a list of ways you can support the people of Afghanistan at home and abroad.

Demand action from Canada in response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan

Protect our rights from facial recognition!

ICLMG - 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.

+ Take action to ban biometric recognition technologies

Trudeau: Ensure justice for Abousfian Abdelrazik

In September 2003, Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik was arrested in Sudan, while he was back in the country visiting his ailing mother. Over the next three years he was imprisoned for nearly 20 months and was held under house arrest for 12 months. 

He was denied a lawyer, and was never charged or brought before a judge. During that time he was badly tortured in three different prisons. Not only did Canada fail to take steps to protect him, CSIS officials frequently obstructed efforts to secure his release.

Stop Mohamed Harkat's Deportation to Torture

No one should be deported to torture. Ever. For nearly 19 years, Mohamed Harkat has faced the ordeal of being place under a kafkaesque security certificate based on secret evidence and accusations he cannot challenge, and facing deportation to torture in Algeria.

Please join us and send the letter below to Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino, urging them to stop the deportation to torture of Mr. Harkat.



• Your letter will also go to your Member of Parliament, along with the ministers of Justice & of Immigration.
• And don't hesitate to also sign and share this petition!

China: Free Canadian Huseyin Celil

The Chinese authorities accused Huseyin of offences related to his activities in support of Uighur rights. They held Huseyin in a secret place. They gave him no access to a lawyer, to his family, or to Canadian officials. They threatened him and forced him to sign a confession. They refused to recognize Huseyin’s status as a Canadian citizen, and they did not allow Canadian officials to attend his trial. It was not conducted fairly, and resulted in a sentence of life in prison in China. His life sentence was reduced to 20 years in February 2016. Huseyin has spent much of his time in solitary confinement. He lacks healthy food and is in poor health. Kamila needs her husband, and the boys need their father back

+ Urge China to stop targeting Uyghurs in China and abroad

OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES

Anti-terrorism laws

Législation antiterroriste

Sri Lanka's harsh anti-terrorism law leaves garment makers hanging

Philippines: Appeals roll for another shot to void feared anti-terror law

Attacks on dissent

Attaques sur la dissidence

New CitizenLab Report: Psychological and Emotional War Digital Transnational Repression in Canada

Hundreds rally in Toulouse against the dissolution of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra

National security law: Hong Kong activist arrested on suspicion of violating bail conditions with online comments

National security law: Ex-Bar Association chairman leaves Hong Kong for UK after meeting with police

Pashtun Activists Decry Pakistan’s Anti-Terror Trials

Resisting the UK Policing Bill

Russian Crackdown on Dissent Intensifies as Over 13,000 Arrested for Opposing Ukraine Invasion

Migrant and refugee rights

Droits des migrant.es et des réfugié.es

Death of Immigration Detainee an Urgent Wake-Up Call for Canada

Non-citizens of Ukraine don't qualify for temporary refuge in Canada

Poor tech, opaque rules, exhausted staff: inside the private company surveilling US immigrants

Police

Reimagining Safety: What happens when we defund the police? (webinar)

Building the biometric state: Police powers and discrimination

Privacy and surveillance

Vie privée et surveillance

Civil society calls on the EU to ban predictive AI systems in policing and criminal justice in the AI Act

Italy fines Clearview AI €20M and orders data deleted

PEARL 2 PEGASUS Bahraini Activists Hacked with Pegasus Just Days after a Report Confirming Other Victims

A Pastor’s Legal Fight Against Customs and Border Protection Exposes a Reckless Surveillance Operation

Whistleblowers

Lanceur.ses d'alertes

The U.K. Wanted to Extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. From the Start

Miscellaneous

Divers

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Teen Near Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied East Jerusalem

EVENT: IJV Canada: Together Against Apartheid campaign launch registration

EVENT: BDS: A Toolkit for Community Organizing by Independent Jewish Voices Canada

TAKE ACTION: Write to Canadian churches: Now is the time to speak up in regard to Israel’s apartheid crimes

Neve: Make the Ukraine crisis a turning point in defending the 'rules-based' international order

Ukrainians Are Nonviolently Resisting War

Putin’s Criminal Invasion of Ukraine Highlights Some Ugly Truths About U.S. and NATO

TAKE ACTION: Russia: Stop the aggression and protect civilians in Ukraine

TAKE ACTION: Canada: Diplomacy not Militarization: The Courage to Call for Negotiations

From July to Dec - De juillet à décembre 2021

Check out our biannual summary of activities: What We've Been Up To from July to December 2021.

In 2022, we plan to continue our work on the following issues:

- The Canadian government's concerning "online harms" legislative proposal, including its approach on "terrorist content," mandatory reporting to law enforcement and new powers for CSIS;

- Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for privacy law reform;

- Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, addressing problems in security inadmissibility and establishing a long overdue independent review and complaint body for the CBSA;

- Justice for Hassan Diab and launching a video on extradition law reform;

- Greater transparency and accountability for CSIS;

- The return of the 40+ Canadian citizens indefinitely detained in Syrian camps, including 26 children;

- The end to the CRA's prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities, revealed in our June 2021 report;

- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including the establishment of a strong, effective and independent review mechanism;

- Monitoring the implementation of the National Security Act, 2017 (Bill C-59);

- 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 for flights that do not land in or fly over the US;

- Pressuring lawmakers to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security and the "war on terror", as well as keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest;

- And much more!

Read more - Lire plus and share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG.