International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
July 9, 2021
What we've been up to so far in 2021. Please help us protect civil liberties for the rest of the year!
ICLMG 30/06/2021 - What we've been up to in 2021:

  • We called on the government to not expand anti-terror laws to fight racism
  • We met with many MPs, agencies, policy staff from the Offices of the Minister of Public Safety and Minister of Justice, etc.
  • We published a report exposing CRA's Prejudiced Audits against Muslim Charities
  • We continue to call for Justice for Dr Hassan Diab and his family!
  • We were featured in 85+ news media articles, op-eds and podcasts
  • We co-organized and presented in various online events
  • We published op-eds, articles & statements ...and much more! More details

During the second half of the year, we will organize activities around the 20th "anniversary" of the beginning of the so-called "War on Terror" and the rushed adoption of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, as well as the problematic laws passed and human rights abuses inflicted since in the name of national security.
And we will continue fighting:
  • against facial recognition technology, governments' attacks on encryption, and online mass surveillance
  • for a review mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency
  • to abolish security certificates and end deportation to torture
  • to repeal the Canadian No Fly List
  • for justice for Hassan Diab & the reform of the Extradition Act Read more

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Letter to PM Trudeau: End the CRA's Prejudiced Audits of Muslim Charities
ICLMG 23/06/2021 - More than 130 groups signed an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau and members of his cabinet, raising concerns and calling for action in regards to the Canada Revenue Agency’s prejudiced audits of Muslim charities, under the auspices of countering terrorist financing. The letter is in support of the revelations and recommendations included in ICLMG’s new report “The CRA’s Prejudiced Audits: Counter-terrorism and the targeting of Muslim charities in Canada.” [...]

Targeting Muslim charities on the basis of terrorist financing suspicions simply because of the religion they uphold is Islamophobic and prejudiced. Such targeting also negatively impacts the Muslim community and the beneficiaries of their charitable work. Institutional and structural Islamophobia contributes to an atmosphere of intolerance and hate, and signals to Canadians that their fellow Canadian Muslim charities are not to be trusted. Not only are Muslim organizations being targeted by the government with questionable and unfounded allegations of promoting radicalization, the process of an audit, and possible revocation, creates a chilling effect that can cripple the Canadian Muslim charitable community. Dismantling such prejudice is the first step in fighting hate.

The Ministry of National Revenue has direct responsibility over the CRA and therefore RAD. The Ministry of Finance created the 2015 National Risk Assessment (NRA) that has empowered RAD to target Muslim charities. The Ministry of Public Safety’s agencies closely work with RAD and provide it information and resources to conduct its audits.
The assertions and conclusions of government anti-terrorism laws and the 2015 NRA directive have been implemented by agencies in a manner that targets and profiles Muslim organizations and communities, supports Islamophobia and has produced bureaucrats and agents who have become invested in these Islamophobic practices – whether they recognize them as prejudiced or not. While this approach may not be officially sanctioned by the government of Canada, it is real, it is happening and it allows Islamophobia to persist unaddressed.

We call on you to act upon the recommendations from the ICLMG report:
1. That the federal government refer this issue to review by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) in order to examine the CRA’s RAD processes overall, and specifically its selecting of Muslim charities for audit, to ensure organizations are not being targeted due to racial or religious prejudice. The review must investigate the source of past audits of Muslim charities, active audits of Muslim charities, and Muslim charities identified for audit.
2. That the Minister of Revenue declare an immediate moratorium on the targeted audit of Muslim charities by RAD until the review has concluded. This does not preclude the audits of Muslim charities selected at random by the CRA outside of RAD.
3. That the Ministry of Finance revisit the anti-terror regulatory, policy and legislative landscape, particularly the 2015 NRA and its impact, particularly on the Muslim community.
4. That the federal government amend the NSIRA Act to allow for complaints from the public regarding the CRA’s national security-related activities.
5. That NSIRA and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) coordinate to carryout regular reviews of the CRA’s anti-terrorism activities – including the Charities Directorate and RAD – going forward.

The CRA RAD’s policies and practices are neither fair nor effective, and are undermining
Canadian values of due process and fairness. Prime Minister, you have committed to an Emergency National Action Summit on Islamophobia in the coming weeks. It is also important for our community to see effective action against systemic and structural Islamophobia. We call on you to put an end to the Islamophobic practices within the CRA and to ensure oversight and accountability. Read more - Lire plus






Tim McSorley: The Case for a Ban on Facial Recognition Surveillance in Canada
Surveillance & Society Journal 09/06/2020 - A central argument for the move to “smart cities” — and smart technology in general — is the supposed improvement of security and safety. This ranges from increasing the safety of our home appliances by, for example, being able to monitor them remotely to increasing the safety of pedestrians by better managing traffic. But it also includes the “law enforcement” side of safety and security: tools that allow homeowners to monitor their property (and, not so incidentally, that of their neighbours) or that allow police officers to more easily “deter” or “predict”
crime and to apprehend suspects.

While efforts by law enforcement agencies to engage in “smart” policing by analyzing statistics in order to predict crime “hot spots” and thereby either prevent or minimize the amount of crime committed have been long - documented (and de-bunked), the securitization of the city has grown in leaps and bounds over the past two decades. This has been, in part, through developments in technology but is also due to the security crackdown in many western countries, including Canada, since the events of 9/11 and the start of the “War on Terror.” Expanded powers, expanded budgets, and expanded integration of national, regional, and local police and intelligence agencies have meant increased surveillance and criminalization. While these agencies now hold multiple technological tools in their tool belt, facial recognition has emerged as a particularly troubling and controversial tool for surveillance by law enforcement.

In Canada, it was revealed in January 2020 that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had been using Clearview AI’s controversial facial recognition app since October 2019 — even though the force had denied ever having used it. It was further revealed that the RCMP has, in fact, used facial recognition technology in one form or another since 2002. The problem isn’t limited to Clearview AI or to the RCMP, though. Police forces in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Halifax, Windsor, Ottawa, Toronto, and multiple other police departments across Ontario have all admitted to using facial recognition technology, with many initially staying silent or even denying their use of it. Moreover, it’s also likely that facial recognition is being used even more broadly: police and security agencies are not required to disclose their use of new technology and will often refuse to answer
any disclosure request under the guise of protecting sensitive operational information.

We have followed these issues closely at the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) and believe law enforcement should be restricted in its use of facial recognition technology, especially when it comes to surveillance, and that the widespread use of this technology necessitates public debate and new legislation. Along with thirty organizations and forty-six civil liberties advocates, we issued a call for a ban on the use of facial recognition surveillance technology by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Canada, including the RCMP, CBSA, and CSIS. While our call was limited to the federal government because of our coalition’s mandate, our concerns apply to local and regional police as well.

We believe that there are four compelling reasons why we need to have a formal public consultation into the overall use of facial recognition technology, and why facial recognition surveillance should never be allowed for law enforcement or intelligence agencies:
1. Facial Recognition Violates Our Rights
2. Facial Recognition Technology is Inaccurate and Biased
3. Facial Recognition's Use by Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies Remains Unregulated
4. Facial Recognition is a Slippery Slope

Given all of this, we believe the time for a ban on the use of facial recognition surveillance by law enforcement is now. In particular, we believe the federal government must take three actions:
1. Ban the use of facial recognition surveillance by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies;
2. Initiate a meaningful, public consultation on all aspects of facial recognition technology in Canada; and
3. Establish clear and transparent policies and laws regulating the use of facial recognition in Canada, including reforms to PIPEDA and the Privacy Act.

While these relate to the federal government, they can also serve as a template for action at the municipal, regional, and provincial levels, which all have authority over varying law enforcement and security agencies: initiate a ban on surveillance and hold inquiries into the overall use of the technology in order to craft better laws and to better protect our rights. Read more - Lire plus


Azeezah Kanji: The coloniality of Canadian Islamophobia – and anti-Islamophobia
Al Jazeera 02/07/2021 - Political leaders have shed tears for the Afzaal family mown down in London, Ontario on a public street, while maintaining policies that brutalise Muslims largely out of sight: increasing military spending; selling arms to states that slaughter Muslims; attempting to deport Muslim refugees to the risk of torture; and spending millions of dollars to fight the compensation claims of “War on Terror” torture survivors in court. [...]

Criminally charging the London perpetrator as a terrorist does not rectify the counterterrorism “colour line”; it masks it. Nathaniel Veltman, the man who mowed down the Afzaal family in London, is being prosecuted for an act of killing already committed, while Muslims are criminalised pre-emptively for acts distant from any death or injury at all. This has produced a situation in which Muslims, responsible for less than 10 percent of casualties from public political violence in Canada since 9/11, have been subjected to 98 percent of completed terrorism prosecutions. If Veltman were to have been treated “equally” to a Muslim, he and members of his entire family and community would have been harassed regularly at their school and work by security agencies, denied security clearances for playing paintball, surveilled in their places of worship, targeted for entrapment while struggling with mental illness, placed preventively under suffocating “peace bond” conditions without trial, and put on no-fly lists on the basis of name coincidences and racist stereotypes: draconian state powers that should not be “equalised” but dismantled. [...]

Islamophobia is distorted as an issue of interpersonal “extremism” and “hate,” largely dissociated from everyday state practices premised on and profiting off the devaluation, demonisation and disposability of Muslim life. Indeed, some of the very same “national security experts” responsible for legitimising the demonising discourse of “Muslim extremism” are now being treated as authorities on how to fight anti-Muslim extremism. Professor Stephanie Carvin, for instance, was exposed last year for baking cakes that celebrate Muslim drone deaths, yet continues to be quoted in media analyses of the London killings – proving that it is entirely possible to have your Islamophobic cake and eat it too.

Even progressive pundits have participated in representing Islamophobia as isolated to particular bigoted personalities and bygone times: placing the blame on former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party, just as endemic anti-Muslim racism in the US was reduced to an anachronism by pinning it on Donald Trump. Never mind that Harper’s Conservatives have been out of power for the last six years, but the toxic mill of state-sponsored Islamophobia has kept churning on. Liberals and Conservatives alike have ratcheted up anti-terrorism powers, resisted accountability for torture complicity, and refused to challenge Quebec’s ban on hijabs and other “visible religious symbols” for public employees – rights-abusive measures all rationalised as necessary for eliminating the imagined Muslim threat. [...] The tools of state violence (such as counterterrorism) are expanded in the name of curtailing private violence – cutting off some of the “extreme” branches of systemic racism while nourishing the roots. [...]

Prime Minister Trudeau may proclaim that “Islamophobia has no place” in Canada, but in reality anti-Muslim racism has been intertwined for centuries with the anti-Indigenous violence lying at the foundations of the settler-colonial state. Papal bulls authorising Muslim and Jewish dispossession and enslavement during the Crusades served as a basis for the Doctrine of Discovery – Europeans’ self-granted 15th-century imprimatur for colonialism, which continues to underwrite Canada’s theft and occupation of Indigenous lands. Tactics of book burning and forcible re-education were exported from the Spanish Inquisition in Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) to the genocide in the Americas: the destruction of systems of knowledge being intrinsically connected to the destruction of the peoples who produced them. While European conquistadors sub-humanised Muslims and Jews as “people of the wrong religion,” Indigenous nations were expelled from humanity altogether as “people with no religion”. This hierarchy of being persists in the jurisprudence of Canadian courts – upholding anti-Muslim laws such as Quebec’s religious symbols ban, while refusing to recognise Indigenous sacred sites facing corporate depredation as entitled to any protection under religious freedom rights at all.

The radical dehumanisation of Indigenous peoples underpinned the radically genocidal violence of the US’s “Indian Wars,” creating legal and military precedents which have been carried over into the “War on Terror”: a mantle for the ongoing suppression of Indigenous and Muslim resistance to domination by colonial states, from Canada to Palestine to Kashmir. Canada targets Indigenous land and water defenders with many of the same counterterrorism powers of mass surveillance and criminalisation developed for use against Muslim communities post-9/11 – continuing the long tradition of treating those on the receiving end of state terror as “terrorists” themselves. The response to the London attacks highlights not only the fallacy, but the absurdity, of appealing to this colonial state apparatus as the solution to racism when in fact it lies at the source; an apparatus that continues to reproduce the white supremacism situated at its heart, whether by the condemned violence of a van attack or the condoned violence of police and military killings, torture complicity, and erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. Read more - Lire plus




Canadian Labour Congress President letter to PM Trudeau: End the injustice against Hassan Diab!
CLC 26/05/2021 - Dear Prime Minister Trudeau, I am writing today, on behalf of three million Canadian workers, to express concern regarding the case of Dr. Hassan Diab and respectfully request the Canadian government take immediate action to put an end to this long odyssey of injustice. The Cour de cassation upheld the French Court of Appeal's decision to refer the Canadian professor to trial, despite the serious flaws, contradictory reasoning and misstatements of evidence in the appeals court's ruling.

In 2018, the investigating judges in charge of the case dismissed the case and released Hassan in light of “consistent evidence” of his innocence. Hassan, his spouse and their two young children have suffered enough. The decision by the Cour de cassation is a continuation of the scapegoating of an innocent man. [...] Mr. Prime Minister, in 2018 you stated, “I think, for Hassan Diab, we have to recognize first of all that what happened to him never should have happened. This is something that obviously was an extremely difficult situation to go through for himself and for his family, and that's why we've asked for an independent external review to look into exactly how this happened and make sure that it never happens again.”

I call on you and your government to honour your words by taking action to put an end to Dr. Hassan Diab’s long and troubling ordeal. To further prolong this miscarriage of justice is an offence to Canadian values and a manifest failure to protect the fundamental human rights of Canadians. Therefore, I ask that you take two clear steps: 1. Give immediate assurances to Hassan Diab that Canada will not accept nor accede to a second request for his extradition. 2. Urge France to put an immediate end to this continuing miscarriage of justice. Read more - Lire plus


Top spy agency tracked Caledonia land dispute as possible threat to national security: secret document
APTN 29/06/2021 - Canada’s top spy agency monitored a Six Nations-led land occupation in Caledonia, Ont., as a potential threat to national security and gathered intelligence on it during road blockades last winter, according to an internal document obtained by APTN News under the Access to Information Act.

An intelligence brief labeled as “secret” and prepared for “domain awareness” on Nov. 26, 2020 indicates the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) kept close tabs on the land dispute, citing “notable concerns regarding critical infrastructure.” Titled “‘1492 Land Back Lane’ Camp: Caledonia Land Dispute and the Potential for Violence,” the report was prepared a month after the group and its supporters shut down roads, train tracks and damaged hydroelectric equipment following a skirmish with police. “Critical infrastructure near the camp has been damaged, vandalized or disrupted during the protest,” the spy agency reported. “The damage to critical infrastructure and the potential disruption to services have implications not only for Caledonia, but southern Ontario as a whole.”

The spy agency reported the camp was erected last summer on the site of a proposed 25-acre subdivision called McKenzie Meadows, noting the development sits on a portion of disputed Six Nations land known as the Haldimand Tract. “According to activists, the development infringes on Indigenous sovereignty,” said CSIS in a line accompanied by a redacted footnote. The brief also stated, incorrectly, “Six Nations is one of nine Mohawk Nations that are part of the broader Haudenosaunee Confederacy.” The confederacy actually consists of the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora. Each nation once had its own village on the Grand River tract prior to an influx of settlers, hence the name. Though significantly redacted, the document indicates interest in the standoff at the highest level of the national security bureaucracy, said one researcher.

“The invocation of critical infrastructure, for them, really, like in terms of their mandate, gives them an authority to be more active in investigating and engaging in surveillance,” said Jeffrey Monaghan, an associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. Monaghan co-authored a book called Policing Indigenous Movements about how federal agencies have ramped up mass surveillance of domestic activism over the last decade under the broadening auspices of the war on terror. “The inclusion of critical infrastructure immediately makes this a national security problem in their eyes,” he said. “There’s a language around violence, and there’s also a language around the sovereignty claim — and seeing sovereignty claims as a threat to the Canadian state.”

Monaghan said the hand wringing over sovereignty claims, factual inaccuracies and contradictions reveal a “culture of racism” and colonialism that’s implicit in the way the national security establishment sees Indigenous resistance. “That’s a very deep, deep racial discourse that is being used in a very casual way in the language of this report,” Monaghan said. He said it’s a long-standing tradition within the bureaucracy to label certain groups as legitimate and illegitimate then portray the illegitimate group as unreasonable and potentially violent. “It justifies the scrutiny, it justifies the surveillance, it justifies the criminalization later and it doesn’t need to be factually accurate. It’s just part of this pattern that they need to present. This narrative that they almost present themselves to justify their actions.”

Monaghan said the concept of critical infrastructure was born from the fear terrorist organizations would attack things like nuclear power plants but has become a more flexible category over the years. “It’s gradually morphed, and kind of morphed around the interests of business and company and resource extraction interests to focus on domestic forms of protest, and especially Indigenous protest,” he explained. The book argued that this surveillance is often opaque and may have a “chilling effect” on activism by creating a culture of suspicion and paranoia among those who start to assume state spying on them is normal. “In terms of CSIS, the top spy agency, collecting information on protests like this, I think it is a serious civil liberties threat,” he said. “We’re years and years behind being able to adequately oversee and govern these institutions.” Read more - Lire plus
Lethal Force Against Pipeline Protests? Documents Reveal Shocking South Dakota Plans for National Guard
DemocracyNow! 02/07/2021 - Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced she is deploying 50 members of the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In an extraordinary twist, the deployment is being paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Willis Johnson, who lives in Tennessee.

Critics say Noem is turning the National Guard into a private mercenary force targeting migrants, but the governor’s plans for the National Guard could encompass other activities. Water protector and land back attorney Bruce Ellison has obtained documents that indicate the same force could be deployed to suppress Indigenous activists resisting pipelines — including through “lethal force,” Ellison says. We also speak to Tara Houska, Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective, who adds the Department of Homeland Security has also been involved in suppressing resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota. Read more - Lire plus
Confidential national security docs left on human rights lawyer's Halifax porch
The Canadian Press 03/07/2021 - A human rights lawyer says documents that the Canadian government argues contain confidential matters of national security were shoved into his door frame, with no signature or password needed. Benjamin Perryman, who teaches constitutional law at the University of New Brunswick, represents a Roma Hungarian couple who claim border officials discriminated against them on the basis of ethnicity.

In April, the Federal Court of Appeals ordered the immigration minister to send sensitive documents containing screening criteria as an encrypted online file to parties in the case using the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Instead, Perryman says the government FedExed a CD-ROM that was “stuffed” into the door frame of his house in Halifax and needed no encryption, password protection or signature upon receipt of the package. The Canadian Press has seen photos of the envelope lodged in the door. The process is inconsistent with the government’s claim that releasing screening indicators — used to weed out potential illegal immigrants before arrival in Canada, where they could hypothetically claim asylum — would harm the country’s safety and security, he said.

“Canada makes the claim that if material got into wrong hands that there would be substantial injury,” Perryman said. “And I arrived at home to find it stuffed into my door on the outside. The package included a cover letter stating the government had permission from court staff to send the package as a CD-ROM, Perryman added, but stressed that it was unencrypted. The incident marks the second security hiccup related to the couple’s case this year. According to an affidavit from a Canada Border Services Agency manager, the government in February sent Perryman files with “sensitive information” on which CBSA officials had performed “redactions by applying black highlighting” that could be lifted with the click of a mouse. He argues that federal officials are trying to use “national security as a smokescreen to cover up racial discrimination,” an allegation the government rejects.

Lukacs also provided documents from an access-to-information request showing that he had received in unredacted form some of the same text that was blacked out by the CBSA. Other Western countries often publish their screening criteria, which are largely in the public domain, he said. The Kisses say Roma travellers seeking to visit relatives in Canada face “systemic discrimination” by border officials. “The humiliation we experienced at the Budapest Airport was exceptional even compared to the prejudice and discrimination that I have experienced all my life in Hungary. A flight to Canada was the last place where I would have expected to be treated this way,” Attila Kiss said in an email. Shortly after, the Kisses learned a CBSA liaison officer in Vienna had cancelled their ETAs. Asked why, the BUD Security agent told them that “the biggest problem is that the person whom you are travelling to has no status” — as a Canadian citizen or permanent resident — according to an August 2020 court submission from the Kisses, who recorded their interaction with the agent.

The officer’s notes also say the couple was “unable to explain how they can take three months off work” and “do not own a home.” Attila Kiss, who has worked at lighting company Tungsram — owned by GE Hungary — since 1994, got approval for a six-month leave of absence and owns a house, court documents show. “These alleged indicators are based on ethnic stereotypes depicting the Roma as nomads who neither work nor have a home,” the Kisses state in their filing. Perryman said asserting national security to justify withholding information, including screening indicators, amounts to opaque governance, with implications for fundamental rights. “The problem with this as an approach is that it deprives all Canadians of actually being able to see the work of the court and to evaluate Canada’s policies, whether or not they discriminate against travellers and whether or not they are defensible on behalf of Canada,” he said. Read more - Lire plus
Military violated rules by collecting information on Canadians, conducting propaganda during pandemic: report
Ottawa Citizen 23/06/2021 - Military commanders violated federal rules and acted without authority when they ordered intelligence teams to collect information on the public as well as use propaganda techniques against Canadians, top defence officials now admit. Information was culled from social media accounts of members of the public in Ontario and data was compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings. Military commanders also proceeded with a plan to use propaganda techniques employed during the Afghanistan war, claiming that was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic.

A series of articles last year by this newspaper prompted four separate internal military investigations into the military’s use of propaganda and other information operations or IO techniques against Canadians. “This included the conduct of IO on a domestic operation without explicit CDS/DM direction or authority to do so, as well as the unsanctioned production of reports that appeared to be aimed at monitoring the activities of Canadians,” Eyre and Thomas acknowledged in their document. One of the military investigations examined the initiative last year by Lt.-Gen. Mike Rouleau, then head of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, to issue a plan for the use of propaganda techniques against Canadians during the pandemic. The investigation found the Canadian Joint Operations Command headquarters not only didn’t follow established policy, but also such an initiative was never requested in the first place by the federal government.

Another investigation highlighted how military intelligence officers broke various rules as they gathered information from social media accounts of various members of the public. Senior leaders initially tried to justify their actions by claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the pandemic. They maintained there was nothing wrong with that initiative since the information collected was from publicly available social media accounts of Ontarians. But the investigation concluded otherwise. “Teams contravened requirements by not conducting a risk assessment prior to conducting activities on the internet and they collected Canadian citizen information without our explicit direction,” Eyre and Thomas wrote.

Yet another review centred on the Canadian Forces public affairs branch and its activities. Last year the branch launched a controversial plan that would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as to collect and analyze information from the public’s social media accounts. The plan was circulated at National Defence headquarters in draft form and would have seen staff move from traditional government methods of communicating with the public to a more aggressive strategy of using information warfare and influence tactics on Canadians. Training for such a capability was also put in place. The Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, the company implicated in a 2016 data-mining scandal to help Donald Trump’s election campaign. In this case, the contracts were awarded to Emic Consulting, a British firm. The initiative, overseen by Brig. Gen. Jay Janzen, was part of a shift at National Defence headquarters to what was dubbed “the weaponization of public affairs.”

The plan was abruptly shut down in November after this newspaper revealed details about the initiative. In response, Janzen sent a message to public affairs officers that “these efforts were on the leading edge, and we were exploring uncharted territory. Innovation is sometimes prone to being misunderstood.” But the military investigation determined what the Canadian Forces public affairs leadership was doing was “incompatible with Government of Canada Communications Policy (and the) mission and principles of Public Affairs.” In response to the various investigations, the military plans to bring in new training and clearer directives to ensure that Canadians are not the target of future propaganda attempts. Read more - Lire plus
Muslim survivor of 7/7 London bombings slams government’s counter-terrorism strategy on anniversary
Arab News 07/07/2021 - A Muslim survivor of the 7/7 bombings targeting London called for an overhaul of the British government’s controversial counter-terrorism strategy. Sajda Mughal OBE told British newspaper Metro on the 16th anniversary of the London bombings that she is dismayed at the government’s controversial Prevent strategy, which outlines the approach for countering radicalization and extremism.

A review of Prevent is being boycotted by more than 450 Islamic organizations who say that the program has curtailed freedom of speech, removed people’s civil liberties and criminalized communities. The review is being conducted by William Shawcross, who has expressed Islamophobic views in the past, and the organizations say that he is unfit to be a neutral and fair assessor of the policy. Mughal, the CEO of JAN Trust, an organization which supports marginalized women and young people and raises awareness of issues including counter-terrorism, told Metro the government is not doing enough to tackle hate and far-right extremism in British society. “There needs to be a complete shake-up of the whole counter-terrorism strategy in order to make the UK a harmonious place,” Mughal said.

Mughal, who previously worked with the Home Office through her role at JAN Trust, slammed the Prevent strategy and said “it is not fit for purpose.” “We’ve had Prevent for 16 years and finally it’s being reviewed, but as someone who’s worked previously with Prevent, I have no faith in the current review, it’s a tick-box exercise,” she said. The program has been accused of criminalizing and stigmatising those it seeks to protect, such as an 11-year-old boy who was referred to the program after he told his class he wanted to give “alms” to the needy, which his teacher mistook for “arms.” “It should be about the public’s lives being put first, but unfortunately that’s not that the case. On the inside, the Prevent department is about egos, promotions and personalities. You change things through the better through listening to criticism, if you don’t you just live in your echochamber, and that’s exactly what’s happened within counter-terrorism,” Mughal added. Read more - Lire plus

ACTIONS & EVENTS
Canada must take action to end the injustice against Dr Hassan Diab
Despite no new evidence, strong exculpatory evidence, and contradictory reasoning, France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, has upheld the French Court of Appeal's shocking order that Hassan must stand trial.

Send the message below to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs: The Canadian government must take immediate action to put an end to Dr. Diab's long odyssey of injustice!

If you live in Canada, take action here + share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram


If you live outside of Canada, click here + share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Si vous n'habitez pas au Canada, agissez ici + partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + IG
A new report from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group shows that the Canada Revenue Agency is targeting Muslim charities for audits, based on prejudiced and unsupported allegations of a risk of terrorist financing, and in secret and without accountability.

Please send a message to the Minister of Revenue, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Public Safety, the Charities Directorate Director as well as your Member of Parliament to stop the prejudiced audits of Muslim charities.
Please share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!
Open letter calling for a global ban on biometric recognition technologies that enable mass and discriminatory surveillance

We, the undersigned, call for an outright ban on uses of facial recognition and remote biometric recognition technologies that enable mass surveillance and discriminatory targeted surveillance. These tools have the capacity to identify, follow, single out, and track people everywhere they go, undermining our human rights and civil liberties — including the rights to privacy and data protection, the right to free assembly and association, freedom of expression, and the rights to equality and non-discrimination. 

These uses of facial and remote biometric recognition technologies, by design, threaten people’s rights and have already caused significant harm. No technical or legal safeguards could ever fully eliminate the threat they pose, and we therefore believe they should never be allowed in public or publicly accessible spaces, either by governments or the private sector.
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.
CSIS is NOT above the law!
Two recent court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.

Send a message to the Public Safety Minister demanding that he take action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable. Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.
Tell Trudeau to sanction Israel
Right now, Gaza is under attack, and Jerusalem is being ethnically cleansed right before our eyes.

Help us ramp up the pressure on the Trudeau government to stop Israeli aggression and war crimes.

Send an email to Trudeau now demanding that the Canadian government forcefully condemn Israel’s actions and follow its words up with consequences, including sanctions.
UPDATE Action for Cihan Erdal's return!
CUPE member Cihan Erdal has finally been freed after almost 9 months imprisoned in Turkey. CUPE National has sent a letter to Canadian foreign affairs minister with three specific demands for action and reiterating CUPE’s call last fall for Canada to work on Cihan’s behalf. You can help by reminding the Ankara Prosecutor, Turkish Minister of Justice and the President of Turkey of their country's human rights obligations and encourage them to allow him to return home.

Save Abdo from deportation
Abdelrahman El Mady is a father, a husband, a human rights activist and a refugee. He escaped persecution in his home country of Egypt, hoping to find safety in Canada.

Instead he faced profiling and Islamophobia at the hands of the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA). The CBSA has deemed him inadmissible and is now trying to deport him to Egypt.

The Canadian government must hold the CBSA accountable, offer Abdo protection from the risks of detention and torture in Egypt, and reunite him with his wife and children in Canada.
Tell PM Trudeau: No New Fighter Jets!
The Canadian government has launched a competition for 88 new fighter jets, for a starting price of $19 billion (and a cost of at least $77B over the lifespan of the jets). This is the second most expensive procurement in Canadian history.

This purchase is planned for early 2022. It's crucial that the government hears from all of us, now!

Send a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, National Defence Minister Sajjan, Foreign Affairs Minister Champagne, and all Members of Parliament.
Call on Justin Trudeau to 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.
Tell Transport Minister to cancel Canada's drone contract now!
Canada’s Transportation Ministry recently approved a $36M contract for drone technology from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company. The money will purchase a “civilian” version of Elbit’s lethal military drone, the same one which was used to kill civilians during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014.
Click below to message the Transport Minister, the Prime Minister, federal political leaders, and your MP.
Stop CSIS from targeting everyday citizens & community groups
A recent report revealed that CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, collected over 8,000 pages of documents, spying on citizens like you, people who exercise their democratic rights by attending a community meeting at a local church or taking peaceful action for what they believe in. And CSIS shared this info with Big Oil corporations. Sign this petition to tell the govt to stop using taxpayer money to unconstitutionally spy on Canadians part of peaceful community groups.
All-in-one action page: Stop Mohamed Harkat's Deportation to Torture
Call PM Trudeau, write a letter to Public Safety Minister & your MP, and sign Sophie Harkat's petition to stop the deportation of Moe Harkat.

If sent back to Algeria, Moe faces detention, torture and death.

No one should be deported to torture. Ever.
Reunite Ayub, Khalil, and Salahidin with their families
Ayub Mohammed, Salahidin Abdulahad, and Khalil Mamut are 3 Uyghur men who fled China's persecution. They were sold by bounty hunters to the US military in 2001 and taken with 19 other Uyghurs to Guantanamo.

Despite being exonerated in 2003, they were kept in Guantanamo for years. Now in forced exile, their families are here in Canada, and their kids growing up without their fathers.

Despite posing no threat to Canadian national security, these men have been waiting over 5 years to reunite with their families.

Take action to reunite them!
Call on China to allow reunion of Uyghur families
Many Uyghur parents overseas have had to leave one or more children in the care of family members in Xinjiang. Some parents have since learned their children were taken to state-run “orphan camps” or boarding schools after the relatives taking care of them had been detained.
The mass detention campaign in Xinjiang has prevented Uyghur parents from returning to China to take care of their children themselves.

Sign the petition and call on China's President to ensure that children are allowed to leave China to be reunited as promptly as possible with their parents and siblings already living abroad, if that is preferred by them.
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.
Canada must act to end Islamophobia in Xinjiang, China
There is credible evidence that up to one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mainly Muslim groups in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are being detained in secret internment camps. Detainees are brainwashed, tortured and are forced to renounce their religion and culture.


And send a message to Chrystia Freeland demanding that Canada actively support an independent and unrestricted international fact-finding initiative to Xinjiang.
Protect Encryption in Canada
Our ability to use the Internet safely, securely and privately is under threat. Canada wants to create 'back doors' into encryption like some of our partner countries in the Five Eyes Alliance have already done.

This weakens Internet safety for all of us. If we don’t act, Canada could be next.

We need a policy that explicitly protects our right to encryption now.
Environmental defenders are not terrorists!
We, the undersigned environmental and climate activists from the Philippines and the international community, urge Filipino public authorities to undertake preventive interventions against the continued red-tagging and the possible escalation of reprisals against environmental defenders.

We urge legislators to declare red-tagging as a crime punishable by law for curtailing constitutionally-guaranteed free speech and other civil liberties.
MORE NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES
Access to information & accountability
Accès à l'information et reddition de compte
Privacy and surveillance
Vie privée et surveillance
Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG.
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