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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

November 11, 2022 - 11 novembre 2022

***This online event was hosted on unceded Algonquin territory. This land must be returned to the care of the Algonquin People.

The ICLMG is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. To highlight two decades of advocacy to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the “War on Terror,” we have organized an online panel with many of our amazing past and present colleagues and partners. It was a great event!

Watch the video above for a wide-ranging discussion and Q&A on the impacts of Canada’s anti-terror actions and the ongoing efforts to protect fundamental rights and freedoms.

PANELISTS

– Roch Tassé, ICLMG National Coordinator from 2002-2015, current member of the ICLMG steering committee

– Maureen Webb, labor lawyer, human rights activist, and author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World

– Dominique Peschard, co-chair of the ICLMG steering committee, representative of La Ligue des droits et libertés

– Yavar Hameed, human rights lawyer at Hameed Law in Ottawa

– Monia Mazigh, author, academic and human rights activist. Former ICLMG National Coordinator for 2015-2016.

– Matthew Behrens, freelance writer and social justice advocate co-ordinating Homes not Bombs, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture and the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada.

– Roger Clark, former Amnesty International Canada Secretary General and campaigner for justice for Hassan Diab and extradition law reform

– Patricia Poirier, former ICLMG researcher for the report of the Information Clearinghouse on Border Controls and Infringements to Travellers’ Rights

– Khalid Elgazzar, lawyer specializing in National Security Law, Civil Liberties and Human Rights Law, and board member with the National Council of Canadian Muslims

Moderated by Tim McSorley, ICLMG National Coordinator

The panelists have covered issues they have worked on with the ICLMG over the years, including:

• The creation of ICLMG in the wake of the Anti-terrorism Act and the War on Terror
• Inquiries into the extraordinary rendition of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, and their fight for redress
• The fight against ever-expanding state surveillance, including the International Campaign against Mass Surveillance and campaigns against dangerous surveillance tools like facial recognition technology
• Campaigns against rights-violating legislation that expand the security state, including the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, the infamous Bill C-51 (2015) and the more recent National Security Act (2017)
• How anti-terrorism tools like the terrorist entities list, the No Fly List, and the targeting of Muslim charities undermine humanitarian aid, justice and civil liberties
• Islamophobia’s role in the War on Terror, including campaigns against the illegal detention of Khaled Al Qazzaz, Yasser Albaz, Benamar Benatta, and Abousfian Abdelrazik 
• Draconian border security measures, including the North American Security Perimeter, and the campaign for accountability for the Canada Border Security Agency
• And much more! Source

It’s time to bring detained Canadians home from northeast Syria

The Globe and Mail 07/11/2022 - Monia Mazigh and Alex Neve are human-rights advocates who have campaigned on behalf of Canadians unjustly detained abroad for more than two decades. Last month, two women and two children, all Canadian citizens, were repatriated to Canada from northeast Syria. Along with 40 other Canadians – 21 children, 11 women and eight men – they have endured years of human-rights abuses while detained in horrible conditions in the Roj and al-Hol camps in Syria’s autonomous Kurdish region. Both women were arrested upon their arrival in Canada. One was charged with terrorism-related offences, while the other was released on bail in advance of an expected peace-bond hearing. Both face allegations of leaving Canada to live in the Islamic State.

The justice system will run its course in addressing these charges, but in the meantime, importantly, these women and children will no longer face the grim human-rights violations that have been their daily reality in Syrian detention camps. Meanwhile, the Canadian government released a statement announcing these repatriations, but remained notably vague about what it will do for the remaining Canadians still held in Syria. We understand that the circumstances regarding these women’s stories, and the stories of those still detained in northeastern Syria, are complex. Allegations of terrorism or related offences do not often inspire public sympathy for those on the receiving end.

What we are particularly concerned with, however, is ensuring that the rule of law and respect for human rights remain paramount. We have campaigned on behalf of numerous Canadians unjustly detained abroad for more than 20 years.

We welcome this encouraging step regarding Canadians detained in northeastern Syria, which will bring relief to their families. But we know that other families face continuing anguish and despair, left with no answers about what will happen to their daughters, sisters, sons and brothers. No one deserves to be unjustly detained. Yet there are many past examples of individuals who have suffered unlawful detention because of a lack of action on the part of Canadian authorities. Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin are all Canadian citizens who, at various times in the past two decades, were tortured and detained in Syria while the Canadian government declined to bring them home. Abousfian Abdelrazik was abandoned and faced constant risk to his safety in Sudan while the Canadian government refused, for years, to issue him a passport. Omar Khadr endured a decade locked up at Guantanamo Bay while the government did nothing to extricate him from that human-rights nightmare. We had hoped that such cases were of the past. We were wrong.

There has been no lack of pleas to Canada to bring its citizens home: In June, 2021, the House of Commons foreign affairs committee recommended the repatriation of Canadian citizens held in the Syrian camps. In January of this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross declared: “What is happening in northeast Syria is not a sustainable solution. States must repatriate their own citizens.” And in June, a group of United Nations special rapporteurs reminded the Canadian government that the repatriation of its citizens “is the only international law-compliant response to the complex and precarious human-rights, humanitarian and security situation” in Syria. Even the U.S. State Department has called on its partners to “urgently repatriate their nationals and other detainees remaining in northeast Syria.” Notably, Canada did thank the United States for its assistance in last month’s repatriations.

Left with no prospect of help from their government, the families of some of the detained Canadians have launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government. Hearings in that case, initially scheduled for early November, have been postponed to December. Every day of delay is a day of unbearable agony for the families, and another day of inhumane detention for the men, women and children confined in the camps. For years, families were bluntly told that the situation in northeast Syria was too dangerous for Canadian officials, who could not travel there safely to attend to the formalities needed to arrange repatriation. That remained Canada’s position even as a growing number of other governments were actively intervening to assist their citizens.

Recent developments make it clear that if it ever was too perilous, that is no longer the case, as at least three Canadian officials were on the ground to facilitate this repatriation.

With no clarity, we are left only to ponder whether these repatriations represent a change of policy. Is Canada now willing to protect its citizens, after abandoning them to years of humanrights violations? We need to hear clearly and immediately from the Canadian government that a new approach is under way and that all remaining Canadians detained in northeast Syria will be repatriated. Their families deserve more than ambiguity and silence. Source

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

TAKE ACTION: Send Birthday Cards to Jack Letts, Illegally Detained in an Overseas Dungeon for 5.5 years!

Doctors Without Borders: Between two fires: Danger and desperation in Syria’s Al-Hol camp

MSF 07/11/2022 - Under the auspices of the global fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, exceptional policies have been implemented involving the indefinite and arbitrary detention of women, children and men in Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls on all relevant parties – including the Global Coalition, local authorities in northeast Syria, and states with nationals in Al-Hol – to assume responsibility for the welfare of people in Al-Hol. It also calls on the Global Coalition to support local authorities in taking immediate steps to guarantee people’s wellbeing, protection and fundamental human rights. 

The below report, Between two fires: danger and desperation in Syria’s Al-Hol camp, lays bare the cruelty of the long-term detainment of more than 50,000 people in Al-Hol, northeast Syria. Read more - Lire plus

Women repatriated from ISIS camps should be offered rehabilitation, not punishment: professor

CBC News 27/10/2022 - For women and children returning from ISIS detention camps, reintegration into Canadian society may be a challenge — but an expert in preventing violent extremism said it's important the opportunity is provided. "Rehab and reintegration are the keys to Canadian safety," said Dr. Cécile Rousseau, a professor of McGill University's Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry.

"Just as [is the] case in the other young offenders, we should target integration and rehab rather than punishment," she added. At least two Canadian women and their children have been repatriated to Canada after leaving a detention camp for ISIS fighters' family members in Syria. Canadian police arrested them shortly after their landing, and one of them was charged with terrorism-related offences. 

Ottawa lawyer Lawrence Greenspon, who represents one of the women, said authorities are seeking a peace bond for his client. Rousseau, who directs a clinical team that addresses the prevention of violent extremism, spoke to The Current's Matt Galloway about Canada's obligation to Canadian women and children in the ISIS detention camps, and the concerns she has about their mental health. Here's part of their conversation.

What do you see as Canada's obligation to these women and children?

I think the human rights issues are very important and Canada has [an] obligation toward all of its citizens, but in particular to our children. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that the best interest of children is above federal and provincial law. This is very important in the present case because a lot of children are involved and these children will grow up. And if we think in terms of prevention, integration and rehabilitation of the children and the loved ones who are still young should be our priority.

I'll ask you about the children in a moment, but for the women who willingly joined an extremist group, how do you go about assessing the risk that they pose to Canadians now? 

Well, you know, as any citizen who kind of commits an offence, assessment should be individualized — and when the person who committed an offence is young, as in this case, again, rehabilitation is the key to Canadian safety. Even with a severe penalty … they will come out of jail, they will integrate [into] our society, and we want them to feel that they are part of it, that we have a role of it, and that we'll accept them. [...]

What about the kids? … These kids have been through extraordinarily difficult things. How can that shape them in years to come, what they have gone through?

It certainly will be a structuring influence. Now, in which direction? That is for us to build with their family and with them. The impact on kids depends on the age. The impact on preschoolers is really related to parental relations, direct environment. Is it nurturing or not? Is it threatening rather than ideal? [...]

What is the role and the place of what is often called deradicalization in that treatment?

We do not use the term anymore. Why? Because evidence has shown that it doesn't work and that is important. What promotes the change is not a shift in ideology … it's not deradicalization. What [promotes] a change is the meaning of life, the perspective. Do you have new chances? What's happening? Are you in a helpless, hopeless situation, or do you begin growing again? Do you have loved ones around you? Do you feel appreciated? This is what [is] the key element to change. So it's really about life going on and having a meaning in life. And for most of the women who will come back, I think that if we take good care of their children and if we value them as [moms], well, that's a good reason to live. We have to think that presently there is a huge gap between perceived strength, which is huge with the woman, and actual dangers. You know, a lot of people around can be radicalized … and we don't see them and we don't know them. These women, we know they will be monitored, and I think they're looking for a second chance. So let's give it to them. Read more - Lire plus

The U.S. did it. The EU might. Why Canada won't put Iran's revolutionary guard on its terrorist list

CBC News 04/11/2022 - In response to the death of Amini, the federal government announced last month that it would be taking steps under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) to make top members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — potentially 10,000 people — inadmissible to Canada. [...]

In a news conference last month, Attorney General and Justice Minister David Lametti explained that since the IRGC is part of Iran's military, and military service is mandatory, there are concerns that the Criminal Code would be too much of a "blunt instrument" to deal with the group. He said the government needs to target the truly "bad actors without catching innocent people as well." Including the IRGC in those terrorist listings might unfairly capture Iranians in Canada who oppose and fled the regime, but had been conscripted into the IRGC. "We don't want to punish innocent people or those against the regime," he said.

Thomas Juneau, who specializes in the politics of the Middle East at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, agreed that the problem with the IRGC is that in the over 40 years of the Islamic Republic, there are over "hundreds of thousands of individuals, mostly men, who have been in the IRGC, in many cases conscripts. "They were cooks. They were in administrative or clerical positions briefly in the 1990s or 2000s. So do you really want to sanction them? In some cases they're innocent." Read more - Lire plus

ICYMI: Iranian-Canadians feel like '2nd-class citizens' as many continue to be stopped while travelling to the U.S.

AI Oversight, Accountability and Protecting Human Rights

Cybersecure Policy Exchange 11/2022 - This report is a collaboration of interdisciplinary researchers from the Cybersecure Policy Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, and the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.

Canada’s investment in developing AI systems has not been matched by a comparable effort to regulate the technology. While we are encouraged by these initial efforts to regulate AI systems in Canada, we share several key concerns, with corresponding recommendations to improve the proposed framework, particularly under the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) of the newly tabled Bill C-27: Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022.

Recommendations

1. The Need for Adequate Public Consultation: Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada should formally consult on AIDA with community advocates, researchers, lawyers, and groups representing the interests of BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, economically disadvantaged, disabled and other equity-deserving populations in the country.
2. The Need for Proper Oversight of AIDA: To effectively regulate the AI market in Canada, the AIDA Commissioner needs to be an independent agent of Parliament and we need to empower an independent tribunal to administer penalties in the event of contravention, outline best practices for auditing, and enforce the law as required.
3. AIDA Must Apply to Government Institutions: Given that AIDA only currently applies to the federal private sector — as government institutions are explicitly exempt from AIDA — it is imperative that AIDA’s framework be broadened to include government institutions.
4. Bill C-27 Needs Consistent, Technologically Neutral and Future-Proof Definitions: Both the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) and AIDA within Bill C-27 should provide for a definition of AI or algorithmic systems that is cohesive across both laws. The definition of AI ought to be technologically neutral and future-proof. A potential pathway for regulation is to define algorithmic systems based on their applications instead of focusing on the various techniques associated with machine learning and AI.
5. Bill C-27 Must Address the Human Rights Implications of Algorithmic Systems: Bill C-27 needs to address the human rights risks of algorithmic systems in a comprehensive manner:

• This should include, but not be limited to, prohibitions on the processing of biometric data such as facial images through automated means for the unique identification of individuals, especially in public settings and potentially subject to a very limited set of exceptions.
• Bill C-27 and particularly AIDA need to provide people with recourse in order to protect fundamental rights when AI systems are used — such as the right to object to the automated processing of personal data, as well as the right to appeal decisions that are made when algorithmic systems are used.
• Certain uses of algorithmic systems (e.g., ones that exploit vulnerable groups based on age, physical or mental disabilities, or systems used by the state for social scoring purposes) must also not be allowed because they pose unacceptable risks to people’s safety, livelihoods, and rights, which requires more than AIDA’s current approach to identifying and managing risk.
• Bill C-27 and AIDA more specifically should also include high levels of protection by default for children. Read more - Lire plus

Christopher Parsons on NSICOP's Special Report on the National Security and Intelligence Activities of Global Affairs Canada

Twitter 04/11/2022 - About a week ago, I posted a thread which broke down major findings in NSIRA’s annual report. A key finding, and warning, was that NSIRA was having serious and significant issues in obtaining access to information from the CSE in particular.

Today, NSICOP released a special report entitled “Special Report on the National Security and Intelligence Activities of Global Affairs Canada”.

Even if you don’t read the report it is important to read the Chair’s message to the Prime Minister. Key, is that NSICOP is warning that the government is asserting that even information that was previously public could not be released.

This over-breadth is linked to the government’s definition of Cabinet Confidences. If the current protocol continues to be applied then NSICOP may be unable to fulfil its mandate. NSICOP is explicitly asking for these issues to be addressed. Absent a change in legislation, it is asking that that the government make clear what is being withheld and, also, clarify NSICOP can obtain everything except information associated with “core Cabinet secrets”.

Both of review bodies are warning they cannot access information they need to fulfil their mandates. This is a serious issue, and threatens to impair the social license of Canada intelligence agencies’. An inability to review undermines the legitimacy of these agencies activities. Source

Read the report here

Ken Rubin: Access to information in Canada is broken beyond repair

The Globe and Mail 04/11/2022 - Canada’s access-to-information system is broken, weighed down by long delays, numerous complaints and low international ratings. But Canadian authorities think the preventive disclosure system is doing just fine as intended. After nearly six decades of government inquiries, I can confirm that bureaucrats, politicians, corporate and law-enforcement officials just want all the secrecy protections they have and more, the public be damned. In my case, that’s meant, both before and after Canada passed access legislation in 1982, persisting and requesting well over 100,000 secret items, some of which ended up as front-page stories.

Let me give you some examples of the information delay/denial system at work that I have recently experienced. First off, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada gave me a three-year time extension on my request for records on the specific regional job benefits claimed for the most expensive multibillion-dollar project in Canadian history, with the Parliamentary Budget Office now warning about even higher costs coming for building and maintaining combat naval warships.

More than three years later, I haven’t received any records and I’d wager the government and the contractor, Irving Shipbuilding, would like it that way. Besides, there may not be as many regional benefits as claimed. Secondly, I sought records more than four years ago on behalf of Canadian academic Hassan Diab regarding the RCMP’s long involvement in his surveillance and unjust extradition, including its involvement in his 2014 extradition to France. The RCMP, which is notoriously poor at providing access, appears to have no real interest in releasing anything and likely can cite all kinds of exemptions if needed, allowing them to cough up mainly blank pages. [...]

When I applied for and received hundreds of cabinet discussion papers after the Access to Information Act’s implementation, the response was to never again produce the factual details as a stand-alone accessible document. When calls came more recently for access to information coverage from the Prime Minister’s Office and other ministers’ offices, including from Justin Trudeau himself, the legislated response in 2019 was to legally exclude those offices forever from public access. Ingeniously and cynically, the legislation allows for a few ministerial handouts under a new legal exclusion regime called “pro-active disclosure.” [...]

There is review upon review of access legislation, but they are not meant to correct secrecy. They are mostly done to enhance secrecy and to keep all the ornate, opaque barriers in place. I often hear some parliamentary committee being told this is a resource problem while advocating for the continuation of what amounts to a massive unnecessary system of excessive secrecy. It’s too harmful for Canadians to let this system stand. It’s time for Canada to create a proper right-to-information system that actually does what it is supposed to do and allows the public to know what is happening inside our own governments. Read more - Lire plus

New Report Sheds Light on Pentagon's Secret Wars Playbook

The Intercept 03/11/2022 - The United States has fought more than a dozen “secret wars” over the last two decades, according to a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. Through a combination of ground combat, airstrikes, and operations by U.S. proxy forces, these conflicts have raged from Africa to the Middle East to Asia, often completely unknown to the American people and with minimal congressional oversight. “This proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous,” wrote Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “The conduct of undisclosed hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress, and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations.”

These clandestine conflicts have been enabled by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as well as the covert action statute, which allows secret, unattributed operations, primarily conducted by the CIA. The United States has also relied on a set of obscure security cooperation authorities that The Intercept has previously investigated, including in an exposé earlier this year that revealed the existence of unreported U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Ebright documents so-called 127e programs, known by their legal designation, in those countries and 12 others: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and Tunisia, as well as a country in the Asia-Pacific region that has not yet been publicly identified.

The 127e authority, which allows U.S. commandos to employ local surrogates on U.S.-directed missions, targeting U.S. enemies to achieve U.S. aims, is just one of three low-profile efforts analyzed in the Brennan Center report. Another, 10 U.S. Code § 333, often referred to as the “global train-and-equip authority,” allows the Pentagon to provide training and gear to foreign forces anywhere in the world. The far murkier 1202 authority allows the Defense Department to offer support to foreign surrogates taking part in irregular warfare aimed at near-peer competitors like China and Russia.

The report, released Thursday, offers the most complete analysis yet of the legal underpinnings, congressional confusion, and Pentagon obfuscation surrounding these efforts and explains how and why the Defense Department has been able to conduct under-the-table conflicts for the last 20 years.

“The Brennan Center’s report underscores the need to shine a light on our defense activities that have been cloaked in secrecy for too long. At the bare minimum, the public and Congress need to know where and why we’re sending our service members into harm’s way,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Intercept. “I hope this report strengthens the urgency of Congress taking back its war powers, eliminating existing loopholes in security cooperation programs, and ensuring our strategies match our values, goals, and commitment to our service members.” “Congress’s understanding of U.S. war-making is often no better than the public record,” writes Ebright. “The Department of Defense’s diplomatic counterparts in the Department of State also struggle to understand and gain insight into the reach of U.S. hostilities. Where congressional oversight falters, so too does oversight within the executive branch.” [...]

More troubling, her analysis suggests that for a significant period of time, there was no clear legal basis for the U.S. military to fight alongside and direct these forces. The Obama administration designated al-Shabab an associated force of Al Qaeda and thus, a legitimate target under the 2001 AUMF in 2016. That administration did the same for the Islamic State in 2014, but the Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) has never been publicly identified as an ISIS-associated force by any administration. This means that the Pentagon developed and fought alongside the Puntland Security Force from 2012 and the Danab Brigade from 2011 — under the 127e and 333 security cooperation authorities — before the AUMF was judged to authorize hostilities against al-Shabab and ISIS, much less ISS. [...]

Rep. Jacobs said it was difficult to assure the military community in her San Diego district “that we’re doing everything we can to keep them safe when Congress has such little information, let alone oversight over when, where, and how we’re using military force. Attempts to avoid scrutiny from Congress – and Congress’s own abdication of our war powers – is central to how we ended up in forever wars, the spike in civilian casualties, and failed strategies that waste taxpayer dollars and fuel the very conflicts we’re trying to solve.”

Expansive definitions of collective self-defense of proxies are also especially worrisome in regard to the 1202 authority, which requires even less oversight than 333 and 127e and is “used to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals” taking part in irregular warfare. While patterned after 127e, 1202 is aimed not at regional terrorist groups like al-Shabab and ISS but at “rogue states,” such as Iran or North Korea, or near-peer adversaries like Russia and China. “The executive branch’s broad interpretation of its use of force authorities, when combined with 1202, can lead to combat, which Congress hasn’t approved, against powerful states,” Ebright told The Intercept. “For the 1202 authority to have so little oversight when the risks it carries — when you’re running proxy forces against powerful, even nuclear-armed states — is a major mistake.” Read more - Lire plus

Ending Perpetual War

Just Security 25/10/2022 - Successive U.S. administrations have failed to end the “Forever War,” the global armed conflict the United States has waged against terrorist groups continuously since 9/11. Though generally eschewing the phrase “war on terror,” the Obama administration maintained the war footing in the form of indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay and status-based targeting under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), as did the Trump administration with even fewer safeguards in place.

The Biden presidency has yet to turn the corner. Recent reports suggest Biden is following a similar playbook for direct action (airstrikes and special operations raids) as his predecessors. While the administration has slowed the pace of drone strikes in nearly every theater – with the exception of Somalia, where strikes are ratcheting up again – these trends may be easily reversed in secret at any time and by anyone who occupies the Oval Office. The war on terror has ebbed, not ended. It is in this context that we must now assess the new presidential policy framework for counterterrorism operations.

Back to the Future

Far from ending perpetual war, the latest counterterrorism guidance appears to further entrench the elaborate rules governing targeted killing constructed during the Obama administration. Indeed, as described to the New York Times, Biden’s playbook – the Presidential Policy Memorandum (PPM) – is not very dissimilar from its predecessor policy documents, the Principles, Standards, and Procedures (PSP) and Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) under the Trump and Obama administrations, respectively. Like these documents, the PPM seeks to impose an additional set of policy constraints on direct action – beyond what the laws of war require – in areas “outside of active hostilities” which are neither clearly war nor peace.

On the face of it, the PPM returns to stricter Obama-era standards, prompting some commentators to observe that the “Wild West” days of targeted killing under the Trump administration are “officially done.” The PPM reinstates the requirement to ensure that capture is infeasible before resorting to targeted killing (even though Trump’s PSP did also state that capture is “generally preferred”), requires that targets pose a “continuing, imminent threat” to U.S. persons, and brings back the “near certainty” standard that the approved target has been correctly identified and that civilians will not be harmed. It reportedly favors strikes against identified high value targets – rejecting “signature strikes” against individuals based on patterns of behavior associated with terrorist activity – while preserving the right to conduct such strikes if necessary.

None of these provisions represent a sea change in the way the United States wages its counterterrorism wars. Importantly, the Biden administration will continue to conduct such strikes under the domestic legal authority of the outdated 2001 AUMF – a relic of the days following 9/11 when Congress authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of those attacks. The administration maintains that it is engaged in a global armed conflict with a classified and metastasizing list of terrorist groups, allowing it to target group members continuously and detain them indefinitely until these conflicts have ended (if they ever do, since the United States has never publicly articulated a legal theory for how such conflicts end).

What is more, the policy guidance does not reject, and may implicitly embrace, contested legal theories that have underpinned counterterrorism operations for decades. As a result, direct action operations may be conducted in accordance with the “unwilling or unable” test, where U.S. forces may forgo territorial or host state consent for operations on its territory and need not have U.N. Security Council authorization. Such operations may also rely on expanded notions of imminence that deviate from widely accepted interpretations of international law, allowing individuals to be killed even when they do not pose anything close to an immediate threat. Reinforcing these positions sets dangerous precedents for the rest of the world to follow – and U.S. adversaries are taking note, with Iran recently invoking the unwilling or unable test to justify strikes in Iraq.

In solidifying these positions, the PPM in many ways represents the culmination of years of counterterrorism policy. As Luke Hartig argues, the policy appears to deliver on the original promise of the PPG – the Obama administration’s vision of a “restrained” approach to counterterrorism that sought to balance the necessity of responding to threats with the imperative of respecting civilian life. But President Obama never got this balance right, and it remains to be seen whether Biden will succeed. Despite recognizing the dangers of remaining on a perpetual war footing, the Obama administration could not deliver on promises to close Guantánamo Bay nor to repeal and replace the 2001 AUMF. Now that terrorism rarely makes the headlines – at least for now – it is doubtful the Biden administration will have either the will or political capital to take on such thorny reforms.

The upshot of all this is that the “Forever War” continues, albeit with less fanfare and at a slower pace. And this is the most dangerous phase of perpetual war, when public attention has shifted, and elected officials no longer speak of a “tipping point” where the United States can declare victory and move to an approach that relies on law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and other instruments of national power to address the residual threat of terrorism. Since the risk of terrorism can never be reduced to zero or near zero, accepting that any terrorist threat necessarily requires a militarized response means there will always be a reason to keep fighting. The Wild West days are not over – not until individuals are no longer killed in secret outside of recognizable war zones. [...]

Finally, the administration should set legal limits on direct action. As in the past, the PPM is a policy, rather than legal, document. This means that the president – and all future presidents – can disregard the guidance at any time and with no warning. Additionally, the PPM, like its predecessor documents, reportedly includes an internal exemption that allows the president to approve strikes without the PPM’s constraints in extraordinary circumstances, and yet still publicly call it a PPM strike. While the executive branch is undoubtedly keen to preserve freedom of action, tying its own hands is necessary to prevent future abuses of power that could spark national security crises abroad and lead to further democratic backsliding at home. Working with Congress to repeal the 2001 AUMF, as well as to codify stricter standards for direct action, would help prevent such abuses. [...]

The United States is at a crossroads. Its conventional wars in the Middle East have ended, the threat from terrorism has receded, and it is time to set aside the war paradigm. The Biden administration should recognize the gravity of this historical moment, navigate the legal, moral, and policy challenges that it presents, and ultimately seek to illuminate a path back to peace. Failing to do so raises the Orwellian prospect of further descent into perpetual war, where “by becoming continuous, war has ceased to exist” and therefore can never fully end. This war, like all wars, must end. Read more - Lire plus

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

Yahoo News 05/11/2022 - The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting. An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump’s false claims about “Antifa,” an “organization” that even his most loyal intelligence officers failed to drum up proof ever existed.

The DHS report offers a full accounting of the intelligence activities happening behind the scenes of officers’ protest containment; “twisted efforts,” Wyden said, of Trump administration officials promoting “baseless conspiracy theories” to manufacture of a domestic terrorist threat for the president’s “political gain.” The report describes the dossiers generated by DHS as having detailed the past whereabouts and the “friends and followers of the subjects, as well as their interests” — up to and including “First Amendment speech activity.” Intelligence analysts had internally raised concerns about the decision to accuse anyone caught in the streets by default of being an “anarchist extremist” specifically because “sufficient facts” were never found “to support such a characterization.”

Questioned by investigators, the agency’s chief intelligence officer acknowledged fielding requests by Wolf and his acting deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to create dossiers “against everyone participating in the Portland protest,” regardless of whether they’d been accused of any crime, the report says. That officer, Brian Murphy, then head of the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), told interviewers that he’d rejected the idea, informing his bosses that he could only “look at people who were arrested,” and adding that it was something his office had done “thousands” of times before. The DHS report, finalized more than a year ago, includes descriptions of orders handed down to “senior leadership” instructing them to broadly apply the label “violent antifa anarchists inspired” to Portland protesters unless they had intel showing “something different.”

Once the dossiers were received by the agency’s emerging threat center, it became clear that DHS had no real way to tie the protesters to any terrorist activities, neither at home nor abroad. Efforts to drum up evidence to support the administration’s claim that a “larger network was directing or financing” the protesters — a task assigned to another unit, known as the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center, diverted away from its usual work of analyzing national security threats — “did not find any evidence that assertion was true,” the report says. Read more - Lire plus

Turkey’s Erdoğan Deploys Sweden and Finland’s NATO Membership Bids to Further His Repression

Just Security 28/10/2022 - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seeking to use the carrot of NATO membership for Sweden and Finland to manipulate international law. Erdoğan has told the two NATO aspirants, who are seeking to join the alliance after having seen the shocking Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Turkey will ratify their membership only if they agree to extradite Turkish dissidents to face trial, adjust their definitions of terrorism, and allow arms exports to Turkey. Current NATO members must unanimously ratify any agreement to admit new members, and Turkey and Hungary are the lone holdouts, the latter having become more repressive itself and now following Turkey’s lead on alliance accession.

Erdoğan had issued a list of demands for both Sweden and Finland, and on June 28, the three countries signed a memorandum of understanding that provided Turkey the assurances it sought in exchange for initial approval on the two countries’ accession to NATO, pending ratification by each member’s legislative branch. Those demands included that Sweden and Finland lift an arms embargo against Turkey, and that they take action on Turkish extradition requests for what the Turkish government describes as terrorists.

Specifically, Turkey wants the two countries to extradite or deport members or affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and members associated with the Gülen Movement, a Turkish nationalist movement that advocates for education and interfaith dialogue, and which the Turkish state condemns with the label “Fethullah Terror Organization (Fethullah Terür Örgütü or FETÖ).” Its leader, Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, was a one-time ally of Erdoğan and his pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), but moved to the United States in 1999. He now stands accused in Turkey of orchestrating a failed coup against Erdoğan in 2016. The United States has refused Turkey’s requests to extradite Gülen.

Turkey’s push for extradition of perceived adversaries is part of a pattern. In the case of Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession, Turkey is seeking to have them extradite individuals not on the basis of international law but on the basis of a political agreement. It is important to understand who the people are who Erdoğan wants extradited to show that this is political maneuvering. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag reportedly told a state news agency in June that authorities would again seek the extradition from Finland of six alleged PKK members and six individuals it says are members of the Gülen Movement, and request the same from Sweden of 11 alleged PKK members and 10 people it says are Gülenists.

In the case of alleged members of the PKK, which the United States, the European Union, and Turkey have designated a terrorist organization, Reuters on Oct. 21 cited an Oct. 6 letter from Sweden to Turkey outlining steps it has taken toward the June 28 memorandum, including on the PKK. “Sweden’s security and counter-terrorism police, Sapo, `has intensified its work against the PKK,’ and it made `a high-level visit’ to Turkey in September for meetings with Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency,” Reuters reported, quoting the letter. The correspondence said Sweden would “address” pending extradition requests based on the Turkish intelligence, Swedish law, and the European Convention on Extradition, Reuters reported. As for members and associates of the Gülen Movement, they are not considered terrorists in the West and often obtain political asylum. One of the individuals in Sweden whom Erdoğan is targeting is Bülent Keneş, a journalist who was convicted in Turkey of “insulting the President” and has now become a bargaining chip for Sweden and Finland’s membership of NATO, even as all but two of the alliance’s 30 members have ratified their accession. [...]

The current Turkish government has become known for rejecting criticism and cracking down on any and all opposition. This increased significantly after the failed coup of 2016, when there were huge purges of civil society. Long lists comprising of thousands of people: judges, lawyers, academics, teachers, and civil servants were drawn up, and more than 9,000 people were put in prison as a result of the post-coup crackdown, and thousands more lost their jobs. Charges against them have been spurious, meaning that essentially these people were “guilty” not of committing a crime but of reading the wrong literature, speaking to the wrong people, and expressing skepticism of the Erdoğan government. These purges are regularly highlighted by human rights groups. Freedom of speech also is a persistent target for the Erdoğan regime, which recently introduced a new media bill imposing stricter censorship that Erdoğan immediately ratified. More than 200 Turkish authors, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, issued a statement in opposition to the new law, which international freedom of expression organization, Article 19 called “dangerous” and “dystopian.” [...]

The Turkish government’s newest assault on Interpol rules is to abuse its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) system. Rather than issuing a Red Notice that requires a full extradition request to follow, they put a targeted individual’s passport into the SLTD database. For example, one of my Turkish clients was stopped in the Balkans and told that his passport was on the SLTD list, which normally would mean that, because he is a Turkish national, he would be deported to Turkey. As he is accused (falsely) by Erdoğan’s government of being associated with Gülen, he would be immediately arrested in Turkey and likely subjected to a flagrantly unfair trial and tortured. This would all be done without using any extradition treaty or legal protection. Fortunately in this case, we were able to use the airline rules of that particular airline to turn him back to the U.K. In fact, the West often has had to rebuff Turkey’s illegal demands. The U.K., for instance, will extradite in ordinary criminal cases but not in cases linked to the PKK or the Gülen Movement. However, that does not stop Turkey from trying alternative means. I have seen recent cases in which the U.K. has refused extradition on political grounds, only for Turkey to issue a new fabricated fraud charge so they can try again. The intention is transparently political. Read more - Lire plus

Türkiye: UN experts call for release and end of judicial harassment of anti-torture expert

If NATO Opposes Aggression, Why Does it Support Turkish Crimes Against the Kurds?

Current Affairs 10/11/2022 - For decades, Turkey has been in conflict with the Kurds, the largest stateless ethnic group in the world that primarily resides in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Initially, the Kurdish national movement demanded an independent Kurdish state, but over the last several decades they have shifted toward advocating for civil rights, greater autonomy, and localized self-governance.

Turkey has bombed the Kurdish region of Iraq continuously since 2015, violating Iraqi sovereignty and killing scores of civilians. From February to July of this year alone, Turkey has bombed Iraq nearly 200 times. To give a recent example, Turkey shelled a popular tourist destination in Duhok province, killing eight Iraqi civilians, including a 1-year-old child. Though Turkey claims that these attacks on Iraq are justified in Turkey’s fight against the PKK—the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant Kurdish group demanding equal rights and greater autonomy for Kurds—the United Nations, legal scholars, and prominent human rights organizations have condemned the strikes as unlawful, and both the Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government have repeatedly called for an immediate end to Turkey’s violations of Iraqi sovereignty.

At a United Nations Security Council meeting following the Turkish shelling in Duhok, the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq stated that the attack demonstrated Turkey’s “shocking disregard for civilian life and for the universally accepted standards of international humanitarian and human rights law.” Iraq’s foreign minister called the attack an act of “flagrant aggression.” And while Turkey’s regular bombings of Iraq are in clear contravention of international law, its attacks on the Kurds in Syria are far worse.

Turkey regularly bombs the Kurdish region of Northern Syria—an area known to the Kurds as Rojava—killing civilians and targeting members of the YPG, the force typically credited with defeating ISIL in Syria. Turkey’s relentless bombardment of Rojava is an attempt to destroy the establishment of an autonomous region of Kurdish self-governance in Syria, which threatens to serve as a model for the Kurds within Southeastern Turkey. Kurdish autonomy and self-governance within Turkey would be, in the eyes of the Turkish government, a disaster. The Kurds in this region of Syria are attempting to build a society based on gender equality, participatory democracy, and ecological sustainability.

Recently, Turkey killed three women during a drone strike while the women were leaving a conference on women’s liberation in Qamishli, Syria. All three of these women were decorated Kurdish commanders who fought against ISIL—one of the women was even praised by United States Central Command as a “a critical SDF leader who led forces in combat … [against] ISIS since the height of the fight.” The overall death toll from Turkish bombings in Syria is stunning: in one single bombing campaign of the Kurdish city of Afrin, Turkey killed hundreds of civilians and over 1,000 Kurdish fighters.

But the atrocities do not stop at airstrikes. Turkey invaded Northern Syria in 2018 and 2019 and has annexed large swaths of the country, in clear violation of international law. During these invasions and occupations, Turkey has committed—and continues to commit—extensive and well-documented war crimes. Following Turkey’s 2019 invasion, Human Rights Watch documented the following:

“Turkey and the Syrian National Army (SNA), a non-state armed group backed by Turkey in northeast Syria, indiscriminately shelled civilian structures and systematically pillaged private property held by the local Kurdish population, arrested hundreds of people, and summarily killed Kurdish forces, political activists, and emergency responders in areas they occupy in northeast Syria.“

According to Amnesty International:

“The Turkish military offensive into northeast Syria has wreaked havoc on the lives of Syrian civilians who once again have been forced to flee their homes and are living in constant fear of indiscriminate bombardment, abductions and summary killings. Turkish military forces and their allies have displayed an utterly callous disregard for civilian lives, launching unlawful deadly attacks in residential areas that have killed and injured civilians.“

Thousands of Kurds have been killed in the course of Turkey’s invasions. [...] Turkey has procured its arsenal of advanced weapons primarily from NATO states over the last several decades, including the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands. [...]

Though NATO has long been deferential to Turkish demands and complicit in its atrocities, Turkey has gained even more leverage within the context of Sweden and Finland’s current applications to join NATO, which requires a unanimous vote by all member states. To prevent a Turkish veto of their NATO accession, Sweden, Finland, and the other key NATO states are bowing to Turkish demands, despite Turkey’s continued war crimes. Consequently, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, and other NATO states have lifted their arms embargoes  and resumed sending advanced weaponry to the country, flooding Turkey with enormous quantities of arms which will undoubtedly be used against Kurdish civilians.

In order to further appease Turkey, Finland and Sweden have reportedly ended their longstanding support for the YPG and other Kurdish groups, and are even in talks to potentially deport Kurdish activists and journalists living as asylees in their respective states. If deported, these activists and journalists will almost certainly end up political prisoners in Turkey, which historically jails more journalists and human rights defenders than almost any other country on earth. (According to a 2019 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Turkey has frequently vied with China for the ignominious title of the world’s worst jailer [of journalists].”) Read more - Lire plus

Turkish police take fingerprints of the entire population in Gever, a stronghold of the Kurdish resistance

USA: Biden administration must not detain Haitian asylum seekers at Guantánamo

Amnesty International 01/11/2022 - In response to unconfirmed reports that the Biden administration is considering holding Haitian asylum seekers in a third country or expanding capacity at an existing facility at the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International said:

“Haitians fleeing their country amidst a humanitarian and human rights crisis should be welcomed and have the right to seek safety in the USA without discrimination. They must not be held in a third country or a US navy base infamous for unlawful and indefinite arbitrary detention and torture.”

“Amnesty International has demonstrated that successive US governments have tried to deter Haitian people from claiming asylum in the United States through the application of policies designed to intercept, detain, and remove them, starting in the 1970s and continuing with Title 42. Their tactics have included unlawful pushbacks at sea, mass detention, torture or other ill-treatment, and expedited removal proceedings with deficiencies in individualized screenings. In the 1990s, for instance, US authorities shamefully detained Haitian asylum seekers in poor conditions in camps in Guantánamo Bay.”

“It is time for the United States to put a stop once and for all to this discriminatory treatment and make sure that Haitian asylum seekers have access to US territory and due process without discrimination to exercise their rights to seek asylum, including individualized assessments of their international protection claims. The ongoing operations at the Guantánamo Bay naval base are already marred with horrendous human rights violations, and Amnesty International has long called for the detention facility to be shuttered for good. The United States must refrain from using this site to commit more abuses.” Read more - Lire plus

Biden administration not taking 'concrete steps' to close Guantanamo, defence lawyers say

MEE 28/10/2022 - Several defence lawyers have criticised the Biden administration for not doing enough to release the remaining detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison, responding to a US official who said the government is working "dilligently" to transfer out the detained population. In a hearing, hosted by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, several US government officials spoke to the efforts being taken by the Biden administration to release the remaining detainees still held at Guantanamo and provide adequate care to them while they remain detained, while also working to shut down the prison facilities there. "The US government has repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo," said Thomas Hastings, interim permanent representative of the US to the Organisation of American States.

"And to that end, the current administration engaged in a thorough review involving all relevant departments and agencies to develop an approach for responsibly reducing the detainee population and setting the conditions to close the facility." The officials' speaking publicly regarding the administration's efforts on the issue of Guantanamo was notable, given that the Biden administration did not send anyone to testify during a Senate hearing on the prison held earlier this year. "The Department of State is diligently working to identify suitable transfer locations and negotiate that transfer with foreign governments. We expect to have additional transfers in the near future," Jeffrey Kovar, assistant legal adviser in the Department of State's Office of political and military affairs, said during the hearing.

Since coming into office, the Biden administration has released four detainees from the prison and appointed an official to oversee the remaining transfers out of Guantanamo.

Yet Wells Dixon, a lawyer for several detainees and senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that while he appreciated the renewed efforts from Biden, there have not been any strong actions taken. "With great respect, a lot of what we heard today was not new," Dixon said. "What I didn't hear today, what I hoped to hear today, was the concrete steps that the United States government is going to take to increase the rate of transfers." "We haven't heard anything about how the United States Government intends to end the military commission process or ultimately close [the prison]."

A growing concern for the aging population of the detention centre is the health of the detainees, and over the past few years, several detainees have petitioned for a mixed medical commission to come to the island and assess the overall medical treatment provided onsite. Ammar al-Baluchi, who for years has been suffering from severe brain damage as a result of his treatment at CIA black sites, is currently requesting one of these commissions, and her lawyer told MEE earlier this month that his condition is so bad that he is not able to read or form complete thoughts. A 2019 report by The Center for Victims of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights found that medical equipment and expertise available on-site were "increasingly insufficient to address detainees' health needs". Read more - Lire plus

New book “The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture”: Interview with author Lisa Hajjar on the lawyers who fought against torture

Andrew Mitrovica: American horror: POTUS after POTUS wronged this old Pakistani man

Al Jazeera 03/11/2022 - I find it infuriating when a scarred life is reduced to a quirky curiosity. That is what has happened to Saifullah Paracha, a 75-year-old Pakistani entrepreneur who was finally released in late October from the United States-run dungeons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In reporting on Paracha’s belated liberation, several news organisations noted that he was the oldest captive there without, of course, admitting that, like so many others, he should not have spent a moment in jail given his US captors never came even remotely close to finding him guilty of a crime.

Paracha was locked up for 19 years at what one New York Times correspondent called a “seafront compound“. Sounds almost like a sun-kissed tourist resort rather than a brutish, remote prison featuring barbed wire fencing, guard dogs and armed US soldiers manning lookout posts. In any event, that Paracha was an anomaly at Guantanamo Bay – where most of the other captives were much younger men – is what made him newsworthy. Not the fact that Paracha wasted nearly two decades of his life in a dungeon as part of a covert, worldwide abduction racket. Nor the fact that Paracha was never charged by his American abductors and jailers during his long imprisonment. But journalists, ultimately, aren’t the villains here. The responsibility for this horror is shared by a succession of unrepentant US presidents who will likely never experience even a minute measure of regret or discomfort for what they did to an ageing, frail man and his family.

Paracha was “accused” of being an al-Qaeda sympathiser and “suspected” of bankrolling the group. That sentence, which quotes the BBC, contains two of the three most popular weasel words governments use to “link” – that’s the third – anyone to terrorism without proof. In July 2003, a suspicious FBI lured Paracha to Thailand where they abducted him and flew him – bound, shackled and hooded – to Afghanistan, in an obscene affront to international law. While being held incommunicado at a US military prison at Bagram, Paracha suffered the first of a series of heart attacks. Fourteen months later, he was taken – bound, shackled and hooded again – to Guantanamo Bay where, without a scintilla of evidence that he helped finance or promote al-Qaeda’s interests, he remained until a few days ago.

In 2005, Paracha’s son, Uzair, who was living in New York, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly “providing material support to terrorism”. Thirteen years later, in 2018, a US federal court judge ordered his release after exculpatory information was discovered that raised doubts about his conviction. Justice Sydney Stein said he was granting Uzair a new trial because permitting the original judgement to stand would be “a manifest injustice”. Two years later, prosecutors dropped the case against Uzair. The Paracha family has indeed been the victim of a “manifest injustice”, perpetrated by powerful men who, today, are being rehabilitated and feted as “elder statesmen”.

American presidents are not only immune to accountability; they are also immune to shame.

I doubt that George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump remember who Paracha is or care a whit about his fate since one of the principal qualifications to become commander-in-chief is to be prepared to deploy American force to harm and kill people in defence of the “national interest”. And this, at least, Paracha has over those who have presidential libraries built as monuments to their importance: There is no basis to claim that he has ever harmed or killed another soul. In particular, the conduct of that smug liberal darling, Obama, in connection with Paracha’s ordeal is shameful. A “task force” established on inauguration day by the then-new president reported to him in 2010 that there was “no evidence” to justify laying charges against some of the Guantanamo “detainees” but added that they were “too dangerous” to be set free. In April 2013 it emerged that Paracha was one of 71 captives who were innocent. Read more - Lire plus

Dept. of Homeland Security Ramps Up Efforts to Police Online Speech on Ukraine, COVID & Afghanistan

DemocracyNow! 04/11/2022 - Documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Department of Homeland Security is working with private tech companies to fight online speech that undermines support for the U.S. government.

We speak to one of the co-authors of The Intercept’s report, investigative journalist Lee Fang, who says the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act signed into law in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump expanded the government’s power to reshape online discourse. “These documents raise clear civil liberty concerns, concerns around the First Amendment and if the government is trying to shape the kind of news we see,” says Fang. Read more - Lire plus

Journalism is at risk from the National Security Bill. We’re fighting back

openDemocracy 08/11/2022 - Imagine a country where the authorities target investigative journalists as spies, and outlaw news and campaigning organisations that receive foreign funding. At Index on Censorship, we have been writing about such countries since the darkest days of the Cold War. Now, a coalition of organisations promoting free expression and the rights of journalists is raising serious concerns about sweeping measures contained in new legislation here in the UK.

openDemocracy – alongside the National Union of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Index on Censorship itself – has asked for an urgent meeting with security minister Tom Tugendhat to discuss our joint submission to the parliamentary committee scrutinising the new National Security Bill. (The bill is currently at report stage in the House of Commons, due to go to the House of Lords next.) [...]

Our coalition has identified several areas of concern, but chief among them is the chilling effect the new legislation will have on the practice of investigative journalism. The absence of meaningful free-expression protections means that whistleblowers in government will be further deterred from disclosing official wrongdoing.

The new legislation makes it clear that those in receipt of information or documents deemed to benefit foreign powers will face the most severe penalties – up to a maximum of life imprisonment. Although ministers gave assurances under questioning that these measures are not designed to target journalists, such protections are not written into the legislation. The decision to prosecute would ultimately lie with the attorney general of the day. In the face of such sweeping measures, we are demanding the introduction of a public interest defence to increase protections for those exposing genuine wrongdoing in the sphere of national security.

Fundamental to the concerns of our coalition are the so-called “foreign power conditions” woven throughout the new legislation. Our fear is that the measures are so broadly drawn that journalists and free-speech organisations could be swept up in a future crackdown.

The scope of the National Security Bill as presently drafted is so vast that any organisation receiving foreign funding – including foreign news services – could be caught up by it.

Democracy depends on vibrant and critical journalism. The UK government should resist the desire to sacrifice media freedom on the altar of national security. Read more - Lire plus

New Europol rules massively expand police powers and reduce rights protections

statewatch 10/11/2022 - The new rules governing Europol, which came into force at the end of June, massively expand the tasks and powers of the EU’s policing agency whilst reducing external scrutiny of its data processing operations and rights protections for individuals, says a report published today by Statewatch.

Given Europol’s role as a ‘hub’ for information processing and exchange between EU member states and other entities, the new rules thus increase the powers of all police forces and other agencies that cooperate with Europol, argues the report, Empowering the police, removing protections.



New tasks granted to Europol include supporting the EU’s network of police “special intervention units” and managing a cooperation platform for coordinating joint police operations, known as EMPACT. However, it is the rules governing the processing and exchange of data that have seen the most significant changes. Europol is now allowed to process vast quantities of data transferred to it by member states on people who may be entirely innocent and have no link whatsoever to any criminal activity, a move that legalises a previously-illegal activity for which Europol was admonished by the European Data Protection Supervisor.

The agency can now process “investigative data” which, as long it relates to “a specific criminal investigation”, could cover anyone, anywhere, and has been granted the power to conduct “research and innovation” projects. These will be geared towards the use of big data, machine learning and ‘artificial intelligence’ techniques, for which it can process sensitive data such as genetic data or ethnic background. Europol can now also use data received from non-EU states to enter “information alerts” in the Schengen Information System database and provide “third-country sourced biometric data” to national police forces, increasing the likelihood of data obtained in violation of human rights being ‘laundered’ in European policing and raising the possibility of third states using Europol as a conduit to harass political opponents and dissidents.

The new rules substantially loosen restrictions on international data transfers, allowing the agency’s management board to authorise transfers of personal data to third states and international organisations without a legal agreement in place – whilst priority states for international cooperation include dictatorships and authoritarian states such as Algeria, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco. At the same time, independent external oversight of the agency’s data processing has been substantially reduced. The threshold for referring new data processing activities to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) for external scrutiny has been raised, and if Europol decides that new data processing operations “are particularly urgent and necessary to prevent and combat an immediate threat,” it can simply consult the EDPS and then start processing data without waiting for a response. Read more - Lire more

Europe at a Crossroads over Planned Use of Biometrics

CIGI 02/11/2022 - The European Union is facing a mounting identity crisis, and a genuine test of its purported values, when it comes to its use of biometric identification technologies. Next year, it will deploy a new information technology system known as the Entry/Exit System (EES) for registering entry, exit and refusal-of-entry information of non-EU nationals visiting the passport-free Schengen area for short stays (defined as a maximum of 90 days in any 180-day period). A consortium formed by IBM, Atos Belgium NV and Leonardo S.p.a. was awarded a contract worth 140 million euros for the underlying software, while IDEMIA and Sopra Steria will provide the corresponding facial recognition system for an estimated price tag of 300 million euros. The EES is expected to cost nearly half a billion euros in the first few years alone. But the cost to the European Union’s moral authority is potentially much higher.

First proposed in 2013, a regulation authorizing the EES was formally adopted in 2017. At issue are not necessarily the merits of the new system itself. Rather, the problem, as the deficiencies in the process to implement the EES highlight, is the growing precarity of fundamental rights in Europe’s approach to digital governance, as well as the competing values at stake in respect of biometrics. The system is due to go live in May of 2023 after significant delays, notwithstanding that attitudes toward facial recognition and other biometrics have changed significantly since the project’s inception nearly a decade ago.

Just last year, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a ban on certain uses of facial recognition technologies, and specifically cautioned that “the use and collection of any biometric data for remote identification purposes, for example by conducting facial recognition in public places, as well as at automatic border control gates used for border checks at airports, may pose specific risks to fundamental rights.” Individual member states have also called for limits and even outright moratoria on certain uses of the controversial technology by the public and private sectors, and have levied hefty fines against companies such as Clearview AI for commercial deployments.

More recently, the EU Commission’s proposal for a new regulation on artificial intelligence (AI) — the AI Act — identified facial recognition and other biometric AI tools as “high-risk” use cases, with several drafts even calling for a prohibition on “the use of ‘real time’ remote biometrics identification systems in publicly accessible spaces for the purpose of law enforcement.” Although the AI Act is part of a broader EU-wide legislative overhaul designed to preserve fundamental rights with respect to digital technologies, the treatment of biometrics under the act remains one of the primary sticking points holding up a final draft of the proposed legislation. This foreshadows the European Union’s looming identity crisis when it comes to facial recognition and other biometric identification tools. Although the EES is a prime example of this internal-values clash playing out in real time, it has received limited scrutiny — despite what it may suggest about the way forward, including on the AI Act.

Inspired in part by a series of terror attacks across Europe at the time of its introduction, and forming part of a broader “Smart Borders” package, the EES is alleged to support the “identification of terrorists, criminals, suspects, and victims of crime” by providing a centralized database intended to facilitate EU-wide cooperation on border management. It will replace manual document checks and passport stamping by border guards with automated biometric checks, similar to the self-service kiosks or “eGates” found in many airports; enable automated alerts of suspected overstays; and provide access to Europol for law enforcement purposes. The system will collect biometrics in the form of facial images and fingerprints for purposes of one-to-one identity verification (comparing individuals to their own biometrics), one-to-many identification (comparing an individual to all stored entries in the database), and reduced duplication of personal data processing. A proposal to include iris scanning was abandoned due to logistical challenges. Individuals refusing to provide their biometrics will be denied entry to the European Union. The EES and Smart Borders are also in line with a broader trend of the EU Commission’s funding of an increasingly high-tech suite of digital tools and technologies in the name of streamlining immigration enforcement and border control, such as the use of drones and thermal cameras at refugee camps in Greece, in a phenomenon some dub “Fortress Europe.”

The primary motivations articulated for the border management “upgrade” are mostly technocratic. According to the European Union, “the main advantage of the EES is saving time” by “modernising border management,” making travel “easier” and “border checks more efficient” (although many fear that it will actually introduce significant delays and inefficiencies for travellers, a particular concern for those in a post-Brexit United Kingdom). But faster, easier and more efficient for whom? Certainly not for those meant to render their faces and fingerprints at the border. What’s more, the underlying values driving these systems — namely, speed, ease and efficiency — are more corporate than democratic, imbuing core functions of the state with the values of companies providing the underlying technologies.

Worse yet, despite press releases emphasizing “fundamental rights,” a deep dive into the EES documentation reveals only a superficial engagement regarding the fundamental rights of those who are impacted beyond the privacy and security of their data. For example, a lengthy impact assessment undertaken by the Commission promises the system “will be developed in full respect of the privacy by design principles,” without further explanation of what that design entails. Even within the narrow lens of data protection, it concludes that the system is “proportionate” because a few key principles are satisfied — namely, that the system “does not require the collection and storage of more data for a longer period than is absolutely necessary to allow [it] to function and meet its objectives.” There is no explication of what it means for the system to “function and meet its objectives.” Read more - Lire plus

Open letter: the German government should stand up for a strong ban on biometric surveillance in the Council of EU negotiations regarding the AI Act

EU calls for spyware moratorium, but no ban to protect human rights

AccessNow 08/11/2022 - Today, the European Parliament’s Pegasus committee is calling for an immediate moratorium on the sale, acquisition, transfer, and use of spyware. Access Now reviewed an early copy of the committee’s draft report via Politico — the preliminary conclusions of its investigations — that outlines detailed recommendations that would significantly increase the protections against the use of spyware and ensure further accountability. Notably, however, it just does not demand the prohibition of technologies that are incompatible with human rights. To right this wrong, Access Now is calling on the special committee to recognise a need for a ban to strengthen its stance on these dangerous tools, and urges other EU institutions to take the necessary steps to implement the committee’s recommendations both in law and practice.

“A call for prohibition would have been a key indicator that the European Parliament has the fortitude to stand up against the spyware industry and abusive governments. Hungary and other examples highlight the painful gaps the EU still needs to fill to protect democracy, rule of law, and fundamental rights”, said Fanny Hidvegi, Europe Policy and Advocacy Director at Access Now. “The special committee’s report rightly shows that national security is a political excuse not a legal constraint, and EU institutions have the means and obligations to fulfill their role as the guardian of the EU treaties.”

The European Parliament established the special committee to address EU governments’ continuous and scandalous use of spyware to target and silence journalists, human rights defenders, and political opposition and dissidents. Launched in April 2021, the Committee’s mandate is to shed light on the use of the invasive tech in Europe. 

“The PEGA committee must take the opportunity to call for an outright ban on invasive spyware that gives indiscriminate and disproportionate access to individuals’ devices”, said Rand Hammoud, Surveillance Campaigner at Access Now. “Ample evidence proves that spyware like NSO Group’s Pegasus violates people’s fundamental rights, and has already caused significant harm globally. There is no rights-respecting use of this technology, nor are there any technical or legal safeguards that could ever fully eliminate the threat they pose. These are tools of transnational repression that should never be allowed, and the EU must use this opportunity to set the bar right with a timely ban.”

The committee’s report calls out the outrageous government actions in certain EU countries and, critically, it recognises that EU institutions have the means and obligation to act, and makes concrete recommendations to significantly increase the protections against the use and abuse of spyware in Europe. Access Now urges EU institutions to take on this challenge, and put an end to the use of this dangerous technology. Read more - Lire plus

ACTIONS & EVENTS

Take Action for Justice for Hassan Diab!

1. Attend the November 13th rally in Ottawa

• What: Rally Demanding that the Canadian Government Protect Hassan Diab from Further Injustice
• When: Sunday November 13, 2022, from 1:00 to 2:30 pm ET
• Where: At the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument, 220 Elgin St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Please invite your friends and share the Facebook event + Instagram post + Twitter post widely!

2. Attend the November 14th online press conference

• What: Press conference for Justice for Hassan Diab
• When: Monday November 14, 2022, at 11 am ET
• Where: Livestream on ICLMG’s youtube channel. Subscribe and click the bell to be notified when we go live!

3. Sign and share the LeadNow petitions to protect Hassan from further injustice

Petition in English + Pétition en français

4. Send an email using ICLMG’s one-click tool and share widely!

Letter in English + Lettre en français

For more information on the case of Hassan Diab, read our webcomic, watch our animated version of the comic, or visit justiceforhassandiab.org. Source

Arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, two decades of fighting deportation to torture, 16 years of harassment and intrusive surveillance, secret trials, PTSD: That's not good for anyone's health!

This November 2022, join #MoeVember to demand justice for Mohamed Harkat!

Please 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.
• Don't hesitate to also sign and share this petition!
• Send another email using this new template and invite your friends to this Facebook action!

Please share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Version française : Joignez-vous à #MoeVember et exigez la justice pour Mohamed Harkat!

SVP partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

UPDATE Free Jack Letts and all Canadian Detainees in NE Syria

Canada must immediately act to free four dozen Canadian men, women and children left to rot in one of a series of notorious Northeastern Syrian prisons and detention camps described as “Guantanamo on the Euphrates.” 

The longest held detainee is Jack Letts, 26, who has been imprisoned for almost 5 years without charge under conditions the United Nations has described as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”

Send an email and call!

NEW 4 Home, 40 to Go: Send Postage-Free Birthday Card to Jack Letts, Illegally Detained 5.5 Years

NEW President Biden: Set them free

Nearly 800 men have been detained in Guantánamo Bay since it opened in 2002 - but only 12 of them have ever been charged with a crime. 

As of Oct 2021, these 3 men are cleared for release but remain imprisoned:

• Ahmed Rabbani
• Abdul Malik
• Khalid Qasim

These men should be free. No one should ever be locked up without charge or trial. The wrongful imprisonment of these men has stolen almost 20 years of their lives and exposed them to torture, abuse and ill-treatment. Sign the petition urging Biden to release these men now.

Stop the Smear Campaigns against Palestinian Advocacy

Recently, we have witnessed an intensified campaign by the pro-Israel lobby in Canada to smear Palestinian activists and their supporters. The National Post ran an online article about Palestinian-Canadian writer Khaled Barakat and the advocacy organization Samidoun. On April 30, the same article was splashed across their front page of their paper and has since been referenced in the Canadian Senate and the Jerusalem Post. Send your letter to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to tell them that you join with the 80 organizations that have called to “Stop the Smear Campaigns against Palestinian Advocacy”.

Philippines: Hands off labour rights defenders

Hundreds of labour rights defenders, workers, and trade unionists in the Philippines have been subjected to various forms of threats and harassment for fighting for labour and human rights.

The attacks against activists have been relentless since former President Rodrigo Duterte declared war against activism, perpetuating the culture of impunity and promoting vilification of activists through 'red-tagging'.

These attacks are bound to continue, if not worsen under the watch of the new president Ferdinand Marcos, the son of the dictator and human rights violator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

Allow asylum for Uighur refugees!

The targeting of Uighur migrants across 28 countries demonstrates unprecedented transnational repression. Ask your MP to support Motion M-62. This motion proposes to resettle 10,000 Uighur in Canada by 2024. Send an email which makes 2 demands:

1. Increase number of incoming Uighur refugees to 30,000.
2. Launch the resettlement plan sooner than 2024.

Save Afghan Women’s Rights Defender!

Farzana Denied Entry to Canada! Call/Write for Urgent Permit to Save Afghan Women’s Rights Defender!

Please take 2 minutes to send an urgent email and call (sample messages below) to protest the potentially lethal rejection of Afghan women's rights defender Farzana Adell Ghadiya’s application for protection in Canada.

The Public Order Bill & the UK government's latest crackdown on protest

The Canadian government is moving nearer to obtaining armed drones, worth $5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars. Now is the time to say stop the procurement. Armed drones threaten people’s lives around the world. Rather than making the world safer, they are used in extrajudicial executions, surveillance of targeted populations and other violations of human rights. Take one minute to write to the Canadian Minister of Defence. Tell her it is time to stop militarizing the sky.

Free Muhammad Rahim

In 2007, Muhammad Rahim was kidnapped in front of wife and children in Lahore, Pakistan. He was bundled into a jeep, and for 8 months he disappeared into the network of CIA secret prisons where he was subjected to toture. According to the US Senate "torture report", the torture of Muhammad Rahim produced no intelligence. In 2008, the US announced he had been transferred to Guantanamo. The US have stated they have no intention to charge him with a crime, yet declared him a "forever prisoner". Now in his mid-50s, a medical examination found several nodules which a specialist has revealed could be indicative of cancer. After 13 years in prison without charge, he longs to be reunited with his 7 children.

Since the Taliban takeover of a year ago, Canadian aid organizations have faced barriers in sending aid to Afghanistan due to Canadian sanctions and a restrictive interpretation of the Canadian Criminal Code’s anti-terrorism provisions. This is despite the US, the UK, the EU countries and even the UN taking action to ensure sanctions do not interfere with crucial humanitarian assistance.

ICLMG has teamed up with other Canadian organizations to call on Prime Minister Trudeau and the Canadian government to act immediately to remove barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance. This includes ensuring that sanctions and counter-terror finance and criminal law restrictions do not impede the provision of lifesaving humanitarian aid. This issue isn’t limited to Afghanistan, either, which is why we are also asking the government to address the long-standing issue of ensuring that anti-terrorism laws and sanctions do not interfere with humanitarian assistance. Version française

Protect human rights defenders in Palestine

CJPME - Canada’s inaction in the face of Israeli repression must end! Canada must stand up for human rights defenders by condemning Israel’s actions and putting its support behind the work of Palestinian NGOs

+ NCCM action: Canada must denounce the banning and raiding of Palestinian human rights organizations

Ban facial recognition technology

Amnesty International - Facial recognition technologies are used to stifle protest and harass minority communities around the world – not just in New York City. These technologies are a global threat to the right to privacy, freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and to equality and non-discrimination. Call for an end to technologies of mass surveillance.

Cuba is Not a Sponsor of Terror!

A crucial policy of the Trump administration remains, and that is Cuba’s presence on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. It is critical to Cuba’s ability to pursue economic, trade and humanitarian activities that it be removed immediately from the list - a power well within Biden’s authority.

Please sign CodePink's petition to the White House calling for Cuba to be removed from the list.

No More F-16’s to Turkey!

We, the undersigned, demand you not approve any more sales of F-16’s or other fighter jets to Turkey. After the release of the report “Civilian Casualties of Turkish Military Operations in Northern Iraq (2015-2021)” we would find it unacceptable that the U.S. would continue selling F-16s to the Turkish military.

Tell Biden to 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!

Protecting water is not terrorism: Free Jessica Reznicek

In 2016, Jessica Reznicek took action to stop the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves. In 2021 she was sentenced to 8 years in prison with a domestic terrorism enhancement. In 2022 an appeals court upheld her conviction writing that even if the terrorism enhancement was an error it was "harmless" although it increased a 37 months sentence to a sentence of 96 months. Stop the criminalization of dissent!

Reform Canada's extradition law now!

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!

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

Canada must protect encryption!

Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.



Click below to send a message to urge Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!

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

RCMP off the land

This is unconscionable. The RCMP are violently harassing Wet’suwet’en land defenders again for fighting against the sovereignty-violating Coastal Gaslink pipeline. We’ve heard reports directly from land defenders that drilling for CGL is imminent — and the RCMP's specialized unit CIRG (Community-Industry Response Group), is ramping up their enforcement. They have a history of using excessive force and violence against Indigenous people — all in the name of profit.

We know that the BC government and high ranking RCMP officials have the power to deploy — and remove the RCMP. If enough of us fill their inboxes with emails demanding they respect Indigenous sovereignty and call off the RCMP, it could be enough to force them to act and halt all construction. Send a message directly to key decision makers asking them to stop the violence.

+ Wanna do more? Join a group

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

Urgent Action to Stop the Deportation of Mohamed Ibrahim and his Family

Mohamed Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, alongside his wife, Shaimaa, and 5 children - the youngest of whom a toddler who was born in Canada - have been given a removal order by the CBSA and are facing deportation back to Egypt where Mohamed will be facing a high risk of human rights abuses by the current Egyptian regime as a result of his peaceful political activism in Egypt. Mohamed and his family arrived in Canada in 2017 and applied for asylum. However, his claim was rejected due to a legal error of his lawyer.

We call on the Minister of Immigration to give Mohammed Ibrahim and his family protection on humanitarian and compassionate grounds pursuant to section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Tell Trudeau: Stop Arming Apartheid!

As revealed in CJPME's "Arming Apartheid" analysis, Canada is selling almost $20 million in arms to Israel each year – its highest level in 30 years! At the same time, Israeli forces continue to violently raid Al-Aqsa and across occupied Palestine, and human rights organizations – including Amnesty International – have all recently concluded that Israel imposes an apartheid regime against Palestinians!



There is no excuse for Canada to continue exporting arms to a country practicing apartheid and other abuses. Help us push the Canadian government to suspend arms exports to Israel, and investigate whether Canadian-made weapons have been used against Palestinian civilians! Canada must end its complicity now!

Email your MP – No more weapons to Saudi Arabia

Canada has blood on its hands. Now approaching its seventh year, the war in Yemen has killed over a quarter of a million people. Over 4 million people have been displaced because of the war, and 70% of the population, including 11.3 million children, are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. The Saudi-led coalition has bombed Yemeni markets, hospitals, and civilians, and yet Canada has exported over $8 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015, the year the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen began. Send a letter now calling on the Canadian government to stop sending weapons to Saudi Arabia and stop arming the horrific war in Yemen.

+ Write letter: Canada’s silence on Saudi mass executions deeply troubling

Canada: End the Safe Third Country Agreement

The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the United States puts refugees at risk. Under the STCA, refugees who arrive at official ports of entry to seek protection in Canada are sent back to the US, where some have suffered serious rights violations in detention. This encourages refugee claimants to cross the border into Canada between ports of entry, sometimes in perilous conditions.

Despite the constitutionality of the STCA being in question, reports suggest that the government is attempting to expand this agreement. 



Take Action now and send a message to Minister Fraser to respect refugee rights by rescinding the Safe Third Country Agreement.

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.

OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES

Attacks on dissent

Attaques contre la dissidence

In Post-Coup Myanmar: ‘Death Squads’ and Extrajudicial Killings

Rwanda Fed False Intelligence to U.S. and Interpol As It Pursued Political Dissidents Abroad

‘The Nightmare After Halloween’: Groups Urge UK Parliament to Drop Resurrected Anti-Protest Proposals

UN human rights panel wary over PH’s anti-terrorism law

Philippine - New human rights group vows focus on red-tagging

17 Hong Kong democrats set to face 90-day national security trial in early 2023 over unofficial primaries

Explainer: Hong Kong’s national security crackdown – month 28

Egypt Arrests Hundreds in Crackdown Before COP27 Climate Summit; Pressured to Free Alaa Abd El-Fattah

Egypt’s COP27 summit app is a cyber weapon, experts warn

Freedom of expression and of the press

Liberté d'expression et de la presse

TAKE ACTION: Help free my brother Alaa Abd el-Fattah - before it’s too late

#ProofOfLife: stop the abuse, free Alaa now

Human Rights Watch website and others are unblocked in Egypt for the first time in several years

Suspend adoption of IHRA definition of antisemitism, UN official says + 128 scholars ask UN not to adopt IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

Hong Kong court lets UK lawyer defend media tycoon Jimmy Lai

Hong Kong library writing contests forbid entries deemed contrary to national security

Senegalese Journalist Arrested on National Security Charges

New Justice Department Media Rules Won’t Help if Trump Wins Again

Elon Musk’s First Move Is To Fire The Person Most Responsible For Twitter’s Strong Free Speech Stance

Migrant and refugee rights

Droits des migrant.es et des réfugié.es

From GPS tagging to facial recognition watches: expanding the surveillance of migrants in the UK

UK: Immigration officials target mosques, temples and churches to advise people to return home

Police

JCCF Lawyer Keith Wilson says the Ottawa convoy was receiving leaked information from law enforcement and alleges the OPS launched “fake operations” to figure out where the leak was coming from

Ottawa Police had more intelligence on local residents criticizing them on Twitter than they did on convoy supporters who were talking about staying past the first weekend

Running while Black: An incomplete list of stops and surveillance, from a new book by El Jones

Privacy and surveillance

Vie privée et surveillance

The Biden Administration’s SIGINT Executive Order, Part I: New Rules Leave Door Open to Bulk Surveillance

Clearview Stole My Face and the EU Can’t Do Anything About It

Greece to Ban Sale of Spyware After Government Is Accused of Surveillance

Miscellaneous

Divers

Brock experts say current Ontario back-to-work legislation is ‘unprecedented’

Le Collectif Échec à la guerre: Déclaration 2022 – Campagne coquelicot blanc: La présente escalade guerrière : une menace planétaire!

As climate change worsens, the Liberals are spending $300 billion on new warships

Rep. Ro Khanna: U.S. Should Halt Arms to Saudis over Yemen War & Oil Production Cuts

Never Withdraw a Demand for Diplomacy

Check out our biannual summary of activities: What We've Been Up To from January to June 2022. Lisez la version française ici.

Here are the issues we plan to work on for the rest of 2022:

• Monitoring the evolution of Bill S-7 – the electronic device border search bill – as it passes through the Senate and House of Commons;
• Ensuring that the Canadian government’s proposals on “online harms” do not violate fundamental freedoms, or exacerbate the silencing of racialized and marginalized voices online;
• Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for privacy law reform (including monitoring the new Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act);
• Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility;
• Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming the extradition law;
• Greater transparency and accountability for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS);
• The return of the 44 Canadian citizens indefinitely detained in Syrian camps, including 26 children;
• The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities;
• Pushing for Canadian government action on behalf of Iranian Canadians negatively and unjustly impacted by the US terror listing of the IRGC
• Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including the establishment of a strong, effective and independent review mechanism. This includes evaluating and advocating for improvements to the proposed Public Review and Complaints Commission Act  (Bill C-20);
• Monitoring the review 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 + Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

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