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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
September 13, 2025 - 13 septembre 2025
| | Watch the Stop Bill C-2 Webinar! | |
ICLMG 27/08/2025 - We hosted a webinar on August 27 on Bill C-2 featuring some of Canada’s leading civil society voices on humanitarian issues and your rights.
Speakers included:
- Adam Sadinsky, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers
- Kate Robertson, The Citizen Lab
- Sarom Rho, Migrant Rights Network
- Matt Hatfield, OpenMedia
- Moderator: Tim McSorley, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Bill C-2, Mark Carney’s so-called “Strong Borders” Act, is cruel, useless and dangerous. Experts are calling it the most anti-privacy legislation since Harper’s C-51, and comparable to – and in some ways, even worse than – the Trump administration’s anti-migrant and refugee measures. The Government and the bill’s supporters say we need strong borders to protect our safety; but C-2’s flagrant attacks on our rights are so broad, it will make all of us less safe. Yet unless we mobilize in force now, Bill C-2 will likely pass into law this fall.
This webinar, attended by hundreds, covered the essentials you need to know to understand what’s wrong with Bill C-2, and the “elbows down” political context that’s driving Carney’s proposal. Attendees were able to:
- ask privacy and migrant rights experts your questions about the details of the bill
- take action during the webinar and/or leave with a full tool set to make your voice heard and help stop this harmful legislation
- poser vos questions en français
Co-organized by: International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Migrant Rights Network, OpenMedia, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, Canadian Council for Refugees
Co-presented by: Amnesty International Canada (english speaking section), BC Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, Centre for Black Development Options Canada, Clinique pour la justice migrante, HIV Legal Network, Ligue des droits et libertés, Refugee Lawyers’ Association of Ontario. Source
NEW Migrant Rights Network action: Make a call to stop Bill C-2
NEW Greenpeace action: Tell PM Carney: We don’t want Trump-style borders and surveillance state!
NEW Parliamentary petition: Withdraw Bill C-2; uphold the “elbows up” promises to reject Trump-style policies; honour the responsibility of elected office; and affirm our Charter, not trample it.
Ottawa’s strong borders bill could infringe on Charter and privacy rights, parliamentary study warns
À la merci de la police de Trump
Border bill would leave dissidents who visited Canada in the past at risk: experts
Bill C-2 will Harm Farmers, Farm workers, says National Farmers Union
| | Remembering and confronting the legacy of the “War on Terror,” 24 years on | |
ICLMG 11/09/2025 - This year marks the 24th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Today, we remember the thousands killed that day, but also the millions killed since because of the decades-long “War on Terror” and its ongoing legacy that continues to be used by governments, including Canada, to justify and carry out serious human rights abuses, targeted attacks and mass killings around the world.
The idea of a “War on Terror” may no longer be as prominent, but the policies, actions and logic that underpinned it continue to reverberate today, and must still be confronted, including:
- Using the justification of “fighting terrorism” to defend and excuse Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, and crackdowns on protesters worldwide
- The ongoing legacy of death and destruction in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries attacked and occupied in the wake of 9/11
- The exponential expansion of mass surveillance worldwide, supercharged now by AI systems exploited by national security agencies in secret and with little to no regulation
- The tightening of borders and increased criminalization of and violence towards migrants and refugees, under the guise of protecting “national security”
- Racism, racial profiling, xenophobia and colonialism that underpins so much of anti-terrorism and national security measures
- The justification for unlawful, indefinite detention, abuse and torture, including at Guantanamo Bay, in Northeast Syria, and many more
- The erosion of fundamental rights, including free expression, freedom of movement, and privacy rights, and attack civic space
- The rapid increase in police and intelligence agencies’ powers – including the use of anti-terrorism laws for other purposes – accompanied by a lack of effective accountability or oversight mechanisms
- Counter-terrorist financing laws blocking humanitarian aid and international assistance, and being used to target, investigate and shut down humanitarian organizations and international solidarity organizations
- Recent dangerous moves to combine the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror”, already leading to extrajudicial killings and signalling a troubling new intersection of two of the most misguided and deadly policies of the past decades
Over the past 23 years, our coalition has worked collectively to push back against these developments in Canada and, to the degree we can, internationally. Today especially, we call on governments to abandon these policies.
As concrete steps, the Canadian government must immediately withdraw Bill C-2, act to address systemic racism, roll back surveillance powers, introduce greater accountability mechanisms, increase funding and powers for independent oversight bodies, do all in its power to stop the genocide in Gaza, and take further steps toward dismantling government counter-terror and national security apparatus overall.
You can find out more about our work in our 20th anniversary publication, looking back on two decades of confronting anti-terrorism overreach in Canada. Read more - Lire plus
| | Submission to the Financial Action Task Force in regard to the Fifth Mutual Evaluation of Canada | |
ICLMG 28/08/2025 - In August 2025, ICLMG made a submission in advance of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) upcoming on-site review of Canada’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regime.
In 2021, the ICLMG published, “The CRA’s Prejudiced Audits: Counter-Terrorism and the Targeting of Muslim Charities in Canada,” one of the first reports to analyze the government’s implementation of counter-terrorist financing measures and identifying serious concerns about the profiling and targeting for sanctions charities based in the Muslim community in Canada. It detailed how the Canadian government’s approach to countering terrorist financing was targeting Muslim-led charities was biased, disproportionate, unduly secretive and unequal and selective in its application. This included an analysis of Canada’s 2015 National Inherent Risk Assessment and Canada’s approach to monitoring and auditing charities for CTF purposes.
In that report, we found that Canadian national security agencies and the charities regulator, since at least 2003, had been targeting Muslim-led charities for surveillance and investigation based on approaches to countering terrorism that viewed Muslim and other racialized communities as inherently at-risk for abuse by, or engaging in, terrorist activities.
Our research demonstrated that this approach, as in other counter-terrorism measures, was not supported by facts, but rather opinion, conjecture and accusations based in bias and prejudice (both conscious and unconscious), including possible Islamophobia.
The findings were bolstered by a report from the Senate of Canada issued in November 2023, finding that the Canadian Revenue Agency’s counter-terrorist financing “work to date – regardless of the intentions of its employees – has demonstrated structural bias against Muslim charities” and recommended a full review of the counter-terrorist financing division of the CRA.
Moreover, testimony from CRA staff during Senate hearings confirmed that of 12 of the 14 charities that have had their status revoked following investigations by the CRA’s counter-terrorist financing division were Muslim-led, which supports our previous finding that at least 75% of charities targeted by the CRA were in the Muslim community. Importantly, none of these charities or their directors have been formally charged with terrorist financing or related infractions.
We also identified significant concerns in Canada’s National Inherent Risk Assessment (NIRA) from 2015, which unduly labeled the NPO sector as medium to high risk, again with a particular focus (without evidence) on Muslim and racialized NPOs operating both domestically and internationally. Overall risk appeared exaggerated, there were no efforts to address risk mitigation, and the NPO sector was not consulted in the sectoral evaluation.
However, this version of the NIRA persisted until 2023, well after new guidance was issued by the FATF. Unfortunately, similar concerns continue to persist with the 2023 NIRA, and the forthcoming 2025 NIRA.
There have also been significant concerns with the impact of Canada’s CTF regime on the work of humanitarian and international assistance NPOs. In particular, following the take-over of the Afghanistan government by the Taliban in 2021, the Canadian government issued an interpretation of its CTF laws that prohibited any activity in Afghanistan that could provide material support to the Taliban government. This included any taxes, tariffs or other fees that aid organizations would be required to pay to the government in order to carry out humanitarian activities. This was a clearly disproportionate application of Canada’s counter-terrorism laws and violated international humanitarian law. With sustained pressure from NPOs, the Canadian government passed legislation to create a humanitarian exemption to CTF measures and an authorization regime for international assistance activities deemed to be non-humanitarian; however, the program is significantly flawed and continues to result in limitations on international aid.
These issues are explored in more detail in the rest of the submission. Read more - Lire plus
| | Call to withdraw from “counter-terrorism” summit in Israel amid genocide in Gaza | MENA Rights Group leads a campaign calling on all participants and sponsors to withdraw from the 2025 “World Summit on Counter-Terrorism,” organised by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. ICLMG is amongst the more than 50 individual and organizational signatories to the call. | |
MENA 21/08/2025 - We strongly urge all participants to withdraw from the upcoming World Summit on Counter-Terrorism organised by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), a research institute of Israel’s Reichman University.
The event, scheduled for September 15-18, 2025 and branded as the “most influential event in the field of counter-terrorism today”, is taking place amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, perpetrated in the name of combating terrorism.
Participation in the World Summit is particularly unconscionable at a time when, just 80 kilometres away, over two million Palestinians are subjected to constant bombardment and mass starvation.
The ICT is highly problematic for two main reasons: it is closely intertwined with the Israeli military, security and intelligence apparatus, and it perpetuates the dehumanising narrative used by the Israeli authorities to justify the ongoing genocide.
A significant portion of the ICT’s members have held high-ranking positions in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), or in the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence services.
Among the institute’s leadership are ICT Director and IDF Colonel Eitan Azani, and ICT Board of Directors Chairman and former Mossad Director Shabtai Shavit, after whom the World Summit is named. ICT members also include Sharon Saportas, who served as IDF Planning Department Head of Operations during Israel’s 2012 “Operation Pillar of Defense” and 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” military attacks on Gaza, and former Police Commander Alik Ron, who retired from the police following a court petition demanding his removal or suspension due to evidence of racism towards Palestinians and abuses of power.
In January 2025, the ICT platformed former Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant, despite the fact that he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
sFurthermore, under the guise of research and academia, the ICT, which positions itself as “one of the leading academic institutes for counter-terrorism in the world”, plays a role in portraying the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza as a legitimate “war on terror”. Reichman University, with which the ICT is affiliated, has mobilised to “join the war effort”, and introduced scholarships and honorary titles for student soldiers serving in the Israeli military since October 2023.
Through its academic programs, research desks, publications and media appearances, the ICT clearly reinforces the Israeli authorities’ rhetoric to justify committing grave human rights violations against Palestinians. Recent research authored by ICT founder and Reichman University President Boaz Ganor, describes Israel’s military assault on Gaza as a “war of self-defense” which was “forced upon Israel”, and conflates global protests against Israeli policies, academic boycotts of Israeli universities, and slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea” with antisemitism.
In past years, ICT World Summits have drawn numerous academics and representatives of United Nations (UN) agencies. Among past participants are Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) Vladimir Voronkov, Director of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT) Mauro Miedico, former UNCCT Director and current Secretary General of the Council of Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly (UNCPGA) Jehangir Khan, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland, and UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) Executive Director Natalia Gherman.
Some of the UN officials’ relationship with the ICT extends well beyond participation in the World Summit: the ICT’s Advisory Board includes current CTED Director and Chief of Branch David Scharia, former CTED Executive Director (2013-2017) Jean Paul Laborde, and former UN Assistant Secretary-General and CTED Executive Director (2007-2013) Mike Smith.
For decades, Israeli universities have been complicit in Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism, apartheid, and now genocide. In recent months, dozens of universities have ended or pledged to end ties with complicit Israeli universities. Pisa and Tilburg universities, along with Sciences Po Strasbourg, have already cut ties with Reichman University.
As Reichman University, the ICT and its World Summits propagate and advance Israel’s “counter-terrorism” narrative to justify the brutal onslaught against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, we urge:
- All speakers, attendees, and sponsors to immediately withdraw from the 2025 World Summit and end all collaboration with the ICT;
- All UN agencies and their representatives to immediately cut ties with the ICT.
Update: The United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) have confirmed to MENA Rights Group that they will not be attending the upcoming World Summit, despite past participation of several of their representatives. Source
| | Canada is arming Israel — and Liberals can’t stop lying about it | | Joint letter: Immediate Action Needed to Fulfill Canada’s Humanitarian Commitment for Gaza Family Reunification Through the Temporary Resident Visa | For over a year, a coalition of organizations has been standing in solidarity with Palestinian Canadians calling for urgent reform of the Gaza Temporary Resident Visa (TRV) Special Measures for Extended Family Program. The full text of today’s letter is below. | |
Amnesty International Canada 27/08/2025 - Dear Prime Minister Carney, Minister Diab, Minister Anand, and Minister Anandasangaree:
We write to you as a Coalition of organizations working towards Gaza Family Reunification: Amnesty International Canada, Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Sustainable Human Empowerment (SHE) Associates, Rural Refugee Rights Network, Righting Relations Canada, and The United Church of Canada. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Canadian community, who have endured unbearable loss while waiting for Canada to live up to its promise of safety and family reunification for loved ones trapped under siege in Gaza.
Since the launch of the Gaza Temporary Resident Visa (TRV) Special Measures for Extended Family Program in December 2023, family members and Human Rights advocates alike have described it as a system designed to fail. We have described the pain and indignity experienced by applicants again and again, and still thousands of families wait in agony.
The Canada–Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program clearly demonstrated what Canada can accomplish: welcoming 129,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion in the first year alone, and waiving security screening for children and seniors. By comparison, only 864 Palestinians have made it to Canada as of July 8, 2025, and the vast majority left Gaza on their own. Canadian officials have assisted in the evacuation of fewer than 2% of program applicants directly from Gaza, and only where applicants had previously approved biometrics, despite program guidelines. As a result, not only do thousands of applicants remain stranded in Gaza, we have confirmed reports of families who have been separated at evacuation points by the Canadian Government.
Other countries have shown that evacuations are possible when there is political will: while Canadian officials hide behind bureaucracy, France evacuated 115 people in a single flight this past April. By refusing to evacuate applicants without biometrics – something the program acknowledges is impossible to obtain in Gaza – Canada is imposing a reverse onus burden, treating all Palestinians as a security threat, a blatant example of anti-Palestinian racism that is condemning innocent people to starvation and death.
Canada recognized the severity of the situation in a July 21st joint statement with 25 other countries, admitting that “the suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths” with “the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food”. As the situation in Gaza becomes more desperate each day, families and supporters have organized vigils, met with officials, and documented every barrier, yet the results remain the same: empty promises, endless paperwork, and preventable deaths.
We therefore demand the following urgent and immediate actions:
● Immediately open a humanitarian corridor to urgently evacuate all program applicants to prevent further death and physical and psychological harm to those who, by all rights, should have been in Canada with their families long ago. In the alternative, urgently approve all remaining TRV applications from Gaza immediately or within 14 days, as was done for Ukrainians, and facilitate their speedy evacuation, as we have seen done by other countries.
● Waive Biometrics Requirements: The TRV Program guidelines have never required biometrics for evacuation; implement an immediate policy to waive biometric requirements for exit.
● Expedite Application Processing: Commit to a 14-day visa application turnaround and immediately clear out the massive backlog of applicants in both Gaza and Egypt.
● Coordinate Medical Evacuation: Work with the World Health Organization and other NGOs on the ground to immediately evacuate the hundreds of identified critical medical cases of TRV program applicants.
● Address Anti-Palestinian Racism: Commit to addressing anti-Palestinian racism within the TRV program by:
i. Ending the assessment and monitoring of social media accounts.
ii. Taking active steps to reduce the weaponization of Section 34.1 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
iii. Providing clear and transparent guidelines for both IRCC and CBSA staff in processing and responding to TRV applications.
iv. Ending the practice of treating all applicants as potential security risks.
● Exert Diplomatic Pressure: Exercise Canada’s diplomatic presence in the region to ensure immediate evacuation from Gaza of all TRV program applicants
● Honor the Program’s Scope: Commit to the approval of 7,500 individuals – 5,000 under the Special Measures cap and an additional 2,500 on humanitarian and compassionate grounds – as agreed to in community meetings with IRCC staff.
● Provide Comprehensive Settlement Support: Ensure Gazan families receive the same treatment, respect, and support as other groups Canada has welcomed in times of crisis. Harmonize resettlement services and health care access with provincial and territorial partners, ensuring that when health care barriers arise at the provincial level, Interim Federal Health will be extended until such obstacles are overcome.
Canada cannot claim to stand for human rights and equality while it abandons Palestinian families to die waiting. As organizations who have been advocating for the Federal Government to take urgent action to support Gazan Canadians and their families since October 2023, we urge you to work with us to honour your legal and moral obligations. Over 18 months ago, Canada made a commitment to reunite Palestinians in this country with their loved ones. That promise is long overdue, and we are asking what this new government will do to bring it to fulfilment.
This is not a policy debate — it is a matter of life and death. We urge you to commit to an intensive, urgent, goals-oriented ongoing working partnership to end the suffering so many families continue to endure.
We are requesting a meeting to discuss how to move forward as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canadian Section (English-speaking)
Khaled Alqazzaz, Executive Director, Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council
Michael Bueckert, Acting President, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
Ally Crockford, National Coordinator, Righting Relations Canada
Matthew Behrens, Co-ordinator, Rural Refugee Rights Network
Urooj Mian, Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Human Empowerment (SHE) Associates
Rev. Michael Blair, General Secretary, The United Church of Canada Source
Canadian families of Gazans seek to fast-track approved resettlement, fearing loved ones may die
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NEW Parliamentary petition: Canada must implement a comprehensive and urgent evacuation plan, under the name “Canada Gaza Authorization for Emergency Travel”
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| | “Uniting for Peace”: How U.N. Could Override U.S. Veto, Send Peacekeepers to Gaza, Block Arms & More | |
Democracy Now! 04/09/2025 - Interview with Craig Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer who formerly served as the director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He resigned in October 2023 over the U.N.’s failure to adequately address large-scale atrocities in Palestine and Israel. [...]
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Craig, you mentioned this. Let’s talk about that, the options that are available to the U.N. General Assembly as we approach the 18th of September, the deadline that you mentioned, which is the expiration at the U.N. for Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice on ending the occupation and implementing provisional orders. People think that with the Security Council deadlocked because of a perpetual U.S. veto, there is nothing the U.N. can do. But the U.N. General Assembly does actually have the power to intervene. If you could explain what the “Uniting for Peace” resolution is, when it was last used and how effective it’s been?
CRAIG MOKHIBER: Yes, that’s right. There is this mechanism in the United Nations General Assembly, known as “Uniting for Peace.” It has been long on the books, adopted in 1950. It has been used many times, sometimes with very practical effect, other times just symbolically.
But there is an opportunity now to use it to actually change the situation on the ground in Palestine, despite the U.S. veto in the Security Council. You know, far too many delegations have gotten into the habit of hiding behind the U.S. veto by throwing up their arms and saying, “Well, we tried, but the U.S. vetoed it.” But Uniting for Peace allows the member states of the United Nations, 193 of them, in the General Assembly, to circumvent the U.S. veto and to adopt concrete action, as it did, for example, in 1956 by mandating the U.N. emergency force to deploy to the Sinai in the middle of the Suez Crisis against the wishes of two Security Council members, the United Kingdom and France, and against the wishes of Israel. It could do the same thing now, in September, by mandating a U.N. protection force for the people in Gaza and, more broadly, in Palestine, that is specifically mandated to protect civilians, that is mandated to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid, to preserve evidence of Israeli war crimes and to begin the process of reconstruction, most importantly, to change the incentive structure for Israel and its co-conspirators in the genocide that’s happening in Palestine.
Other measures could be adopted in such a resolution — for example, denying the credentials of Israel in the U.N. General Assembly, as has — as was done with apartheid South Africa; establishing a criminal tribunal to hold Israeli perpetrators to account; reactivating the anti-apartheid mechanisms to deal with Israeli apartheid — a whole range of measures that could be adopted, that would have actual teeth and that could not be vetoed by the United States or any other state. And there is an indication, from previous votes around Palestine, that they would have the two-thirds majority that is necessary for adopting these measures in the General Assembly. Israel would have no legal right to refuse or to obstruct.
And this is the final important point that I’ll make on this one. Just last year, the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world, found that Israel has no sovereignty in Gaza or the West Bank. It has no legitimacy, no authority and no right or legal standing to either consent or to refuse the intervention of a force to protect the Palestinians. The state of Palestine has requested such a force. Palestinian civil society, across the board, has demanded such a force. And there’s an opportunity here now for that to actually be created in September.
AMY GOODMAN: Two quick questions. You know U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres very well. You were at the U.N. for more than three decades. Is it just him that’s stopping this from moving forward? And how would a Palestinian state, the recognition [of] it [by] more and more countries, stop the assault on Gaza?
CRAIG MOKHIBER: Well, it’s not the secretary-general. He has no real power here, although there’s much more he could have done in the past two years of this genocide, to use the visibility of his office, the influence of his office, to, first of all, call out the genocide by name, and also to call on states to take the kind of measures that we’re discussing here today. These have always been on the table. They could have happened at any point during this genocide.
But the beauty of the Uniting for Peace mechanism is that the secretary-general cannot block it, the Security Council cannot block it, the United States cannot block it. It only requires a two-third majority of the member states. There is a move underway to build that majority now, and the hope is that that will take place.
Now, you asked: What could obstruct it? A lot of things could obstruct it. The United States does not play fair in international diplomacy. One could expect that, acting on behalf of Israel, it will use every carrot and stick — sticks, in particular — threats against delegations, not just allies, but delegations with developing economies that rely upon foreign aid, although foreign aid has been effectively slashed.
So, the threats could derail this by the United States, but hopefully the world is ready to stand up and provide protection. Under the glare of publicity, every state will have to say they either do or do not support protection for a people undergoing genocide. Read more - Lire plus
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| | Controversial B.C. RCMP unit to police opposition to fast-tracked resource projects | A widely-criticized police unit is participating in provincial committees coordinating surveillance and policing of protest against major resource projects—including those fast-tracked under new legislation | |
The Breach 21/08/2025 - A RCMP unit criticized for violent and unlawful conduct will be involved in enforcing new laws in British Columbia that will fast-track resource and infrastructure projects, The Breach has learned.
Newly obtained documents show the RCMP’s Community-Industry Resource Group (C-IRG) will work with secretive provincial committees that monitor and respond to opposition to major projects—projects that may be pushed through under new legislation B.C. Premier Eby says is necessary to deal with a tariff war launched by Donald Trump.
The notorious unit was recently rebranded and given a permanent policing role in the province, despite an ongoing federal probe into its conduct. Hundreds of formal complaints have been made about its excessive force, illegal tactics, and racism during crackdowns on blockades against gas pipelines and old-growth logging operations.
Now, the newly-branded unit, renamed the Critical Response Unit–BC (CRU-BC), will be at the forefront of policing resistance to new fast-tracking legislation, Bills 14 and 15, according to internal government documents obtained by The Breach through an access-to-information request.
With its policing of pipeline and logging demonstrations having been deemed a “national best practice” by the RCMP, there is potential that this model—and its criminalization of Indigenous and climate protest—could be replicated in other provinces, as resistance heats up against a wave of environmental deregulation being pushed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and several premiers.
Tapped to gather intelligence by government committees
An internal RCMP background document lays out how the rebranded unit is participating in two secretive provincial committees—the Critical Incident Secretariat and the Civil Disobedience/Public Order group—that coordinate intelligence between police, government, and industry and respond to opposition around major resource and infrastructure projects.
With the recent passage of laws accelerating these projects, the RCMP unit will be central to any government moves.
A spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General acknowledged that the unit would be involved with these provincial committees, but told The Breach that “operational decisions, including the enforcement of court-issued injunctions, occur independently of government.”
“CRU-BC’s involvement in provincial committees is focused on coordination, planning, and resource readiness across B.C. police agencies,” they said. “These committees allow police to share expertise, develop consistent approaches, and ensure smaller or remote communities have access to trained, skilled resources without diverting officers from other critical duties.”
But reports over the last few years have painted a different picture of its goals.
The basis for its new role was laid in 2021, when the BC government quietly launched a Civil Disobedience Work Plan, a province-wide strategy to manage protests.
According to the plan, the government aimed to create an “integrated protest response team,” expand surveillance, and attempt to shape public perceptions about police actions, The Tyee reported last year.
The plan also enhanced the role of the Critical Incident Secretariat, a shadowy arm of the government with no public-facing website that provides “situational awareness” on natural resource sector protests, maintains an RCMP liaison, and briefs senior provincial officials.
The newly-obtained documents confirm the RCMP unit is participating directly in these operations.
The government backgrounder on the evolution of CRU-BC states that it “is instrumental in providing strategic and expert feedback” regarding its response to civil disobedience, helping “effectively and holistically address public order, critical incidents, and unlawful protest activities.”
One of the key roles of the unit on these two committees is intelligence coordination. The unit now has dedicated resources to monitor opposition to proposed and active infrastructure projects.
Weekly reports from the RCMP to the BC government, obtained by The Breach, show that in 2024 CRU-BC was keeping tabs on opposition to the controversial LNG and gas projects across the province.
This monitoring allows the unit’s liaison team to approach communities to gather information and attempt to counter potential disruptions, while maintaining ties to industry proponents and sharing intelligence with corporate and contracted private security personnel.
The unit’s operations extend beyond provincial borders: one internal report notes it will engage with “national and international counterparts on issues which affect BC.”
By having it participate in these committees, the province now has a permanent, heavily-armed police unit formally participating in a government-wide strategy to monitor, gather intelligence, and respond to opposition—including protests against projects fast-tracked under newly passed legislation. Read more - Lire plus
| | 70 leading Canadians, civil society groups ask Carney to protect Canada's 'digital sovereignty' | |
CBC News 02/09/2025 - Dozens of experts, academics and organizations have released an open letter urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to swiftly "defend Canada's digital sovereignty" and protect the country from the whims of the Trump administration.
The letter says Carney has argued Canada must become an energy superpower and get big projects built, but not spent enough time talking about the need to secure Canada's digital economy.
"Empires once built railways. Now they build algorithms," said Barry Appleton, a Toronto-based international trade lawyer and one of the letter's signatories.
"If Canada cannot govern the code that governs Canadians, then we are no longer a sovereign democracy. We will be tenants in Trump's regime."
The signatories ask Carney to stake out protections for social media, cloud systems, AI engines, digital transactions and other data that can be "weaponized by a Trump regime seeking unchallenged technological dominance."
The letter said action must be taken because 90 per cent of Canada's internet traffic is currently routed through the U.S. or through U.S.-based tech giants.
Those tech giants, the letter said, make more than $20 billion tax-free annually from Canadian digital creators at the expense of Canadian artists.
It also said that foreign social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook play a big role in shaping Canadian political discussion without domestic oversight.
Canada also needs to act now to secure its digital sovereignty, the letter says, because U.S. companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google control most of Canada's cloud infrastructure and CUSMA trade rules prevent the federal government from requiring those companies to store Canadians' data north of the border.
Updating some legislation, scrapping others
Among the signatories of the letter are: Canadian writers Margaret Atwood and John Ralston Saul; filmmaker Atom Egoyan; former Gov. Gen Adrienne Clarkson and organizations such as the Canadian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Medical Association.
They want the Liberal government to take a number of steps to re-establish Canadian digital sovereignty including launching a public consultation with Canadians and experts on the issue.
Once experts and the public have had the chance to weigh in, the signatories want the federal government to publish an independent threat assessment on Canada's digital infrastructure. [...]
And the signatories want the Liberal government to "withdraw entirely the deeply flawed, anti-privacy Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act." The legislation was introduced in June and currently sits at second reading.
The Strong Borders Act would give increased powers to Canada's security and intelligence services, expand the ability to open and inspect mail and allow officials to cancel or suspend immigration documents.
The letter says Bill C-2 "opens the door to unprecedented surveillance and cross-border data sharing with the U.S. that, under President Trump, has become increasingly unreliable, authoritarian and out of step with liberal democracies around the world."
A spokesperson for Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon acknowledged the letter, but didn't say if the government would be following any of its recommendations.
"Canadians have made it clear that they want trusted digital platforms and protections, and we are committed to implementing regulation that is clear, without hindering innovation and growth," the spokesperson said in an email. Read more
Le Canada perd sa souveraineté numérique, déplorent des groupes d’experts
Federal agencies fumble privacy safeguards on asylum system revamp, risking refugee data
| | Ronald Deibert: Canada’s New Minister of AI Must Not Be Naive to Its Harms | |
Globe and Mail 08/09/2025 - “AI is democratizing intelligence: making the ability to analyze data, automate tasks and improve decision‑making more accessible. … So many things that used to take tons of time now happen in seconds.”
So says Evan Solomon, Canada’s newly appointed Minister of AI, in an interview with Toronto Life magazine.
But what happens when tasks made more efficient are ones that actually corrode society? Mr. Solomon – apparently an optimist – should spend more time looking into those less heart-warming stories. They are hard to miss, and devastating in their effects.
For example, Anthropic – the San Francisco–based AI firm – recently reported that it discovered hackers had been using its Claude chatbot to conduct sweeping cybercrime operations, undertaking reconnaissance of firms’ infrastructures, creating malware to steal information, and then analyzing the data to determine what could be used to extort victims. A full suite of labour-intensive cybercrime tasks – “things that used to take tons of time,” in Mr. Solomon’s words – now fully automated, thanks to Claude.
Meanwhile, reporting from The Intercept showed the U.S. military is now pursuing AI-driven covert influence operations to “suppress dissenting arguments.” The U.S. initiative is hardly surprising. News of state-sponsored, AI-enabled disinformation campaigns are appearing with increasing frequency, with links to China, Russia, Iran, Rwanda, Israel and other governments.
So common are these now that nearly every world event features them. A recent New York Times investigation showed how both Israeli- and Iranian-aligned actors unleashed AI-generated videos and synthetic content during the two countries’ most recent conflict, fabricating events like air strikes on Israel’s Ben Gurion airport or massive civil protests in support of an Iranian regime change. AI-constructed disinformation floods the Russia-Ukraine and Gaza wars, too. As with cybercrime, psyops that used to take a lot of time and resources can now be done with the click of a button.
A feature of many of these ops are the private firms that mount them. The convergence of powerful new AI tools with a deteriorating political climate has created a perfect ecosystem for “dark PR” companies to thrive in. Poorly regulated, ethically dubious startups now offer industrial-scale ideological manipulation as a service. Among them is Israel-based Psy-Group (rebranded as White Knight Group), whose motto “Reality is a matter of perception” is like a mashup of philosopher Jean Baudrillard and Mossad. Another Israel-based group, dubbed “Team Jorge” by the group of undercover journalists who outed them, has boasted of using AI-enabled disinformation to meddle in dozens of elections worldwide.
The results are predictable and frightening. A tsunami of AI-enabled disinformation is already upon us, polluting the public sphere and seeping back into the language models that AI systems feed upon. What to do?
Governments, when they’ve addressed these threats at all, have mostly misframed them as “foreign interference” – part of the age-old geopolitical competition of states. However, this is not an issue solely confined to states interfering in each others’ domestic affairs. The same systems can be deployed by a domestic lobby group or a multinational company looking to discredit a whistleblower or derail an investigation. Moreover, framing the threat in geopolitical terms typically precipitates calls to arm up or risk falling behind, adding fuel to the fire.
AI companies themselves have taken tentative steps to fix the problem, but these are far from sufficient. Firms like Anthropic and OpenAI now maintain “threat intelligence” teams to track malicious actors. As with social media, however, these units face a built-in contradiction: they are tasked with policing harms that stem directly from their own business models. They’re like poorly resourced concussion medics working on behalf of fight clubs.
Simultaneously, public interest researchers who study AI disinformation face roadblocks. Social media and AI platforms have shut down open interfaces previously used by researchers, while becoming litigious toward critics and researchers, stifling independent watchdogs.
What is needed now is not euphoric cheerleading. At minimum, governments should impose mandatory transparency reporting and independent audits of AI platforms; pass legal requirements that tech platforms be open to public-interest research; encourage investigations into the negative psycho-social effects of AI, especially on youth; and introduce sanctions targeting firms whose operations are implicated in AI malfeasance.
It says something bleak about our times that systems capable of modeling language and reasoning with remarkable efficiency are being exploited for covert purposes, deployed not to expand human understanding but to systematically subvert it. Instead of “democratizing intelligence,” as Mr. Solomon claims, we are witnessing a kind of collective brain damage. The Minister of AI should be mitigating those risks, rather than naively championing the tech behind it all. Source
RCMP received more than 140 requests to use new tech, AI tools
| | Canada’s border agency plans to use AI to screen everyone entering the country — and single out ‘higher risk’ people | |
The Toronto Star 29/08/2025 - Canada Border Services Agency is planning to use AI to check everyone visiting or returning to the country to predict whether they are at risk of breaking the law.
Anyone identified as “higher risk” could be singled out for further inspection.
The traveller compliance indicator (TCI), which has been tested at six land ports of entry, was developed using five years of CBSA travellers’ data. It assigns a “compliance score” for every person entering Canada. It will be used to enforce the Customs Act and related regulations.
The AI-assisted tool is expected to launch as early as 2027 and is meant to help border services officers at all land, air and marine ports of entry decide whether to refer travellers and the goods they are carrying for secondary examination, according to an assessment report obtained under an access to information request.
“We use the obtained data to build predictive models in order to predict the likelihood of a traveller to be compliant,” said the report which was submitted by the border agency to the Treasury Board. [...]
However, experts are alarmed by the lack of public engagement and input into the tool’s development. They worry that the system may reinforce human biases against certain types of travellers such as immigrants and visitors from certain countries because the quality of the analytics is only as good as what is inputted.
“If you’ve historically been very critical over a certain group, then that will be in the data and we’ll transfer that into the tool,” said Vancouver-based immigration lawyer Will Tao, who obtained the report.
“You look for the problems and you find problems where you’re looking, right?”
The government report said the border agency serves more than 96 million travellers a year, and trying to keep up with expected growth would require the addition of hundreds of border officers. In addition, physical limitations make it impossible to add extra booths at some points of entry.
The AI tool, the report said, will help keep border processing times at current levels even with an expected increase in the number of travellers.
“No decisions are automated,” the report said. “Rather the current primary processing is being supported with a flag indicating whether a traveller’s information matches a compliance pattern.”
However, if an officer follows a mistaken recommendation from the tool, it could have impacts that could “last longer,” the report added.
“Once a risk score or indicator is presented to an officer, it can heavily influence their judgment, which in practice means the system is shaping outcomes even if the final authority is technically still human,” said University of Toronto professor Ebrahim Bagheri, who focuses on AI and the study of data and society.
“A false positive is when the system flags someone as risky or non-compliant even though they are in fact compliant. In the border context, that could mean a traveller is singled out for extra questioning or secondary examination even though they’ve done nothing wrong.” [...]
He’s also concerned that like other AI tools that have had a tendency to bias people with a certain skin colour, citizenship or background, the compliance indicator could further marginalize particular groups.
The tool could also present problems in court cases challenging an officer’s decision, said Tao, if the system only provides “boilerplate reasons” or if those reasons are actually an officer “rationalizing ex post” to obscure what the machine’s real concerns are.
Bagheri, the U of T professor, said individuals affected by this tool must be provided a way to contest the AI tools flags or errors are simply going to be repeated.
“Recourse cannot stop at fixing one person’s case,” he said. “Machine-learning models also need to be able to unlearn bias, not just correct incorrect decisions on an individual basis but detect and correct biased patterns in the models themselves.”
Bagheri said it requires more than an administrative process that reviews complaints but rather a formal technical procedure for “retraining, recalibrating or updating models” whenever systemic bias is uncovered. Policymakers should ensure that both individual redress and structural correction are built in from the start so that fairness is continuously enforced rather than treated on a case-by-case basis. Read more - Lire plus
| | Pentagon Official: Trump Boat Strike Was a Criminal Attack on Civilians | |
The Intercept 05/09/2025 - The lethal strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday was a criminal attack on civilians, according to a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration paved the way for the attack, he said, by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.
“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the Department of Defense official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”
President Donald Trump claimed that the attack was aimed “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists,” in a TruthSocial post. He continued: “TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of [Venezuelan President] Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.”
Trump accompanied the post with a video of a four-engine speedboat cutting through the water with numerous people on board. An explosion then destroys the boat. Trump said the attack killed 11 people. It was unclear whether they were given a chance to surrender before the United States killed them.
After days of silence, the White House issued a statement late Thursday claiming the attack was lawful. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said it was “taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered his own justification for the strike the same day. “Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people is an imminent threat. And at the DoD our job is to defeat imminent threats,” he told a group of journalists. “A foreign terrorist organization poisoning your people with drugs coming from a drug cartel is no different than Al Qaeda, and they will be treated as such as they were in international waters.”
Two U.S. government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Hegseth’s justification – which one called “completely unserious” – took shape after the attack.
Experts said Hegseth’s rationale was flimsy, if not farcical. “Tren de Aragua being designated as a foreign terrorist organization is a purely domestic law enforcement designation. It offers no authority for the military to use deadly force,” said Todd Huntley, who was an active-duty judge advocate for more than 23 years, serving as a legal advisor to Special Operations forces engaged in counterterrorism missions around the world. “Under international law, there’s no way this even gets close to being a legitimate use of force.”
Other legal experts have agreed with Huntley, now the director of the National Security Law Program at the Georgetown University Law Center. Members of Congress have echoed the assessment.
“Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any President carte blanche to ignore Congress’s clear Constitutional authority on matters of war and peace,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, in a statement. “There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law.”
Hegseth said the attack would be followed by others. “It won’t stop with just this strike,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate.”
Diosdado Cabello, the Venezuelan Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace called the Tuesday attack “an illegal massacre in international waters” and said the United States had “violated international law.”
Brian Finucane, who worked for a decade in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State, where he advised the U.S. government on counterterrorism and other military matters, also noted that designating a group as a foreign terrorist organization does not, by itself, provide authority for the use of military force.
“Nonetheless, such FTO designations are widely and mistakenly perceived as authorizing such action within the executive branch,” he wrote in a legal analysis published this week. “Thus, designation of Tren de Aragua and a number of other Latin American criminal entities as FTOs in February foreshadowed this week’s attack in the Caribbean, despite providing no actual legal authority for it.”
U.S. attacks around the world – from Libya to Somalia – during the war on terror have been justified under strained interpretations of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. But despite the Trump administration labeling cartels “narcoterrorists,” experts say there is no plausible argument that the AUMF can apply to Tren de Aragua.
“We knew exactly who was in that boat,” Hegseth told Fox News on Wednesday. The Pentagon has frequently claimed to have killed terrorists when it has instead killed innocents. A 2023 investigation by The Intercept, for example, determined that an April 2018 drone attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time, the military announced it had killed “five terrorists” and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.”
Several experts and government officials speculated that the boat the U.S. struck on Tuesday may not even have been smuggling drugs due to what they said was an unusually large number of people on board the vessel. Read more - Lire plus
Cartels Are Bad But They're Not 'Terrorists.' This Is Mission Creep. Trump using the military to solve every problem is a backward step.
Repatriated Venezuelans Denounce ‘Abuse and Torture’ in El Salvador’s CECOT Mega Prison
DHS ends temporary protected status for some 200,000 Venezuelans in the US
NEW Canada: Tell the US: Hands off Venezuela
NEW US: No War, No Overthrow, No Coup, No Sanctions on Venezuela
| | Judge Blocks Trump’s Late-Night Deportation of Hundreds of Guatemalan Children | |
Democracy Now! 02/09/2025 - A federal judge stopped the Trump administration from illegally deporting as many as 700 Guatemalan children over the Labor Day weekend, ordering a last-minute block on their removals even as some children had already been boarded onto planes.
The National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request to stop the deportation flights, arguing that the children would face harm and abuse if they were returned to Guatemala. The children arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors, and many are now living in shelters or foster care. The Trump administration insists it is acting at the request of the children’s families and the government of Guatemala.
“There are protections for unaccompanied minors that provide how a child can be released from custody, to whom, and the process if they want to go back to their country,” says Efrén Olivares, an attorney representing Guatemalan unaccompanied minors. “If this were a benign repatriation to send children back to their parents, it wouldn’t be happening at midnight on Sunday of Labor Day weekend.” Read more - Lire plus
DOJ backs off claims about Guatemalan children it sought to deport The Trump administration had claimed the parents desperately wanted their children back.
Abrego Garcia Detained Again, Faces Deportation to Uganda After 3 Days of Freedom
“Unprecedented and Not Normal”: ACLU Sues over Legal Black Hole at “Alligator Alcatraz” ICE Jail
Teen Immigrant’s Release Propels Lawsuit to End ICE’s Courthouse Arrests
ICE Conducts Largest-Ever Raid at Georgia Hyundai Plant: 475 Arrested, Mostly Korean
CBP Had Access to More than 80,000 Flock AI Cameras Nationwide
Video: ICE can hack your phone without you knowing
ICE Hunts Down Immigrants by Spying on Their Wire Transfers
| | Trump’s Union Busting Tests Limits of ‘National Security’ Powers | |
Bloomberg Law 08/09/2025 - The collective bargaining rights of more than 1 million federal workers depend on whether President Donald Trump can freely decide which employees across the government conduct what he deems to be “national security” work.
Trump on Aug. 29 ended union protections for roughly half the workers at the US Patent and Trademark Office by placing it—along with employees of the National Weather Service and NASA—in the same category as security agencies including the CIA and FBI, expanding a March directive. Trump has stripped organizing rights from workers at more than 40 agencies, touching two-thirds of the federal workforce.
Unions’ lawsuits challenging the orders place before the courts a rarely used exemption to labor laws for civil servants engaged in national security functions and raise new questions about the president’s authority to use that rationale to weaken government workers’ protections.
“Whether collective bargaining is allowed to continue in the federal sector comes down to these cases,” said Nicholas Bednar, an administrative law professor at the University of Minnesota, calling the orders an “existential” threat.
After circuit courts stayed several preliminary injunctions against the March order, the administration began withdrawing from collective bargaining agreements and cutting ties with unions.
The union battle is just one piece of Trump’s campaign to remake the federal workforce. He has fired tens of thousands of workers, gutted whole agencies, and enticed workers to leave through resignation perks. He has eroded civil service protections—firing leaders of independent agencies and the watchdog charged with investigating government workers’ complaints—all while creating new political posts that answer to him alone.
The latest order targeted federal workers who are highly specialized: patent examiners, the NWS, NASA, and the International Trade Administration. The Patent Office Professional Association—the union representing patent examiners—and the National Weather Service Employees Organization fired back at Trump’s order with a lawsuit, saying it violated federal labor law and their First Amendment rights. The National Treasury Employees Union also sued in DC District Court, seeking recourse for the workers it represents in the patent office.
National Security Loophole
Presidents can exempt agencies from federal-sector labor protections, if their primary function is “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” and if collective bargaining cannot be applied in line with national security requirements, according to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act.
The carve-out was created by the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, but legal scholars say the courts haven’t issued a major decision on it since President Ronald Reagan exempted the US Marshals Service.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in its 1989 AFGE v. Reagan decision the president wasn’t required to prove when an agency meets the national security threshold for exemption under the “presumption of regularity,” in which the courts defer to government actions without clear evidence that it violates the law.
Courts will have to choose whether to draw a line on the president’s authority this time around, Bednar said.
David Burton, a legal scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Trump has a strong case, as the law directly gives the president authority to exempt agencies.
“This one doesn’t strike me as pushing the envelope all that far,” he said. “You can disagree over what is or is not national security, but there’s a pretty clear statutory provision there.”
Unions have accused Trump of wielding the exemption to retaliate against them unlawfully. They contend that many of the affected workers play no role in national security.
“What’s really dangerous is this idea they can use national security to justify anything,” said Tom Krause, former solicitor for the PTO. Read more - Lire plus
| | National security or xenophobia? Texas restricts Chinese owning and renting property | |
BBC 28/08/2025 - Jason Yuan, a second-hand car shop owner, closes the hood of a vehicle after tightening the last nut on the battery terminal - a routine he is all too familiar with.
Texas has long felt like home for him, as a naturalised US citizen born in China. But a recently passed state law is shaking his belief in his chosen homeland.
Texas Senate Bill 17 of 2025, also known as SB 17, will take effect on 1 September, restricting people and companies from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from purchasing and renting property.
Officials say the bill is to protect national security. But to people like Mr Yuan, it sends a discriminatory message - that people who look like him are not welcome in Texas. "It is anti-Asian, anti-immigrant, and specifically against Chinese-Americans," said Texas Representative Gene Wu, a Democrat leading the fight against the bill. The new law could harm businesses in Texas, Wu told the BBC. Companies that could bring millions of dollars of investment to the state are looking for options elsewhere.
SB 17 was proposed earlier this year and signed into law on 20 June by Governor Greg Abbott, who called it the "toughest ban in America" to keep away foreign "adversaries". It prohibits certain individuals and organisations of countries designated as national security threats from acquiring property in Texas - including homes, commercial space and agricultural land. It also restricts the length of time for which they can rent property to less than one year.
China is the first country named in the legislation, which accuses Beijing of using "coercive, subversive, and malignant influence activities to weaken the United States" in its bid to surpass the US economically, militarily and politically. Those who violate the law could face fines of more than $250,000 (£193,000) or jail terms.
US citizens and green card holders are exempt, and valid visa-holders will still be allowed to own one primary residence. But opponents say regardless of the carve-outs, the bill is discriminatory in nature, and anyone deemed to look Chinese could be subject to unfair scrutiny.
In July, the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA), a non-profit organisation, filed a lawsuit on behalf of three visa-holders from China, arguing that the law was unconstitutional.
The judge later dismissed the case, siding with the state attorney general who said the plaintiffs - who are student-visa and work-visa holders living in Texas - would not be personally affected by the law.
It therefore appears that the three plaintiffs are spared for now. But, for the wider group of visa-holders from the four countries, the lack of clear interpretation of the legal clauses still stokes uncertainty. CALDA says it has filed an appeal.
'The Chinese Exclusion Act of 2025'
Chinese nationals are the largest group affected by the new law. At least 120,000 people who were born in mainland China were living in Texas as of 2023. [...]
Jason Yuan has devoted his time outside his car shop work to be a community activist. Before the bill passed, he led rallies outside the Texas capital and testified at a public hearing, telling the committee that the new land bill should be called "the Chinese Exclusion Act of 2025".
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law fuelled by anti-Chinese sentiment, was passed. The controversial law barred immigration of Chinese labourers into the US.
"Banning home ownership from folks just like me based on their country of origin, that is discriminatory in nature," Mr Yuan, the car shop owner, told the BBC.
Mr Yuan was concerned about the future for his two children - and when he spoke at a recent rally, his 13-year-old son stood behind him.
"I told everybody this is all worth it," Mr Yuan said. "In the future, I would tell my kids when you face some discrimination, when somebody picks on you, this is a way to push back." [...]
The right to own land has been a struggle for Chinese-Americans, dating back over a century.
A previous alien land law in Texas, which restricted non-US citizens from purchasing land, was in force until 1965. It was deemed to be "unreasonable and discriminatory" and against "economic development".
A National Trend
SB 17 is not the first bill of its kind in the US. Twenty-six states, most of them Republican-controlled, have passed 50 bills that restrict foreign property ownership targeting China since 2021, according to Committee of 100, a Chinese-American non-governmental organisation.
The Trump administration has also said it plans to ban Chinese nationals from buying farmland in the US. "Texas's law should sound alarm bells," said Mr Toomey, adding that the legislation weaponised false claims of national security against Asian immigrants and other communities.
Mr Yuan believes that if Chinese-Americans do not put up a fight, the new law in Texas could lead to similar bills being passed in other states. Ohio, for example, is considering a ban against "adversarial countries", but with stricter scope that could include green card holders as well. Activists have been rallying against it. Read more - Lire plus
| | This Imam Refused to Be an FBI Informant. Now ICE Wants to Deport Him. | |
The Intercept 05/09/2025 - It was a humid June morning when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knocked on the door of a modest condo in North Miami Beach, Florida, just across the canal from Greynolds Park — a relic of the New Deal, shaded by old oaks. They weren’t conducting a sweep. They had come for Foad Farahi, a Sunni imam who had lived in the area for more than 30 years.
Farahi was taken to a detention center in Miami and then put on a government plane to Texas, bound for a different detention facility. Later, he was moved again, this time to Torrance County Detention Center: a bleak, privately run complex in the remote deserts of New Mexico, where recent reports describe sewage backups and a lack of clean drinking water. He’s been locked up there ever since.
Farahi, 50, is one of thousands who have been swept up by ICE since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. But this wasn’t the first time the U.S. government had backed him into a corner. Nearly 20 years earlier, in the last years of George W. Bush’s presidency, U.S. officials tried to use the threat of deportation as leverage to turn him into an informant against his own community.
He refused. He wasn’t deported, and he never became an informant. For years after, he lived in the shadow of the immigration system, checking in with authorities, complying with every rule. Now, his lawyers argue, his detention is less about process than punishment. “Mr. Farahi’s detention appears to be purely punitive,” they wrote in a recent habeas petition in federal court in New Mexico.
Farahi’s story stretches across two decades of American security policy, linking the FBI’s post-9/11 informant machine to today’s immigration dragnet. His treatment has long raised questions about whether the FBI weaponized immigration enforcement as a tool of coercion and what it means when saying no to the government results in a life sentence in limbo. [...]
The Crackdown
Then came Trump’s immigration crackdown. Detention has ballooned to record levels, with more than 60,000 people now held in immigration detention, compared to a high of fewer than 40,000 under former President Joe Biden.
The Trump administration has implemented sweeping new tools: expedited removals, raids in sanctuary cities, and deportation flights to third countries — even where individuals lack ties. ICE has struck deals with Uganda, Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan to accept deportees, while others were dropped at El Salvador’s massive CECOT prison, built for gang crackdowns and now housing migrants under a U.S. agreement to pay El Salvador $6 million.
Lawyers for men deported to Eswatini say they were delivered into prisons without due process, just as happened in El Salvador — signs of how the U.S. government’s deportation practices are outsourcing indefinite confinement to countries with poor human rights records.
Farahi is now trapped in this sprawling, multinational system of deportation and detention. After three decades in the U.S., he’s facing the greatest risk of being forced out. Where to? For months, no one would say. “He hasn’t been told where they would send him, if anywhere,” his lawyer, Kenia Garcia, told me.
This week, that silence broke. ICE told Farahi they were asking Kuwait to take him. Farahi grew up there, but he was never a citizen, and he knows Kuwait could simply send him on to Iran — the very danger he fled when he arrived in the U.S. at 19 years old.
ICE declined an invitation to comment on Farahi’s case.
What began for Farahi with a knock on his door in 2004 has ended with another in 2025, and what began as a counterterrorism strategy has evolved into a system that wields detention and deportation not as tools of security, but as punishments in their own right. Read more - Lire plus
| | UK: nearly 900 arrests at Palestine protest shows Government's disregard for our protest rights | |
Amnesty International UK 07/09/2025 - Police make 857 arrests under the Terrorism Act at yesterday’s Defend Our Juries demo
Amnesty’s observers witnessed episodes of police aggression, including supporters of the protest being shoved away and batons being pulled out on people
‘The scenes yesterday were a shocking demonstration of how the UK's overly broad terrorism laws are being used to suppress free speech’ - Kerry Moscogiuri
Responding to news that police made 857 arrests under the Terrorism Act at yesterday’s Defend Our Juries peaceful protest, Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International’s Director of Campaigns and Communications, said:
“The staggering number of arrests at yesterday’s peaceful protest marks a new low for protest rights in this country. It’s completely ridiculous for police to be targeting and arresting people for sitting down, quietly holding a sign.
“Amnesty International deployed observers to the protest, and police claims that the protest turned violent are a misrepresentation. Our observers witnessed the Defend Our Juries protest being entirely peaceful.
“Some supporters of the protest shouted insults at the police and a small number of them attempted to prevent the police from carrying arrestees away. This did not appear to be a coordinated effort.
“Police officers, on a number of occasions, were aggressive towards supporters of the protest. This included violently shoving people away and pulling out batons to make space whilst protesters were arrested and hauled into police vans.
“Peaceful protest is a fundamental right. The scenes yesterday were a shocking demonstration of how the UK's overly broad terrorism laws are being used to suppress free speech.”
The Met Police said 890 arrests were made: 857 arrests were for showing support for Palestine Action, while 33 were arrested for other offences, including 17 for assaults on police officers. Source
NEW United Kingdom: Free all Peaceful Protestors!
UK: 'Horrifying' that Defend Our Juries spokespeople are being threatened with severe jail sentences
MPs push for change on Palestine Action but minister stands firm
Hamas Continues Its Battle Against UK Terror Designation
| | UK: Met police’s facial recognition plans fall foul of European law, says watchdog | |
The Guardian 20/08/2025 - Scotland Yard’s plan to widen the use of live facial recognition technology is unlawful because it is incompatible with European laws, the equalities regulator has said.
As the UK’s biggest force prepares to use instant face-matching cameras at this weekend’s Notting Hill carnival, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said its use was intrusive and could have a “chilling effect” on individuals’ rights.
The development will be a blow to Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who has backed the use of the technology at mass events such as this weekend’s carnival, which 2 million people are expected to attend in west London.
The EHRC has been given permission to intervene in a judicial review launched last month by the anti-knife campaigner Shaun Thompson. Thompson, a black British man, was wrongly identified by live facial recognition (LFR) as a criminal, held by police, then faced demands from officers for his fingerprints.
Data seen by the EHRC shows that the number of black men triggering an “alert” by the technology is higher than would be expected proportionally when compared with the population of London, it said.
A letter last week from 11 anti-racist and civil liberty organisations, disclosed in the Guardian, urged the Met to scrap the use of the technology over concerns of racial bias and the impending legal challenge.
LFR technology captures and analyses the faces of individuals passing in front of real-time CCTV cameras. It extracts unique biometric data from each face and compares it against a “watchlist” of thousands of people sought by the police.
There is at present no specific domestic legislation regulating police use of LFR, with police using common law powers instead. The Met insists that the Equality Act 2010 places legal obligations upon them to eliminate discrimination.
The EHRC said that the claim brought forward by Thompson “raises issues of significant public importance” and will provide submissions “on the intrusive nature of LFR technology” which focus on the way in which the technology has been used by the police.
The Met’s policy on LFR technology was unlawful because it was incompatible with articles 8 (right to privacy), 10 (freedom of expression), and 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European convention on human rights, the watchdog said.
Rebecca Vincent, the interim director of Big Brother Watch, said the EHRC’s intervention was “hugely welcome”.
She added: “The rapid proliferation of invasive live facial recognition technology without any legislation governing its use is one of the most pressing human rights concerns in the UK today. Live facial recognition surveillance turns our faces into barcodes and makes us a nation of suspects who, as we’ve seen in Shaun’s case, can be falsely accused, grossly mistreated and forced to prove our innocence to authorities.” Read more - Lire plus
In France, the eternal return of facial recognition
| | OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | | ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC | | The Liberal government has introduced a sweeping new national security and border omnibus bill, Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act. Under the guise of addressing border security and placating the Trump administration, the government is seeking unrelated powers – some of which they have unsuccessfully attempted to obtain in the past – which will have wide-ranging negative impacts on human rights and civil liberties. Please send a quick email to your MP, the Public Safety Minister, the Justice Minister, the Immigration Minister and the Prime Minister urging them to withdraw this dangerous bill. Thank you! | |
Canada: Abolish rights-violating terrorist entities list!
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On October 15, 2024, the Canadian government placed the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network on Canada’s terrorist entities list. While ostensibly a tool to protect the safety and security of people in Canada and internationally, the list is an arbitrary political tool that undermines freedom of association, of expression and due process in the courts. Its effectiveness as a national security tool has never been demonstrated in a manner that justifies its use.
Due to these deep flaws, and more, the ICLMG has consistently called for the list to be abolished since the Canadian coalition’s founding in 2002. Please join us in urging the Canadian government to abolish the rights-violating terrorist entities list once and for all. Thank you!
| | CSIS isn't above the law! | | |
In recent years, at least three court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.
Send a message to the Public Safety Minister demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable. Your message will also be sent to your MP and to the Minister of Justice.
| | Canada must protect Hassan Diab! | | Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now! | Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts. United Nations officials have even found that the conditions faced by Canadians in prison are akin to torture. Please click below to urge the federal government to repatriate all Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay. | | 22 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now! | | 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 the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice and your MP to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. Thank you!
Version française: Le Canada doit réformer la loi sur l'extradition!
| | Canada must protect encryption! | |
Canada, with other G7 nations, continues to push to weaken our access to strong, reliable encryption, after decades of being supportive of strong encryption. We need encryption to safeguard our data, our online transactions, our communications, and to protect the lives of journalists and human rights activists.
Please send a message to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Minister of Public Safety, as well as your Member of Parliament, to urge them to reverse course and once again commit to protecting encryption.
Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir
| | Protect our rights from facial recognition! | Facial recognition surveillance is invasive and inaccurate. This unregulated tech poses a threat to the fundamental rights of people across Canada. Federal intelligence agencies refuse to disclose whether they use facial recognition technology. The RCMP has admitted (after lying about it) to using facial recognition for 18 years without regulation, let alone a public debate regarding whether it should have been allowed in the first place. Send a message to the Prime Minister and the Public Safety Minister calling for a ban now. | | What we’ve been up to from January to May 2025 and our plan for the rest of the year | |
ICLMG 30/05/2025 - Thanks to the support of our members and donors, here is what we were able to work on so far in 2025 :
- Open letter to the new Prime Minister and government
- 2025 federal election and National Security Info Card
- C-20: First independent watchdog for the CBSA
- C-27: Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022
- Online Harms
- Foreign Interference
- Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
- Canada’s terrorist entities list
- Palestine and the right to dissent
- Impacts of Counter terrorism financing
- Hassan Diab & Extradition
- Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- And more!
What we have planned for the rest of 2025!
We have our work cut out for us! In response to threats of tariffs and annexation from the Trump administration, the Canadian government has problematically committed to the rapid expansion of border security, surveillance and information sharing with the US, and expanded the use of rights violating anti-terrorism tools. We also cannot ignore the US crackdown on protesters and migrants under the guise of fighting terrorism and protecting national security. We need to ensure that Canada disentangles itself from the US national security regime, resists US pressure to expand surveillance and counter-terror powers and tools at the expense of our civil liberties, and increases protections for privacy, dissent, migrants and asylum seekers.
We will continue our work on these issues and much more:
- Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for good privacy law reform
- Addressing the lack of regulation on the use of AI in national security
- Advocating for restrictions on Canadian information sharing with the US, including the application of the US No Fly List in Canada
- Campaigning for the repeal of secretive and rights violating national security lists, such as the Terrorist Entities List and the Canadian No Fly List
- Halting the rapid expansion of new security measures at the border and continuing to push back against the false narrative depicting migrants and refugees as security risks, and advocating for rights protection and accountability for border agencies, including by monitoring the creation of a new CBSA and RCMP watchdog agency
- Advocating with lawmakers and officials to protect civil liberties from the overall negative impact of national security
- Countering the escalating repression of free expression, dissent and protest in the name of “countering terrorism,” including the crackdown on protests in support of Palestinian human rights and against the genocide in Gaza. This includes countering new “bubble zone” laws at the municipal and federal levels
- Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
- Fighting for Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada's extradition law
- Addressing the impacts of measures to counter terrorism financing on civil society groups, including the CRA’s targeting of Muslim-led charities and restrictions and criminalization of the provision of international assistance and humanitarian aid
- Calling for the return of Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children, who remain indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
- Pushing for restrictions on the implementation of new foreign interference laws
- Keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest
- And much more! Read more - Lire plus
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| | Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | | |
THANK YOU
to our amazing supporters!
We would like to thank all our member organizations, and the hundreds of people who have supported us over the years, including on Patreon! As a reward, we are listing below our patrons who give $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
James Deutsch
Bill Ewanick
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
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