statism watch

Oh, it’s for the children. It’s to keep you safe. Here, let’s just put cameras right in your homes to keep you safe, wouldn’t that be a great idea? Just when it seemed that there was at least one aspect of the surveillance control grid that people had safely beaten down – it’s back, like some ludicrous game of whack-a-mole. There should be an entirely new category of irony for the fact that school administrators in the UK can film kids in the can, but parents can’t kiss their kids or play with them in a public playground unless they’ve got a very special license. Is there nothing people won’t capitulate too after they’ve been softened up with a little propaganda? Is there nothing to which we won’t stoop in the rush to insert ourselves into some dystopian nightmare? The staff should be charged for this crime.

Flashback: More Details Emerging About School Laptop Spying, And It Doesn’t Look Good | School Spycams Case Explodes As Feds Initiate Probe | Pennsylvania schools spying on students using laptop Webcams, claims lawsuit | Texas Schoolkids Tagged With GPS Tracking Devices | 50 Toronto high schools to have armed police presence | UK schoolkids trained to inform on ‘extremist’ classmates by police DVD | UK Schoolkids Protest CCTV, Hidden Microphones in Class | Lunchtime lockdown to promote healthier eating: T.O. school plan | Schools seek more police as crime drops | Police presence in high schools makes the grade | Has your child been CAFed? How the Government plans to record intimate information on every child in Britain | Safety report author Falconer on armed police in schools: “Facile” | Parents, children to be fingerprinted at initial 250+ nursery schools in UK | Frequent school lockdowns raise questions | 27 Toronto schools to get armed police presence | Two trustees stand opposed to armed police in schools | Armed police officers heading to high schools | Texas truant students to be tracked by GPS anklets | CCTV cameras spying on hundreds of classrooms | Armed Police to Roam Toronto High Schools | $4 Million Earmarked for Cameras, “Respect” at Toronto Schools | School removes CCTV cameras from children’s toilets after furious protest from parents

Sky News
March 9, 2010

Outraged parents have hit out at a school in Birmingham after pupils discovered CCTV cameras in the school’s toilets.

Youngsters at Grace Academy in Chelmsley Wood claim they returned from half-term to find staff had installed the cameras without notifying them or their parents.

Some parents are furious at what they say is a “total invasion of privacy” and claim some pupils are so anxious about being watched they are refusing to use the facilities.

One mother whose teenage daughter attends the school is concerned the footage could fall into the wrong hands.

She told the Sunday Mercury: “She came home from school and told me security cameras had been installed in the girl’s toilets but we didn’t know anything about it.

“You would expect the school to have consulted parents first yet we received no information and no letters have been sent home explaining this decision.”

Grace Academy claims the cameras only cover the sink areas and have not yet been activated.

School principal Terry Wales told Sky News: “It’s to safeguard our youngsters, many schools are using cameras now.

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And the other fork of the dual attack on online freedom is exhumed to lend support in the present assault – ‘cyberterror’, meet ‘cyber bullying’. Of course, if someone says something mean to someone on the telephone, do you ban the telephone network? Do you set up some new infrastructure to filter bad words and ideas from being spoken on the phone? Do you sue Bell Telephone? Of course not, because this is a question of human action and human nature. The technology isn’t what is at fault. The media is hyping and hyping these isolated cases where some kid commits suicide because some other kid said they were fat (or whatever the case may be), and the outcome is going to be some sort of ‘driver’s license‘ or vetting process or an automated censor board unless people get a little perspective and look at why the media establishment really wants the Internet locked down: Control of content.

Related: Italy Convicts Google Execs over Youtube Video of Downs Syndrome Boy | UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users | China launches interview requirement, licensing for personal websites | Internet companies voice alarm over Italian copyright law | Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites | Australia introduces web filters | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | Cyber Bullying Case Officially Dismissed for Vagueness | Do We Need a New Internet? | Cyberbullying verdict turns rule-breakers into criminals | Felony hacking precedent not set in case of Myspace cyberbully | Myspace terms of use could become fulcrum for destruction of online anonymity in precedent setting case | Microsoft patents web moderator robots, forbidden phrases to be memory-holed | Berners-Lee W3C Consortium to ‘Authorize’ Website Content? | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck | MySpace signs up to OpenID scheme

Dan Whitcomb, Reuters
March 9, 2010

The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals.

Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively “safe harbour” from prosecution over user-generated content in the United States and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions.

Such may have been the case when three Google executives were convicted in Milan, Italy on February 24 over a bullying video posted on the site – a verdict greeted with horror by online activists, who fear it could open the gates to such prosecutions and ultimately destroy the Internet itself.

Journalist Jeff Jarvis suggested on his influential BuzzMachine blog that the Italian court, which found Google executives guilty of violating the privacy of an autistic boy who was taunted in the video, was essentially requiring websites to review everything posted on them.

“The practical implication of that, of course, is that no one will let anyone put anything online because the risk is too great,” Jarvis wrote. “I wouldn’t let you post anything here. My ISP (Internet Service Provider) wouldn’t let me post anything on its services. And that kills the Internet.”

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So the DNA of innocent people will ‘only’ be kept on file for three years. One day is completely unacceptable. If less than one percent of cases are solved using the DNA database, they’re not spending all that money to maintain it to fight crime. It’s for something else. In the US, DNA is being sent to the military for research. Why? Should we be taking a closer look at the kind of warnings well placed people like Aldous Huxley made about the use of eugenics technology in Brave New World?

Related: DNA matches solve only a fraction of crimes, police admit | UK Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims | UK: Terror ’suspects’ could remain on DNA database for life, innocents get 6 years | UK: Home Office climbs down over keeping DNA records on innocent | UK: Police ‘must purge innocent DNA’ | UK: Police ‘arrest innocent youths for their DNA’, officer claims | US: Ruling allowing Taser use to get DNA may be nation’s first | UK: Fury as Commons denied vote on DNA database | UK: DNA details of 1.1m children on database | Controversial US measure would require DNA sampling at arrest | Police to demand blood, urine at roadside stops | Newborn Blood-Storage Law Stirs Fears of DNA Warehouse | Man spends 18 hours in police cell and has his DNA taken for ‘dropping an apple core’ | Widen DNA dragnet: Police Chief Blair

Alan Travis, The Guardian
March 8, 2010

MPs’ report ahead of key vote says DNA profiles of inncent people should be kept for no longer than three years

Government proposals to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people for up to six years have been rejected by the Commons home affairs select committee.

The MPs’ report, published in advance of a key Commons vote on DNA, says they are not convinced that such a long retention period will lead to any more cases being cleared, let alone getting more convictions.

Instead, the cross-party committee backs a maximum period of three years for the police to keep the DNA profiles of those people they arrest but release before they are charged or convicted.

The home affairs committee says its short inquiry has concluded that as few as 0.3% of crimes are detected as a result, at least in part, of matching crime-scene DNA to a personal profile on the national DNA database.

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The PASS/REALID program is resurrected yet again (that didn’t take long), and this time the political spin is that it will solve issues around immigration. It’s a national ID card not only for the US, but fits into the overall initiative of North American integration. You know your new Canadian driver’s license? The one you’re going to have to fingerprint for? Same thing. This is a global initiative to track and trace populations. In addition to Canada and the US, India and the UK are two states that this journal is aware of that are issuing standardized biometric ID. The UK is also issuing its police forces with portable fingerprint scanners, so you can see the sort of biometrically-enabled tyranny we’re headed for here. Why not just start wearing dog collars? It’s the same thing. You are the herd, and your authoritarian masters will keep track of every little thing you do from now on. What do you think of that idea?

Related: US Move to National ID Cards Delayed | UK: Chipped ID card scheme launched in Greater Manchester | UK Government plans to link criminal records to ID cards | UK national ID card cloned in 12 minutes | Alberta Hutterites need enhanced driver’s licence photos: top court | US: REALID tracking chip ID card resurrected by PASS initiative | India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards | BC Bars swipe patron IDs, collect data | Incoming CSIS chief to seek biometric data at border | Ontario’s high-tech driver’s licences pose privacy risk: watchdog | Moratorium sought on RFID driver’s licenses | RFID passport security defeated in minutes | Saskatchewan adopting US-mandated ID card, to include RFID chip, facial recognition | Drivers licences with chips spark heated debate | Ontario Privacy Czar Worried about High-Tech Licences | North American ID card in the works through SPP | Ontario sees allies in licence proposal | New licence may double as passport | Wilkins touts ’simple’ ID card for travel to U.S.

Laura Meckler, The Wall Street Journal
March 8, 2010

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill are proposing a new national biometric ID card that would be required of all U.S. workers.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

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This journal has criticized Mr. Freeze in the past for characterizing the ability of Canada’s SIGINT establishment to conduct espionage on Canadian citizens abroad – first granted publicly in September 2009 – as the closing of a ‘loophole’. Now he’s back on the online intelligence beat, writing soothingly that CSIS is ‘reaching out’ to Canadian business in order to keep us safe from the newly devastating threat of cyberterror. To characterize botnets and hackers as a massive new threat to the security of the West is patently false. The net has gotten along very nicely, thank you, by organically adapting to new issues as they arise. Colin Freeze is simply following the talking points coming out of the mouths of Pentagon contractors (Like Michael McConnell) that are seeking to establish control of global information flow via federalization and nationalization of the Internet. A single article may not give one enough information to see which way the wind is blowing on an international level when such a massive project is underway. And indeed this particular CSIS program, establishing links between CSIS and strategically important corporations, is just one small indicator of the overall trend – but it follows on the American initiative to roll business networks into an NSA program through the agency of the CSE on this side of the border. StatismWatch has already done much of the research needed to collate this info – all you need to do to get up to speed is read through it. Please? Jesse Brown’s latest Search Engine podcast over at TVO, “The Enemy of The Internet” is also recommended.

Flashback: United States weighs massive expansion of Internet monitoring | Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet | Google, NSA may team up to probe cyberattacks | UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users | Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites | Australia introduces web filters | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | UK Internet surveillance plan to go ahead | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | Case for Internet spying not closed | Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | UK ISPs condemn Internet surveillance plans | UK to found new ‘cyber-security’ units attached to national eavesdropping centre | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Sweden approves wiretapping law | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail
March 8, 2010

As economic espionage and hacking become growing threats to the West, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is stepping up efforts to persuade businesses to safeguard secrets deemed vital to national interests.

CSIS’s corporate-outreach program, which started in the 1990s, largely fell by the wayside during the years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, when fighting terrorism absorbed nearly all the spy service’s energies.

But emerging threats – including shadowy-but-powerful hacker networks based in China – are sparking a renewed federal interest in forging partnerships between the corporate and intelligence worlds.

“CSIS has and continues to speak with various corporations in Canada on potential security threats, which may have an impact on national security interests,” CSIS spokeswoman Isabelle Scott said in an e-mailed response to questions from The Globe and Mail. “CSIS alerts firms to common covert methods used by those who may target them.”

She did not elaborate on which hostile entities may be targeting Canada, and added that any information shared during briefing sessions with corporations is confidential.

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The great English common law traditions of the Magna Carta are now open to question, apparently. It was the Magna Carter, forced upon the King by the nobles in a time of wildly extortionate taxes – including the first income tax in history – that first set the precedent that the King’s actions are subject to the rule of law, that the judiciary is an independent body. It is difficult to overstate the dangers of the recent erosion of this principle in Western nations.

Related: UK: Government fury as judges attack MI5, security services | MI5 chief denies cover-up claims over detainees | UK Top judge: Binyam Mohamed case shows MI5 to be devious, dishonest and complicit in torture | Britain reveals details of Binyam Mohamed torture | UK: Rights watchdog reveals Pakistani spies pressed by British to torture detainees | UK: Move to withhold evidence in MI5/MI6 torture collusion claim | UK: New evidence in Binyam Mohamed torture case | UK: Secrets of CIA ‘ghost flights’ to be revealed | UK: CIA ‘put pressure on Britain to cover up its use of torture’ | Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress | Guantanamo’s closure window dressing – overseas CIA ‘black sites’ to stay | ‘If I didn’t confess to 7/7 bombings MI5 officers would rape my wife,’ claims torture victim | MI5 faces fresh torture allegations | UK: Government makes ‘unprecedented’ apology for covering up Binyam torture | Obama administration: Guantanamo detainees have ‘no constitutional rights’ | Tortured Guantanamo detainee set free | UK agents ‘colluded with torture in Pakistan’ | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | U.K. resident held at Gitmo alleges Canadian involvement in torture | Senior judges attack US over ‘torture evidence suppression’

Afua Hirsch, The Guardian
March 8, 2010

The government will attempt today to have a case about torture heard entirely behind closed doors in a move that some lawyers say would extend secrecy to a new area of hearings, overriding ancient principles of English law.

This morning a case will come before three appeal judges in London in which seven men are seeking damages against the government for mistreatment during what they say was their “extraordinary rendition” and torture facilitated by the British security services.

The men include former Guantánamo Bay detainees Binyam Mohamed and Moazzam Begg. But the government is seeking to have the case held in secret, less than two weeks after the court of appeal ruled that seven paragraphs of secret evidence in the case of Mohamed should be made public.

Lawyers for the men say that if successful, the government’s application would extend closed proceedings into findings of fact in the civil courts for the first time.

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Related: UK Citizen snoopers recruited to spy on Londoners | UK University student fined £80 for dropping matchstick on Oxford pavement | Embryonic EU security office set up in secret talks under Lisbon Treaty | UK: Garbage spies alarm neighbourhood | US Homeland Security: Terror fight needs public’s vigilance | UK: Big Brother state wants even more spy powers | UK recruits an army of snoopers with police-style powers | ‘AmeriCorps’ Domestic Paramilitary Propaganda Ad | Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More | London Police Encourage Citizens To Inform on Neighbour’s Garbage | UK Home Secretary unveils civilian anti-terrorism security force | Pre-Olympic transit ads encourage citizen surveillance | US Congress passes mandatory national service bill | New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty” | UK: Civil servants attacked for using anti-terror laws to spy on public | Justin Trudeau introduces National Voluntary Service motion | US Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills | UK House of Lords warns over ’surveillance state’ | UK Shortly to Become Worse Surveillance Society than Stasi East Germany | ‘Environmental volunteers’ will be encouraged to spy on their neighbours | ‘Our People’ stand up for Putin | Vladimir Putin sets up nationalist Russian Youth brigade

Tom Whitehead, The Telegraph
March 8, 2010

Hundreds more town hall staff and private security guards are to be handed police-style powers in a fresh Home Office drive to create an army of civilian “spies”.

Almost 1,700 people, also including car park attendants and dog wardens, already have powers to hand out a string of fines and even take photographs of low level offenders under the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme.

But the Government has quietly announced it plans to review the scheme with chief police officers to see how it can be expanded further.

Rank and file officers warned the move is “blurring the lines” of legitimate law enforcement and is creating a “third tier” of policing.

Even chief constables are now cautious over the scheme following it’s rapid growth, which has seen numbers increase by a fifth in just 12 months.

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This is the Soros plan. And of course, the IMF will happily operate this immense capital pool. Really nothing to do with global warming, of course, that’s just the pretext. It’s unlikely the money will even ever go towards ‘fixing’ the environment, as though a tax could ever accomplish this in the first place. Remember how the American banks simply appropriated the bailout funds and put them towards buying up and merging with their smaller competitors? It’s outright theft. And the end that these globalizing institutions have in sight is the creation of a new layer of global governance, with centralized taxation and currency control headed up by the IMF and the World Bank. It doesn’t seem as though they particularly care how they get the funding for this – recent months have seen separate proposals for a ‘Tobin tax’ on all financial transactions at Copenhagen and elsewhere, a global bank insurance levy, and now this idea of a direct ‘IMF tax’ on the GDP of nations. Ever since Copenhagen fell through (in large part because African states could see the proposed economic colonization a mile away, and they didn’t want to go that route), the globalist clique has backed off for a while, but now the renewed push is on to get the international community to capitulate, and there is an implicit threat involved now. Hand over power, or more countries fall. (Economist Max Keiser has exposed how Iceland was taken down by derivatives (skip to the second video), and it’s all over the news how Goldman Sachs wrecked Greece.)

Flashback: EU considers general carbon tax | Leaked UN Documents Reveal Plan For “Green World Order” By 2012 | Davos: Global climate fund threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns | Davos 2010: George Soros warns gold is now the ‘ultimate bubble’, calls for IMF to handle climate fund | Copenhagen Accord Establishes Global Government Framework | Canada part of Copenhagen climate deal | Final Copenhagen Text Includes Global Transaction Tax | World leaders push for climate deal | UN Chief: We Will Impose Global Governance | Copenhagen climate summit releases draft final text | IMF could fund climate adaptation: Soros | Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak | Bombshell UN Climate Documents Reveal Planned “End Run” Around National Sovereignty | Canada agrees to contribute to $10-billion climate change fund | UK: Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process | Leaked G20 Documents Shed Light on Global Carbon Tax | Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’ | Czech President: Copenhagen to be ‘Largest tax increase in world history’ | Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading as banker scam | Oil Companies Support Global Warming Alarmists, Not Skeptics | Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate, downgrades CO2 threat | EU agrees to pay developing countries ‘climate aid’ to pass Copenhagen | Copenhagen’s Plans for a New ‘Government’ are Scary | Copenhagen, carbon, and the global corporate agenda | Lord Nicholas Stern: The world’s future is being decided this weekend | Thatcher science adviser: Copenhagen goal is world government | German Scientists Call for ‘World Climate Bank’ | G8 Summit: Rich nations to pay green tab | US Congress Passes the 1,200-page Climate Bill that it was not allowed to read | Climate Cops To Fine “Wasteful” Homeowners & Businesses | Obama targets US public with call for climate action | Obama to stake reputation on fast-tracked climate bill | The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment? | Ontario unveils cap-and-trade legislation | Economic stabilization may rely on carbon economy, economist says | Climate panel presses for federal cap-and-trade system | NRTEE Carbon Market Panel is ‘Round Table on Socialist Planning’ | Obama, Gore, tied to Chicago carbon exchange | U.N. ‘Climate Change’ Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy | U.N. Environment Head Wants Global Warming Tax | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | EU calls for global carbon trading system to fight climate change

The Associated Press
March 8, 2010

Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, left, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, right, take part in a panel discussion at the University of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, March 8, 2010.(AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday proposed a plan for the world’s governments to pool together to raise money needed to adapt to climate change, a rare step for an organization that normally does not develop environmental policies.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the Fund is concerned about the huge amount of funding needed and the effect that will have on the global economy. He added that the proposal may help efforts to reach a binding agreement on climate change later this year.

Strauss-Kahn proposed that countries adopt a quota system similar to the one the Fund uses to raise its own money, which could bring in money faster than proposals to increase carbon taxes or other fundraising methods. He only provided a broad outline of the plan, as the organization will release a paper within 10 days with full details. It is unclear how the proposal will be received.

The IMF raises funds from its 185 members mainly through a quota system that is based broadly on each country’s economic size. The United States is currently the largest shareholder.

“We all know that (carbon taxes and other fundraising methods) will take time and we don’t have this time. So we need something which looks like an interim solution, which will bridge the gap between now and the time when those carbon taxes will be big enough to solve the problem,” Strauss-Kahn said. “And that is exactly what the IMF proposal is dealing with.”

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Flashback: CSIS secretly interrogated Afghan prisoners | Canada wanted Afghan prisoners tortured: lawyer | Harper grilled over prorogation, Afghan detainee torture documents | MP threatens motion on Afghan documents | PM Harper downplays detainee torture scandal, prorogation | Claims troops mistreated prisoners unfounded: military police | Peter MacKay, Red Cross discussed detainees in 2006 | Canada’s troops investigated for Afghan abuse | Colvin disputes witnesses’ detainee testimony | Tories sabotage Afghan committee meeting | Canada ‘defended’ torturer | Ottawa won’t release Afghan torture documents | Top general’s Afghan detainee reversal hikes pressure for public inquiry | Richard Colvin’s Afghan torture memos reveal government concealed prisoner access issues | Torture claims unreliable, officials say, despite having found evidence of torture | MPs vote public inquiry into Afghan detainees, Tories ignore majority motion | Torture claims weren’t probed, official testified | Harper government changes tune on Afghan prisoner issue | Colvin’s testimony true: former Afghan MP | David Mulroney testifies war confused issue of torture | Hillier says he saw no credible reports of torture | Afghan torture emails reached MacKay’s office | Opposition wants documentation prior to government torture rebuttal, PM cries foul | Canadian officials discussed torture in 2006 | Canada shamed on Afghan prisoner torture | Canada ignored torture warnings: Diplomat | Military lawyer stonewalls on Afghan torture claims | Ottawa was warned Afghan detainees might be tortured | Military commission suspends torture hearings, gags witness | Torture probe delayed; Tories deny gagging witness | Federal court limits Afghan detainee torture probe | Watchdog rejects government bid to delay Afghan detainee inquiry | Ottawa moves to block Afghanistan detainee torture hearings again | Bid to Block Afghan Detainee Inquiry Slammed | What Ottawa doesn’t want you to know: Government was told detainees faced ‘extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial’

CBC News
March 8, 2010

An internal government memo obtained by CBC confirms that Canadian authorities began formulating a plan for dealing with accusations of torture of prisoners in Afghanistan as early as March 2007 — months before such allegations first came up in the media.

The memo, drafted by officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs, instructs staff to inform the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Red Cross if “NGOs, relatives, media or otherwise make credible allegations that detainees transferred by CF [Canadian Forces] to Afghan authorities have been potentially abused following their transfer.”

Officials must also “follow up separately to address potential concerns with the conditions of detention,” the memo says.

First drafts of the document were written in March 2007, months before the Globe and Mail reported that 30 prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by the Canadian military were “beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogations.”

The timing of the memo shows the government was concerned about the possibility that detainees were being abused while in Afghan custody long before revelations about actual cases of abuse became public.

The existence of a plan to deal with allegations of abuse came to light in November 2009 during hearings held by the parliamentary committee examining Canada’s mission in Afghanistan and the issue of detainee transfer.

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