statism watch

CBC News
Last Updated: Monday, June 18, 2007 | 4:48 PM ET

Transportation experts and privacy advocates warned of potential abuses as Canada’s no-fly list, which checks the names of domestic airline passengers against a list of people deemed to be threats, went into effect on Monday.

Fewer than 1,000 names are believed to be on Transport Canada’s Specified Persons list, unlike its U.S. counterpart, which has grown to contain more than 44,000. The list will not be available to the public, which means those on it will only find out when they try to travel.

The “dynamic” list will be adjusted as intelligence agencies such as CSIS and the RCMP evaluate “reliable and vetted” information, said Allan Kagedan, chief of aviation security policy for Transport Canada.

“The numbers will change, so I’m not sure what there’s a real point in identifying a number,” Kagedan told CBC News on Monday.

Barry Prentice, director of the Transport Institute at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, said the list is “sort of a charade” to make people feel like they have greater security.

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By Jonathan Duffy, BBC News Online Magazine
Last Updated: Thursday, 3 June, 2004, 11:34 GMT 12:34 UK

The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever.

Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn’t go a bundle on its switchboard operations.

Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice – the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman – reciting back the number and inviting callers to “leave a message after the tone”.

Anyone who accidentally dialled the number would probably think they had stumbled on just another residential answer machine.

But behind this ultra-modest façade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.

On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting.

For four days some of the West’s chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.

What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.

Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.

…

“My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.

Mr Gosling seizes on a quote from Will Hutton, the British economist and a former Bilderberg delegate, who likened it to the annual WEF gathering where “the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide”.

“One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting,” says Mr Gosling.

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