statism watch

The Canadian Press
Friday, February 29, 2008

Lawyers for alleged terrorist Adil Charkaoui vowed Thursday to fight Canada’s new security certificates in the Supreme Court.

Lawyer Johanne Doyon said she will argue that an accused has the right to know the allegations and evidence against him, and to share the information with his lawyer.

Doyon, speaking in her client’s hometown of Montreal, said the new certificates also contravene the federal Bill of Rights.

Doyon said the Federal Court was advised Tuesday of Charkaoui’s decision to pursue a constitutional challenge. She said the motion will be filed within a month.

“We’re going as fast as we can because it is in the interests of Mr. Charkaoui to go fast,” Doyon said.

“You can understand, to have this condition on him, it’s too much. It’s very difficult for him. He is suffering a lot.”

Charkaoui and his lawyers are also unhappy that a summary of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s case against him was posted on the Federal Court’s website last week.

The posting outlined Charkaoui’s alleged discussion of a plan to hijack a plane and his application to work at Air Canada. The details were part of the announcement of the new security certificate against Charkaoui.

“It’s one side of the story that you have there,” Doyon said. “Inside the Federal Court file, there is a lot of documentation which contradicts the resumé in question, and we feel that it is unfair to have only one side.”

Another sore point was that reporters saw the posting on the new certificate before Charkaoui and his lawyers did.

Charkaoui and his lawyer refused to address the specific allegations contained in the summary.

‘Insulted by the incompetence of CSIS’

A weary Charkaoui attended the brief late-afternoon news conference and bitterly criticized the spy agency’s handling of his case, saying they have been basing their investigation on unfounded allegations against him.

“I am profoundly insulted by the incompetence of CSIS,” he said.

Charkaoui, who was born in Morocco but now lives in Montreal, was arrested in 2003 under a federal security certificate and was detained until 2005, when he won his release in court.

In a landmark judgment a year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the previous security certificates, the legal tools used by Ottawa to deport terrorist suspects who don’t hold Canadian citizenship.

The old regime allowed indefinite detention and eventual removal from Canada based on secret intelligence presented to a judge behind closed doors, with few details ever disclosed to defendants.

The new law, which passed in the House of Commons, would improve bail procedures and permit special security-cleared lawyers to attend the secret hearings, challenge government evidence and protect the rights of the accused.

Critics say the changes don’t go far enough and maintain that the new regime is also likely to be overturned as a violation of the Charter of Rights.

Doyon argued that the system providing security-cleared lawyers isn’t good enough because it deprives detainees of their chosen legal representation.

Source

CBC News
Last Updated: Friday, February 29, 2008 | 12:17 AM ET

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday there is “absolutely no truth” in allegations that Conservatives tried to bribe a dying Independent MP in 2005, although a recording of an interview he gave at the time seems to suggest otherwise.

In a raucous session of question period on Parliament Hill Thursday, Harper told the House that he investigated claims the Conservatives offered a million-dollar life insurance policy to the late Chuck Cadman just two days before a critical vote on May 19, 2005.

“There is absolutely no truth in it,” the PM said.

The allegations were made by Cadman’s wife, Dona, in a forthcoming book, Like A Rock: The Chuck Cadman Story.

Cadman, a B.C. MP who was battling cancer and died in July 2005, ultimately sided with the ruling minority Liberals in the vote, ensuring Canadians would not head to the polls for a summer election. The Conservatives were the official Opposition at the time, and Harper was at the helm of the party.

Harper is quoted in the book, and appears to confirm that some sort of financial arrangement was offered to Cadman. He was interviewed by the book’s author, Vancouver journalist Tom Zytaruk, shortly after Cadman’s death in 2005.

CBC News has obtained a copy of the audio recording of the interview.

Full Story

Larisa Alexandrovna, The Raw Story
Published: Thursday February 28, 2008

Hijacker had post-9/11 flights scheduled, files say

Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.

The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA request filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.

The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

 Full Story

CBC News
Last Updated: Monday, February 25, 2008 | 10:10 PM ET

The Defence Department is advising Canadian soldiers not to post personal photos and information on social networking websites like Facebook, citing security concerns.

The advisory was circulated in a memo obtained by CBC News. It warns soldiers not to appear in uniform in online photos and not to disclose their military connections.

“Al Qaeda operatives are monitoring Facebook and other social networking sites,” the memo says.

…

But Sunil Ram, an international security and defence analyst, questioned the military’s warnings about posting information online.

“What we’re really talking about is censorship more than anything else,” he said on Monday. “This is the military’s attempt to control the imagery of what is actually happening on the ground.”

Full Story

David Pugliese ,  Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, February 22, 2008

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.

The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.

“It’s kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration. We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites,” said Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians.

Trew said there is potential for the agreement to militarize civilian responses to emergency incidents. He noted that work is also underway for the two nations to put in place a joint plan to protect common infrastructure such as roadways and oil pipelines.

“Are we going to see (U.S.) troops on our soil for minor potential threats to a pipeline or a road?” he asked.

Full Story

Colin Freeze, Omar El Akkad, Globe and Mail
February 22, 2008

Ottawa – A new set of security certificates related to a number of alleged terrorists in Canada were signed Friday, narrowly beating a Supreme Court-imposed deadline that would have effectively crushed the old set of certificates.

Security certificates issued under a new law passed just this month were entered into federal court on Friday. The certificates are issued against five men, all suspected of being involved in Islamic terrorism. Most of the men are no longer in prison, but instead living under strict movement restrictions and surveillance. The suspects’ detention has sometimes been referred to as a “three-walled prison,” because at any time they are free to leave Canada. However the suspects have repeatedly challenged the allegations and secret evidence against them.

In 2006, the Supreme Court found that parts of the previous legislation dealing with security certificates violated the Charter of Rights. The court gave the government one year to fix the law, or see the current security certificates expire. This Friday marked the last working day before the court deadline.

On Friday, the Justice Department designated a new class of lawyer to address the discrepancy in the law, designating 13 “special advocates” to argue against secret evidence presented in terrorism cases against immigrants.

The new class of lawyers has created much debate in legal circles, with some lawyers complaining the designation amounts to a fig leaf for a still-unpalatable process, whereas other lawyers have argued they should at least give the new proceedings a shot.

Under the old security-certificate legislation, suspected terrorists could be kept from seeing the evidence against them for reasons of national security. Under the new legislation, such suspects would be able to have an advocate – act on their behalf. Such advocates would be able to meet at length with suspects, and then see all the secret evidence against them. However, after the advocates have seen the evidence, their subsequent contact with the suspect would be severely limited.

The previous set of certificates were issued to six men. However one of those men appears to be left out of the new set. No new certificate was issued for Manickavasagam Suresh, an alleged Tamil Tiger fundraiser.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has praised the new legislation as the best of its kind in the world. However he has also said he expects the new law to be challenged in court again.

The list of 13 lawyers, named by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, include some of the Canada’s best-known legal luminaries, lawyers with hard-won expertise in dealing with national-security secrecy claims.

While chosen by the government, the special advocates are no stooges. Many have battled government secrecy in past security-certificate cases and during judicial inquiries.

The Justice Department had run a special advocates school this week, to tutor the lawyers in why national-security secrecy claims are made and why they must be upheld. The special advocates will be allowed to talk to their clients before they see the secret evidence against them, but not after the special advocates learn the totality of the allegations.

Much of the reason for has to do with foreign relations. Canadian security agencies, which describe themselves as “net importers” of intelligence from foreign agencies, complain that the information pipeline would be compromised if they divulge sensitive secrets passed along by others. To spill other countries secrets then, is seen as tantamount to jeopardizing national security.

The security-certificate procedure the special advocates will be taking part in is a measure designed to kick out potentially dangerous immigrants, who do not have the same legal rights as criminally accused persons in Canada. The government need only convince a Federal Court judge that there is a “reasonable suspicion” an individual is a threat to the security of Canada. Parts of the case can be made in secret.

The special advocates include many veterans of Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor’s inquiry into the Maher Arar affair, including Lorne Waldman, Paul Cavalluzzo, Barbara McIsaac, and Ronald Atkey. They had respectively represented Mr. Arar, Judge O’Connor, the government of Canada and served as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court.

Two defence lawyers in ongoing security certificate case have also been appointed special advocates. Paul Copeland and John Norris who have spent years railing against government secrecy during these cases.

The designation of special advocates may mean they finally get to know the totality of the evidence against their clients, but they will also find themselves in the awkward position of keeping government secrets once they hear them.

The other special advocates include Nancy Brooks, Gordon Cameron, Francois Dadour, James Duggan, Anil Kapoor and Ivan Whitehall.

Source

The Daily Mail
Last updated at 15:37pm on 21st February 2008

A school has been forced to remove CCTV cameras they installed in the students’ toilets after furious protests from pupils and parents.

Hundreds of outraged students petitioned against the cameras after they spotted them in the toilets and even refused to use the loos all day so they were not caught on CCTV.

Other children were kept at home by their families rather than expose themselves to the “gross invasion of privacy”.

Full Story

By MATTHEW HICKLEY, The Daily Mail
Last updated at 06:56am on 19th February 2008

Doctors, teachers and social workers will be told to act as informers to identify potential violent offenders for monitoring by the police and other agencies.

Ministers hope that by spotting binge-drinkers, drug addicts and young gang members early before they commit serious crimes they can be placed on a national database and steered away from offending behaviour.

The plans have been dubbed the Minority Report powers, a reference to the 2002 Tom Cruise movie in which a futuristic “precrime” police unit uses psychics to arrest and imprison criminals just before they carry out attacks.

But civil liberty campaigners and union bosses warned that such intrusive measures by the Home Office would destroy the relationship of trust between GPs and their patients or social workers and clients.

Full Story

Don Butler, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

$2 million given to team to develop new technology

OTTAWA — Emil Petriu is in full oratorical flight, defending his controversial research in a Transylvanian accent that lapses in and out of penetrability.

“I’m crazy. I’m paranoid,” Petriu smilingly tells a visitor to his office in the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Technology and Engineering.

He’s not really, of course.

At 60, he’s a pioneer in the development of wireless sensor-based “information appliances,” such as intelligent homes and cars, and worked on tactile sensors for the space station program.

Since arriving from his native Romania in 1985, he has taught at the University of Ottawa where, in 2004, he was named a university research chair. Now, he’s on the cutting edge of an emerging brave new world.

Last week, a team he heads received $2 million from Ontario to develop and commercialize new surveillance technologies for such public spaces as airports, school campuses and shopping malls.

Full Story

Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch
February 19, 2008

The federal Liberals’ recent promotion of an illegal fundraising scheme, along with the federal Conservatives’ court battle with Elections Canada over spending during the last federal election, and the widespread ongoing involvement of lobbyists in all political parties, reveals just how much the attitudes of the inside-Ottawa-elite and wannabe-elite are the main barrier to having an honest, ethical, open, representative and, therefore, waste-preventing federal government.

While representatives of parties from across the political spectrum point accusing fingers at each other, none of them have focused on cleaning up the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” system that has legalized trading favours as the basis for most decisions made in Ottawa (and in provincial and territorial capitals, and in many cities and towns) in the past 140 years since Canada became a country.

It’s as if they have never heard the common-sense sayings “Money talks” and “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Full Story