The Globe and Mail 01/10/2014 - A federal cyberbullying bill that includes controversial new surveillance powers - and immunity for telecommunications companies that voluntarily hand over private data to police - has taken another step toward becoming law, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that critics say is at odds with the bill. Bill C-13, which had sat idle in Parliament since MPs adjourned for summer, passed in a vote at its report stage Wednesday shortly after a separate vote that capped the amount of time that will be spent in the House debating it. Bill C-13 makes it illegal to circulate an intimate image without the subject's consent, but also includes a host of new "lawful access" powers, such as new warrants for police access to online data, phone records or for digital tracking. Critics have warned the bill's thresholds for warrants are too low and that the cyberbullying law is too broad and vague. The bill also grants immunity to telecoms that voluntarily hand over data, a sticking point raising privacy concerns. The Supreme Court's Spencer decision in June ruled that warrants are generally required when seeking subscriber information from telecoms.

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Your iPhone is now encrypted. The FBI says it'll help kidnappers. Who do you believe?

Bras de fer entre le FBI, Apple et Google sur le chiffrement

FBI Director equates protecting personal privacy with lawlessness

Nine epic failures of regulating cryptography

Vancouver Observer 29/09/2014 - Documents reveal that Security Intelligence Review Committee member Yves Fortier is a shareholder in TransCanada Corporation - the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline. Fortier is one of three review committee members recently appointed to lead the investigation regarding the Canadian Security Intelligence Service gathering information on climate activists opposed to Canada's energy policies. A May 1998 corporate document obtained by the Vancouver Observer lists Fortier as Director, TransCanada - and holding 2,086 Common Shares Held as of April 30, 1998. These revelations come only months after former SIRC Chair Chuck Strahl resigned as Canada's top spy watchdog in an apparent conflict-of-interest over business arrangements with Enbridge pipelines while serving on the SIRC committee. Fortier - a former director of TransCanada - was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to SIRC in August 2013. "I ceased to become a director twelve...fifteen years ago" said Fortier. When asked today if he still maintains holdings in TransCanada Corporation, Fortier responded: "I would have to ask my financial advisor. I think I do, actually". When pressed further, a terse Fortier then admitted: "I am confirming that to the best of my recollection that I still have some shares in my portfolio of some TransCanada shares".

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iPolitics 25/09/2014 - What happened to Maher Arar was never supposed to happen again.
Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife, a family and a good job, was 'rendered' to a Syrian prison in 2002. There he was tortured for months because anonymous Canadian officials, working hand-in-glove with the U.S. government, used bogus 'intelligence' to tar him as a terrorist.
Simply put, that's what former Ontario Associate Chief Justice Dennis O'Connor concluded after he exhaustively examined what happened to Arar and why it happened. In the end, Ottawa had to pay Arar millions of dollars for smearing his name and for permitting a loyal Canadian to be secretly shipped like a piece of baggage - first to Jordan, then to Syria, where he was kept in a coffin-like cell where rats roamed free. Despite the horror that Arar endured - and the undeniable role that powerful Canadian officials played in it - more Canadians are being put in a position of having to defend themselves against the terrorist smear. This time, the powerful government officials making the terrorist-ties accusation aren't anonymous. They're in the PMO. And the latest target of the thinly-veiled 'terrorist' smear is the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), an independent, non-partisan, non-profit group that has worked for 14 years on human rights and civil liberties issues on behalf of Canadian Muslims.

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The Intercept 28/09/2014 - As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the "homeland." A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded "The Khorasan Group." After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat - too radical even for Al Qaeda! - administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.