rabble.ca 11/06/2015 - On Tuesday, when Opposition members questioned the government about the findings of the massive Voices-Voix report, Dismantling Democracy, Public Security Minister Steven Blaney answered that the government would "take no lessons" from people who "support terrorist organizations." Blaney was referring to a one-paragraph reference, in the 62-page Voices-Voix report, to IRFAN Canada -- the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy -- which the government recently classified as a terrorist organization. [...] Does an organization itself become "terrorist" if, in an uncontested effort to get medical and humanitarian aid to people in a conflict zone, it transacts with a duly elected body that is also classified as terrorist? Neither CRA nor the RCMP nor anyone else in authority has accused IRFAN of knowingly and deliberately supplying funds or resources to Hamas, or any other group, for violent, military purposes. IRFAN is condemned as being terrorist because the organizations it has worked with in Gaza are associated with the governing body, Hamas. Hamas, in turn, openly pursues what it would call armed resistance -- what others choose to call terrorism. In the end, Voices-Voix made its brief mention of the IRFAN case only as an example of how Canadian foreign policy and security considerations can severely hamper the activities of groups in Canada that seek to do charitable and humanitarian work. [...] For his part, the Minister for Public Security was happy to dismiss the entire report on the basis of that one, short paragraph. His philosophy seems to be: when in doubt, reach for the t-word. Many will see Minister Blaney's argument for what it is: an effort to establish guilt by association. In this case, it is association with terrorists that is at least twice removed. At other times there has been a word for that sort of accusatory tactic. That word is McCarthyism.   

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Read the report - Dismantling Democracy: Stifling debate and dissent in Canada

Egypt's civil society facing renewed government crackdown

Bahrain opposition leader given four-year jail sentence 

The Canadian Press 18/06/2015 - Canada's rising detention of non-criminal foreigners in maximum-security prisons amounts to arbitrary, cruel and inhumane treatment that violates international obligations, a disturbing new report concludes. The report by the University of Toronto's International Human Rights Program finds that Canada Border Services Agency has become more heavy handed in dealing with migrants with little or no accountability. Renu Mandhane, a criminal lawyer and the program's executive director, said the report reveals "shocking gaps" in the rule of law. "A CBSA officer essentially has the discretion to determine that somebody should be held in maximum-security jail conditions," Mandhane said Wednesday in an interview. "It was really surprising to me...that decision was totally discretionary and also not subject to any rules." The report, called "We Have No Rights", concludes incarceration can have a catastrophic impact on migrants' mental health. It contains harrowing profiles of detainees imprisoned for as long as eight years who talk of a lack of access to support services, confinement in cold windowless cells, their despair. "They treat us like garbage," one inmate told researchers. "We had no rights at all."

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What dual citizens need to know about Bill C-24, the new citizenship law

Fraude à la citoyenneté : des milliers de Canadiens visés, peu de révocations

Chute du nombre de demandes d'asile: Ottawa dit n'avoir rien à se reprocher

The Hill 17/06/2015 - A top federal court on Wednesday ruled that people held for months on end for immigration violations following Sept. 11, 2001, can sue top government officials for racial profiling and other abuses. The split decision from a three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals comes after more than a decade of litigation and could lead to increased scrutiny of the government's behavior following the 2001 terror attack. "We simply cannot conclude at this stage that concern for the safety of our nation justified the violation of the constitutional rights on which this nation was built," Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley wrote in their 109-page decision. "The question at this stage of the litigation is whether the [eight foreigners arrested on immigration charges] have plausibly pleaded that the [government officials] exceeded the bounds of the Constitution in the wake of 9/11," they wrote. "We believe that they have." After being arrested for immigration charges, such as overstaying a visa or working without legal authorization after 9/11, the men were held for between three to eight months in New York or New Jersey. The men, who are all Arab or South Asian, were detained for being "suspected terrorists" and claim that they were abused by prison guards and subjected to extended solitary confinement. In 2002, they filed a class-action lawsuit against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, and other federal and local law enforcement officials. Wednesday's decision allows that lawsuit to go forward.

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UNHCR - Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase 

rabble.ca 16/06/2015 - A budget implementation bill is an unlikely -- and many would say inappropriate -- place to make major changes to Canadian privacy law. Yet Bill C-59, the government's 158-page bill that is set to sweep through the House of Commons, does just that. The omnibus budget bill touches on a wide range of issues, including copyright term extension and retroactive reforms to access to information laws. But there are also privacy amendments that have received little attention.
In fact, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada was not even granted the opportunity to appear before the committee that "studied" the bill, meaning that privacy was not discussed nor analyzed (the committee devoted only two sessions to external witnesses for study, meaning most issues were glossed over). The bill raises at least three privacy-related concerns. First, the retroactive reforms to access to information, which are designed to backdate the application of privacy and access to information laws to data from the long-gun registry, has implications for the privacy rights of Canadians whose data is still contained in the registry. By back-dating the law, the government is effectively removing the privacy protections associated with that information. Second, the government plans to expand its collection of biometric information, including fingerprints and digital photos, to visitors from 150 countries. The law currently applies to 29 countries and one territory, meaning this constitutes a massive expansion in the amount of personal data the government collects. The regulations associated with the biometric data collection have yet to be released, but the expansion raises privacy concerns over how the information is stored, the potential for false matches, and the need for appropriate notices about the collection, use and potential disclosure of the information.

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'Billions' of records at risk from mobile app data flaw

Droit à l'oubli: Google mis en demeure en France