The Huffington Post 21/07/2016 - The commissioner's mandate is mainly to review CSE activities and their compliance with the law, and in the case of complaints, to undertake investigation. However, the commissioner report, which is supposed to be an independent exercise conducted by a review body, seems more and more like a self-congratulatory document where criticism directed at the CSE or its activities is hard to find. [...] In previous years, two main problems became clear to the public in regard to CSE activities: 1. The stipulations protecting the privacy of Canadians are not always respected, as CSE was reminded by Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien. 2. The lack of safeguards when it comes to information sharing with other agencies -- the Canada Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS), for example. [...] It seems from the report that, in general, the commissionner recommends that the minister should always be informed about controversial issues, but no specific mechanism is suggested to deal with the identified problems. The issue of transparency becomes a matter of blind trust in the hands of the minister of national defence.

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The Canadian Press 20/07/2016 - Canadian citizens Arar, Almalki, El-Maati, Nureddin, etc. were tortured abroad because of false information shared by Canadian officials with foreign governments. Have we learned nothing? "Canada's electronic spy agency won't say how often it shares information that could lead to someone being tortured in an overseas prison. The Communications Security Establishment -- which monitors threats from foreign terrorists and spies -- has censored documents that spell out the figures, even though the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service have revealed such numbers in the past. The reticence prompted Amnesty International Canada to say "much greater transparency" is needed from the Ottawa-based CSE. "At stake is Canada's compliance with crucial international human rights obligations to prevent torture and ill-treatment," said Alex Neve, Amnesty's Canadian secretary general."

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Bob Paulson apologizes for 'egregious behaviour,' nudity at RCMP bomb school

RCMP didn't 'purge' public documents, the Mounties actually just had no idea where they were

The Canadian Press 20/07/2016 - The Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU), an unaccountable and opaque system unlike few others, has cleared police officers of any wrongdoing. A Coroner's inquest will take place in two years but that will make no finding of guilt and its recommendations do not need to be implemented. The CBSA, as always, has nothing to say. This is how they want Abdi's story to end, without anyone being held accountable. This we refuse. We indict all the systems that colluded in his death and we commit yet again to fighting them. Today, about 50 men are on hunger strike. Each of them fears dying like Abdurahman. This, we cannot allow.

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Province must stop housing federal immigration detainees: Cole

Do immigration detainees belong behind bars? Radio interview with Barbara Jackman & Macdonald Scott

The Chronicle Herald 15/07/2016 - "Clear gaps" in how the federal government reports invasive surveillance practices may hide the true scope of police activities, according to documents prepared for Canada's privacy watchdog. Although the number of authorized wiretaps has "plummeted" since 2002, a January briefing for Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien suggests those numbers may mask police surveillance practices. "It would be erroneous to infer from the drop in overall warrants issued that surveillance is affecting fewer individuals," reads the document, obtained under access to information law. "While federal authorities issued just over a hundred surveillance warrants last year (2014), they issued 792 notifications of surveillance to individuals previously targeted. From this, one can conclude more and more individuals are being named as targets in a warrant application. "With a single warrant from the Federal Court (police) may list dozens of individuals for surveillance targeting." Public Safety is required to issue a report each year about the number of warrants sought to put individuals under surveillance - "wiretap" warrants that allow police extraordinary powers to keep tabs on individuals. But police aren't just bugging the phones of bad guys anymore. New technology allows law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance on a much wider scale.

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US may let foreign states serve warrants on tech firms, but only if feds can do the same

Edward Snowden's new research aims to keep smartphones from betraying their owners

Le Devoir 18/07/2016 - En matière de tromperies nourries par la politique de la peur, Nice ne manquait d'ailleurs pas d'illustrations affligeantes: ville française avec le plus gros parc de caméras en milieu urbain, le plus gros effectif de policiers municipaux, une milice citoyenne formée de 520 personnes à la «moralité vérifiée», elle n'en demeure pas moins au 401e rang des 408 métropoles de France pour les crimes contre la propriété et contre la personne. Et désormais au premier rang des villes de France ayant subi une attaque de civils au camion. Le paradoxe en amène un autre : les atteintes portées aux libertés individuelles par la surveillance de masse reposent bel et bien sur une promesse de sécurité, de protection, de défense du confort des masses, qui, malgré la conviction des politiques portées comme des dogmes par une frange grandissante de populistes, est loin de se réaliser. [...] Tout au plus, leur défaillance vient surtout nourrir la bête. Au lendemain de l'attentat de Nice, le parti conservateur français, Les Républicains, a réclamé une modification de la loi pour autoriser la reconnaissance faciale automatique par vidéosurveillance. Ainsi, en passant devant une caméra, le citoyen dévoilerait plus qu'un visage : il livrerait aussi aux autorités un pedigree, une adresse, un numéro de téléphone, une date de naissance... Une autre intrusion dans l'intimité des citoyens qui, on s'en doute, face à l'ingéniosité du désespéré, ne peut être encore une fois rien de plus qu'un autre leurre.

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The Intercept 15/07/2016 - While the motive for the attack is still under investigation, it is worth examining why the Islamic State is so eager to claim such incidents as its own. On the surface, ramming a truck into a crowd of people gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks seems like an act of pure nihilism. No military target was hit. Initial reports suggest that the killings may lead to French attacks on ISIS's already-diminishing territories in Iraq and Syria. And French Muslims, many of whom were reportedly killed in the attack, will likely face security crackdowns and popular backlash from a public angry and fearful in the wake of another incomprehensible act of mass murder. But the Islamic State's statements and history show that such an outcome is exactly what it seeks. In the February 2015 issue of its online magazine Dabiq, the group called for acts of violence in the West that would "[eliminate] the grayzone" by sowing division and creating an insoluble conflict in Western societies between Muslims and non-Muslims. Such a conflict would force Muslims living in the West to "either apostatize ... or [migrate] to the Islamic State, and thereby escape persecution from the crusader governments and citizens."

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Nice : comment le discours du pouvoir sur les liens avec le terrorisme islamiste a évolué

Is the War on Terror a "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"?

Chilcot Report and the delusions of Western democracy

The Intercept 15/07/2016 - Much of the information in the 28 pages is not new and has been mentioned in previously released documents on the 9/11 investigation. As such, the public release of these suppressed pages is unlikely to precipitate major changes in the relationship between the United States and the Saudi government. In a statement issued on Friday, the Saudi Embassy in the United States said that it "welcomes the release" of the suppressed pages, saying that they exonerate Riyadh of any direct role in the attacks. While the report does not find any smoking gun pointing to official Saudi involvement, it does highlight one consistently troubling theme of the kingdom's response to the attacks: its refusal to cooperate with investigators seeking to uncover information about the hijackers. As the report notes, "In testimony and interviews, a number of FBI agents and CIA officers complained to the [inquiry] about a lack of Saudi cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September 11th attacks." Referencing a May 1996 Director of Central Intelligence memo, the report cited agency beliefs that "the Saudis had stopped providing background information or other assistance on Bin Ladin because Bin Ladin had 'too much information about official Saudi dealings with Islamic extremists in the 1980s for Riyadh to deliver him into U.S. hands.'"

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Medea Benjamin: Why Is Government Downplaying Saudi-9/11 Docs After Keeping Them Secret for Years?

How terrorism in the West compares to terrorism everywhere else