Sandra Finley

2013-10-10 Census Lockheed Martin: my case is dismissed, without costs. (Means that I lost the case.)

 Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Ladar Levison, Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  2 Responses »
Oct 102013
 

The application for leave-to-appeal to the Supreme Court was “dismissed” which means that I lost the legal battle.

 

WHAT IS THE CHARTER RIGHT TO PRIVACY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION  WHICH WAS THE DEFENCE IN MY TRAIL?  WHAT WAS LOST?

“In fostering the underlying values of dignity, integrity and autonomy, it is fitting that s. 8 of the Charter should seek to protect a biographical core of personal information which individuals in a free and democratic society would wish to maintain and control from dissemination to the state.”

(Ref.  Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 8 Privacy – Case Law: The Queen Vs Plant protects a “biographical core of personal information” from the state. Oakes Test to override.)

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Hello everyone,

The Tobias judgment is below — scroll down.  (89-year-old Audrey Tobias was charged for failure to comply with the 2011 Census.  Audrey did not fill in a census form because of Lockheed Martin’s involvement at StatsCan.)

Regarding my own case (2006 Census, objection to Lockheed Martin, charter right to privacy of personal information the legal argument put forth because it was the argument with the greatest likelihood of success):

The Supreme Court “dismissed” the application for Leave-to-Appeal.  They decided not to hear the appeal.  So the lower court decisions (“guilty”) stand, at least as far as the Province of Saskatchewan is concerned.

The decision by the SCC to dismiss the appeal is based on the “Objective Summary” provided to the deciding panel.  That Summary made two points, both of which began with the statement:

“The applicant refused to fill in and return any of the long form census form.”

Through my lawyer, I tried to get the Summary changed.  I had had numerous conversations with StatsCan, Prosecution Services and the Judge through the years.  NEVER was PARTIALLY filling in the form an option.  The Citizen is pressured  to fill in the form, to provide all the personal information sought by the form.

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Peter writes:

I think your case was very worthwhile in spite of losing; it helped to make Canadians aware of Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the census, and to question it.

To me, an important eye-opener:

My trial shed light on the vulnerability of our Charter Rights.  As far as I know, the  Oakes Test has been accepted, unchallenged mythology.  See the short explanation, The Oakes Test to over-ride Charter Rights.  How Prosecutors get around it.

I conclude that the defenders of our Charter Rights are we ourselves.  The Justice system and the Government are not going to do it.   Through numbers provided in the transcript of the Tobias trial the head of StatsCan census operations testified that non-compliance is now 11%.  Some portion of that represents defence of the Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information.

The situation legally is now this:

THE SASKATCHEWAN COURT-OF-APPEAL DECISION STANDS – –  IT APPLIES IN SASKATCHEWAN.

In Saskatchewan the Courts, by finding me guilty of non-compliance with the 2006 Census, have effectively ruled that in Saskatchewan we do NOT have the Charter Right to Privacy of personal information in this case where the demand came from Statistics Canada.   (That was the issue through the appeal process in my trial.)

(BUT, as explained below and in a number of postings,  do not confuse StatsCan “surveys” with censuses.)

THE ONLY AVENUE LEFT, TO UPHOLD THE CHARTER RIGHT WOULD BE

By the issue coming up through the Justice system in one of the other provinces.  (The Courts of Appeal in the different provinces CAN and sometimes DO, take different views.  There may then be another appeal to the Supreme Court.)

THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA (SCC) CHOSE NOT TO HEAR THE QUESTION OF PRIVACY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION, IN MY CASE

Unfortunate.  It is a very important question for Canadians, especially in the wake of the leaks by Edward Snowden, and in the context of the American military/surveillance intrusion into Canada.  Lockheed Martin is involved with the work being done at StatsCan;  and also with the NSA.   I think it most likely that “back-door” entry to the StatsCan data base has been established, with or without StatsCan knowledge.

Can’t know whether the privacy question vis-à-vis StatsCan data base will come to the SCC again in the future, through someone else in a different province.

The Supreme Court of Canada decided not to hear an appeal of the decision of the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal.  (The Sask Appeal Court upheld the decisions of the lower courts in Saskatchewan.  I was found “guilty” but given an absolute discharge in relation to the 2006 census long form.)

It may be a moot point. The CENSUS long form (50+ questions, many of them personal – 2006) no longer exists.   And SURVEYS (the National Household Survey, 80+ questions, replaced the census long form) are not mandatory.  So people cannot be prosecuted for failure to comply (to hand over all the personal information), as was the case for myself and others in 2006.

A problem I have is that StatsCan continues to tell people that they have to hand over the information requested in a Survey, because “It is the Law.  You will be prosecuted if you don’t.”  Which is not true.   See  ARE STATSCAN “SURVEYS” MANDATORY?

I believe we have to strenuously defend Charter Rights.  It is a low point, when, in the Province of Saskatchewan the Justices rationalized away the Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information.

Refer also to (short and easy to understand):  The Oakes Test to over-ride Charter Rights.  How Prosecutors get around it.

So, we keep on, keepin’ on!

PEACE GROUPS

A few days ago I posted on many facebook groups:

If we want peace, we have to be knowledgeable, and use every opportunity to halt the WAR CORPORATIONS. 

How do we combat the financial incentives to war? A large percentage of the American economy is dependent upon their War machinery. Canada is expanding its dependence. The War Corporations make money, always. They are considered to be a wise investment. To add insult to injury, tax payers provide huge funding to them.  (F-35 contracts!) 

And so it happens that I refused to participate in the Census – – Lockheed Martin Corporation has lucrative Government contracts related to Census and “Survey” data collection on citizens. They are the American war and surveillance industry. I ended up in Court. …

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TOBIAS

The Court decision in the Audrey Tobias case (Lockheed Martin / Census   Click on the link to see a copy of the decision.

The reason for acquittal was not related to the Charter Right.

Thanks to Rod for explaining it:

Great for her (Audrey Tobias) but not for the charter issue!!!!  They basically shuffled the cards and played a joker trump card and totally avoided the charter rights… which will not help your cause… my opinion. Highlighted in red…..your intent is obvious.

(“The judge rejected the charter arguments, but said that Tobias’s memory and some conflicting testimony left him with reasonable doubt as to her intent at the time of the refusal.

Audrey Tobias and her lawyer, Peter Rosenthal, were surprised by the judge’s decision. (Trevor Dunn/CBC)

Judge Ramez Khawly noted that for a conviction both the act and intent of a crime must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, so he had to acquit Tobias.

“It was an unusual judgment in my view,” Rosenthal said outside court. “He described our charter arguments as Hail Mary passes and he didn’t catch it …They were novel arguments but he found a more novel argument it seems in analyzing the [intent].”)”

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My many thanks to you all.

I am satisfied.  The ball landed in my court in March 2008 – –  the Summons to Court.  With the help of many people, the sharing of information, many more citizens are aware of what Lockheed Martin Corporation is, and what they are doing in Canada.

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EXCERPT from:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech Plus Words of Wisdom from Eisenhower.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

(note – – it’s worthwhile reading the rest of what Eisenhower said. It’s pretty amazing.)

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CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE  to Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the Statistics Canada  (called the “Census Bureau” in the U.S.) data base is because of what Lockheed Martin does in the world.

  • Besides the manufacture of weapons that are against Canadian and International Law
  • besides their international surveillance
  • besides how corrupt they are
  • Lockheed Martin Corp was very influential in the decision by the American Govt to drop bombs on Iraq in an illegal war justified by lies and propaganda.  The war has bankrupted the American people (trillions of dollars of debt), inflicted terrible destruction and de-stabilized the Middle East.
  • UPDATE:  In 2015 it became known that Lockheed Martin was the number one “contract interrogator” in the highly illegal and depraved torture at American offshore prisons like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

These are the guys that our tax dollars are enriching, through exorbitant contracts  (the price of just one helmet, required by each pilot of a Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth bomber is one million dollars.)

2013-10-09 Census Lockheed Martin: Audrey Tobias found not guilty in trial for census refusal over weapons-maker link

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Oct 092013
 

UPDATE:  Activist Audrey Tobias objected to Lockheed Martin’s involvement with processing the census in 2011. She died in December 2016. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

I have to pause for a moment.  Bless you, Audrey.

Toronto Audrey Tobias court

 

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/09/audrey-tobias-found-not-guilty-in-trial-for-census-refusal-over-weapons-maker-link/

 

Audrey Tobias found not guilty in trial for census refusal over weapons-maker link

 

Allison Jones, Canadian Press | October 9, 2013

 

Audrey Tobias walks from a Toronto court with her lawyer Peter Rosenthal on Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Chris Young / The Canadian PressAudrey Tobias walks from a Toronto court with her lawyer Peter Rosenthal on Wednesday, October 9, 2013

TORONTO — A Toronto judge lambasted the government Wednesday for its prosecution of an 89-year-old peace activist who refused to fill out the 2011 census, and found her not guilty.

Audrey Tobias admitted that she refused to fill out the basic personal information the census required because it was processed using software from U.S. military contractor Lockheed Martin.

But the judge noted there are two elements that the Crown must prove for a conviction: the act and the intent.

 

Tobias’s testimony left Ontario Court Judge Ramez Khawly unsure whether she was accurately recalling her intent for refusing the census nearly 2 1/2 years ago, or if the passage of time has “dimmed her memory.”

 

 

That left Khawly with reasonable doubt of Tobias’s intent and he said he therefore must acquit her.

Tobias stood defiant but soft spoken on the courthouse steps, saying she was willing to be dragged off to jail if she had been found guilty.

 

“I would have done whatever was necessary because I wasn’t willing to fill it in,” she said. Asked whether she had been afraid of the prospect of spending a maximum of three months behind bars, she shrugged.

“I was curious,” she said. “I wondered what it would be like.”

She wasn’t, however, willing to pay the maximum $500 fine the Statistics Act charge carried because she said that would be an admission of guilt.

Her lawyer, Peter Rosenthal, said outside court that it was unexpected for the case to come down to the “exact nuance of what she was thinking as she failed to fill out the form.”

“It’s a very unusual ruling in my experience and opinion,” he said.

“He wasn’t criticizing her for being an older person with a lack of memory. I mean, everybody reframes things as you rethink something that happened a couple of years ago.

Chris Young / The Canadian Press

Chris Young / The Canadian PressTobias grips a rail for support as she leaves court

 

Tobias said she didn’t think her age had anything to do with it.

“People are people until they’re dead, old or young,” she said.

There were 3,700 Canadians who refused to fill out the census, Tobias’s one-day trial heard, and that list was whittled down through various criteria to about 53 people who Statistics Canada recommended taking to court.

But the Department of Justice didn’t have to go along with prosecuting an elderly peace activist who was a “model citizen,” Khawly said.

 

I mean, really, could the defence have scripted anything better for their cause? Did no one at Justice clue in that on a public relations perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster? Are they that myopic that they could not see the train wreck ahead?

.

“Could they not have found a more palatable profile to prosecute as a test case?” Khawly said.

“I mean, really, could the defence have scripted anything better for their cause? Did no one at Justice clue in that on a public relations perspective, this was an unmitigated disaster? Are they that myopic that they could not see the train wreck ahead?”

Tobias was a photogenic “martyr in the making,” Khawly said.

“Anyone in Justice who had not seen that coming should be ushered immediately into an introductory marketing course,” he said.

 

Lawyer Peter Rosenthal, who represented Tobias pro bono, had argued that forcing her to complete the census would violate her freedoms of conscience and free expression.

Khawly rejected the Charter arguments he characterized as a “Hail Mary pass,” but admitted he was briefly captivated by the “siren song of the defence.”

“Only once I paused long enough, did the reality of giving in to this invitation hit me,” he said. “Rational thought replaced emotion. To accede to the defence view struck me as even more disturbing than Justice’s lack of sensitivity and feel for picking their battles.”

No reasonable interpretation of the law can justify the defence’s Charter arguments, no matter how “sympathetic” the accused, Khawly said.

“It is not readily apparent that answering the short, biographical census questions amounts to forcing a message on Ms. Tobias,” he said.

“(The defence’s argument) lacks any nexus between Ms. Tobias’s conscientious beliefs nor her freedom of expression and the legal requirement to complete the census questionnaire.”

2013-09-28 Street protests, The weapon of choice. Textbook for activists. The Economist.

 Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Peace or Violence  No Responses »
Oct 072013
 

(Note:  don’t let the beginning of the article dissuade you!)

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21586842-bloodshed-sometimes-helps-autocrats-stay-power-it-rarely-benefits-protesters-weapon

THE little screaming fact that sounds through all history”, John Steinbeck wrote, is that “repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.” The standard Western critique of skull-crackers on the streets of Cairo, Moscow or Tehran is “You will regret it.” But will they? History’s lessons regarding protests and violence are more complex. Bloodshed sometimes works for autocrats, at least temporarily. But for protesters themselves, taking up arms is usually a mistake.

Massacres do indeed leave the culprits isolated on the international stage and reviled at home, as citizens lose any illusions they might have harboured about their rulers. But, at least in the short term, they often keep regimes in power. China’s Communist rulers see the deaths on Tiananmen Square in 1989 as blood well spilled. Doubtless Iran’s have few regrets about the people they killed in 2009. Bashar Assad may feel that his atrocities in Syria have been vindicated. In this narrow sense—even if observers might wish otherwise—violence often succeeds.

2013-10-07 Brazil is tip of the iceberg on Canadian spying, U.S. journalist says, Globe & Mail

 Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Ladar Levison, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Oct 072013
 

Go to the URL – there is a short, good video interview of a journalist in Rio de Janeiro:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/more-disclosures-about-canadas-foreign-spying-activities-coming-us-journalist-says/article14726430/

(the text of the article is below, for back-up)

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Also of interest:

Canada’s elite soldiers expropriate to expand CFB Trenton  (With a note by me about the justification given by the Member-of-Parliament  – it’s jobs and economic development for the area, don’t you know!)

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Brazil is tip of the iceberg on Canadian spying, U.S. journalist says

BY Stephanie Nolen and Colin Freeze

Rio de Janeiro and Toronto — The Globe and Mail

More disclosures about Canada’s aggressive foreign spying activities are coming, suggests Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist revealing the top-secret documents acquired by Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency employee and security contractor.

“There is a huge amount of stuff about Canada in these archives because Canada works so closely with the NSA,” Mr. Greenwald, who lives in Brazil, told The Globe and Mail in an interview on Monday.

While he said that he would not comment on documents not yet made public, he said that Canadians should know that “there is nothing really unique about what Canada’s doing to Brazil – it’s not like Brazil is the only target for Canada.”

On Sunday, Mr. Greenwald teamed with reporter Sonia Bridi from Brazil’s flagship investigative television program Fantastico to reveal documents suggesting that the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC), an ultrasecretive “electronic-eavesdropping agency,” set out to conduct a cyber-espionage campaign against Brazil’s mines and energy ministry.

Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff called the spying “unacceptable” on Twitter Monday. Saying the spying appeared to be a clear case of industrial espionage, she demanded an explanation from the Canadian government.

The leaked documents suggest that in 2012 CSEC used a spying program code-named Olympia to map the phone calls, e-mails and video conferences made within the mines and energy ministry.

Mr. Greenwald said that Brazil isn’t the only country that the Olympia program has targeted, according to the documents he has seen. He added that the ramifications spread far beyond Brazil.

“The reason this is so newsworthy is that the U.S. and its allies love to say the only reason they are doing this kind of mass surveillance is they want to stop terrorism and protect national security – but these documents make clear it is industrial and economic competition, it’s about mining resources and minerals,” Mr. Greenwald said.

Last month, Mr. Greenwald and Globo revealed that the NSA is spying on Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company.

Mr. Greenwald says its hypocrisy that the United States and its allies publicly lament they are victims of cyber-espionage while privately engaging in such intelligence-gathering campaigns themselves.

“The U.S. is running around publicly accusing China of using hacking for industrial advantage – well, this is a really clear cut example of this – of how Canada and the rest of the Five Eyes are doing it,” he said.

The “Five Eyes” is the name for the secretive alliance of “signals-intelligence” agencies from the English-speaking world – Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States – that has existed since the Second World War. For decades countries have had a loose agreement to help each other spy on foreign countries, while refraining from spying on one another.

Mr. Greenwald said the revelations about CSEC he worked to broadcast on Fantastico on Sunday night stood out among the documents in the Snowden archive that he has reviewed so far.

“It was a pretty amazingly detailed document, given what these documents usually are.”

He wryly quipped that it was characteristically Canadian – “polite and thoughtful” – for the spy agency to have made its activities so explicit.

When the reporting team took the CSEC-stamped documents to Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy for a response, officials immediately latched on to their significance.

“The Brazilians were very specific about the competition they’re in with Canada and Canadian industry and the interest the industry has in Brazil,” Mr. Greenwald said. “And pretty indignant about how obvious the motive is, purely for industrial and economic advantage.”

One of the leaked slides makes it clear CSEC collaborates with the U.S. National Security Agency’s highly aggressive “Tailored Access Operations” unit.

“TAO is one of the most aggressive and insidious parts of the NSA – they’re hackers – they hack other people’s computers exactly the way hackers that the U.S. puts in prison do,” Mr. Greenwald said. “Canada is working with the NSA on some of the most aggressive techniques that the NSA did.”

Mr. Greenwald first met with Mr. Snowden in Hong Kong along with filmmaker Laura Poitras last summer. The former contractor had reached out to them, explaining that he had amassed a treasure trove of classified NSA and allied material that he wanted to leak.

Mr. Greenwald said that when he and Ms. Poitras began to learn what was in the documents, they were struck by “how active Canada is in its partnership with the U.S. and U.K.”

Mr. Snowden now lives in Moscow, out of the reach of U.S. authorities who are seeking to try him on espionage charges.

2013-10-07 Spy agency CSEC needs MPs’ oversight, ex-director says, CBC News

 Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Ladar Levison, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category)  No Responses »
Oct 072013
 

Please take time for the related ACTION ITEM:

2013-11-23  SIGN STATEMENT:  Protect our Privacy!  (IMPORTANT)

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RELATED:  2013-10-09  Inside Canada’s top-secret billion-dollar spy palace, CBC News

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FOLLOWING is a backup copy of the CBC Report.  Go to the URL for pictures. etc:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/spy-agency-csec-needs-mps-oversight-ex-director-says-1.1928983

CBC gets inside look at super-secret intelligence agency at heart of Brazilian spying allegations

 

By Greg Weston

In an exclusive interview with CBC News, the former head of Canada’s most secretive intelligence agency says there should be greater parliamentary scrutiny of the clandestine spy service at the heart of Brazilian espionage allegations.

Calls for more openness are certain to get louder in the wake of fresh allegations the agency spied on Brazil’s mining and energy ministry in search of corporate secrets.

In a rare interview, former spymaster John Adams told CBC News he thinks the government must do more “to make Canadians more knowledgeable about what the intelligence agencies are trying to do on their behalf.”

Adams recently retired after seven years as head of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, and he admits the agency has deliberately kept Canadians in the dark about its operations for decades.

“There’s no question that CSEC is very, very biased towards the less the public knows the better, and in fact it seems to have worked, because you very seldom see them on the front page of the newspapers.”

Part of CSEC’s mandate is to monitor foreign communications, including those coming into Canada.

But it cannot target domestic telephone or email traffic.

“That’s against the law,” says Adams, who left the highly secretive Ottawa-based agency last year. “Absolutely not.”

But, he adds, “We have got capability that is unique to this country. No one else has it,” Adams said.

Warning for Canadians

Adams admits that CSEC is not immune from some of the practices causing a furor in the U.S. and Britain, but stresses they are all legal.

For instance, he says, CSEC is gathering huge amounts of so-called metadata from phone companies and internet providers, information on large numbers of people including their complete phone and email records.

“Metadata is an issue, there’s no doubt about it,” Adams says, “but they can only use what is relevant to ongoing investigations.”

American internet users are also up in arms over revelations that the NSA has been making deals with major telecommunications companies to get past the security encryption codes protecting customer data.

Adams won’t reveal details about how CSEC spies operate in this country, but they are apparently breaking through encryptions.

“The reality is encryption is ubiquitous, it’s everywhere, so clearly if intelligence agencies are going to seek information, they’re going to be able to breach encryption.”

All of which helps to explain Adams’s warning for average Canadians: if you think anything you read, write or send via the internet is private, think again.

“The reality is if you’re on the internet, you literally might as well be on the front page of the Globe and Mail,” Adams says.

“You have to know that probably if someone’s interested in you, they may well be listening or reading or whatever it might be.”

Don’t count on passwords for protection, either.

“If you use a word that’s in the dictionary, they’ll crack it in less than a minute.”

Adams says about 900 of CSEC’s roughly 2,000 employees are involved in the spy business, both gathering intelligence and analyzing it.

A lot are young, talented computer hackers.

“These young people … they’re computer scientists, they’re engineers, they’re just interested in the business. And they can do things with CSEC that if they did them outside of CSEC would frankly be against the law.”

Privacy commissioner concerned

Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, is among those who worry Canadians are being kept in the dark about what goes on at CSEC.

“We don’t know enough about what CSEC does,” Stoddart said in an interview, adding that her office doesn’t have the authority to shine a light on CSEC.

The agency has its own watchdog, retired judge Robert Decary, who is stepping down for personal reasons at the end of the year.

Decary has a total staff of about a dozen people, only about half of whom are actual investigators.

Decary doesn’t give interviews, but Adams says CSEC processes more data in a day than all of Canada’s banks combined, so “obviously he doesn’t have the resources to look at everything.”

But Adams says the watchdog’s team does have access to enough key data to know whether CSEC is “doing something against the privacy law.”

In his final report to Parliament, Decary said he was unable in one instance to be able to determine if CSEC had broken the law, and he called for greater transparency.

Critics say Decary is not entirely independent, pointing out he reports to the defence minister, not Parliament, and even then his reports have to be vetted by CSEC for “national security reasons.”

As a result, Decary and his predecessors have produced reports that are rarely  enlightening to the public.

Even Adams, the former CSEC director, says it’s time for the agency to be more open and report to a special all-party parliamentary committee.

That may come soon if CSEC continues to land in hot water over its foreign spying.

Allegations that CSEC spied on Brazil are just the latest.

Documents obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and published in the British newspaper the Guardian in June suggest CSEC may have been part of a scheme to hack the phone calls and emails of ministers and diplomats at a G20 summit in London in 2009.

The leaked documents were apparently part of the intelligence debriefing after the summit, and those that made reference to spying on foreign diplomats included the CSEC’s official seal along with those of the NSA and the British spy service known as GCHQ.

Big Brother’s little brother

Thomas Drake, a former NSA intelligence executive turned American whistleblower,  says the Canadian logo on the document is proof that CSEC was somehow involved in the London spying.

“The fact that their seal shows up on those slides means they are participants by virtue of that alone.”

Drake says the Canadian and American intelligence agencies have a close relationship, though the U.S. and British agencies generally call the shots because of the sheer size of their operations.

“You can assume that in terms of CSEC, that it is one of the little brothers of Big Brother NSA,” Drake says.

So CSEC is “generally going to go along with whatever NSA and GCHQ say. They are in partnership.”

CSE’s participation in spying at the London summit is now bound to raise questions about whether Canada spied on its own guests at the G20 summit the following year in Toronto.

2013-10-06 (UK) Cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ spying programmes, says Chris Huhne. Ex-minister says he was in ‘utter ignorance’ of Prism and Tempora. The Guardian

 Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Ladar Levison, Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Oct 062013
 

By Nick Hopkins and Matthew Taylor

GCHQ

Chris Huhne questions whether the Home Office deliberately misled parliament over the surveillance capabilities of GCHQ, pictured. Photograph: GCHQ/MoD/EPA

Cabinet ministers and members of the national security council were told nothing about the existence and scale of the vast data-gathering programmes run by British and American intelligence agencies, a former member of the government has revealed.

Chris Huhne, who was in the cabinet for two years until 2012, said ministers were in “utter ignorance” of the two biggest covert operations, Prism and Tempora. The former Liberal Democrat MP admitted he was shocked and mystified by the surveillance capabilities disclosed by the Guardian from files leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“The revelations put a giant question mark into the middle of our surveillance state,” he said. “The state should not feel itself entitled to know, see and memorise everything that the private citizen communicates. The state is our servant.”

Writing in Monday’s Guardian, Huhne also questioned whether the Home Office had deliberately misled parliament about the need for the communications data bill when GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping headquarters, already had remarkable and extensive snooping capabilities.

He said this lack of information and accountability showed “the supervisory arrangements for our intelligence services need as much updating as their bugging techniques”.

Over the past three months the Guardian has made a series of disclosures about the activities of GCHQ and its much bigger American counterpart, the National Security Agency. Two of the most significant programmes uncovered in the Snowden files were Prism, run by the NSA, and Tempora, which was set up by GCHQ. Between them, they allow the agencies to harvest, store and analyse data about millions of phone calls, emails and search engine queries.

As a cabinet minister and member of the national security council (NSC), Huhne said he would have expected to be told about these operations, particularly as they were relevant to proposed legislation.

“The cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ’s Tempora or its US counterpart, the NSA’s Prism, nor about their extraordinary capability to hoover up and store personal emails, voice contact, social networking activity and even internet searches.

“I was also on the national security council, attended by ministers and the heads of the Secret [Intelligence Service, MI6] and Security Service [MI5], GCHQ and the military. If anyone should have been briefed on Prism and Tempora, it should have been the NSC.

“I do not know whether the prime minister or the foreign secretary (who has oversight of GCHQ) were briefed, but the NSC was not. This lack of information, and therefore accountability, is a warning that the supervision of our intelligence services needs as much updating as their bugging techniques.”

Huhne said Prism and Tempora “put in the shade Tony Blair’s proposed ID cards, 90-day detention without trial and the abolition of jury trials”.

He added: “Throughout my time in parliament, the Home Office was trying to persuade politicians to invest in ‘upgrading’ Britain’s capability to recover data showing who is emailing and phoning whom. Yet this seems to be exactly what GCHQ was already doing. Was the Home Office trying to mislead?

“The Home Office was happy to allow the NSC and the cabinet – let alone parliament – to remain in utter ignorance of Prism/Tempora while deciding on the communications data bill.”

The draft bill would have given police and the security services access, without a warrant, to details of all online communication in the UK – such as the time, duration, originator and recipient, and the location of the device from which it was made. The legislation was eventually dropped after splits in the coalition.

Proper scrutiny of the intelligence agencies was vital, said Huhne, and surveillance techniques needed to be tempered. “Joseph Goebbels was simply wrong when he argued that ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’. Information is power, and the necessary consequence is that privacy is freedom. Only totalitarians pry absolutely.”

Huhne, formerly the energy and climate change minister, was jailed this year after he admitted perverting the course of justice over claims his ex-wife took speeding points for him. In February he was sentenced to eight months in prison but was released after serving 62 days.

His intervention comes as concern about the oversight and scrutiny of Britain’s spy agencies grows. While former members of the intelligence community insist GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 operate with integrity and within the law, even they have questioned whether the oversight regime is fit for purpose following the Snowden revelations.

Over the last few days a former member of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Lord King, a former director of GCHQ, Sir David Omand, and a former director general of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, have questioned whether the agencies need to be more transparent and accept more rigorous scrutiny of their work.

On Monday, a former legal director of MI5 and MI6 will add his weight to the calls for change. David Bickford told the Guardian Britain’s intelligence agencies should seek authority for secret operations from a judge rather than a minister because public unease about their surveillance techniques is at an all-time high.

 

Bickford said the government should pass responsibility to the courts because of widespread “dissatisfaction with the covert, intrusive powers of the UK intelligence and law enforcement agencies”.

“Whether this is based on perception or reality doesn’t really matter,” he said. “As long as government ministers continue to authorise the agencies’ eavesdropping, telephone and electronic surveillance, and informant approval, the public will believe that there is an unhealthy seamless relationship between them.” Bickford said it was time for ministers to “step out of the equation and leave the authorisation of these highly intrusive methods to the judiciary”.

Bickford was drafted in to MI5 and MI6 following a series of scandals, including the furore over the book Spycatcher, written by the senior former MI5 officer Peter Wright. He worked for almost a decade until 1995 and still advises governments on countering international organised crime and terrorist money laundering.

Bickford said giving judges rather than cabinet ministers responsibility for authorising sensitive operations would “reduce the risk of perception of collusion … and limit the room for accusations of political interference.”

“Government may argue that all this is unnecessary as there is adequate oversight of the agencies. However, that cannot substitute for independent judicial authority at the coal face.”

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) condemned the way the British government had threatened legal action against the Guardian newspaper unless it destroyed the copy of the Snowden files it had in London.

“WAN-IFRA calls on democratic governments to recognise that acts of intimidation and surveillance against the press risk undermining the fabric of transparent, accountable governance,” the organisation’s board said in a resolution issued during its meeting on the eve of this week’s World Publishing Expo in Berlin, Germany.

2013-09-28 Diane Francis’ plan to merge Canada and the United States has many, many problems, National Post

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?  No Responses »
Oct 062013
 

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/28/jonathan-kay-diane-francis-plan-to-merge-canada-and-the-united-states-has-many-many-problems/

 

In her new book, National Post columnist Diane Francis makes the case for the U.S. and Canada forming a united North America

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Veteran National Post columnist Diane Francis has written 10 books. Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country is easily her most ambitious.

Perhaps a little too ambitious, many readers might conclude.

———–….

 

Plus, what would happen to the CFL? Would we still be permitted to play with three downs?

‘We’ve been dating heavily for generations. So now let’s talk about common law — or even go all the way and get married’.

Moreover, trends in public opinion, especially here in Canada, would seem to go against the grain of Ms. Francis’ thesis. A decade ago, many Canadians were envious of America’s more-vibrant economy, and there was much talk of a “brain drain.” But since the 2008 financial crisis in particular, such talk largely has evaporated, as per-capita GDP levels have equalized between the two nations.

When I raise such concerns, Ms. Francis warns me that I am missing the big picture. In her book, she argues that a “new cold war” is being fought between the U.S.-led west and the Chinese-led east — a war that “divides the world into players who are open and those who are secretive.”

She believes that the increasing Chinese ownership of Canadian resource companies shows that we’re losing this struggle. (Indeed, much of the book is dedicated to raising awareness of Chinese “economic aggression” within Canada’s borders.) And unless we Canadians embrace a full-fledged union with the United States, she argues, we are destined to become “neo-colonial” vassals of Beijing, and victims of Russian gunboat diplomacy in the Arctic Ocean. In a dystopian scenario sketched out by military historian Jack Granatstein in the book’s first chapter, readers are presented with the dubious prospect of whole flotillas of “dope smugglers” and terrorists being ferried through our Arctic waters by Chinese ships.

On the day of our interview, there was fresh news that Ukraine had inked a deal with a Chinese company to lease a full 5% of its land mass to Chinese agricultural operations. When I ask Ms. Francis if this is the type of “neo-colonialist” scenario she fears might play out in Canada, she nods solemnly.

“Canadians aren’t talking about this threat,” she says. “We have a Prime Minister who has been taking some steps [in the Arctic], yes. But then you have the four opposition leaders. Three are from Quebec and that’s what they talk about. And then there’s [the Green Party’s Elizabeth May] from B.C. who wants to turn the country into a giant park. Meanwhile, the world is hungry for our resources. If we don’t develop them [with American help], it might all be taken away from us.”

“The bottom line,” Ms. Francis adds, “is that in this world, you need to be a big player. If Canada is going to be the target of a creeping takeover from a big player, we may as well manage the process, instead of being victimized. That’s what the book is about. For Canada and the United States, one plus one is going to equal four. We’ve been dating heavily for generations. So now let’s talk about common law — or even go all the way and get married.”

 

— Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

 

 

2013-10-05 Canada’s Shadow Revenue Minister Warns Government against Sellout on FATCA, National Post

 Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Oct 062013
 

FATCA = Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (American)

Rain from heaven – –  I think I am supposed to bless the universe at this moment!   (And I do.)

  • For the trial I need citizens (and Judges) to see what is happening.
  • Audrey Tobias created a stir that brought more attention to the census and the role of the American military/surveillance through Lockheed Martin.
  • And now the information on FATCA is starting to get out (below).
  • Could not be better timing!  The next critical date in the trial is this Thursday (Oct 10).

 

NOTE:  Gil’s observations about Lockheed Martin and American access to Canadian data bases are in the Comments at the bottom of Lockheed Martin, War Economy, StatsCan, Census, Surveys, Charter Right Privacy, On Trial.

/Sandra

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FATCA increases surveillance capability by American powers.

It creates access by the NSA and other US “Security” agencies to foreign (and Canadian) bank, credit union and other institution records.  It applies to individual accounts, but not corporate.

At the top of the list of “must have” countries on which the U.S. Treasury Department needs to force submission to the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act” (FATCA) is our closest ally and biggest trading partner: Canada.

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American citizens are fighting FATCA (RepealFATCA.com).

Canadians, thankfully, are being drawn in.  We would otherwise be unaware.

It is being raised in the Federal Government by NDP MP Murray Rankin (article below).

This comes around the same time as the release of financial analyst Diane Francis’ book , Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country

– – – – – – – – – – — – – – – – – – – –

Canada’s Shadow Revenue Minister Warns Government against Sellout on FATCA

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Canada-s-Shadow-Revenue-Mi-by-James-Jatras-Canada-us-Integration-131005-282.html

James George Jatras for  RepealFATCA.com

Washington, DC

At the top of the list of “must have” countries on which the U.S. Treasury Department needs to force submission to the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act” (FATCA) is our closest ally and biggest trading partner: Canada.   Unless Ottawa agrees to sign on the dotted line to permit enforcement of this ill-conceived U.S. law against its own Canadian institutions and citizens, prospects for compelling the rest of the world to fall into line lose all credibility.

According to Treasury’s earlier expectations, Ottawa was to have knuckled under by the end of 2012.  That didn’t happen , though the Department continues to make increasingly absurd and nonfactual claims that the world is stampeding to sign so-called “intergovernmental agreements” (IGAs) that enlist foreign governments as enforcers for the IRS.   The first one to run up the white flag, unsurprisingly, was the United Kingdom, which has already finalized regulations that blatantly enforce this foreign (i.e., American) law on British institutions and citizens (” The International Tax Compliance (United States of America) Regulations 2013 “), at the cost of hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds — in return for nothing from the U.S .  (Can anyone imagine Congress’s passing a law authorizing the Treasury Department to issue regulations on American firms and citizens to impost The International XYZ Compliance (China, France, Germany — take your pick ) Regulations 2013?)

In Ottawa, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is under strong pressure to follow London’s poodle-like example .  The problem is, Canada is a country that claims to respect the rule of law, including serious privacy and human rights safeguards , notably under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms .  It is also a country in which a million Canadian citizens , perhaps even more, would be considered “U.S. Persons,” whose personal financial information would be sent to the IRS (and then over to U.S. intelligence agencies !) without even a suspicion of wrongdoing.

Standing Up for the Rights and Civil Liberties of Canadian Citizens and Residents

To be fair, Prime Minister Harper and Minister Flaherty are on record as objecting to FATCA in principle.   But as with officials of other governments around the world, they have been subject to dire threats of sanctions from the Treasury Department, misguided pleas from some financial sectors that an IGA would lessen the negative impact of FATCA ( it won’t ), and a cheerleading section of tax lawyers, accountants, consultants, and software firms anticipating a compliance pig-out .  This has seriously distorted Canadian officials’ awareness of their available options.

Now comes some serious counter-pressure from the Opposition, which may help clarify where Canada stands.  While smaller parties like the Progressive Canadians (no representation yet in the House of Commons) and Greens (one Member, Elizabeth May ) have been commendably forthright in their resistance to FATCA, the major Opposition party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) , has been largely silent, or even passively supportive of FATCA in the mistaken belief it is merely a measure directed against American “tax cheats.”

The NDP still hasn’t come out against FATCA as such.  But in a significant development, Murray Rankin , the NDP’s Official Opposition Critic for National Revenue, wrote to Minister Flaherty on September 25 laying out standards that must not be crossed in an IGA.   (For denizens of the country south of the 49th parallel who may not be familiar with Canada’s parliamentary system, the “Official Opposition Critic” is the equivalent of “Shadow Minister” in the British system — the Opposition Member of Parliament who would take over the designated Ministry if the NDP ” Shadow Cabinet ” replaces the Conservatives.)

In his letter, Rankin expresses “serious concerns” regarding Flaherty’s negotiations with Treasury to “oblige Canada to enact laws and regulations requiring Canadian financial institutions to comply with this U.S.-based legislation,” i.e., FATCA.  He also cites the “lack of transparency” and consultation in the ” closed door negotiations. ”  Exactly so.  What is being hidden from not only the Opposition but from the public?

In addition,

“New Democrats are concerned with the prospect of a foreign nation unilaterally imposing obligations on Canadian banks to disclose personal information. The Canadian Government has a responsibility to protect Canada’s tax base, and while we understand the United States’ desire to protect their own tax base, this should not come at the cost of the rights of individuals residing in our own country. Cracking down on tax cheats should occur through international cooperation rather than unilateral action.

“What’s more, the secrecy of the negotiations over this agreement has left Canadians in the dark as to the integrity of their personal banking information. The Canadian government should be standing up for the civil liberties of Canadians. Furthermore, the Conservative government must ensure that any agreement reached is fair for Canada.

“In the interest of transparency, fair taxation and respect for privacy rights, we are asking the government to reject any agreement that violates the rights [of]Canadians or that fails to offer Canada equal benefits to those provided to the United States.” [emphasis added]

NOTE:  the full text of the Rankin letter appears on the URL, starting at the bottom of page 2:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/Canada-s-Shadow-Revenue-Mi-by-James-Jatras-Canada-us-Integration-131005-282.html]

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MORE BACKGROUND ON FATCA:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/FATCA-a-Tool-of-the-Elect-by-James-Jatras-Economic_Electronic-Voting_Government_International-130928-983.html

Related Topic: Canada-us Integration

 

2012-04-02 Privacy czar sounds alarm on drones patrolling U.S. border, Globe & Mail

 Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Oct 062013
 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/privacy-czar-sounds-alarm-on-drones-patrolling-us-border/article2389782/

By COLIN FREEZE

With the so-called “Three Amigos” meeting in Washington, Ottawa’s privacy czar is expressing fears that unmanned aircraft could soon be peering down onto all three countries in North America.

“I think Canadians should be concerned about the increasing use of drones,” Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart told The Globe and Mail in an interview Monday.

“… It’s another technology that has the potential to be very privacy invasive. These drones could be going back and forth across the border and no one would notice.”

Ms. Stoddart made the remarks as she and her 13 counterparts in Canada’s provinces and territories released a joint statement urging the Conservative government to be more mindful of privacy rights as Ottawa and Washington firm up the language of the Beyond Borders agreement.

“I think this is really one of the big new implications in enhanced border security – the constant surveillance of our borders by drones or other unmanned vehicles,” Ms. Stoddart added.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who met Monday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the White House, announced the Beyond the Border plan last December. Now, officials in Ottawa and Washington are hoping to hammer out the fine-print details – including language on privacy-protection principles – by the end of May.

The overarching goal is to create a common security perimeter around Canada and the United States through shared intelligence and policing programs, initiatives that should curb Washington’s fears of cross-border terrorism and help meet both countries’ need for bilateral trade.

But Ms. Stoddart and her provincial counterparts are worried that the security perimeter could eat away at civil liberties.

There are few more glaring symbols of growing U.S. government surveillance power than the Predator drones that are migrating from foreign war zones to become unarmed eyes in the sky for domestic police and border guards.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security flies some drones over American air space along remote patches of the Canada-U.S. border – including one that stopped suspected cattle rustlers in North Dakota last year.

And last month, it was widely reported that U.S. drones were being secretly dispatched to Mexico to assist that country’s efforts to curb a bloody drug war that’s claimed thousands of lives.

Ottawa has been less eager to embrace drones for surveillance on civilians.

The Canadian Forces use some unmanned planes in foreign war zones and to patrol the coast and some domestic police forces have recently purchased “micro-drones” to help gather evidence at crime scenes.

But unlike their U.S. counterparts, Canada’s border guards are not known to be using any drones to keep an eye on land crossings. Should they start, or team up with U.S. border guards to do so, such measures could raise a litany of privacy questions.

“I haven’t heard nor has my staff heard that the Canada Border Service Agency has drones,” Ms. Stoddart said. “… But it’s a coming technology.”

Hammering out the right regulatory framework is key, she said, adding that her office is being consulted with “increased cadence” by federal officials as they try to firm up the Beyond the Border agreement .

Ms. Stoddart said she is also concerned about expanding programs that would allow U.S. police and federal agents to pursue investigations on Canadian soil by teaming up with Canadian counterpart agencies.

Such programs could lead to U.S. intelligence databases being populated with information gathered in Canada. And yet, red-flagged Canadians would have no legal recourse that would allow them to get misleading or wrong information scrubbed out American databases if need be.

“The clock is ticking,” Ms. Stoddart said. “… This is why we are coming out with a statement now because we are concerned about maintaining Canadian privacy standards, about not unnecessarily sending data to the United States.”

 

 

 

 

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