CSIS won't open full Tommy Douglas file WTF!

CSIS won't open full Tommy Douglas file

Last Updated: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 12:41 PM ET Comments718Recommend322
The Canadian Press
The RCMP's file on Tommy Douglas, shown here after re-election in November 1965, contains articles noting Douglas's concern about rumours of RCMP surveillance of Canadians. (Canadian Press)
Canada's spy agency is pulling out all the stops to block the release of decades-old intelligence on socialist icon Tommy Douglas.
In an affidavit filed in Federal Court, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service argues that full disclosure of the file on Douglas could endanger the lives of confidential informants and jeopardize the agency's ability to conduct secret surveillance.
Indeed, CSIS suggests its very raison d'etre would be imperilled by releasing the information compiled on the one-time Saskatchewan premier and federal NDP leader, widely revered as the father of medicare.
"Secrecy is intrinsic to security intelligence matters," Nicole Jalbert, the agency's access to information and privacy co-ordinator, says in the affidavit filed late last month.
"The requirement for secrecy with respect to past and current activities of a security intelligence agency is essential; the origin of information, its extent and the methods by which it was obtained must remain a secret."
Fear of a legal precedent
In an apparent reference to the precedent CSIS fears might be set if the Douglas files were released, Jalbert adds: "The routine, full disclosure of security intelligence information would, in certain circumstances, prevent or severely hamper the service's ability to discharge its statutory mandate."
The lawyer for The Canadian Press reporter who initiated the battle over disclosure of the Douglas dossier said CSIS's argument would essentially mean all intelligence files must remain secret in perpetuity.
"The suggestion that anything that intelligence agencies do must be secret for all time I think is contrary to basic democratic principles," Paul Champ said in an interview.
He said it's ironic that former Soviet Bloc countries have opened up their old intelligence files to public scrutiny while "the security intelligence file on Tommy Douglas, one of Canada's most loved political icons, remains closed."
"It's pretty unbelievable."
Champ last year filed affidavits from Wesley Wark, a renowned security intelligence expert, and historian Craig Heron, both of whom maintained it's absurd to keep the Douglas file secret so many years later.
The court last week rejected a federal government bid to strike those affidavits on the grounds that they contain "pure conjecture, speculation and legal opinion."
File fight started in 2005
The battle over Douglas' intelligence file began in November 2005, when reporter Jim Bronskill made an Access to Information Act request for the RCMP dossier on the fabled prairie preacher-turned-politician.
Some material in the file, now in the possession of Library and Archives Canada, was eventually released.
It showed that spies with the now defunct RCMP Security Service had shadowed Douglas for more than three decades, attending his speeches, analyzing his writings and eavesdropping on private conversations. His links to the peace movement and Communist Party members were of particular interest.
But the government refused to release big chunks of Douglas' file — some of it dating back to the 1930s — because of national security concerns. Its decision was upheld by the information commissioner of Canada.
Bronskill took the minister of Canadian Heritage, who oversees the archives, to court in a bid to force disclosure.
CSIS, which replaced the RCMP Security Service and was consulted on Bronskill's initial request for the Douglas dossier, maintains it's irrelevant that the file is decades-old and has long been closed.
"The passage of time and the age of information cannot be used to conclude that its release will not cause damage," Jalbert says in her affidavit.
"Sources may still be active, despite the passage of time. Subjects of investigation would learn much about the scope of the information available about them and about service methods of operation.
Release could identify employees: CSIS
"Some subjects of investigation are entities that remain of interest for many decades. In addition, many investigative techniques that were used in the (1960s) are still relevant today."
Jalbert argues that release of the information could identify CSIS's employees, procedures and administrative methodologies, including how the agency manages investigations.
Moreover, she says it could reveal the identity of confidential informants, which "would send a clear message to current and future human sources that the service is not able to guarantee the anonymity upon which their safety depends."
Champ agreed CSIS has a duty to protect the identity of any informant who might still be alive. But beyond that, he said there's no reason to withhold information in the Douglas dossier.
In his earlier affidavit, Wark said the fact that the original RCMP file on Douglas was transferred uncensored to the national archives suggests the government recognized the information had "historical value" but "no ongoing operational utility."
"The notion that once sensitive security and intelligence records remain sensitive for eternity is a patent absurdity," Wark said.
"The threat environment changes, institutions change, policies change, security and intelligence methods change, legal standards change and so on."
Douglas's daughter, actress Shirley Douglas, has also filed an affidavit supporting full disclosure.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/02/10/csis-tommy-douglas-.html#ixzz0fCTOmhv7

CTV Ottawa did not back up it's archives. What were they thinking?

First off, I would like to say that everybody at CTV Ottawa are all OK after the fire in the newsroom. According to reports, as the newsroom was on the second floor and their local archives were on the first floor I am guessing their archives suffered some water damage. Apparently they did not develop a disaster recovery plan to recover the archives in the event of a disaster. I find this highly unusual that with technology available to digitize VHS tape and possibly reels of film, that such a project was not undertaken. About 30 years ago, the local Ottawa station was also used as a small to medium size production facility. Among the shows they produced was "You can't do that on television" circa 1970's. If they wanted to digitally archive in a rush, they could have put on YouTube using a producers account. I admit that would not be the best archiving method but it would be among the least expensive and even if they had lost content to the fire or water it would have been backed up on a web server. Of course, there are many digital archiving companies that could have been used or if you wanted to keep it strictly in house, they could break up the archive and use their own production facility and personnel to make digital copies of the data/content. Ironically, when a local station gets a new episode of a TV show, it's usually on some kind of digital medium or the even more high tech way of receiving new material is the producer of the show sends it over as a digital feed to be rebroadcast on the network. This technique doesn't allow copying of the feed. If that's how modern TV shows can be delivered, then digitizing ones archive is a very easy task. At the end of the day, this reminds me of an old IT adage; always back up your files.

Omar Khadr's civil suit news.

Colin Freeze
Omar Khadr remains in Guantanamo Bay, but his Canadian lawyers are already seeking $10-million in damages from the Canadian government for its alleged complicity in his ordeal.
Nate Whitling, a lawyer for the Khadr family, confirmed that a stalled civil suit is now seeking millions on behalf of Mr. Khadr, up from the original $100,000 sought when it was launched years ago.
“That's been out there for a while,” Mr. Whitling said, adding the proposed damages were amended following court-ordered disclosures regarding the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's role in interviewing Mr. Khadr in Guantanamo.
The Canadian suit remains years away from resolution. U.S. legal processes are still ongoing, and authorities in Washington have never retreated from their decision to hold Mr. Khadr as an alleged al-Qaeda enemy.
Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld that the CSIS interviews violated Mr. Khadr's Charter rights as a Canadian citizen, reinforcing a series of previous court rulings have ruled that CSIS should have stayed away from gathering intelligence inside the “legal black hole” represented by the U.S. prison camp for “illegal enemy combatants.”
Mr. Khadr's lawyers have obtained videotapes of CSIS agents interviewing Mr. Khadr in “Gitmo” as well as diplomatic notes indicating Canadian agents knew he had been subjected to sleep deprivation by U.S. soldiers in a bid to get him to talk.
While ruling these practises amounted to breach of Mr. Khadr's rights, Canadian courts have stopped short of ordering Canada's Conservative government to press the United States to send him to Canada.
Supporters of Mr. Khadr remain hopeful that he will be repatriated soon.
In 2002, Mr. Khadr was captured in Afghanistan as a 15-year-old fighter.
He was the sole survivor of his faction, while one U.S. soldier was killed in the battle.
The Pentagon has alleged that Mr. Khadr – who was shot several times in the battle – threw a grenade the killed U.S. Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, and that this act constitutes murder.
Since his capture, Mr. Khadr was interrogated at the Bagram military base in Afghanistan and then later at Guantanamo, which operates on leased U.S. land in Cuba.
Intelligence agents were after information about his father, since slain and heralded as a “martyr” by al-Qaeda figures.
Egyptian-born Ahmed Said Khadr had worked as an engineer in Canada prior to uprooting his family to Afghanistan to live in a compound with Osama bin Laden.
The Khadr father is said to have loaned his young son to a prominent al-Qaeda lieutenant who was resisting the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
The $10-million figure, while steep, is not unheard of.
In 2006, Ottawa officials awarded a near-record compensation package of that amount to Maher Arar, the Canadian engineer who spent a year jailed in Syria as a suspected al-Qaeda member.
A Canadian judge ruled that Canadian police circulated inaccurate intelligence about Mr. Arar prior to his ordeal, intelligence that led U.S. agents to arrest him at a New York airport and then, send him to his native Syria for interrogation.
Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor ruled that Ottawa should compensate Mr. Arar for torture suffered at the hands of Syrian officials.

Government of Canada will not ask for Khadr back violating Supreme Court ruling and charter!

Government has no plans to bring back Khadr
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 3, 2010 5:39 PM ET CBC News
Omar Khadr shown at a U.S. military hearing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2009. (Canadian Press)
The Canadian government still has no plans to push for the repatriation of Omar Khadr, an aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a cabinet minister said Wednesday.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned lower-court orders that the federal government must try to bring Toronto-born Khadr back to Canada from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The top court ruled unanimously that Khadr's rights have been violated, and that the Canadian government should do something to remedy the situation, but stopped short of asking the government to bring Khadr back to Canada.
Prime Minister's Office spokesman Dmitri Soudas told CBC News that there has been "no shift" in government policy regarding Khadr, although the government is still "reviewing" his situation in light of the court ruling.
"There hasn't been a change in position," Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon later told reporters.
Khadr, 23, has been imprisoned since he was arrested in Afghanistan at age 15, accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. He is scheduled to be tried in July by a U.S. military court on charges of murder, conspiracy and support of terrorism.
The Conservatives have long maintained that Khadr should go before the U.S. justice system to answer for the charges against him.
Cannon said the government respects the decision of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison and put some of the detainees on trial.
In its Jan. 29 decision, the Supreme Court concluded that ordering the government to ask the U.S. for Khadr's repatriation to stop the continuing violation of his rights would interfere with the government's jurisdiction over foreign relations. Therefore, it chose not to issue the order, even though it had the authority to do so.
"We … leave it to the government to decide how best to respond to this judgment in light of current information, its responsibility for foreign affairs and in conformity with the charter," the ruling said.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/02/03/omar-khadr-government-repetriation.html#socialcomments#ixzz0eXniSvGA

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& Microsoft thinks there more reliable now!
GO GOOGLE GMAIL!

IT Question!

As I look at the Google security incident, I realize that if the hacker successfully penetrated a work station on Google's corporate network, could the same technique not be used against a financial institution using the same malicious software? If this is true, then am I correct in assuming that any financial institution is vulnerable to this type of penetration? In a way, is a payment processing service like Google Checkout or Paypal just as vulnerable as the standard Google network? Is it true that web developers still use IE 6 as a test and validation candidate for new applications and website design - to make sure things are backward compatible? If yes, aren't you supposed to sandbox it as much as possible? How did Google miss that?Thanks

msdogfood@hotmail.com

The PMO now has the Khadr paradox?

Khadr ruling sees top court clash with Tories

Omar Khadr is shown in an interrogation room at the Guatanamo U.S. Naval Base prison while being question by CSIS, in this image taken from a 2003 surveillance video, release by his Canadian defense team on Tuesday July 15, 2008. The Canadian Press
In a 9-0 ruling, Canada's Supreme Court has found Canada and the U.S. violated the prosioner's rights
Supreme Court won't force Khadr repatriation
Norman Spector: How PM should respond to Khadr decision
Key dates: Omar Khadr timeline

Kirk Makin
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Jan. 29, 2010 8:42PM EST Last updated on Friday, Jan. 29, 2010 11:20PM EST
A standoff between the Supreme Court of Canada and the federal government over the repatriation of Omar Khadr has thrust the country into uncharted constitutional waters.
In a 9-0 ruling, the court effectively dared the Harper government to ignore its finding that Canada and the United States are violating Mr. Khadr's right to life, liberty and security under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The court denounced the use of sleep deprivation by his U.S. captors to soften up Mr. Khadr when he was a 15-year-old prisoner, and the government's participation in his interrogation, but stopped short of ordering the government to ask the U.S. to send him home.
It found that the rights violation continues because information obtained during illegal interrogations in 2003 and 2004 is still liable to be used against Mr. Khadr in U.S proceedings.
A government is expected to take action when the court rules it has violated someone's rights. The remedy requested by lawyers who brought the case to court on Mr. Khadr's behalf is that Ottawa bring their client home for trial. Past governments have not ignored strong declarations from the highest court in the land.

The Khadr interrogation
Watch video of the Khadr interrogation
View
Yet a statement from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson Friday raised the possibility that the Harper government will refuse to act or that it will give a token response.
“The government is pleased that the Supreme Court has recognized the ‘constitutional responsibility of the executive to make decisions on matters of foreign affairs in the context of complex and ever-changing circumstances, taking into account Canada's broader interests,' ” Mr. Nicholson said.
He emphasized the gravity of the allegations against Mr. Khadr and noted that the Supreme Court overturned two lower court decisions by finding that the government is not required to ask for Mr. Khadr's return from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In an interview Friday, University of Toronto law professor Sujit Choudhry said the clash of court and government has reached historic proportions.
“It has taken the court where it has never gone before – into the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, and the murky world of security and intelligence co-operation between Canada and other countries in the post 9/11 world,” he said. “It has now thrown the issue back to the federal government, which must now act in compliance with the Charter,” Prof. Choudhry said.
He predicted that Mr. Khadr's lawyers will bring another court challenge if Ottawa leaves their client in U.S. hands.
Allan Hutchison, a law professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School, agreed that Mr. Khadr will have quick recourse if the Harper government flouts the Supreme Court's declaration.
“The Khadr people must use all available methods to shame the government into following a constitutionally sanctioned course of action,” he said.
The court refrained from issuing a direct order to repatriate Mr. Khadr, reasoning that the fluid state of terrorism proceedings dictates a cautious approach. It said that government officials have a much broader and more nuanced sense of foreign policy considerations and the details of Mr. Khadr's case.
But the court showed that a legal fist lies beneath its velvet glove. If the abuse of Mr. Khadr's rights is proven to be continuing, it warned that, “courts are empowered to make orders ensuring that the government's foreign affairs prerogative is exercised in accordance with the constitution.”
Advocates for Mr. Khadr were disappointed Friday, but took encouragement from the clear finding of a continuing rights violation.
The judges could scarcely have been tougher in their finding that Mr. Khadr was mistreated during interrogations in 2003 and 2004.
“Canadian officials questioned Mr. Khadr on matters that may have provided important evidence relating to his criminal proceedings, in circumstances where they knew that Mr. Khadr was being indefinitely detained, was a young person, and was alone during the interrogations,” they said.
“Interrogation of a youth to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges – while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel and while knowing the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the U.S. prosecutors – offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”
Since the information obtained in the interrogation sessions could still be used against Mr. Khadr in U.S proceedings, the court said, “the effect of the breaches cannot be said to have been spent.”
Mr. Khadr was severely wounded in a 2002 skirmish in which he is alleged to have thrown a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces medic. He was charged with murder and scheduled to go before a Guantanamo Bay military commission.
However, U.S. President Barack Obama effectively shut down the commission system this year. Mr. Khadr remains in Guantanamo.
Federal Court Judge James O'Reilly ruled last year that Canada was complicit in torture that included sleep deprivation and the use of a vicious dog.
The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the ruling by 2-1.
At the Supreme Court hearing in November, federal officials warned the judiciary not to create a foreign-policy nightmare by micromanaging sensitive situations abroad involving Canadians.
“The government has the right to decide what requests should be made, how they should be made, and when they should be made,” federal lawyer Robert Frater said. “The courts are not in the best position to do that.”
While Mr. Khadr faces life in prison if convicted, most legal observers believe that he would go free based on time already served if the Harper government agrees to bring him home for trial.