ISIS threat could mute objections to expanded anti-terror laws, critics fear – Politics – CBC News

2014/10/20 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see if the Bill is narrowly focussed on the stated gaps or whether, as is often its want, the Government over-reaches to the point of provoking opposition.

The oversight issue is critical as more powers are provided. We have seen the risks of lack of oversight in the US, with the CIA essentially spying on Congress among other things:

Independent MP Brent Rathgeber agrees that the current international crisis and threat of homegrown terror “will provide cover for the government to expand the roles of CSEC and CSIS, and what they share with the Five Eyes.”

The Five Eyes is the collective name for Canada and its intelligence-sharing allies — the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Rathgeber stressed some of those powers may very well be necessary, “given that the ISIS threat must be taken seriously.”

The issue, he said, is to balance those national security concerns with privacy rights.”

Security agencies unchecked will grow both in times of imminent threat and in times of comparative security,” he told CBC News. “Therefore it is incumbent on civilian oversight and Parliament to provide checks and balances.”

Even so, he said he’s not expecting to see any increased oversight powers in the new bill — and “given the legitimate climate of fear, or at least concern,” he said, “the public will be complacent.”

By a twist of procedural timing, MPs may find themselves with an opportunity to debate greater oversight when a private members bill, sponsored by Liberal defence critic Joyce Murray, comes before the House this fall.

The bill would create a special parliamentary committee to monitor legislative, regulatory, policy and administrative framework for intelligence and national security in Canada, and review activities of all federal agencies, including CSIS.

Murray told CBC News she “has no problem in principle” with giving CSIS more leeway to keep track of suspected terrorists abroad.But shes not ready to give up on transparency and accountability.

“The absence of parliamentary oversight and review mechanism for our security agencies means an absence of accountability to the Canadian public.”

She’ll need to the support of the government to pass her bill, however, which doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

“There is robust oversight of national security agencies in Canada,” Public Safety spokesman Jason Tamming told CBC News.

“We are always focused on protecting the rights of Canadians,” he said, adding the government appointed a former Ontario NDP MPP to the civilian oversight body in 2009.

“We don’t need to strike any new committees to create duplicative oversight.”

As to the last point, given the overall Government approach (e.g., cyberbullying bill which included increased surveillance powers), impossible to take seriously.

ISIS threat could mute objections to expanded anti-terror laws, critics fear – Politics – CBC News.

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Experts cautious about boost in powers for spy agency | Ottawa Citizen

2014/10/18 Leave a comment

Some initial reactions to the proposed changes to CSIS to allow it to counter extremism and terrorism. Seems like the informant issue may be more problematic than the “Five Eyes” sharing issue:

One measure would let CSIS work more closely with its allies in the “Five Eyes” spy network, which is made up of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. This would allow CSIS to obtain information from the others on Canadians fighting abroad with terror groups, and would allow it to help another Five Eyes country track its nationals working with terror groups in Canada.

A second measure would give CSIS informants the same anonymity that already exists for police sources, who are not subject to cross-examination and can have their identities hidden, even from trial judges.

“What we’re trying to do is give our sources a class privilege akin to that of law enforcement,” said Andy Ellis, CSIS’s assistant director of operations, citing a “chilling effect” on informants without such protections.

“They’re going to have to be fairly careful in how they draft this,” said Craig Forcese, associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa. “The devil’s in the details in terms of what’s in the bill.”

Both changes come as courts have slammed CSIS’s approach to investigations.

Last year, a federal court judge said Five Eyes warrants were being used as a back-door way to spy on Canadians, putting them at risk of being detained abroad.

“If you throw some info over the fence, the allies can do whatever they want,” said Forcese, expressing concern over cases like that of Maher Arar, a Syrian Canadian detained and deported to Syria while in the United States. Arar was tortured during his imprisonment in Syria but later completely exonerated in Canada from any links to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in May that CSIS informants already have sufficient protection, with their anonymity decided on a case-by-case basis.

Intelligence expert Wesley Wark served as an expert witness in that case, in which CSIS revealed one of its sources had failed lie-detector tests. He said not allowing informants to be cross-examined in secret trials would be “very problematic.”

“The court said informants need more protection, but not blanket protection. Why are they going to ignore that ruling and introduce something into legislation?” said Wark, adding that he’s never heard of a CSIS informant’s identity being publicly revealed since the agency’s creation in 1984.

Forcese said police informant anonymity has developed in case law — not through legislation — so enshrining it in legislation will require close constitutional scrutiny to make sure the right of a fair trial isn’t infringed.

Experts cautious about boost in powers for spy agency | Ottawa Citizen.

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Harper learning to separate Islam from terrorism: Siddiqui | Toronto Star

2014/10/16 Leave a comment

Signs of change noted by one of the harsher critics of the Harper Government, Haroon Siddiqui:

Harper himself avoids Canadian Muslims except for a selected few, such as the minority Ismailis. The prime minister and his Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney have pointedly courted those who’ve come to Canada fleeing persecution in Muslim lands — Christians and Ahmadis from Pakistan, Christians from Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, Bahais from Iran, etc. Some openly spit hatred at Muslims, yet are cosseted by the Harperites.

Contrast this with Barack Obama and David Cameron of Britain who do extensive outreach to Muslims, at home and abroad.

And unlike Obama who speaks knowledgeably and confidently about how terrorism violates Islamic principles, Harper has been clumsy, speaking instead of “Islamic terrorism.”

But he is learning.

Last month in opening the Aga Khan Museum, he said:“The Aga Khan has devoted an extraordinary amount of time, toil and resources to the ideals of Islamic culture and history. In doing so, His Highness has greatly contributed to demystifying Islam, throughout the world, by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism. This is a vision of Islam of which all Canadians can be proud especially when a contrary and violent distortion of that vision so regularly dominates the news.”

A few days later, speaking in New York, Harper went against the holy grail of Islamophobes, that terrorism emanates mostly from mosques. Speaking of radicalized youth, he said:

“Our experience in Canada has been that their connection to the Muslim community is often extremely tangential. A surprising number of these people have no background in Islam whatsoever. They’re individuals who for whatever reason drift to these kinds of causes. Even those with backgrounds in Islam, they’re often people who are not participants in mosques . . . They’re off on kind of a radical, political fringe.

“Our security and intelligence people would tell you that a good relationship with our Muslim community has actually really helped to identify a lot of these threats before they become much more serious.”

Harper learning to separate Islam from terrorism: Siddiqui | Toronto Star.

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How the world is dealing with the militant threat

2014/10/15 Leave a comment

Good reporting on radicalization in Belgium (the country with the dubious honour of the highest number of “terror tourists” per capita among Western countries) and the current trial of those accused of recruiting them:

For some of the members of Sharia4Belgium, their journey to Syria did not go as planned. Mr. Bontinck, for instance, has maintained that he did not take part in any fighting, which earned him the mistrust of his comrades. He was imprisoned at various points by the al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front and the Islamic State and has co-operated with Belgian authorities since his return to the country.

Family members of some of those still in Syria have attended the start of the trial looking for answers and, in some cases, accountability. The mother of one young woman who went to Syria was removed from the courtroom after she began shouting and trying to approach Mr. Belkacem, Le Soir reported.

Some experts caution that prosecutors could find it difficult to prove charges against returned fighters, particularly where they concern the activities of the defendants overseas. “The courts will not take Twitter feeds as sufficient evidence of what they have done,” said Jytte Klausen, a professor at Brandeis University outside of Boston and founder of the Western Jihadism Project, on a conference call earlier this week.

Still, others said the high-profile case is a chance for the Belgian authorities to send a message. “I am quite sure that they want to set an example for the guys who are in Syria or who want to fight in Syria in the ranks of Islamic State,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent historian who tracks Belgian jihadis. “I do believe there will be convictions.”

How the world is dealing with the militant threat – The Globe and Mail.

Along with a good summary of how some countries are handling the issue:

 A look at how countries are battling terror networks 

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Salman Rushdie condemns hate-filled rhetoric of Islamic fanaticism

2014/10/14 Leave a comment

Salman Rushdie on Islamic fanaticism:

 “A word I dislike greatly, Islamophobia, has been coined to discredit those who point at these excesses, by labelling them as bigots. But in the first place, if I don’t like your ideas, it must be acceptable for me to say so, just as it is acceptable for you to say that you don’t like mine. Ideas cannot be ring-fenced just because they claim to have this or that fictional sky god on their side.

“And in the second place, its important to remember that most of those who suffer under the yoke of the new Islamic fanaticism are other Muslims…

“It is right to feel phobia towards such matters. As several commentators have said, what is being killed in Iraq is not just human beings, but a whole culture. To feel aversion towards such a force is not bigotry. It is the only possible response to the horror of events.

“I can’t, as a citizen, avoid speaking of the horror of the world in this new age of religious mayhem, and of the language that conjures it up and justifies it, so that young men, including young Britons, led towards acts of extreme bestiality, believe themselves to be fighting a just war.”

The author said members of other religions have distorted language, but to a much lesser degree.

“It’s fair to say that more than one religion deserves scrutiny. Christian extremists in the United States today attack womens’ liberties and gay rights in language they claim comes from God. Hindu extremists in India today are launching an assault on free expression and trying, literally, to rewrite history, proposing the alteration of school textbooks to serve their narrow saffron dogmatism.

“But the overwhelming weight of the problem lies in the world of Islam, and much of it has its roots in the ideological language of blood and war emanating from the Salafist movement within Islam, globally backed by Saudi Arabia.

“For these ideologues, “modernity itself is the enemy, modernity with its language of liberty, for women as well as men, with its insistence of legitimacy in government rather than tyranny, and with its strong inclination towards secularism and away from religion.”

Strong yet much more focussed and nuanced than Maher or Harris.

Salman Rushdie condemns hate-filled rhetoric of Islamic fanaticism – Telegraph.

Fareed Zakaria echoes comments on Maher and Harris made by others on how counterproductive, in addition to being wrong, their comments are:

Harris should read Zachary Karabell’s book “Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation.” What he would discover is that there have been wars but also many centuries of peace. Islam has at times been at the cutting edge of modernity, but like today, it has also been the great laggard. As Karabell explained to me, “If you exclude the last 70 years or so, in general the Islamic world was more tolerant of minorities than the Christian world. That’s why there were more than a million Jews living in the Arab world until the early 1950s — nearly 200,000 in Iraq alone.”

If there were periods when the Islamic world was open, modern, tolerant and peaceful, this suggests that the problem is not in the religion’s essence and that things can change once more. So why is Maher making these comments? I understand that as a public intellectual he feels the need to speak what he sees as the unvarnished truth (though his “truth” is simplified and exaggerated). But surely there is another task for public intellectuals as well — to try to change the world for good.

Fareed Zakaria: Let’s be honest, Islam has a problem right now

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Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization

2014/10/10 Leave a comment

Not out of character: denouncing something for political purposes while quietly carrying out some needed work:

According to a request for proposals posted online on Wednesday, Public Safety Canada is looking to carry out five research projects delving into such areas as the “psychology” of violent extremism, the role of the Internet in radicalization, and the extent to which women become involved in terror movements.

“We are funding research that is studying the participation of western extremist travellers in the conflict in Syria, how they communicate, how they travel. This research will give us the building blocks that we can use to develop better strategies to stop radicalization before it ever manifests itself,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney told the House of Commons public safety committee on Wednesday.

Government looks to terrorism studies to stop radicalization.

CBC report on how the Government continues to emphasize enforcement, not prevention, in its public messaging (both are needed):

[Michael] Zekulin had hoped to hear details of a counter-radicalization strategy announced months ago by the RCMP. He didn’t get it.

“The whole counter-radicalization strategy is to prevent the next generation of fighters. We need to get into communities, recognize the threat at home because groups like ISIS are very sophisticated using social media to recruit to their cause.”

In fact, Canada is well behind other allies in developing a counter-radicalization strategy. Britain, the U.S. and Australia already have such plans in place.

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says cooperation between his force and CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) has provided timely information that has led to successful arrests and prosecutions in recent years.

“We have about 63 active national security investigations on 90 individuals related to the travelling group — both people who intend to go or who have returned — so the pace and tempo of the operations is quite brisk,” he told the committee on Wednesday, adding “that it’s nothing Canadians need to be alarmed about.

“I think we are managing through our collective efforts our response that is appropriate to the nature of these suspected offences.”

Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director of CSIS, points out that while Canadian security agencies have increased their vigilance, Canadians still wind up in conflict zones.

“At the end of the day when they come back there’s a good chance they are deeply radicalized,” he told CBC News. “They are trained in weapons of war and they may hurt Canadians at home.”

For his part, Zekulin also worries that those radicals will become effective recruiters once they’ve returned. As fighters and as Canadians, he says, they have credibility and a story that can influence others in their community.

So while the federal government is sending jets to stop the spread of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, an important battle over radicalized Canadians may also be taking shape here at home — a battle in which Ottawa may already have waited too long to intervene.

Has Ottawa been too slow to take on radicalized Canadians?

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Australian PM orders crackdown on visas for radical Islamist preachers

2014/10/09 Leave a comment

Hard to argue against the obvious cases but expect some controversy or debate over borderline or less clear cases, and whether this will only be applied to radical Islamists or more broadly:

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that he was ordering a crackdown to prevent radical Islamist preachers entering the country, amidst rising tension with the Muslim community following a series of security-related raids.

Abbott, who recently warned that the balance between freedom and security “may have to shift” to protect against radicalized Muslims seeking to carry out attacks, said hate preachers would now be “red-carded” during the visa process.

The tougher new system, which he said would not require new legislation, comes on the heels of a public meeting in Sydney last week by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international group that says its goal is to establish a pan-national Muslim state.

Conservative commentators have seized on the speech to urge greater restrictions on radical preachers.

“What we want to do is to ensure that known preachers of hate do not come to this country to peddle their divisive extremist message,” Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

“What I’m doing is declaring that we will henceforth have a new system in place which will ensure that preachers of hate can’t come to Australia to peddle their extreme, divisive and alien ideologies.”

Australian PM orders crackdown on visas for radical Islamist preachers – The Globe and Mail.

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Fowler: Half measures in fight against Islamic State will only make matters worse

2014/10/06 Leave a comment

Former Canadian Ambassador to the UN,  foreign policy advisor to Canadian prime ministers,  and kidnapping victim of an al-Qaeda offshoot in Mali, Robert Fowler essentially answers the question he poses at the end of his long and thoughtful commentary in the Globe.

Well worth reading:

Were we, though, to seriously seek to excise the jihadi malignancy – to stop those who are so clearly bent on destroying the underpinnings of our civilization – we would have to engage far more thoroughly than we seem willing to do. We would have to convince our so-called friends in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to stop – really stop – financing jihadi preaching and terror networks throughout the world. At home, we would need to make very clear that we will not abide jihadi teaching, jihadi recruiting, or the dissemination of jihadi propaganda.

Should we seriously seek to damage the barbarous IS, we would have to prepare for and then commit to a long and ugly war against an implacable enemy who is genuinely anxious to die in battle with us. In addition, we would have to abandon the inane restrictions we have so hurriedly and complacently put in place arbitrary time frames, no-boots-on-the-ground, and accept that it will take some up-close and personal combat to get the job done and that there will be casualties, among them a full share of innocents.

Finally, and however improbably in today’s politically correct context, we would have to “maintain the aim” – the removal of an existential threat to our way of life through the crippling degradation of al-Qaeda and its clones – and make it abundantly clear that until that mission were truly accomplished, such a struggle would not be about those nice, distracting things politicians would much rather talk about when they talk about such engagements: development, jobs, democracy, corruption, individual rights, gender equality, faith.

We would also have to accept that, to achieve such an objective, it would take vast budgets and clear-eyed focus over the long haul to convince Muslims in the West and throughout the world that such an engagement had nothing to do with jihadi allegations about crusades; indeed, little to do with religion of any stripe, but rather that global jihad was simply inimical to a peaceful world. Once such a mission were truly accomplished, then and only then could we turn our attention to reconstruction and development.

Short of all this, it’s not worth attempting, and we should walk away, right now: A flaccid attempt, such as that upon which we now seem to be embarked, will undoubtedly make matters worse.

Half measures in fight against Islamic State will only make matters worse – The Globe and Mail.

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U.S. Is Trying to Counter ISIS’ Efforts to Lure Alienated Young Muslims – NYTimes.com

2014/10/06 Leave a comment

Good piece in the NY Times about US Government efforts to engage American Muslims in countering extremism, with some of the same issues that likely arise in Canada. The last line captures the conundrum:

American officials have been able to identify Americans fighting for the Islamic State or other Syrian rebel groups based on intelligence gathered from travel records, family members, intercepted electronic communications, social media postings and surveillance of Americans overseas who had expressed interest in going to Syria, counterterrorism officials said.

But efforts at countering violent extremism, especially at home, “have lagged badly behind other counterterrorism pillars,” said Michael Leiter, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “It is heartening to see the administration attempt to invigorate those efforts, but it is unfortunate that it has, despite the efforts of many, been so long in coming.”

Government supporters question whether funds will be available to sustain these programs. “The administration has the right framework for doing this, but long-term success will depend on sustainable resourcing to help local government, communities and law enforcement build initiatives that can have impact,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former senior White House aide who was one of the principal architects of the current strategy.

That strategy here at home, called countering violent extremism, has proved much more difficult for American officials to master than the ability of the Pentagon and spy agencies to identify, track, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists overseas.

Among its efforts, the Department of Homeland Security provides training to help state and local law enforcement officials in identifying and countering the threat, including indicators of violent extremism and “lone wolf” attacks.

The department awarded the International Association of Chiefs of Police a $700,000 grant last year to develop training on how to prevent, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism.

The department has also sponsored exercises in seven cities, including Houston, Seattle, and Durham, N.C., to improve communication between local law enforcement and communities and to share ideas on how best to build community resilience against violent extremism. “We’re raising awareness,” said David Gersten, who was recently named the department’s coordinator for the overall effort.

Carter M. Stewart, the United States attorney in the Columbus area, said he and his staff meet regularly with Somali-American and other community leaders.

But Muslim advocates say there is deep suspicion that, despite all the meetings and the talk of outreach, the government’s main goal is to recruit informants to root out suspected terrorists.

“I don’t know how we can have a partnership with the same government that spies on you,” said Linda Sarsour, advocacy director for the National Network for Arab American Communities.

Indeed, those who met with Mr. Johnson were conflicted, some saying they were pleasantly surprised he had traveled here to put a face on the federal effort, but clearly embittered by their past experiences with the government.

Dr. Iyad Azrak, 37, a Syrian-American ophthalmologist, recounted how he and his family had been forced on numerous trips to Canada to wait for hours at border crossings while inspectors reviewed his records.

“Not once when we’re coming home do they say to me, ‘Welcome home,’ ” said Dr. Azrak, who said he has been a naturalized citizen for six years.

U.S. Is Trying to Counter ISIS’ Efforts to Lure Alienated Young Muslims – NYTimes.com.

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Winnipeg man could be test case for Canada’s latest tool in fight against terrorism: revoking citizenship

2014/10/06 Leave a comment

A likely test case given Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, a dual Iranian-Canadian national, pleaded guilty in Canadian courts (Hiva Alizadeh — arrested in Project Samosa — pleads guilty to terror plot):

Both the NDP and Liberals oppose the legislation, known as C-24. In a June 25 letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair wrote that the case of Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian Al Jazeera journalist imprisoned in Egypt, illustrated the dangers of the law’s reliance on the decisions of foreign courts.

John McCallum, the Liberal immigration critic, said he was also concerned that the judgments of foreign courts could influence Canada’s decision to revoke citizenship, arguing the term terrorism was used “extremely loosely” against government opponents in countries like Sri Lanka.

The safeguards built into the law are also weak, he said, and it creates two classes of Canadians — those who hold dual nationality and those who don’t. “We think a Canadian is a Canadian and we should not have two classes of Canadians, some of whom could be deported and have their citizenship taken away.”

Neither was he convinced that deporting terrorists was a sound national security strategy. “If you’re serious about stopping them from killing people, you want to put them in jail, you don’t want to deport them to a place where they could go on killing.”

In a recent interview, Chris Alexander, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, said the law “sends a very clear message already to those who have grown up here or immigrated here who think it’s just natural that they should be able to go as Canadian citizens with their Canadian passport off to a theatre of war like Syria and join a barbaric group like Daesh,” another name for ISIS.

“No one, however misguided, can be in any doubt now about whether that kind of move should be taken lightly. It shouldn’t be. It’s a serious crime,” he said. “Where there is a conviction and it’s a dual national, you will lose your citizenship.”

He would not comment on which or how many cases were under consideration, saying it was “early days” and procedures were still being put into place. “I hope there’s early action under this provision, but I can’t give you firm timelines,” he said.

But during a meeting Tuesday with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney “highlighted the Government of Canada’s determination to revoke citizenship from dual nationals found guilty of terrorism,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Winnipeg man could be test case for Canada’s latest tool in fight against terrorism: revoking citizenship  

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