Mohandas Gandhi You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind
Benjamin Franklin They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
It’s been a bad summer for top Ottawa ‘secureaucrats’ – senior public servants in charge of the agencies with lead responsibilities for national security. First, CSIS Director Richard Fadden jumped recklessly into a media and political firestorm with comments about foreign infiltration of Canadian political institutions, leading to calls for his resignation. Then William Elliott, [...]
On April 6, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration had approved the targeted killing of an American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is suspected of encouraging and planning terrorist attacks against the United States. The news that the president had decided to kill an American without charges, without a jury, without a lawyer and without a trial has thus far stirred relatively little outcry. By contrast, President Bush’s assertion of the power to detain two Americans without trial — Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — led to two Supreme Court cases and thousands of news articles, op-eds and talk-show debates. On April 13 the Washington Post editorial board defended the targeted-killing policy — even though we know precious little about its asserted legal justifications or scope.
In Canada, the responsibility for national security accountability is vested in a number of different institutions, each with its own mandate, resources, and powers. Generally speaking, these bodies are tasked with providing review, oversight, and/or a public complaints function in relation to a single agency.
Some agencies involved in security practices – for example, the Canada [...]
The strange case of Mohammed Harkat, a pizza deliveryman who has been labeled a national security threat by the federal government, plays out in the wood-paneled grandeur of the east courtroom of the Supreme Court of Canada building.
Mr. Harkat, 42, a short man with close-cropped dark hair, enters the courtroom each morning almost unnoticed.
He walks [...]
How did American officials miss the warning signs and allow a would-be suicide bomber on to a plane to Detroit Christmas Day?
Hasn’t the U.S. government figured out Google technology yet?
Journalists and other information workers who deal with sophisticated technologies and massive data bases every day are scratching their heads at this failure of the U.S. [...]
