Posted by admin on Jun 19th, 2008
Press Release,  June 18
Several civil liberties groups and major labour unions are launching an innovative project aimed at documenting the impacts of the no-fly lists and other government watch lists on our civil rights, privacy rights and mobility rights. “Over the past year, we realized that we needed to document the growing surveillance of travellers,” said Roch Tassé, coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG). “We were hearing too many troubling stories of people caught in the growing web of watch lists. The stories that have come to light may just be the tip of the iceberg,” said Maureen Webb of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).
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Posted by admin on Jun 10th, 2008
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security By TOM BARRY, Counterpunch. June 7/8, 2008
When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refers to its new deterrence strategy, the agency is not talking about nuclear arsenals, missile defense, or border security. For DHS, deterrence is a strategy of immigration control that relies on what U.S. law enforcement does best: imprisonment. The United States has more people in jail-2.3 million-than any other nation. Although the United States has less than 5% of the world’s population, it holds almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. One of every 100 adults in the “land of the free” is locked up. Immigrants are the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. prison population. The DHS agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains 300,000 immigrants annually, with some 32,000 immigrants in ICE detention centers on any given day. ICE’s budget for its Detention and Removal Operations has jumped from $959 million in 2004 to $2.3 billion today.
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Posted by admin on May 25th, 2008
Saturday May 24. The Guardian
A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody. Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.
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Posted by admin on May 19th, 2008
May 19, 2008 04:04 PM. Tim Naumetz. THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet have exempted contracts with Parliament and Canada’s spy agency from oversight by a new ombudsman’s post that was central to the 2006 Conservative election campaign. The government slipped the exemptions through last week in regulations that empower the contract procurement ombudsman under the Accountability Act – flagship legislation the government introduced as its first bill soon after taking office.
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Posted by admin on May 10th, 2008
David Pugliese. The Ottawa Citizen. Saturday, May 10, 2008
The North American Aerospace Defence Command is already planning how it will protect the 2010 Olympics with potentially everything from fighter aircraft to sophisticated surveillance planes. Canadian Lt.-Gen. Charlie Bouchard, deputy commander of the joint U.S.- Canada military organization Norad, says work is under way on how to best provide air protection for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler.
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