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Canada
poised to pass anti-terror legislation despite widespread outrage
Criticism
of anti-terror bill C-51 has united a diverse array of prominent
opponents as many fear the legislation creates the potential for a
police state
5
May, 2015
Widespread
protest and souring public opinion has failed to prevent Canada’s
ruling Conservative Party from pushing forward with sweeping
anti-terror legislation which
a battery of legal scholars, civil liberties groups, opposition
politicians and pundits of every persuasion say will replace the
country’s healthy democracy with a creeping police state.
Prime
Minister Stephen
Harper is
looking forward to an easy victory on Tuesday when the House of
Commons votes in its final debate on the bill, known as C-51. But
lingering public anger over the legislation suggests that his success
in dividing his parliamentary opposition may well work against him
when Canadians go to the polls for a national election this all.
No
legislation in memory has united such a diverse array of prominent
opponents as the proposed legislation, which the
Globe and Mail newspaper denounced as a a plan to create a “secret
police force”.
The
campaign to stop Bill C-51 grew to include virtually every
civil-rights group, law professor, retired judge, author,
editorialist and public intellectual in Canada.
“The
scale of information sharing being proposed is unprecedented, the
scope of the new powers conferred by the act is excessive,
particularly as these powers affect ordinary Canadians, and the
safeguards protecting against unreasonable loss of privacy are
seriously deficient,” declared Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commisioner
of Canada, in a typical statement. “All Canadians would be caught
in this web.”
Margaret E. Atwood
Stephen Harper is attacking our rights & freedoms. Please do the right thing and #VoteAgainstC51, @toadamvaughan. #cdnpoli
“Stephen
Harper is attacking our rights & freedoms,” author Margaret
Atwood tweeted, urging her local Member of Parliament to “do the
right thing and #VoteAgainstC51”.
Defending
the bill, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney lashed out against
“key misconceptions” promoted by “so-called experts”,
especially what he called the “completely false, and frankly
ridiculous” claim that legitimate protest could be targeted as
terrorism.
Blaney
and Justice Minister Peter MacKay have described the bill as a
“reasonable and proportionate” response to the threat of “jihadi
terrorism.” The prime minister has derided its opponents as being
out of touch with Canadian values.
Hundreds
of thousands of ordinary Canadians signed petitions urging the bill
be scrapped and took to the streets in a national day of protest last
month.
Critics
of the legislation say the imminent law gives Canadian spies sweeping
new powers to investigate and disrupt broadly defined threats to
public safety, with language that makes no distinction between
terrorist plots and legitimate political protests and demonstrations.
At the same time, it neglects to provide any increased oversight of
the country’s vastly empowered chief spy agency, the Canadian
Security and Intelligence Service.
“This
is not an ordinary bill and this is not about politics anymore,”
Green Party leader Elizabeth May told the House of Commons last week.
“This is about the soul of the country and a question of whether we
understand what Canada stands for – for ourselves and what we
represent around the world.”
Thomas
Mulcair, leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, denounced the
bill as “sweeping, dangerous, vague and ineffective”. But much
the same could be said of parliamentary efforts to stop Harper. After
promising to support the bill in deference to its apparent
popularity, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau was easily rebuffed
in his call for amendments.
Introduced
in the wake of two lone-wolf terrorist attacks, one of which killed
sentry Nathan Cirillo at the Canadian National War Memorial in
Ottawa, the bill gained widespread initial support among ordinary
Canadians. But in the weeks of criticism that followed, the polls
turned and a majority began to express opposition.
It
remains to be seen whether their anger will survive to make a
difference in the general election this October.
France
passes new surveillance law in wake of Charlie Hebdo attack
Controversial
new bill that allows intelligence agencies to tap phones and emails
without judicial permission sparks protests from civil liberties
groups
5
May, 2015
The
French parliament has overwhelmingly approved sweeping new
surveillance powers in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in
January that killed 17 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo
and a kosher grocery in Paris.
The
new bill, which allows intelligence agencies to tap phones and emails
without seeking permission from a judge, sparked protests from rights
groups who claimed it would legalise highly intrusive surveillance
methods without guarantees for individual freedom and privacy.
Protesters
for civil liberties groups launched a last-ditch campaign against the
bill under the banner “24 hours before 1984” in reference to
George Orwell’s dystopian novel about life under an all-knowing
dictatorship. Groups including Amnesty International warned of
“extremely large and intrusive powers” without judicial controls.
But
despite opposition from green and hard-left MPs, the bill won the
overwhelming backing of the majority of MPs from the Socialist and
rightwing UMP parties, which said it was necessary to tackle the
terrorist risk. The bill was passed in the national assembly by 438
votes to 86, with a handful of no votes from Socialist MPs.
The
new law will allow authorities to spy on the digital and mobile phone
communications of anyone linked to a “terrorist” inquiry without
prior authorisation from a judge. It forces internet service
providers and phone companies to give up data upon request.
Intelligence
services will have the right to place cameras and recording devices
in private homes and install so-called keylogger devices that record
every key stroke on a targeted computer in real time. The authorities
will be able to keep recordings for a month and metadata for five
years.
One
of the most contentious elements of the bill is that it allows
intelligence services to vacuum up metadata, which would then be
subject to analysis for potentially suspicious behaviour. The
metadata would be anonymous, but intelligence agents could follow up
with a request to an independent panel for deeper surveillance that
could yield the identity of users.
Another
controversial element is the so-called “black boxes” – or
complex algorithms – that internet providers will be forced to
install to flag up a succession of suspect behavioural patterns
online, such as keywords used, sites visited and contacts made
Surveillance
agencies will also be able to bug suspects’ homes with microphones
and cameras and add keyloggers to their computers to track every
keystroke.
The
French prime minister, Manuel Valls, defended the bill as “necessary
and proportionate”, saying that to compare it to the mass
surveillance Patriot Act introduced in the United States after the
9/11 attacks was a lie.
He
said that the previous French law on wiretapping dated back to 1991,
“when there were no mobile phones or internet,” and the new bill
was crucial in the face of extremist threats.
Pierre-Olivier
Sur, chairman of the Paris bar lawyers’ association, warned this
week that the bill was “a serious threat to public liberties” and
would put French people under “general surveillance”.
France
is monitoring an estimated 1,200 Islamists and about 200 people who
have returned from fighting with militant groups in Syria and Iraq.
It has earmarked about €425m (£300m) to recruit thousands of extra
police, spies and investigators to beef up surveillance and boost
national security and intelligence.
The
interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, told Libération last month:
“The measures proposed are not aimed at installing generalised
surveillance. On the contrary, it aims to target people who we need
to monitor to protect the French people.”
The
president, François Hollande, has taken the rare step of promising
to refer the law to the constitutional council, the country’s
highest authority on the constitution, to ensure its principles are
lawful.
The
law will now be examined by the senate.
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