Hard Questions for Canada’s Most Secret Agency
The lack of transparency of Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the CSE, makes it impossible to fully understand how it operates, or how the proposed CSE Act will change elements of its operations. Before having a debate about what the CSE should be allowed to do under the new law, we need to better understand both its past and present conduct.
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Why we sent copies of a video game to Canada's Parliament and Senate
CJFE has partnered with publisher Surprise Attack Games to send 443 license keys for the video game Orwell: Ignorance is Strength to Canadian Members of Parliament and Senators. We are doing this as part of an educational initiative to familiarize Canada’s lawmakers with the ethical implications of new espionage powers that would be created for Canada’s spies following the passage of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters. CJFE is concerned that many of the same fictional powers on display in Orwell: Ignorance is Strength are being made available to Canada’s very real cyber spies through Bill C-59, a deeply troubling update to the widely opposed Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015 (Formerly, Bill C-51).
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Play this game. Don't play games with our rights.
It sounds like science fiction: a shadowy government entity builds a multi-billion dollar high-tech campus in the nation’s capital. It begins a massive recruitment drive gathering thousands of employees with a wide array of skills and technical aptitudes. Then, the government tables a law that would award this entity new and unwarranted powers to eavesdrop on and hack targets connected to foreign countries as well as gathering and storing open-sourced data on citizens. The proposed new law would also give the nation’s spies the power to produce or disseminate false information (including news reports) in order to achieve investigative goals or mislead foreign targets.
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Asking tough questions is not harassment
CJFE is gravely concerned by the arrest of journalist Antoine Trépanier, an employee of Radio Canada, by the Gatineau police (SPVG) on suspicion of criminal harassment.
Trépanier was making inquiries into the case of Yvonne Dubé, who was court ordered to stop her legal practice after being found to have worked as a lawyer in Ontario without a law license. Trépanier did connect briefly with Dubé for comment but following his initial questions she withdrew from a scheduled on camera interview. Dubé is an affiliate of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada.
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CJFE intervenes in Toronto Star case to promote transparency in administrative tribunals
CJFE is intervening in a court case that could end secrecy in Ontario’s tribunals. On February 6, 2017, the Toronto Star filed a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms seeking to combat the lack of transparency that presently surrounds provincial administrative and quasi-judicial tribunals.
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