Canadian police push limits of civilian UAVs laws

FROM: http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/canadian-police-push-limits-civilian-uavs-laws

A local police department in Ontario, Canada is exploring the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and pioneering civil aviation laws for future use of these aerial drones; in 2007 the Kenora Police Department set a new precedence when photographs of a homicide scene, taken from a UAV, were admitted as evidence in a trial for the first time; unlike the large drones used in Afghanistan these smaller UAVs are not practical for surveillance and are primarily used to record photos for trials and provide aerial reconnaissance in hostage situations or bomb threats; the small UAVs are equipped with several cameras including digital still, video, and Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera; the Canadian government is working on developing regulations for the use of these UAVs in civilian airspace.

A local police department in Ontario, Canada is exploring the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and pioneering civil aviation laws for future use of these aerial drones.

Ontario Provincial Police Constable Marc Sharpe has been flying various custom built fixed wing and commercially available rotary wing UAVs to photograph crime scenes and highway accidents as a cheaper alternative to airplanes or helicopters. In 2007 Sharpe set a new precedent when his photographs of a homicide scene, taken from a UAV for the Kenora Police Department, were admitted as evidence in a trial for the first time.

Constable Sharpe began by using custom built fixed wing UAVs that he created himself, but has since switched to using commercially made miniature helicopters. He currently flies the X-6 made Draganfly Systems and the Scout designed by Aeryon Labs Inc., both manufactured by Canadian firms.

These new UAVs are superior to his original designs as they are able to take off and land vertically, require less area to operate, and can hover over fixed areas. Manual controls are also supplemented by GPS and computerized controls that help fly the aircraft.

The small UAVs are equipped with several cameras including digital still, video, and Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras. Image quality is also much higher as cameras include vibration dampeners and image stabilization technology.

Unlike the large drones used in Afghanistan, these smaller UAVs are not practical for surveillance. Instead, they are primarily used to record photos for trials and provide aerial reconnaissance in hostage situations or bomb threats.

Flights usually last five to fifteen minutes and require three man teams consisting of a pilot, camera operator, and an aviation safety officer. Radio controlled UAVs are also restricted to line of sight flights and maximum altitude of 400 feet due to Canada’s aviation safety laws.

Current laws only allow pilots to fly their radio controlled model aircraft in designated locations, but Transport Canada, the government body that regulates airspace, classifies these UAVs as Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) which exempts them from such laws.

Sharpe explains, “According to regulations it’s not a model aircraft, it is an aircraft and we have to follow the rules that apply to aircraft.”

“The rules are designed around having as safe an operation as possible.”

Constable Sharpe is currently working with Transport Canada to develop regulations for the use of these UAVs in civilian air space.

“Currently there is no legislation governing UAVs in controlled civilian air space,” Sharpe said. “There’s a big future for UASs and the government is trying to figure out how to integrate them into civilian air space.”

Starting in November of last year, UAVs have been operating under a Special Flight Operations Certificate which allows it to fly over urban areas. The certificate must be renewed annually with Transport Canada.

According to Sharpe, “Kenora was the first use of an UAV in civilian airspace within an urban environment in North America,” and “the Draganfly was the first commercial system of its kind to be used in an urban environment.”

*** GREAT idea: free up the pilots and the choppers to focus on other more pressing matters of public safety. MS ***

Michael Ross: Canada does not need its own CIA

In an interview reported last week, Arthur T. Porter, chairman of the Canadian intelligence-community watchdog agency known as the Senate Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), stated that a Canadian CIA is not needed.

“You have to recognize that [by spying] you are probably breaking [some other country’s] law by just the definition of what you’re doing,” he said in his first interview since becoming chairman of SIRC. “It’s also incredibly expensive to set that sort of apparatus up. I’m just not sure that we’re ready to go in that direction at this time.”

The National Post headline on the article was “Canadian CIA not needed: Official.” When the point is phrased that way, I would agree: The last thing our intelligence community needs is a bloated, risk-averse, turf-war-mired bureaucracy where some 90% of employees operate domestically, as is now the case with the CIA. What we do need in Canada is a small, nimble, and effective overseas intelligence service that conducts covert information-gathering on the capabilities, intentions and activities of rogue states, transnational terrorist groups and other foreign entities before they appear on our door-step.

A case in point is the recent and sudden regime change in North Africa. Well-placed sources in those countries may have given us a hint of what was about to occur; or at least, which direction events were taking. Unfortunately, Canada now stands as one of the few Western nations without overseas case officers conducting clandestine information-gathering on threats affecting our national security.

Dr. Porter, who according to SIRC’s website, “brings a unique blend of medical practice, finance and business experience to health-care leadership” and his four colleagues on the committee (whose backgrounds are also about as far-removed from the intelligence realm as possible), balk at what they see as the prohibitive cost of setting up an overseas intelligence service. But in the scheme of national security expenditures, a spy agency can be set-up for a fraction of the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet.

The business of spying is a lot less complicated and expensive than many think. It’s the world’s second oldest profession, after all. When broken down to its basics, it merely involves tasking spies to make contact with foreigners who have access to intelligence that we need. It’s not rocket science.

The most common counter-arguments to creating our own spy agency is that we already possess one in CSIS. While it is true that CSIS has a mandate to counter threats overseas should they appear, CSIS is primarily a domestic security service with little in the way of mandate or experience to conduct foreign intelligence gathering on a full-time professional basis. Many of the people with information vital to our national security don’t come to Canada — or, for security and other reasons — cannot leave their own country.

What about our diplomats and their in-country channels of communication? Fictional portrayals notwithstanding, diplomats and spies do not move in the same circles; and, more importantly, diplomats are routinely, if not constantly, put under surveillance by their host countries’ security services — even in friendly nations.

The other argument is that we have good multilateral relationships with allied intelligence services, which share their information with us. But what if another country has to weigh our interests against theirs when it comes to sensitive intelligence that they gathered and don’t feel like sharing? Moreover, how does it look when a country as rich, advanced and strategically important as Canada has no qualms about asking its allies’ spies to endure extreme risk and hardship because we’re too law-abiding and cheap to do it ourselves?

Domestic security services such as CSIS are not spy agencies. They operate on home turf with all the powers and support of the state behind them — including, in Canada’s case, the long arm of the RCMP should things go awry. To coin a metaphor, CSIS can be thought of as a good gamekeeper; but what Dr. Porter and the other committee members need to realize is that, in our world of political instability, terrorist threats and non-conventional weapons proliferation, Canada also needs a few good poachers operating on foreign soil as well.
National Post

“Michael Ross” is a former deep-cover officer with the Israel Secret Intelligence Service (Mossad).

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/15/michael-ross-canada-doesnt-need-canadian-cia-it-needs-better/#ixzz1E4tWUcoU

*** The only reason to make me (somewhat) reluctant about a foreign service capability is that we have enough concerns domestically to worry about as opposed to opening up a whole new can of accountability worms based on foreign ops. I have some ideas how a foreign capability would work but not really willing to share it here on a public blog. ;) MS ***

Govt. CAN withhold secret evidence in terror trials

FROM: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Government+withhold+secret+evidence+terror+trial+court/4258134/story.html

OTTAWA — The country's top court has upheld the federal government's right to withhold evidence for national security reasons regarding the Toronto 18 terrorism plot, which was broken up in June 2006.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada said Thursday that the provisions adopted by the government were constitutional, but it also concluded that suspects could be released whenever the evidence against them is too sensitive to be presented in a trial.

"Sometimes the only way to avoid an '(unfair) trial is to have no trial at all," members of the Supreme Court of Canada wrote in their ruling.

"As we have explained . . . the criminal court trial judge possesses the means to safeguard the accused's fair trial rights."

The Toronto 18 bomb plot was to have targeted the Toronto Stock Exchange, a CSIS office in Toronto and a military base between Toronto and Ottawa.

A separate faction of the Toronto 18 had also spoken of storming Parliament.

Authorities stepped in to break up the scheme in June 2006 as group members unloaded bags labelled "ammonium nitrate" at a rented warehouse.

The courts never heard evidence that was considered to be a threat to national security following a request from the federal government.

Nonetheless, seven of the 18 suspects admitted guilt in the plot, while four others were convicted based on other evidence presented. The charges against the others were stayed or dropped.

Shareef Abdelhaleem, who has been portrayed by the Crown as the "principal architect" of the plot, is due to be sentenced in March.

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Supreme Court set to rule which judges should review national security evidence

FROM: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/supreme-court-set-to-rule-which-judges-should-review-national-security-evidence-115664104.html

TORONTO - Canada's top court is set to decide Thursday whether part of a national-security law is unconstitutional because it stops a judge in a criminal trial from deciding what evidence should be kept secret.

The issue arose in the high-profile terrorism case known as the Toronto 18, when Ontario Superior Court Justice Fletcher Dawson struck down provisions of the Canada Evidence Act.

Prosecutors in the case — as is common in terrorism cases — argued that disclosing certain information to the defence could hurt national security.

Under Section 38 of the act, only a Federal Court judge can determine whether the assertion of national security privilege is valid.

In the terrorism trial, the prosecution relied on evidence police and intelligence agents gathered, some of which was considered too sensitive to release.

In a pre-trial motion, the accused challenged the validity of the act related to the secret material.

In striking down the provisions, Dawson ruled that giving Federal Court exclusive jurisdiction to determine privilege in such cases was unconstitutional.

"That scheme removes this court’s ability to determine whether (national security privilege) applies to prevent the disclosure of relevant information to the accused," Dawson wrote in January 2009.

"Although it is this court that is responsible for the fair trial of the accused, the Section 38 scheme vests exclusive jurisdiction to determine questions of (security privilege) in the Federal Court."

Dawson worried that having to take secrecy challenges to Federal Court would prove disruptive and could derail such trials.

"The applicants have the right to have their constitutional rights in relation to a fair trial determined in the court of competent jurisdiction," he said.

"It is not permissible for this court to defer to the Federal Court, which is not a court of competent jurisdiction . . . in these particular circumstances."

Instead, Dawson said the judge hearing the criminal case should have the authority to review the assertion of national security privilege, and assumed that power in the case he was hearing.

"Dawson's ruling was used for the purposes of that trial," Michael Lacy, who acted for one of the accused, said Wednesday.

"It cut out the Federal Court from making those decisions (on secret evidence)."

The federal government, while agreeing to Dawson's approach for that trial, appealed directly to the Supreme Court of Canada in hopes of preserving the Federal Court's exclusive jurisdiction.

The high court heard the case last March and will issue its ruling on Thursday.

In the summer of 2006, police arrested 18 people in the Toronto area in connection with a plot to attack Parliament and commit other terrorist acts.

Of those, 11 were convicted, while charges were withdrawn or stayed in the other seven cases.

Thursday's high court ruling will have no impact on the convictions.

*** Public prosecutions continue to remain the preferred choice of dealing with terrorism cases. Where the rule of law is paramount and where due process extends to all, THIS establishes the credibility and integrity of our approach in this regard. MS ***

Cancelled debate highlights tension among Canadian Muslims

FROM: http://life.nationalpost.com/2011/02/07/cancelled-debate-highlights-tension-among-canadian-muslims/

February 7, 2011 – 6:00 am

By Jessica Hume

TORONTO —

More than 600 people showed up at the North American Muslim Foundation on a recent Saturday to hear a debate over secular liberalism in Islam.

It would have been something of a face-off. The prospective debaters, Tarek Fatah, author and self-described secular Muslim, and Sheharyar Shaikh, president of NAMF and a conservative imam at Masjid Qurtabah, are known polemicists who have not shied away from very public disagreements in the past.

In fact, the event only came about after an open challenge to Mr. Fatah was published late last year by Mr. Shaikh, who called on the controversial author to publicly defend his moderate views, which have been called unIslamic by some in the Canadian Muslim community. Mr. Shaikh — who has openly defended polygamy and opposed secular education for Muslims — is among them.

When it was announced shortly after 6 p.m. that the debate was cancelled after Mr. Fatah declined to participate at the last minute, more than 600 people were disappointed.

The moderator was changed shortly before the event was to begin, angering Mr. Fatah, who described the audience as “hostile.” His associates with the Muslim Canadian Congress — a grassroots organization Mr. Fatah helped found — then requested one of their replacement moderators be called in, angering Farooq Khan, executive director of NAMF, who described MCC members as full of “hyperbole and imaginary fear.”

At around 6 p.m., Mr. Fatah said he was warned by police of threats to his safety, though he added he has no proof.

“I did not feel comfortable there,” he said.

For their part, neither Mr. Khan nor Staff Sergeant Jim Qualtrough at Toronto’s 42 Division said they were aware of any safety concerns or threats. Staff Sergeant Qualtrough said that “as far as the police are concerned, nothing happened at that location Saturday night.”

Some members of the prospective audience dismissed the debate as being akin to an after-school playground fight — meet me at the monkey bars — between two men whose disapproval of each other was already well known.

But for others, both the events that transpired and those that didn’t only highlighted what they see as growing disparity in the Muslim community in Toronto and in Canada, a population that is expected to triple by 2030, according to a recent report by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

What that means for Toronto, the city with the highest concentration of Muslims in North America, is unclear. A rise in population alone is not cause for concern. What has some members of the Muslim community here more worried is what they describe as an increasing tendency toward more radical and political sermons being delivered in Toronto mosques.

“I see Wahhabism as a growing factor in Toronto,” says Imtiaz Baloch, who lives in Markham and works as an accountant.

Born in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism is among the most conservative and fiercely insular forms of Islam, in which followers subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Koran. The term isn’t being thrown around in mosques here just yet, but its fundamental principles provide the underlying theme for the majority of sermons Mr. Baloch has heard in recent years.

“I mean sermons about Afghanistan, about Iraq, about Kashmir, about suicide bombing and chaos in the Muslim world. As a project I visited mosques in each corner of the city and in lectures, statements and sermons at Sunni mosques from Stouffville to Toronto, imams are preaching about how Muslims all over the world are being attacked by non-Muslims and they are justifying the violence by Muslims against NATO and everyone else,” he said. “I’m scared to take my children to the mosque. So I don’t.”

Another audience member who wished to remain anonymous said he has stopped going to mosques in Toronto altogether.

“I used to go to the downtown mosque [at Dundas and Bay] but I don’t anymore,” he said. “I didn’t like the political discussions, they were divisive. I saw no indication of interest in promoting integration into Canadian society. It was always about how different we are, how Muslims should live in Canada. There were political undertones of why some of the international events were happening and how we should feel about them.”

The “downtown mosque” refers to both Masjid Toronto and the Muslim Association of Canada, both of which are housed in the same building just south of the Greyhound bus station. It first opened in 2002 — Dr. El-Tantawy Attia, a retired engineer originally from Alexandria, Egypt, has been there since day one. Mr Attia says there are few bad apples in every bunch and that the Toronto Muslim community is no exception, but says he preaches “middle of the road Islam” — a seemingly innocuous statement until he qualifies it.

“Here, we follow the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

The Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest and largest international Islamic political group. Though it espouses non-violence, the Brotherhood is a banned party in Egypt, where it is the biggest opposition organization in government, known both for its conservatism and its goal of the creation of an Islamic state.

Mubin Shaikh, a national security consultant who is also known as the informant in the Toronto 18 case, said more than deriving from hubristic imams, any radicalization among Toronto Muslims is likely a function of cultural and identity crises among the city’s Muslim youth.

He sees the phenomenon as affecting second-generation Canadians, who lack the cultural links to their parents’ countries of origin, but can feel equally unintegrated into Canadian society.

“They look to mosques for religious education. Then the more they learn, they don’t think their parents are religious enough. I know, I went through it myself,” Mr. Shaikh said. “These are the ones who can become more aggressive and more radical. It’s a way of asserting an identity separate and apart from the parents and from society and authority.”

If there is a growing pocket of radicalism within the Toronto Muslim community — and Mr. Shaikh says there certainly is — there are two things to take note of from the Toronto 18 case. One is that the sophistication for pulling off acts of terrorism in Canada has not yet been realized. The other, however, is that the low incidence of violence is certainly not for a lack of trying.

“There are more than enough people to keep an eye on here.”

---

*** The problem is when you "dare" others to call you on your claims not thinking they will do just that. Then when it comes to the last minute, decide not to follow through based on clearly fabricated claims of "threats" which the Police themselves dismiss, is to show the weakness of the claims being made in the first place.

Fear-based understandings do nothing to give us a proper understanding of how we can devise solutions - I liken it to "bad intelligence" which is then proferred as a basis for a course of action. If this is the way we're going to go about framing the discussion on national security ... we have a rude awakening waiting for us because clearly, everyone is still asleep at the switch.

How it helps this discussion by using fear mongering talking heads with ZERO operational experience and ZERO professional academic qualifications is beyond me. Would we do this when it comes to Medicine? Engineering? Law? So WHY would we do so for something as vital as national security?

MS

CSIS director balks at new powers for national security adviser

FROM: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/csis-director-balks-at-new-powers-for-national-security-adviser/article1868097/

The head of Canada’s spy agency has serious objections to beefing up the powers of the national security adviser — effectively rejecting a key recommendation of the federal inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing.

In a secret memo to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Dick Fadden said the Air India report’s call to hand new authority to the adviser would undermine ministerial responsibility.

Mr. Fadden said bolstering the role of the adviser – currently a low-profile federal official – would “fundamentally misunderstand” the long-held notion the minister is ultimately accountable for what happens in his portfolio.

“In short, while there is always room for improvement, I believe the report does not fully take into account the measures that have been implemented since 1985, and leads as a result to some unfair and potentially misguided recommendations,” Mr. Fadden said.

The Canadian Press obtained a declassified copy of the four-page June, 2010, memo from CSIS, with few redactions, under the Access to Information Act. The Privy Council Office released a heavily censored version of the same memo under the access law in November.

While the copy disclosed two months ago left a clear impression that CSIS bristled at criticism from the Air India commission, the newly released memo spells out Mr. Fadden’s concerns in considerable detail.

“In several instances, the report’s recommendations seem to be based on the premise that simply adding another level of management or dispute resolution early on in an investigation will somehow resolve outstanding legal issues that may arise later,” Mr. Fadden said.

In its spring report, the Air India inquiry, led by retired Supreme Court justice John Major, recounted a litany of federal failures before and after the June, 1985, terrorist attack that killed 329 people, most of them Canadians.

Authorities believe Sikh extremists fighting for an independent homeland planted explosives on the jetliner, which blew up over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland.

Mr. Major’s June report called for changes to intelligence-handling, criminal prosecutions and aviation security to prevent another such tragedy. Under the retired judge’s recommended plan, the national security adviser would essentially become an intelligence czar, served by a deputy and a staff of representatives from front-line security agencies, including CSIS, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and Foreign Affairs. The adviser would resolve disputes among these agencies. Mr. Major concluded that serious miscommunication and turf wars had contributed to the Air India disaster.

Mr. Major said the current practice of limiting the information CSIS provides the RCMP – to prevent disclosure in possible criminal proceedings – is wrong and results in an “impoverished response to terrorist threats.”

He advocated legislation that would require CSIS to report information that might be used in an investigation or prosecution of an offence to police, prosecutors or the national security adviser. The adviser would also be empowered to pass information to relevant authorities.

Mr. Fadden said in the memo to Mr. Toews that while CSIS is keen to solve long-standing issues related to information-sharing and evidence, “our initial reaction to some of the recommendations – such as relinquishing control of the dissemination of our information to the [national security adviser], and diluting promises of source anonymity – is of serious concern.”

Last month, Mr. Toews seemed to dismiss the notion of making the national security adviser a more powerful point person, using much the same rationale Mr. Fadden did in the memo. “In Canada now, we do have a co-ordination of many of these efforts already and we’re not about to set up a new bureaucracy,” Mr. Toews told a news conference.

In the memo, Mr. Fadden also takes issue with Mr. Major’s assertion that lingering problems of communication and co-ordination, especially between CSIS and the RCMP, have not been resolved.

“I fundamentally disagree with this statement, and submit that, had the same level of effort been applied to an examination of the current operational environment and administrative policy frameworks between the two agencies, the overall tone of the report would have been tempered, and the resulting recommendations would be more reflective of the current realities,” Mr. Fadden says.

“The simple truth is that the chain of events of 1985 could not, or would not, in my view, be repeated today.”

The Canadian Press