Early in the morning on Friday, September 24, FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota's Twin Cities kicked in the doors of anti-war activists, brandishing guns, spending hours rifling through their homes. The FBI took away computers, photos, notebooks and other personal property. Residents were issued subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. It was just the latest in the ongoing crackdown on dissent in the U.S., targeting peace organizers as supporters of "foreign terrorist organizations."
surveillance
The G20's symbolic violence
This week's mass processing inside (and outside) a Toronto courthouse helped clarify June's Jailapalooza festival during the G20, the largest mass arrest in our history. Of 1,100 detained, all but 227 had the charges dropped or were never charged. Most had no links to burning police cars or battered bank machines. They were picked up while protesting peacefully or looking on.
Why? Police say they wanted to prevent recurrences, after the dramatic events. Some intimate they were embarrassed by criticisms of their earlier inaction, and overreacted. Why had police gone missing at the crucial time? There's been no clear answer. One possibility: to justify the vaulting security costs via shocking images of violence.
U.S. surveillance and the National Security Agency
Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained -- sometimes at gunpoint -- and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.
Cda Pension Plan & Israeli Apartheid: CPP has $1.5B in firms supplying Military, Police, Surveillance, Prison products to Israel
Israel and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP)
Should the CPP invest in companies that profit from Israel's military occupation, its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, its destruction of Palestinian homes and orchards, or its construction of the illegal Separation Wall?
The Impending Cybersecurity Power Grab: Stop Cyber-Spying Week
The Impending Cybersecurity Power Grab - It's Not Just for the US
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/impending-cybersecurity-power-grab...
"EFF, Openmedia.ca,CIPPIC and a number of other civil society organizations have declared this to be 'Stop Cyber Spying Week' in protest of several controversial US cybersecurity legislative proposals, including the bill currently before Congress and the Senate called CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act of 2011.
Community members drop by CSIS offices with some questions
Montreal -- Community members showed up at the offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Montreal yesterday morning, intent on engaging in a little role reversal. The group came equipped to photograph and interrogate people entering the offices in an action called "profile the profilers."
The threat of 'Big Brother' Internet monitoring in Canada
The concern over nations becoming "Big Brother" surveillance states is alive and well in Canada.
Canada, that bastion of civility, open-mindedness and personal rights?
Yes, unless you don't follow foreign affairs, our neighbour to the north has been under a conservative -- very conservative -- government for a bit of time now, with Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper serving as prime minister.
The most recent threat to personal privacy coming out of Ottawa is a bill that sounds frighteningly reminiscent of ones we've seen in the U.S.
The "Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other acts" would, among other abominable violations of civil liberties: