I made Another C-51 Presentation. This Time at a University!

Below I've linked the presentation I'm proudest of so far. Not because I delivered it in a stellar fashion (I mostly just read my speaking notes) but because I was given the opportunity to present to a university-level criminology course. I would like to thank Josephine Savarese for offering me that opportunity. I hope that maybe some of them (and some of you who are reading this) might participate in whatever public consultations the government engages in. They say they will hold full public consultations, and I will post here as soon as I hear anything more concrete than that about where and when.

On February 9th, I presented the material linked below to students of Criminology 3643: Terrorism: An Introduction. As always, feel free to share and reuse this material with appropriate attribution.

All files are located here.

I also like this presentation because over the past several months I've started reading Roach and Forcese's book about C-51, which gave me more of the historical context, and I was able to put that into the presentation. It's satisfying to place the current situation in a broader narrative, and readers of this blog may be interested in that broader narrative.

I made another presentation about C-51.

On January 19th, I had the privilege of presenting a lunch and learn session about the information sharing portions of C-51 (the first part, the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act) to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) New Brunswick Chapter. It has taken me a little while to review the PowerPoint and clean up the speaking notes to more closely reflect what I actually said, as opposed to what I had written out beforehand. But that has been done now, and here are those presentations, with speaking notes. As always, anyone who wishes to is free to reuse this material, provided you attribute anything I've written to me, and don't attribute anything I've quoted from somewhere else to me, because I have relied heavily on the work of others and they deserve credit.

Here's a .pptx version, a .ppt version, and a .pdf version.

I have another presentation scheduled for mid February, this time on C-51 more broadly. I will post that up here as well. Given the new Liberal government has pledged to consult with Canadians and amend C-51, I hope that these materials can inform some of the debate around potential amendments to the bill. I would encourage all Canadian readers of this blog to go to an engagement session in their area if possible. I'll post more information about the process the government is following as I learn more about it. At the moment not a lot is known, although slide 14 does list what I knew as of January 19th.

In the Election Tommorrow, Remember C-51

I had intended to post more on this blog over the summer and fall, but life got in the way. So just a quick note, before the election tomorrow.

This is a close 3 way race. Your vote counts more than it would typically. So if you're not planning to vote, please reconsider. And because it's likely to be a minority government, the Greens could be a powerful force, so don't take my saying that it's a 3 way race to mean "don't bother voting Green".

And when you vote, don't forget that this happened:

And that after that, the Liberals supported the legislation so as not to appear soft on terrorism going into an election campaign, while publicly stating that they didn't like the legislation and would amend it if elected.

Those who have read this blog know why I think we need to remember and impose some political consequences for parties (or individual MPs, but in this case, anyone who was a party member voted with their party) that support legislation like C-51.Please remind others who may have forgotten, or may be unaware.

C-51 passed on Tuesday

As of 5:30 PM Tuesday, Ottawa time, bill C-51 passed the Senate. All of the Liberals who were present voted against, along with the two independent senators who were present. All of the Conservatives who were present voted for it.

The breakdown is as follows:

Voted for C-51:

• 44 Conservative senators

Voted against C-51:

• 26 Liberal senators
• 2 independent senators
• Anne C. Cools
• Elaine McCoy

Were not present to vote:

• 6 Conservatives
• A. Raynell Andreychuk
• Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (the seconder of C-51, currently under investigation by the Auditor General for expenses violations)
• Jacques Demers
•  
• 2 Liberals
• 3 "Independents"
• Patrick Brazeau (formerly Conservative, currently suspended due to sexual assault allegations)
•  Michael Duffy (formerly Conservative, currently suspended due to issues with senate expense claims)
• Pamela Wallin (formerly Conservative, currently suspended due to issues with senate expense claims)

Further details to follow (I'll update this post - I just have to stop for tonight because it's late) but if you want to know who voted which way, go here for the vote breakdown, and here for full name, party affiliation, geographic constituency and contact information for each senator.

Final vote on C-51 scheduled for Tuesday at 5:30 Ottawa time

I was expecting that the final Senate vote on C-51 would take place yesterday. But looking at the Senate debates, it appears to have been delayed until Tuesday at 5:30. So that's how long you have to express your views to your senators.

The Hon. the Speaker: Pursuant to rule 7-4(5)(c), the standing vote is deferred to 5:30 p.m. at the next sitting, with the bells to be rung at 5:15 p.m.

...
Hon. Elizabeth (Beth) Marshall, pursuant to notice of June 3, 2015, moved:

That when the Senate next adjourns after the adoption of this motion, it do stand adjourned until Tuesday, June 9, 2015, at 2 p.m.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.

I've only had time to skim the recent debates in the Senate, but it appears that Senators have each been receiving hundreds to thousands of e-mails opposing C-51. I sent e-mails to all of the Conservative Senators from New Brunswick. No response yet.

A Book I'm Very Interested to Read. And You Can, Too - For Free

I just received this in my RSS feed: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/05/law-privacy-and-surveillance-in-canada-in-the-post-snowden-era/

This is just the sort of book I've been looking for - something that gives me an overview of the legal framework around and current state of government surveillance powers. I had seriously considered buying Craig Forcese's book, National Security Law - Canadian Practice in International Perspective, and I might yet do that, but Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era has several advantages:

• It's written by multiple authors, often specializing in the particular subtopic about which they're writing. (This may be true of National Security Law as well, I'm not sure)
• It's up to date as of at least May 6th of this year. I saw a reference in one of the footnotes to the passage of C-51 through the House on May 6th. In other words, while it gives a historical context and legal analysis (most of the authors are lawyers or law professors) to current events, which usually means a few years delay, this book is very current. By comparison, Craig Forcese's book was written in 2007, and in order to get current, I'd have to read the book plus updates in his blog.
• It's free. You could buy a paper or ebook format for $45, but it's also available for free under a Creative Commons share alike non-commercial license, as a PDF download, here.

I think both understanding Internet surveillance, and keeping this issue in people's minds until the October election, are important goals.  So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read through this book, slowly and carefully, and post my thoughts, reactions, and things I've learned on this blog. I'm going to do it on a schedule that is not too arduous for me, or for anyone else with a busy life who wants to read along with me. There are 9 chapters, each about 30 pages long. I'll read one chapter every two weeks, posting about the first chapter two weeks from now. Here's the schedule:

Part I: Understanding Surveillance

June 13, 2015: Chapter I: Canadian Internet "Boomerang" traffic and Mass NSA Surveillance: Responding to Privacy and Network Sovereignty Challenges

June 27, 2015: Chapter II: Forgotten Surveillance: Covert Human Intelligence Sources in Canada in a Post-9/11 World

Part II: Legal Issues

July 11, 2015: Chapter III: Foreign Intelligence in an Inter-Networked World: Time for a Re-Evaluation

July 25, 2015: Chapter IV: Lawful Illegality: What Snowden Has Taught Us About the Legal Infrastructure of the Surveillance State

August 8, 2015: Chapter V: Law, Logarithms, and Liberties: Legal Issues Arising from CSE's Metadata Collection Initiatives

Part III: Reforms and Accountability

August 22, 2015: Chapter VI: Permanent Accountability Gaps and Partial Remedies

September 5, 2015: Chapter VII: The Failure of Official Accountability and the Rise of Guerilla Accountability

September 19, 2015: Chapter VIII: Why Watching the Watchers Isn't Enough: Canadian Suveillance Law in the Post-Snowden Era

October 3, 2015: Chapter IX: Stuck on the Agenda: Drawing Lessons from the Stagnation of "Lawful Access" Legislation in Canada

Immediate Action Required: Contact your Senators

Hi all:

I haven't posted on here in a while, partially because I was discouraged by the 100% strictly partisan vote about C-51 in the House of Commons (not a single person in Parliament broke with their party's line on C-51). The idea that regardless of what their constituents said or what they personally might think, every single person who voted did so based on party affiliation, kind of sapped my motivation to post here for a while, plus the rest of my life has been busy, so without a really important message to write about, I didn't post. But now I do have something important to say.

The bill has passed the House, and been debated and reviewed in the Senate. The final vote in the Senate, which is the real true final vote before this bill becomes law, will occur any day now. And... some of the Liberal senators are going to vote against. As of this writing, there are 5 senators (some Liberal, some Conservative) who have declared they are voting for C-51, and 15 (all Liberal) who have declared they are voting against. And 62 who have not declared their intentions.

The Conservatives still have a majority, but if the Senate is less partisan than the House, given that there has been a strong backlash even within the Conservative base, there's a chance to stop the bill just short of the goal line, as happened with the original CSIS act in 1983. So what I'm asking you to do,  if you're reading this, is to tell any Senators in your province who are undeclared that it's important that they vote against. Please do it now rather than later.

Source of "5 for, 15 against, 62 undeclared", and also a tool for contacting your senators: https://stopc51.ca/senate?

If you want your senators' full contact info, go here: http://www.parl.gc.ca/SenatorsBio/default.aspx?sortord=P&Language=E