RSS FeedCSIS tapped phone despite order
Can you blame people if their response to this kind of news is cynicism?
CSIS tapped phone despite order
Agents violated solicitor-client privilege, recorded 171 calls involving accused terroristBy Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen
November 16, 2010Federal security agents recorded 171 phone calls between suspected terrorist Mahmoud Jaballah and his lawyers after they agreed to halt the practice in December 2008.
That revelation is contained in a recent order issued by Federal Court Judge Kevin Aalto, who condemns the repeated breaches of solicitor-client privilege.
“Solicitor-client privilege is virtually sacrosanct in the Canadian judicial system,” Aalto said in ordering two federal agencies to turn over a raft of documents to Jaballah’s defence team.
I’m also concerned about how this implicates the federal lawyers who had access to this privileged information. What role might the Law Society have in rectifying this abuse of power?
Prisoner’s copyright
Inmate rights are a lost cause for an average politician. If anything, legislators are more likely to push for harsher sentences, more hurdles to parole, and less money for rehabilitation. Of course, history knows prisoners who survived jail through spirituality or by creating works of arts. But one Canadian court case shows that the state may deprive prisoners even of their rights to intellectual property created in the slammer.
John Hawley was sentenced to ten years in prison for armed robberies committed in his mid-twenties. After he was released on parole, John started a “successful commercial art and design studio in Toronto” (Hawley v. Canada, [1990] F.C.J. No. 337). When he served a part of his sentence in Frontenac Institution, a minimum security prison, he created a large painting entitled “Mount Whymper.” This work of art became the subject of a lawsuit he brought against the federal government claiming copyright in “Mount Whymper.”
The Federal Court denied his claim. It found that John was an employee of the Crown at all material times. The judge looked at some of the traditional factors showing supervision and control of John’s work by the prison authorities. He found that John had a work supervisor and that he painted as part of his prison employment. Section 13(3) of the Copyright Act is unambiguous in denying an otherwise strong protection of the creator in cases of works produced in the course of employment. The employer is the IP owner, period.
But was John really a federal employee? According to the court, if you’re in prison, you are, at least for the purposes of IP ownership. It ultimately doesn’t matter that your employment is forced and that your spare time is artificially limited and controlled. To quote the judge: “Frontenac Institution policies, as found in similar institutions, provide only circumscribed conditions under which an inmate can profit or gain from his own labours exerted during leisure hours.” It looks like the flip side of prison rehabilitation is coerced federal employment and consequent government ownership of any works of art created by the inmate.
Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis in gaol. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn composed poems in the Gulag. If they did it in Canadian correctional institutions, would our federal government claim copyright in their works too?
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
Secret evidence
Lifting the cover on Canada’s spy files
Michelle Shephard writes for the Toronto Star:
But beyond answering questions that have lingered for years about Khadr’s case, John’s testimony was a remarkable example of how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is being forced into public.
“There really has been a paradigm shift in what is being disclosed and what’s not,” noted Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represented Maher Arar during a multi-million dollar federal inquiry.
Another evidence flop in a security certificate case
Judge orders CSIS to hand over file
Bill Curry writes for the Globe:
The Federal Court is ordering Canada’s spy agency to disclose a second human source in the Mohamed Harket case, an exceptional decision taken after finding the Canadian Security Intelligence Service “filtered” evidence and failed to tell the court that a first key source had failed a polygraph test.
Access to information
Ottawa sued over censorship of Tommy Douglas dossier
Steve Rennie writes:
The federal government is being taken to court over its decision to withhold hundreds of pages, some decades old, in the Mounties’ secret file on Tommy Douglas.
Ottawa abandons case against Charkaoui
Divisive terror law losing traction
Can we trust secret evidence, often borrowed from foreign countries, to throw people out of Canada?
Colin Freeze explains the security certificates:
… federal ministers sign off on a certificate after viewing secret CSIS information, which allows officials to immediately jail, and eventually deport, a non-citizen.
The “intelligence” used to do this is disclosed to judges but never fully revealed to the accused, drawn as it usually is from secret agents and wiretaps, sometimes placed within Canada but also frequently “loaned” from foreign governments on condition that the provenance be kept secret.
Federal Court rules on challenge to last year’s election
Watchdog failed to show 2008 vote illegal: Federal Court
Sue Bailey writes:
Harper asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament last September despite his own fixed-date election law. That law set the next federal vote for Oct. 19, 2009 – or sooner, if the government lost a non-confidence vote.
Democracy Watch says Harper broke his promise of election reform and the spirit of the law in a blatant grab for majority power.
But Justice Shore said the group’s lawyer, Peter Rosenthal, gave only vague evidence as to how the snap campaign put opposition parties and voters at a disadvantage.
The Crown argued the Prime Minister had a right to “pre-empt a non-confidence vote,” despite the fixed-date election law.
Transparency sought in Afghan inquiry
Subpoenas issued to federal officials in Afghan prisoner inquiry
A legal fight is looming over the federal government’s refusal to release information about alleged war crimes committed by the Canadian military.
Murray Brewster writes for the Canadian Press:
In its attempt to derail the commission inquiry, the federal government has argued that the handling of prisoners is “not subject” to oversight by the military police complaints process, and that the National Defence Act only gives the agency the power to investigate complaints against military police.
