By Maureen Webb

2005: ICAMS campaign

In 2005, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) organized an Ottawa summit of NGOs from around the world to explore concerns about governments’ increasingly globalized ‘War on Terror’ measures.

Due largely to the relationships that then-ICLMG national coordinator Roch Tassé and Brian Murphy, an ICLMG steering committee member, had built over the years, we were able
to get big players, including the EU’s Statewatch, Walden Bello and his group Focus on the Global South, the American Civil Liberties Union, the US Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Quebec Ligue des droits et libertés, to come to Ottawa for four days and to engage in in-depth discussions about what was going on in our respective jurisdictions.

We saw governments bringing in similar measures, working in a coordinated, lockstep fashion, and through opaque, unaccountable supranational bodies to bring in measures without any democratic debate at the national level. And, we felt the dots in this pattern – this new dark turn in global governance – had to be connected, understood and countered on an international scale by an international coalition of local civil society groups.

I think that the work done that week was pivotal because, coming together from our respective countries, we were able to see the ‘War on Terror’ for what it was: an anti-democratic coordinated power grab, laying the ground for the erosion of national sovereignty and nationally guaranteed constitutional rights for decades to come.

You could say, the global surveillance/industrial complex developed their playbook and infrastructure during the years of the war on terror and successfully convinced populations to turn these on “the Other” (at that time, Muslims and, in many countries, political opponents). And, over the past three years, this same surveillance/industrial complex has been experimenting on turning a similar playbook and infrastructure on “the rest of us” – with well-along-the-way plans for making digital ID and central bank digital currency the foundation of a new economy – and has had chilling success in getting people to acquiesce to the kind of “nudge” and “social credit” systems that will turn our democracies into heavily gated and controlled surveillance societies. While many have been overlooking these developments, those of us who’ve been in the trenches fighting national security surveillance overreach for the past twenty years will readily recognize the emerging regime’s antecedents and its dangers.1

During the four days of the Summit, we conceived and agreed to collaborate on an international campaign against mass surveillance (ICAMS) for which Ben Hayes of Statewatch and I wrote the core analysis.

Co-sponsored by the organizations at the Summit, the campaign was launched simultaneously in San Francisco, Ottawa and London in April 2005. It was then presented at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Nearly 300 civil society organizations signed on to the campaign’s Manifesto within the following year.

The people who were involved in the 2005 Summit became close colleagues, collaborators, and trusted advisors to ICLMG. Many of them were back in Ottawa a few years later for a colloquium of international experts organized by ICLMG and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law to draft the Ottawa Principles – a codification of the main areas of international law relevant to government counter-terrorism measures. One of the lessons learned from the 2005 Summit
initiative was that there is no substitute for in-person, working relationships. Bringing representatives from each of those groups to Ottawa was an investment that paid off for years to come.

2006: International Conference of Privacy Commissioners

In 2006, Roch Tassé and Patricia Poirier organized the Civil Society Forum that ran parallel to the International Conference of Privacy Commissioners in Montreal. The Forum’s recommendations picked up on the content of the ICAMS campaign Manifesto and, in 2009, the Manifesto was largely adopted at the civil society proceedings of the International Privacy Commissioners’ Conference in Madrid, and reformulated as the Madrid Declaration of Global Privacy Standards for a Global World.

2007: Illusions of Security

Between 2005 and 2006, I wrote a book based on the analysis of the ICAMS campaign, Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post‑9‑11 World, published in 2007 by San Francisco’s City Lights press, to further influence policy and raise public awareness on ‘War on Terror’ surveillance issues.

Media included interviews with Democracy Now!, CBC’s The National with Peter Mansbridge, BBC’s World Service, Chicago Public Radio, Air America, the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Mexican TV, Barcelona’s el Periodico, the Winnipeg Free Press, and even Playboy magazine. Venues I spoke in included the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the World Affairs Council of California, Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies International Conference (with CSIS, FBI, CIA, and MI5 attending), the International Investigative Journalists conference, film festivals, and numerous universities – to give you an idea of the reach.

Much of what was predicted about global surveillance in the 2005 ICAMS campaign and my 2007 book came true and was confirmed in the 2013 Snowden leaks. And, be aware: surveillance technology has made quantum leaps since the time of Snowden’s revelations, making these digital ID systems we’ve been seeing during the pandemic and in recent global governance plans, in my view, the civil liberties fight of the century.

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Maureen Webb is a constitutional and human rights lawyer and the author of Coding Democracy (MIT Press, 2020) and Illusions of Security (City Lights, 2007). mitpress.mit.edu/author/maureen-webb-28478 & ubc.academia.edu/MaureenWebb

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Since you’re here… … we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!

By Tim McSorley

Over the past two decades, many of us have come to rely on online platforms for basic necessities, communication, education and entertainment. Online, we see the good – access to otherwise hard to find information, connecting with loved ones – and the bad. It often combines the harms we know so well, including hate speech, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, the sexual exploitation of minors, bullying and incitement to violence, with new forms of harassment and abuse that can happen at a much larger scale, and with new ways to distribute harmful and illegal content.

Many social media sites have committed to addressing these harms. But business models that focus on engagement and retention – regardless of the content – have proven ineffective at doing so, with some studies showing that it is in their business interest to continue feeding the most controversial content. When these online platforms do remove content, researchers have documented that it is often those very communities that face harassment that face the most censorship. Governments around the world have also used the excuse of combating hate speech and online harms – such as “terrorist content” – to enact censorship and silence opponents, including human rights defenders.

The Canadian government had been promising to address this issue since 2019, framing it explicitly around fighting “online hate.” The government eventually released its proposal to tackle online harms in late July 2021, alongside a public consultation. There were immediate concerns with the consultation taking place in the dead of summer with an imminent election on the horizon. When the election was called a few weeks later, round tables with government officials who could answer questions about the proposal were canceled.

While the government’s approach was bad, the proposal itself was worse. As cyber policy researcher Daphne Keller described it, Canada’s original proposal was “like a list of the worst ideas around the world – the ones human rights groups… have been fighting in the EU, India, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and elsewhere.”

ICLMG’s central concern with the government’s approach has been around the inclusion of “terrorist content.” Since 2001, we have seen how the enforcement of anti-terrorism laws has led to the violation of human rights, especially because its definition can be twisted to suit political ends. Yet under the government’s initial proposal, social media companies would have been expected to identify “terrorist” content through mass surveillance, act on any content reported by users within 24 hours or face penalties up to millions of dollars, and required to automatically share information with law enforcement and national security agencies, both privatizing and expanding the surveillance and criminalization of internet users. The proposal even put forward new warrant powers for CSIS that would go far beyond addressing “online harms.” It was a recipe for racial and political profiling, particularly of Muslims, Indigenous people and other people of color, and for the violation of their rights and freedoms.

In February 2022, the Ministry of Heritage released a “What We Heard” report in which they recognized many of the valid concerns with the government’s approach. They announced a new consultation process led by an expert advisory group that would review these concerns and propose advice on what the government’s approach should be.

Various groups, including the ICLMG, continued working together to respond to the government’s proposals and to develop ideas on how best to fight online harms. We published op-eds and met with government officials and MPs. In March 2023, we helped draft a group position document on core guiding principles for any future legislation, including “red lines,” that was sent to the Minister of Heritage and shared with opposition critics.

Nearly two years after sharing its initial proposal, in late March 2024, the government introduced Bill C-63 to create the Online Harms Act. The bill has proven controversial in large part because it also seeks to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act in ways that raise civil liberties and human rights concerns.

Specifically in regards to online harms, though, the analysis and advocacy of the ICLMG and others has resulted in a much better bill than would have been expected in 2021. In particular:

• While still including seven different categories of harms, it no longer proposes a simple “one-size fits all” approach.
• There is no explicit requirement that would require platforms to monitor all content in order to identify and remove harmful posts.
• The main focus is on the regulation of platforms, in the form of obligations to create and follow online safety plans, and not on policing all users.
• Except for content that sexually victimizes a child, there is no requirement for mandatory reporting of content or users to the RCMP or CSIS.
• There are no proposals to create new CSIS warrant powers.
  There are greater rules around platform accountability, transparency and reporting.

However, there remain serious areas of concern:

• The proposed category of “content that incites violent extremism or terrorism” is, by its nature, overly broad and vague.
• Given there is a nearly identical, and more specific, harm of “content that incites violence,” a terrorism-focused harm is unnecessary and redundant.
• While not explicitly requiring platforms to proactively monitor content, it does not disallow such actions either.
• Platforms would be required to preserve data relating to posts alleged to incite violence, violent extremism or terrorism for one year, so that it is available to law enforcement if needed for an investigation.
• The proposed Digital Safety Commission, which would enforce the rules under the Online Harms Act, is granted incredibly broad powers with minimal oversight.
• A lack of clarity around hearings and investigations could allow for malicious accusations of posting “terrorist content,” and uncertainty around recourse for those whose content is erroneously taken down by platforms.

This is clearly a complex problem, and it is easier to point out flaws than to develop concrete solutions. What appears clear, though, is that empowering private online platforms to carry out greater surveillance and content removal not only fails to address the heart of the issue, but creates more harm. Instead, governments must invest in offline solutions combatting the roots of racism, misogyny, bigotry and hatred. Just as importantly, governments must address the business models of social media platforms that profit from surveillance and use content that causes outrage and division as a way to drive engagement and to retain audiences. So long as there is profit to be made from fuelling these harms, we will never truly address them.

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Tim McSorley is the National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

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Since you’re here… … we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!

Who we are

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) is a national coalition of Canadian civil society organizations that was established after the rushed adoption of the Anti‑terrorism Act of 2001 in order to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ The coalition brings together 45 NGOs, unions, professional associations, faith groups, environmental organizations, human rights and civil liberties advocates, humanitarian organizations, as well as groups representing immigrant and refugee communities in Canada.

While we recognize the obligation of states to protect citizens and others on their territories from violence, we regret the way in which most states are interpreting this obligation by restricting democratic freedoms. We do not properly defend democracy, the rule of law and a culture of human rights by abdicating these very principles. Security and freedom are not opposites. Respect for fundamental rights is an essential condition, a vital component of security.

Our mandate is to defend civil liberties and human rights – including in relation to refugee protection, minority groups, political dissent, governance of charities, international cooperation and humanitarian assistance – from the negative impact of anti-terrorism and national security.

We do so by:

• Monitoring the evolution and application of Canada’s security and “anti-terrorist” agenda and its impact on civil society organizations and communities
• Disseminating information on the implications of the laws and other anti-terrorist measures to our members, the public, federal MPs as well as to interested and affected organizations and communities, including through the publication of a News Digest twice monthly
• Developing joint and concerted responses to ensure transparency and due process where specific organizations and/or vulnerable communities are affected
• Lobbying and carrying out advocacy work with policy makers, members of Parliament, parliamentary committees, etc., and
• Working with international partners and coalitions, as well as intervening at international bodies such as the United Nations.

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