[R-G] Spy agency gets new secret rulebook

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=n181825720

Spy agency gets new secret rulebook

May 18, 2009 - 14:07

Jim Bronskill, THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA - The federal government has laid down new rules for Canada's  
spy agency following high-profile scandals in which Canadians were  
tortured overseas.

The ministerial directions to the Canadian Security Intelligence  
Service also come as the agency takes on more foreign operations in  
hotspots like Afghanistan.

But human rights activists say so much of the classified instructions  
remain under wraps that it's impossible to tell whether they will lead  
to greater accountability.

The latest directions - essentially a government-penned rulebook for  
CSIS - cover fundamental principles, human sources, operational  
activities outside Canada and domestic and foreign liaison arrangements.

Heavily censored copies of the guidelines, issued to the spy service  
last year, were recently obtained by The Canadian Press under the  
Access to Information Act.

Much of the language mirrors past directions but large portions remain  
secret due to provisions of the Access Act that allow the government  
to conceal information concerning international affairs,  
investigations and advice from officials.

A direction outlining the government's "intelligence priorities" for  
2008-09 was completely withheld from release - even though such task  
lists have been disclosed in the past, broadly covering CSIS efforts  
in areas such as counter-terrorism, security screening and deterring  
creation of weapons of mass destruction.

The deletions make it impossible to pinpoint changes to the CSIS  
rulebook of ministerial directions following two hard-hitting  
commissions of inquiry into the role of Canadian officials in the  
cases of Arab-Canadians tortured in Syrian prisons.

Hilary Homes, security and human rights campaigner for Amnesty  
International Canada, said she can't tell whether the new rules are an  
improvement.

"The challenge with these documents is, you just don't know."

Last October former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci found Canadian  
officials contributed to the mistreatment of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad  
El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin by sharing information - including  
unsubstantiated and highly provocative descriptions of their  
activities - with foreign intelligence and police agencies.

Iacobucci blamed CSIS, the RCMP and Foreign Affairs for mistakes.

The findings came two years after several detailed recommendations  
from a federal inquiry that examined the ordeal of Maher Arar, another  
Canadian tortured in a stark Damascus cell. Justice Dennis O'Connor  
called for policy changes on information sharing, training and  
monitoring of security probes.

Both CSIS and the office of Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan  
declined to discuss the substance of the latest directions to the spy  
service or the timing behind the revisions.

On foreign arrangements, the new directions say CSIS is the lead  
agency for co-operating with foreign counterparts on security threats  
to Canada, but "more detailed guidelines" are completely censored.

"We would certainly hope whatever is there is guided by what was in  
the Arar commission recommendations about sharing information," Homes  
said.

"What's missing is the detail there, and so we're left to speculate  
and hope it embraces certain recommendations but we don't in fact know."

Kerry Pither, a human rights activist and author of Dark Days, a book  
about the Canadians tortured abroad, said ministerial directions  
should be disclosed because they are a crucial tool for accountability  
in the wake of the latest commission of inquiry.

"Given that we now know through the Iacobucci inquiry that CSIS was  
complicit in the torture of three Canadians, it's very important that  
these ministerial directives are publicly available," Pither said.

"That public access is so important, especially now, given a total  
lack of accountability when it comes to CSIS's dealings in these cases."