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2016 | Book

Interrogating National Security, Surveillance, and Terror in Canada and Australia Read chapter Read first chapter

National Security, Surveillance and Terror

Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective

Editors: Dr. Randy K. Lippert, Kevin Walby, Dr. Ian Warren, Dr. Darren Palmer

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Crime Prevention and Security Management

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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About this book

This edited collection brings together leading scholars to comparatively investigate national security, surveillance and terror in the early 21st century in two major western jurisdictions, Canada and Australia. Observing that much debate about these topics is dominated by US and UK perspectives, the volume provides penetrating analysis of national security and surveillance practices in two under-studied countries that reveals critical insights into current trends. Written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this book addresses a fascinating array of timely questions about the relationship among national security, privacy and terror in the two countries and beyond. Chapters include critical assessments of topics such as: National Security Intelligence Collection since 9/11, The Border as Checkpoint in an Age of Hemispheric Security and Surveillance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Law Enforcement, as well as Federal Government Departments and Security Regimes. An engaging and empirically driven study, this collection will be of great interest to scholars of security and surveillance studies, policing, and comparative criminology.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. Interrogating National Security, Surveillance, and Terror in Canada and Australia
Abstract
In this chapter the co-editors introduce the comparative volume and its rationales, provide context about national security, surveillance and terror in both Canada and Australia, describe contributions found in the volume, and conclude with an overview of the volume.
Kevin Walby, Randy K. Lippert, Ian Warren, Darren Palmer

Introduction: Thinking About National Security, Surveillance and Terror

Frontmatter
2. One Warrant to Rule Them All: Reconsidering the Judicialisation of Extraterritorial Intelligence Collection
Abstract
Spies have always crossed borders. And in the close allied relationship between the so-called Five Eyes, intelligence has also crossed borders. These practices are occasionally controversial. Intelligence sharing was at the heart of the Maher Arar inquiry, examining the conduct by Canadian police in providing (incorrect) intelligence on Canadian Maher Arar that culminated in his maltreatment in Syria. Foreign electronic surveillance provoked sustained debate after the 2013 Snowden disclosures. More quietly, however, and sometimes clearly provoked by these public controversies, courts too have begun building legal pickets around these sorts of practices. In Canada, the result has been the ‘judicialisation’ of intelligence collection and sharing. This chapter examines recent developments in this area.
Craig Forcese
3. Australian National Security Intelligence Collection Since 9/11: Policy and Legislative Challenges
Abstract
A key lesson from 9/11 was that intelligence agencies could no longer simply wait for information to arrive. The enhanced threat from Al Qaeda and their global franchises required an extensive and ‘real-time’ collection of intelligence. This new operating environment has refashioned Australian and other Five Eyes countries, therefore, to be more active ‘hunters’ of information. This chapter examines both policy and counter-terrorism legislative landmarks underpinning intelligence collection since 9/11, and the many challenges Australian agencies have faced managing policy and legislative reform. The Australian counter-terrorism response is then compared briefly to the Canadian policy and legislative context to identify common and unique challenges by policymakers.
Patrick F. Walsh
4. The Supreme Court of Canada Presents: The Surveillant Charter and the Judicial Creation of Police Powers in Canada
Abstract
The events of 9/11 have been described as a discursive moment, where states were provided with excuses for governing more coercively, as the need for security seemed to justify precautionary and risk-averse actions. The chapter examines how the Supreme Court of Canada has developed a Charter jurisprudence of surveillance in its articulation of permissible police practices. This chapter posits that surveillance of the everyday can be assessed. Using the notion of surveillant assemblage, we explore recent developments in the law of search and seizure, detention, right to silence and counsel and exclusion of evidence. The deployment of police powers jurisprudence by the Court has established a charter of surveillance as opposed to a Charter of Freedoms.
Richard Jochelson, Mark Doerksen
5. Assemblage, Counter-Law and the Legal Architecture of Australian Covert Surveillance
Abstract
Surveillance practices are typically divisible between the activities of private and state actors. A complex system of regulated and unregulated activity is interfaced with legal architectures deployed to authorise, prohibit, regulate and often legitimate those activities. In this chapter we explore the Australian legal architecture of surveillance. A brief history of Australian surveillance legislation, a discussion of the current regulatory framework at the State and Federal level, and consideration of issues of privacy, accessible technology and the justifications for strategic targeted surveillance operations in the context of a risk society comprise this chapter. By framing the legal architectures, we illustrate how developed legal systems organise and articulate surveillance practices, and consider several uses and effects of these articulations.
Brendon Murphy, John Anderson

Introduction: Case Studies in Comparative Perspective

Frontmatter
6. The Australian Security Continuum: National and Corporate Security Gaps from a Surveillance Language Perspective
Abstract
This chapter presents the concept of surveillance as embedded into the Australian security continuum, arguing there are still significant and challenging gaps in surveillance capabilities and ultimately security. To demonstrate such a security continuum, along with its gaps in efficacy, this chapter draws on variations in the language of surveillance (or concept) to highlight a disconnection across cultural discourses and ultimately states of security. The language of surveillance provides the opportunity to highlight the changing views, needs and applications for the many security continuum actors in the surveillance discourse.
David Brooks, Jeffery Corkill, Michael Coole
7. Securitising ‘National Interests’: Canadian Federal Government Departments, Corporate Security Creep, and Security Regimes
Abstract
National security and corporate security are typically conceptualised as distinct realms of inquiry and practice. This chapter explores how these two security domains are increasingly fused in Canada at the federal level. We draw on freedom of information data regarding six national departments, usually associated with maintaining national security. The overlap between these realms is not limited to national security ‘responsibilising’ or activating private corporations to gather information; nor is it exclusively about corporate security agents providing services for national security initiatives through outsourced arrangements. Instead the overlap is primarily in the organisation of these departments. We conclude by outlining why there should be greater dialogue between scholars studying national and corporate security in Canada, Australia, and beyond.
Kevin Walby, Randy K. Lippert, James Gacek
8. The ‘Security of Security’: Making Up the Australian Intelligence Community 1975–2015
Abstract
This chapter frames the development of Australian national security policies since the mid-1970s as part of a strategy of security governance. After outlining elements of Foucault’s governmentality thesis, the chapter navigates the governmental rationalities that have informed developments in the national security landscape. We observe a self-legitimating cycle of security expansion. This frequently validates enhanced coordination among disparate security agencies, which in turn requires enhanced mass population surveillance and the increased circulation of information about citizen activity with fewer legal constraints. We conclude by discussing how these rationalities of national security governance contribute to profound expansion of Australia’s national security structure that only marginally address key problems associated with the improving inter-agency coordination or limiting the erosion of citizen rights.
Darren Palmer, Ian Warren
9. Justifying Insecurity: Canada’s Response to Terrorist Threat Circa 2015
Abstract
On 22 October 2014, a gunman shot a soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Canada. An early statement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper indicated soon more would be learned. Media outlets picked up on this suggestion, with reports indicating the gunman was associated with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is argued that Canada’s membership in a coalition of countries involved in air strikes against ISIS fighters served to create a context in which particular acts of violence were readily framed as evidence of the ISIS global threat. This chapter considers how framing perpetuates and sustains the notion of ‘foreign’ terrorist threat and considers implications for Canadian national security.
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot

Introduction: National Security, Surveillance and Terror: Issues and Dilemmas

Frontmatter
10. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Law Enforcement in Australia and Canada: Governance Through ‘Privacy’ in an Era of Counter-Law?
Abstract
Comparing Australian and Canadian government attempts to regulate aerial surveillance technology provides an interesting window into how unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance, and surveillance technologies more broadly, are enabled and constrained by factors beyond the conventional purview of national security and law enforcement activities. This chapter examines current uses of UAVs in Australia and Canada, and considers the associated legal, privacy and social implications of their use in each jurisdiction. The chapter considers how institutional drivers and regulatory responses to UAV technologies in each country—shaped by a configuration of transport safety requirements, privacy regimes, technical developments, laws, and social norms—inform different pathways of emergence of UAV technologies and strategies of surveillance in national security and law enforcement.
Adam Molnar, Christopher Parsons
11. The Canada–US Shiprider Programme, Jurisdiction and the Crime–Security Nexus
Abstract
This chapter examines the Canada–US Shiprider programme, a cross-border maritime enforcement programme that was created in 2005 to respond to criminality and security concerns along the shared maritime border by removing the international maritime boundary as an obstacle to law enforcement. Formalised in 2013, Shiprider vessels can now pursue and interdict vessels to respond to criminality and security concerns along the shared maritime border. This is particularly significant in light of Shiprider’s operations in unceded Coast Salish territories and in Akwesasne Mohawk Territory where bi-national border enforcement strategies transect the jurisdictional patchwork of indigenous border nations and where local communities continue to contest the divisions imposed by settler boundaries.
Anna C. Pratt
12. Intelligence and National Security: Australian Dilemmas Post-9/11
Abstract
From the foundation of a security service in 1949 under Cold War auspices of MI5 to the expansion of the concept of security after 2001 and promulgation of over 50 new counter-terror laws, the practice of national security has troubled the Australian political conscience. The maintenance of national security and evolution of an Australian Intelligence Community has raised questions about its necessity and accountability. The pursuit of national security has exposed a paradox at the core of Australian democracy, namely, that political freedom might entail proscribing those dedicated to subverting it by violent means. This chapter explores this paradox, heightened since 2013 by revelations of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden about the extent of Australian surveillance.
David Martin Jones
13. The Day the Border Died? The Canadian Border as Checkpoint in an Age of Hemispheric Security and Surveillance
Abstract
This chapter considers to what extent there is still something we can meaningfully refer to as the Canadian border. Rather than suggest we have arrived at a neoliberal borderless dreamscape, I ask whether the Canadian border has become more analogous to the prolific interior checkpoints that exist within 100 miles of the US border. Examining the adoption of US-led mass surveillance, intensified information-sharing with the USA (official and unofficial) and the uncritical embrace of identification and surveillance technologies such as biometrics and UAVs by the Government of Canada over the past decade, I consider to what extent the Canada/US border has simply become an additional checkpoint in a series of nodes for pre-assessment and pre-clearance found throughout the USA.
Benjamin J. Muller
14. Surveillance and the Colonial Dream: Canada’s Surveillance of Indigenous Self-Determination
Abstract
This chapter argues that the self-determining status of Indigenous peoples represents a challenge to claims of Canadian sovereignty. This challenge troubles the settler state’s dream of maintaining conditions of territorial integrity and economic security. Accordingly, the settler state seeks to identify and manage Indigenous peoples and their activities that are perceived to contradict its interests. The surveillance apparatus is fundamental to this governing project and forms the focal point of this chapter. Within this paradigm, assertions of Indigenous self-determination and jurisdiction are commonly conceptualised as threats to critical infrastructure. The expanded potential of Canada’s surveillance apparatus to capture assertions of self-determination is real. To illustrate, we detail recent institutional mutations and surveillance activities currently taking place.
Tia Dafnos, Scott Thompson, Martin French
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
National Security, Surveillance and Terror
Editors
Dr. Randy K. Lippert
Kevin Walby
Dr. Ian Warren
Dr. Darren Palmer
Copyright Year
2016
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-43243-4
Print ISBN
978-3-319-43242-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43243-4