espionage
The Latest Biden/Harris ‘Lawful Pathways’ Scheme: Declare Latin American Migrants to Be ‘Refugees’
From the Center For Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
Thousands flying in who would not have qualified as refugees in the past
Almost sight unseen and scarcely noticed by the American public, the Biden/Harris administration’s Department of Homeland Security has super-charged yet another “Lawful Pathways” program to admit tens of thousands of people from Latin America who they claim would otherwise have crossed the border illegally.
It’s called the Safe Mobility Office Initiative (SMO), Movilidad Segura in Spanish, jump-started in May 2023 and its capacity expanded this spring. The SMO initiative uses the U.S. refugee resettlement system in a historically atypical way that some critics see as abusive to fly in tens of thousands of people from nationalities the United States has very rarely regarded as warranting refugee resettlement in recent decades — in record numbers and in record-fast time, a CIS examination and analysis of the new program shows.
(See my colleague Nayla Rush’s discussion of the SMO initiative in the context the Biden/Harris administration’s broader remaking of the refugee resettlement program.)
From storefront “offices” set up in Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel and United Nations proxies have granted refugee status to at least 21,000 people from seven Latin America countries in the first year of the program, as of May 2024, some half of them having already arrived, a White House fact sheet reports. (Canada and Spain also take part in the SMO initiative, and several thousand additional people were approved for resettlement in those countries.) The newly minted refugees were Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Guatemalans, Ecuadorians, and Colombians. Data not yet in will likely show greater numbers through June and July because, in May, the Biden administration expanded the SMO program to add Hondurans and Salvadorans for a total of nine nations whose citizens can now be considered for U.S. refugee status.
Historically, the U.S. bestows the highly desired refugee status on grounds that recipients credibly claim they cannot return home due to a “well-founded fear” of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, according to USCIS, whose personnel are staffing the SMO foreign offices in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other UN agencies.
The offer of refugee resettlement brings with it an interest- and penalty-free flight loan backed by U.S. taxpayers, followed by a broad assortment of U.S. resettlement aid and welfare benefits, and a quick path to permanent residence and U.S. citizenship, all very difficult to legally reverse.
A March 2024 Mixed Migration Centre survey of SMO users shows the vast majority, 90 percent, want to travel to the United States for economic opportunities and better living standards rather than to flee war or persecution.
The 21,000 approved for resettlement as of May are a harbinger of even greater number of “refugee” classifications of essentially economic immigrants in Latin America. Tens of thousands more were in the pipeline to fill the administration’s historically high refugee allocation for the Latin America region, from less than 5,000 to an unprecedented 50,000 in 2024. More than 190,000 had registered for those 50,000 slots by the end of May, although many may be declined and referred by the SMO offices to other “lawful pathways”, such as family reunification visas, labor programs, or the legally dubious parole programs.
“Working closely with international organization partners, we are building capacity, running extensive messaging campaigns, and exponentially increasing the number of people who receive information or services via the SMOs,” Marta Youth, the principal deputy assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration testified before a congressional committee in March: “In the refugee pathway, we aim to resettle between 35,000 and 50,000 individuals in Fiscal Year 2024, an historic and ambitious goal that would amount to an increase in refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere of over 450 percent from last year.”
This sharp departure from traditional operation of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) — essentially handing out of refugee approvals to those usually regarded as economic migrants looking to work in the U.S. — is explained by the administration’s public justification: to divert the recipients from planned travel on dangerous migrant trails en route to illegal U.S. Southwest border crossings from Mexico.
That rationale for the expansion of “refugee” resettlement from Latin America comes in an election year in which a mass illegal immigration border crisis figures as a top problem among voters.
“The Safe Mobility initiative is one of the many ways the United States is facilitating access to safe and lawful pathways from partner countries in the region at no cost, so refugees and vulnerable migrants don’t have to undertake dangerous journeys in search of safety and better opportunities,” one State Department release explained last year.
The administration’s justifications for its newfound generosity of refugee status handouts strikes some familiar with USRAP as one of several deviations from operational norms, for short-term political purposes, indicating misuse or even abuse.
Elizabeth Jacobs, a former USCIS attorney and now the Center for Immigration Studies’ director of regulatory affairs and policy, told me the Biden administration’s goal is to serve the short-term political purpose of reducing the appearance of border congestion in an election year. That comes at a steep price, she said.
“This new program is consistent with the Biden administration’s overall strategy to obscure the border crisis from the American public, but not actually reduce the entries of inadmissible aliens to the United States,” Jacobs said. “There are winners and losers to nearly all immigration policies. The losers, here, are the aliens abroad who meet the statutory criteria for refugee status and are in actual need of resettlement.”
One of a Trio of Programs Enabling Invisible Immigration
The Safe Mobility Offices program is actually the third initiative in a broader Biden administration policy strategy of addressing the bad publicity caused by mass illegal border crossings that surpassed nine million in just the first three years of the Biden administration.
The SMO works in concert with two other major “lawful pathways” programs that, between the pair, have paroled into the country on “humanitarian” protection grounds more than one million inadmissible economic immigrants since 2022 who otherwise would supposedly have staged the politically problematic illegal border crossings the administration now wants to reduce.
One of those programs has admitted more than 500,000 inadmissible aliens from 100 countries on two-year renewable but legally challenged “humanitarian parole” permits granted through the “CBP One” mobile phone app. These hundreds of thousands were admitted into the United States at eight U.S.-Mexico land border ports of entry. (See: “New Records Unveil Surprising Scope of Secretive ‘CBP One’ Entry Scheme”.)
The other humanitarian parole program has rechanneled from presumed border crossings another half-million inadmissible aliens by pre-authorizing mostly Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to fly commercial from 77 countries into 45 international U.S. airports, ostensibly as humanitarian rescues. (See “New Data: Many Migrants in Biden’s ‘Humanitarian’ Flights Scheme Coming in from Safe Countries and Vacation Wonderlands”.)
At least 75,000 per month are still entering through just these two ad hoc, congressionally unauthorized, and politically controversial admission programs.
Those two cousin programs have drawn some controversy, opposition, and calls by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to end at least the flights program after the Center for Immigration Studies forced the Biden administration to reveal details through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
But the SMO program is far less known and, probably as a result, has yet to draw similar critiques. Those rejected for refugee status might well be referred to the land and air parole programs.
Nayla Rush, senior researcher for the Center and its refugee policy expert, told me current approvals for refugee status warrant questioning as to whether recipients are eligible.
“They want to bring people from Central America as refugees to decrease illegal entry when we are supposed to be bringing people in who are the most vulnerable,” Rush said. “Are we admitting the most vulnerable, those in real need of resettlement, or is it another policy or diplomatic move undertaken by the Biden administration to address the ‘root causes’ of immigration in the region?”
Deviations from the Norm
Historically, the U.S. State Department and USCIS have reserved refugee resettlement mainly for those fleeing active war zones or violent political upheavals in home countries.
Top nationalities over the two decades have featured people from war-torn Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Bhutan, Syria, Somalia, and some republics of the former Soviet Union, according to published government data. In the last 10 years, Burma, DRC, and Iraq were the nationalities most often granted refugee status.
By contrast, refugee grants in Latin America have long been scant or even nonexistent for decades right up until this year.
From 2002 to 2022, for example, the U.S. has granted refugee status to comparatively tiny numbers of Haitians (49), Nicaraguans (7), Venezuelans (183), Colombians (3,638), and Guatemalans (1,322), albeit sometimes more to Cubans (46,600, due to unique diplomatic considerations).
Most are already safely resettled in third nations, such as Haitians in Chile and Brazil, and were long regarded as not warranting special U.S. protection. Only four Haitians, for instance, were granted refugee status between 2012 and 2022. The U.S. granted only 173 Venezuelans refugee status during that time, few even in the years following that country’s 2017 economic collapse that sent more than seven million of them into 15 nearby countries.
Now, a seemingly great urgency powers approvals of Venezuelans in unprecedented numbers and in record time.
Most SMO applicants are Venezuelans who have been living for years safely and often prosperously in Colombia and Ecuador, hardly refugee material. (See Video: “U.S. Enabling Mass Asylum and Humanitarian Permit Fraud”).
UNHCR screens them all and makes referrals to USCIS adjudicators in the SMO storefronts. On average, the offices were processing some 8,000 cases monthly, including 3,000 at just one local SMO office in Bogota, Colombia, according to a University of Wisconsin policy brief titled “Year One of Safe Mobility Offices in Colombia”.
Of the 3,000 a month whom UNHCR refers to the local SMO office in Colombia, the U.S. government approves 95 percent for refugee resettlement, the university’s brief reported.
Many tens of thousands are Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, who have not suffered war in decades, are registering, too.
A State Department spokesman told CBS News in late May that Safe Mobility Offices in mid-May had “enabled a six-fold increase in the number of refugees resettled from the Western Hemisphere”. In the first half of FY2024, October 2023 through March 2024, more refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean were admitted (8,518) than in any previous full year.
In addition to the oddity of bestowing refugee status on those long regarded as ineligible economic migrants is the speed at which U.S. authorities are processing them. This is perhaps the fastest refugee processing in program history.
“In Just Nine Days!” Breaking Speed Records? Approvals for refugee resettlement, which include security vetting and needs assessments, often took an average of between 18-24 months or even longer. USRAP had already been using technology to reduce processing time for many to as short as six months, Nayla Rush has reported.
But the boasted “expedited” process for Latin Americans seems to be breaking all records.
“USCIS in Colombia processes refugee resettlement applications in only 9 days!” boasts a sub headline in the University of Wisconsin’s policy brief about the first year of SMO. Final arrangements for transportation afterward may require another month or two.
In Colombia and elsewhere where SMO offices are operating, the Associated Press has reported, traditional refugee screening has gone from a “yearslong effort” to “only months”.
“These refugee applicants undergo the same rigorous and multi-layered interagency screening and vetting process as all other refugees and, if eligible, most will arrive in the United States in just a matter of months,” the State Department’s Marta Youth testified.
Free Taxpayer-Backed Airfare?
The previously off-limits U.S. refugee status is especially appealing to Latin Americans because, in addition to providing beneficiaries with a bonanza of U.S. resettlement assistance and a path to U.S. citizenship, the State Department offers interest-free “travel loans” for airline tickets that can exceed $10,000 for families. There is no penalty for failure to pay.
The “loan” program was first set up in the 1950s to help people escape Eastern European Communist countries and is used to help refugees travel in from all over the world. Today, the UN’s International Organization for Migration administers the money on behalf of the State Department, and non-governmental resettlement agencies collect the payments, for commissions of up to 25 percent, according to the New York Times and other reports.
But repayment and loan default rates remain a public mystery, as the State Department under several past administrations has never willingly published this information. In response to litigation by Judicial Watch seeking the default and repayment information for 2016-2017, the State Department asserted that it did not track the information. At the time, Judicial Watch cited a private review of records provided by a whistleblower showing that from 1952 to 2002, IOM issued $1,020,803,910 in loans and had recovered only about half of it.
Under the Biden administration, the State Department has continued its resistance to releasing the information. It has ignored a Center for Immigration Studies Freedom of Information Act request for default rates and a 2022 information request by a dozen Republican members of Congress led by Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas).
The Immediate Future
The future of these programs hangs in the balance of the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has promised to reverse all of Biden’s border-related immigration policies, and this one would likely not escape the Republican’s hatchet. While a Trump administration likely cannot legally reverse refugee grants, it can quickly return USRAP to its prior norm of focusing on higher-priority populations suffering actual war and persecution in their homelands.
But should another Democrat win office, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, expect further expansion of the refugee program in Latin America, as well as the other two humanitarian parole programs. I expect further increases in the Latin America refugee allocation beyond 50,000 to meet the far greater demand for its benefits, as well as more SMO offices in both existing countries and new ones in Latin America. And skyrocketing taxpayer burdens for all of it, on both sides of the American border.
The author would like to thank Eric Gordy for his research assistance.
espionage
U.S. Charges Three More Chinese Scholars in Wuhan Bio-Smuggling Case, Citing Pattern of Foreign Exploitation in American Research Labs
Federal prosecutors allege visiting researchers at the University of Michigan’s “Xu Lab” conspired to import undeclared biological materials from Wuhan.
Federal prosecutors have charged three additional Chinese research scholars connected to the so-called “Xu Lab” at the University of Michigan with conspiring to smuggle biological materials from Wuhan and making false statements — the latest in a string of national security cases involving suspicious research activity at the university’s Life Sciences Institute.
Named in a newly filed criminal complaint are Xu Bai, 28, and Fengfan Zhang, 27, who face conspiracy counts, and Zhiyong Zhang, 30, who is accused of making false statements. All three held student exchange visas and worked in the lab of Xianzhong “Shawn” Xu, according to the Justice Department. Chengxuan Han, a Chinese citizen who also worked in Xu’s lab, previously pleaded no contest in the related roundworm smuggling case.
According to the complaint, in 2024 and 2025 Bai and Fengfan Zhang received multiple shipments containing concealed biological materials related to roundworms that had been sent from China by Han, a doctoral student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan. The case accelerated when Han traveled to work in the Xu Lab in June 2025. She was questioned at the border and allegedly evaded searches by wiping her phone and concealing biological material.
“At some point, pattern becomes practice. And, apparently, these three men are part of a long and alarming pattern of criminal activities committed by Chinese nationals under the cover of the University of Michigan,” U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said. “This is a threat to our collective security.”
As the Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence case takes shape, the alleged facts resemble a much more serious episode that occurred before the COVID-19 pandemic at Canada’s most secure pathogen research lab in Winnipeg. In that case, according to Canadian intelligence reports, Chinese international students working under Chinese Canadian scientist Xiangguo Qiu were found to be clandestinely importing and exporting biological materials and secretly using the high-security facility for research connected to People’s Liberation Army biological weapons and vaccine programs, including Ebola and bat filovirus studies at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department accused two other China-linked researchers, Zunyong Liu and Yunqing Jian, of smuggling Fusarium graminearum — a crop pathogen cited in scientific literature as a potential agricultural terror agent — into the United States for University of Michigan-related research. Their communications referenced shipping biological materials and research plans. Both face smuggling and related charges.
In the new Michigan case, prosecutors allege multiple packages of concealed biological material related to nematode roundworms were shipped from China in 2024 and 2025 by a doctoral student in Wuhan and received by University of Michigan-affiliated scholars. The Justice Department says Han, the prior shipper, pleaded no contest to smuggling and false statement charges this summer before being removed from the United States.
After Han’s removal and an internal university probe into the Xu Lab, the three defendants were terminated for refusing to attend a mandatory meeting, according to the indictment. Investigators say the men then bought tickets to leave from Detroit on Oct. 20, rebooked for Oct. 15, and ultimately attempted to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport at 2 a.m. on Oct. 16. During a customs inspection, one defendant allegedly made false statements about Han, while two others admitted receiving packages from her, including after her arrest.
Shawn Xu, who runs the X.Z. Shawn Xu Laboratory, is not charged. From Ann Arbor, Michigan Live reported that federal investigators have not searched Xu, according to his attorney David Nacht.
Xu “has lived in the United States for decades,” Nacht told Michigan Live, adding that Xu studies worms sourced domestically that are not used for commercial purposes.
In the earlier case, Han admitted sending concealed biological materials to University of Michigan recipients. Although the materials were not considered harmful, prosecutors said the shipments violated import and labeling laws.
A Justice Department press release attributed sharp warnings to senior officials about the misuse of academic pathways. “Educational institutions must enhance their admissions procedures to prevent exploitation,” an acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director said.
“The Chinese nationals charged allegedly were involved in smuggling biological materials into the U.S. on several occasions,” FBI director Kash Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are committed to defending the homeland and stopping any illegal smuggling into our country.”
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Censorship Industrial Complex
How the UK and Canada Are Leading the West’s Descent into Digital Authoritarianism
“Big Brother is watching you.” These chilling words from George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984, no longer read as fiction but are becoming a bleak reality in the UK and Canada—where digital dystopian measures are unravelling the fabric of freedom in two of the West’s oldest democracies.
Under the guise of safety and innovation, the UK and Canada are deploying invasive tools that undermine privacy, stifle free expression, and foster a culture of self-censorship. Both nations are exporting their digital control frameworks through the Five Eyes alliance, a covert intelligence-sharing network uniting the UK, Canada, US, Australia, and New Zealand, established during the Cold War. Simultaneously, their alignment with the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, particularly Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9—which mandates universal legal identity by 2030—supports a global policy for digital IDs, such as the UK’s proposed Brit Card and Canada’s Digital Identity Program, which funnel personal data into centralized systems under the pretext of “efficiency and inclusion.” By championing expansive digital regulations, such as the UK’s Online Safety Act and Canada’s pending Bill C-8, which prioritize state-defined “safety” over individual liberties, both nations are not just embracing digital authoritarianism—they’re accelerating the West’s descent into it.
The UK’s digital dragnet
The United Kingdom has long positioned itself as a global leader in surveillance. The British spy agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), runs the formerly-secret mass surveillance programme, code-named Tempora, operational since 2011, which intercepts and stores vast amounts of global internet and phone traffic by tapping into transatlantic fibre-optic cables. Knowledge of its existence only came about in 2013, thanks to the bombshell documents leaked by the former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower, Edward Snowden. “It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian in a June 2013 report. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”
Following that, is the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016, also dubbed the “Snooper’s Charter,” which mandates that internet service providers store users’ browsing histories, emails, texts, and phone calls for up to a year. Government agencies, including police and intelligence services (like MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) can access this data without a warrant in many cases, enabling bulk collection of communications metadata. This has been criticized for enabling mass surveillance on a scale that invades everyday privacy.
Recent expansions under the Online Safety Act (OSA) further empower authorities to demand backdoors in encrypted apps like WhatsApp, potentially scanning private messages for vaguely defined “harmful” content—a move critics like Big Brother Watch, a privacy advocacy group, decry as a gateway to mass surveillance. The OSA, which received Royal Assent on October 26, 2023, represents a sprawling piece of legislation by the UK government to regulate online content and “protect” users, particularly children, from “illegal and harmful material.” Implemented in phases by Ofcom, the UK’s communications watchdog, it imposes duties on a vast array of internet services, including social media, search engines, messaging apps, gaming platforms, and sites with user-generated content forcing compliance through risk assessments and hefty fines. By July 2025, the OSA was considered “fully in force” for most major provisions. This sweeping regime, aligned with global surveillance trends via Agenda 2030’s push for digital control, threatens to entrench a state-sanctioned digital dragnet, prioritizing “safety” over fundamental freedoms.
Elon Musk’s platform X has warned that the act risks “seriously infringing” on free speech, with the threat of fines up to £18 million or 10% of global annual turnover for non-compliance, encouraging platforms to censor legitimate content to avoid punishment. Musk took to X to express his personal view on the act’s true purpose: “suppression of the people.”
In late September, Imgur (an image-hosting platform popular for memes and shared media) made the decision to block UK users rather than comply with the OSA’s stringent regulations. This underscores the chilling effect such laws can have on digital freedom.
The act’s stated purpose is to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online.” However, critics argue it’s a brazen power grab by the UK government to increase censorship and surveillance, all the while masquerading as a noble crusade to “protect” users.
Another pivotal development is the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (DUAA), which received Royal Assent in June. This wide-ranging legislation streamlines data protection rules to boost economic growth and public services but at the cost of privacy safeguards. It allows broader data sharing among government agencies and private entities, including for AI-driven analytics. For instance, it enables “smart data schemes” where personal information from banking, energy, and telecom sectors can be accessed more easily, seemingly for consumer benefits like personalized services—but raising fears of unchecked profiling.
Cybersecurity enhancements further expand the UK’s pervasive surveillance measures. The forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, announced in the July 2024 King’s Speech and slated for introduction by year’s end, expands the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations to critical infrastructure, mandating real-time threat reporting and government access to systems. This builds on existing tools like facial recognition technology, deployed extensively in public spaces. In 2025, trials in cities like London have integrated AI cameras that scan crowds in real-time, linking to national databases for instant identification—evoking a biometric police state.
Source: BBC News
The New York Times reported: “British authorities have also recently expanded oversight of online speech, tried weakening encryption and experimented with artificial intelligence to review asylum claims. The actions, which have accelerated under Prime Minister Keir Starmer with the goal of addressing societal problems, add up to one of the most sweeping embraces of digital surveillance and internet regulation by a Western democracy.”
Compounding this, UK police arrest over 30 people a day for “offensive” tweets and online messages, per The Times, often under vague laws, fuelling justifiable fears of Orwell’s thought police.
Yet, of all the UK’s digital dystopian measures, none has ignited greater fury than Prime Minister Starmer’s mandatory “Brit Card” digital ID—a smartphone-based system effectively turning every citizen into a tracked entity.
First announced on September 4, as a tool to “tackle illegal immigration and strengthen border security,” but rapidly the Brit Card’s scope ballooned through function-creep to envelop everyday essentials like welfare, banking and public access. These IDs, stored on smartphones containing sensitive data like photos, names, dates of birth, nationalities, and residency status, are sold “as the front door to all kinds of everyday tasks,” a vision championed by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change— and echoed by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall MP in her October 13 parliamentary speech.
Source: TheBritishIntel
This digital shackles system has sparked fierce resistance across the UK. A scathing letter, led by independent MP Rupert Lowe and endorsed by nearly 40 MPs from diverse parties, denounces the government’s proposed mandatory “Brit Card” digital ID as “dangerous, intrusive, and profoundly un-British.” Conservative MP David Davis issued a stark warning, declaring that such systems “are profoundly dangerous to the privacy and fundamental freedoms of the British people.” On X, Davis amplified his critique, citing a £14m fine imposed on Capita after hackers breached pension savers’ personal data, writing: “This is another perfect example of why the government’s digital ID cards are a terrible idea.” By early October, a petition opposing the proposal had garnered over 2.8 million signatures, reflecting widespread public outcry. The government, however, dismissed these objections, stating, “We will introduce a digital ID within this Parliament to address illegal migration, streamline access to government services, and improve efficiency. We will consult on details soon.”
Canada’s surveillance surge
Across the Atlantic, Canada’s surveillance surge under Prime Minister Mark Carney—former Bank of England head and World Economic Forum board member—mirrors the UK’s dystopian trajectory. Carney, with his globalist agenda, has overseen a slew of bills that prioritize “security” over sovereignty. Take Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Customs Act, introduced June 17, 2025, which enables warrantless data access at borders and sharing with U.S. authorities via CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) pacts—essentially handing Canadian citizens’ digital lives to foreign powers. Despite public backlash prompting proposed amendments in October, its core—enhanced monitoring of transactions and exports—remains ripe for abuse.
Complementing this, Bill C-8, first introduced June 18, 2025, amends the Telecommunications Act to impose cybersecurity mandates on critical sectors like telecoms and finance. It empowers the government to issue secret orders compelling companies to install backdoors or weaken encryption, potentially compromising user security. These orders can mandate the cutoff of internet and telephone services to specified individuals without the need for a warrant or judicial oversight, under the vague premise of securing the system against “any threat.”
Opposition to this bill has been fierce. In a parliamentary speech Canada’s Conservative MP Matt Strauss, decried the bill’s sections 15.1 and 15.2 as granting “unprecedented, incredible power” to the government. He warned of a future where individuals could be digitally exiled—cut off from email, banking, and work—without explanation or recourse, likening it to a “digital gulag.”
Source: Video shared by Andrew Bridgen
The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) and privacy advocates have echoed these concerns, arguing that the bill’s ambiguous language and lack of due process violate fundamental Charter rights, including freedom of expression, liberty, and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Bill C-8 complements the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), first introduced in February 2024, which demanded platforms purge content like child exploitation and hate speech within 24 hours, risking censorship with vague “harmful” definitions. Inspired by the UK’s OSA and EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), C-63 collapsed amid fierce backlash for its potential to enable censorship, infringe on free speech, and lack of due process. The CCF and Pierre Poilievre, calling it “woke authoritarianism,” led a 2024 petition with 100,000 signatures. It died during Parliament’s January 2025 prorogation after Justin Trudeau’s resignation.
These bills build on an alarming precedent: during the COVID era, Canada’s Public Health Agency admitted to tracking 33 million devices during lockdown—nearly the entire population—under the pretext of public health, a blatant violation exposed only through persistent scrutiny. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), empowered by the longstanding Bill C-59, continues bulk metadata collection, often without adequate oversight. These measures are not isolated; they stem from a deeper rot, where pandemic-era controls have been normalized into everyday policy.
Canada’s Digital Identity Program, touted as a “convenient” tool for seamless access to government services, emulates the UK’s Brit Card and aligns with UN Agenda 2030’s SDG 16.9. It remains in active development and piloting phases, with full national rollout projected for 2027–2028.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Orwell’s 1984 warns we must urgently resist this descent into digital authoritarianism—through petitions, protests, and demands for transparency—before a Western Great Firewall is erected, replicating China’s stranglehold that polices every keystroke and thought.
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