espionage
Biden expands government’s power to spy on Americans without a warrant
From LifeSiteNews
Legal experts have pointed out that under an updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers could all be forced to surveil Americans.
U.S. President Joe Biden has quietly signed legislation reauthorizing and expanding the government’s ability to spy on American communications without a warrant.
On April 20, Biden signed the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the government to compel a broader range of businesses to collect the communications of U.S. citizens when they are in contact with foreigners, according to legal experts.
The newly passed, updated version of Section 702 accomplishes this by expanding the definition of “electronic communication service providers” who can receive FISA directives to tap communications by dropping the qualifier “communication” from electronic service providers. The new amendment, therefore, makes access merely to equipment on which communications are carried or stored enough to legally surveil Americans.
While the amendment lists types of businesses that cannot be considered Electronic Communication Service Providers (ECSPs), including public accommodations, dwellings, and restaurants, ZwillGenBlog points out that the law still allows the government to “compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702.”
“The breadth of the new definition is obvious from the fact that the drafters felt compelled to exclude such ordinary places such as senior centers, hotels, and coffee shops. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them — and scores of businesses that did not receive a specific exemption remain within its purview,” ZwillGenBlog explained.
The legal experts noted that among the entities that could be forced to surveil Americans under the amendment are “the owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords,” as well as others who can access such equipment, including “delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers.”
ZwillGenBlog also pointed out that “any U.S. business could have its communications” — if involving a foreigner — “tapped by a landlord with access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois had tried and failed to pass an amendment that would require government officials to obtain a warrant before spying on American communications, according to the Associated Press (AP).
“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.
Critics of the new amendment warn that over the past year alone the FBI has unconstitutionally spied on Americans, including Republican U.S. Rep. Darin Lahood of Illinois, who serves on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, as well as Americans present at or near the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in 2008, the National Security Agency (NSA), operating inside the United States, is authorized to collect communications of foreigners overseas for foreign intelligence purposes without a warrant “because courts have held that foreigners have no Fourth Amendment rights,” according to Elizabeth Goitein.
“Although ostensibly targeted at foreigners, Section 702 surveillance inevitably sweeps in massive amounts of Americans’ communications,” Goitein further noted.
“Recognizing the impact on Americans’ privacy, Congress required the NSA to ‘minimize’ the sharing, retention, and use of this ‘incidentally’ collected U.S. person data. But the government and the FISA Court have embraced an interpretation of ‘minimize’ that is remarkably … maximal.”
“The NSA shares raw data with multiple other agencies — including the FBI and the CIA — and all of them retain the data for a functional minimum of five years. Moreover, the FBI routinely combs through it looking for Americans’ communications to use in purely domestic cases, even in situations where the FBI lacks a factual predicate to open a full investigation,” Goitein continued.
There are other means by which the U.S. government can spy on Americans. In 2022, Biden issued an executive order (EO) that allows the government to surveil Americans for broadly defined reasons including understanding “public health risks,” “political instability,” and the “threat” of climate change.
The EO was ostensibly written to “enhanc[e] safeguards” for “United States Signals Intelligence Activities,” which is intelligence gathering by the interception of signals, including communications, such as through cell phones, or those not used in communication. An accompanying fact sheet explains that the EO is meant to help “implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF)” in an effort to “restore trust and stability” to transatlantic data flows.
Alongside permitting spying for the purposes of sizing up the capabilities of foreign entities, the EO permits signals intelligence collection for “understanding or assessing transnational threats that impact global security, including climate and other ecological change, public health risks, humanitarian threats, political instability, and geographic rivalry.”
The document’s lack of elaboration on such so-called “transnational threats” raises the question of the true scope of activity now officially subject to spying by the U.S. government, which is potentially massive.
espionage
Mounties Should Probe Criminal Obstruction in Bill Blair’s Office Warrant Delay, Says Former Senior CSIS and RCMP Officer
In August 2015, then-federal Liberal candidate Bill Blair (back center, tallest) joined Liberal Party officials, including candidate John McCallum and then-Ontario Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and International Trade Michael Chan, at a ‘Team Trudeau’ federal election fundraiser in Greater Toronto Area. Source: John McCallum/Facebook.
By Sam Cooper
54 days created a big window for them to realize who was on this list, whose communications might be captured, and to go into damage control mode: Alan Treddenick, CSIS Veteran
Testimony from senior ministers and aides in Justin Trudeau’s administration at the Hogue Commission—marked by contradictions and conspicuous lapses in memory—has sparked calls for a criminal obstruction investigation into the months-long delay of a warrant targeting Michael Chan, a prominent Liberal Party fundraiser. Alan Treddenick, a former senior officer in Canadian police and intelligence services with extensive experience in domestic and international operations, warns the delay raises critical questions: Were party officials connected to the explosive warrant tipped off, as Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s staff weighed its political fallout ahead of the Liberal Party’s election campaign?
The inquiry revealed that Blair and his top aide were briefed by CSIS around March 2021 on the pending warrant for Michael Chan. The document, which outlined a list of individuals potentially in communication with Chan, remained in Blair’s office for at least 54 days before it was approved. The prolonged delay constrained CSIS’s ability to act, leaving only about two months before the September 2021 federal election.
“The 54 days created a big window of opportunity for them to realize who was on this list, whose communications might be captured, and to go into damage control mode,” Treddenick said in an interview. “In my opinion, that would have meant quietly advising people on the list to be cautious about communications with certain individuals.”
Another expert, Duff Conacher, an ethics and transparency activist, calls the case involving Bill Blair and his chief of staff, Zita Astravas, perhaps the most serious conflict of interest matter he has ever seen in Ottawa.
“Both Blair and Astravas should have recused themselves,” Conacher said in an interview. “If a warrant targets someone affiliated with the politician’s party, there’s a clear risk of a cover-up, delay, or actions that protect the warrant’s subject.”
Emphasizing the stakes of the delay, a national security source—who cannot be identified due to ongoing leak investigations by the RCMP and CSIS—told The Bureau that CSIS officers had allegedly sought to plant surveillance devices inside a mansion Michael Chan was completing in Markham.
According to the source, CSIS officers were pushing to secure a national security warrant for Chan to allow such measures, but delays in 2021 left them frustrated. They noted that the opportunity to covertly install recorders inside Chan’s home during its construction had already passed.
In his testimony Chan acknowledged fundraising and campaigning for over 40 federal and provincial candidates, including prominent Liberal leaders such as Justin Trudeau, Paul Martin, Michael Ignatieff, Sheila Copps and John McCallum. He has vehemently denied any involvement in Chinese election interference and has publicly called himself a victim of CSIS investigations and media leaks.
Blair and Astravas strongly rejected allegations of inappropriate handling of the warrant during their testimony. Conservative MP Michael Chong’s lawyer, Gib van Ert, pressed Astravas, suggesting, “The warrant involved high-ranking members of your party and people you had known for years—isn’t that why you wanted to delay it?”
“That is false. Minister Blair has approved every warrant put before him,” Astravas replied.
Van Ert countered, “But he didn’t get it for 54 days, because of you.”
“Your accusation is false,” Astravas retorted.
The Bureau asked Treddenick for his assessment of the explosive evidence, focusing on the unprecedented delay in warrant approval and the testimony highlighting Blair’s chief of staff’s pointed interest in the so-called Van Weenen list.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
An image from a 2016 Globe and Mail profile on key players in PM Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.
Alan Treddenick:
“Let me start by saying I’m astonished that others in the media haven’t picked up or devoted any time to this issue. It made a bit of a splash during the commission, but then it seemed to disappear.
From Bill Blair to his chief of staff, to Katie Telford, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, even the Prime Minister’s testimony. There were memory lapses, confusion about responsibility, decision-making, and who had access to the document. This is unprecedented in my 32 years with the RCMP and CSIS—it’s unprecedented for a warrant application to sit in the minister’s office for 54 days. That’s one point.
Two, the Van Weenen lists aren’t new. They started within criminal jurisprudence and were adopted into National Security and CSIS Act warrant applications to give justices a broader picture of who might be captured in a target’s interception.
In this case, the 54-day delay is concerning—one, because as I said, it’s unprecedented; two, because of the number of people who would have had access to this in the minister’s office; and three, because during that 54-day period, that document didn’t just sit in somebody’s basket.
Typically, warrant applications with Van Weenen lists go through without issue. But this one raised questions, and Blair’s history as a Toronto police officer doesn’t suggest he would have been involved in stalling it. I put this down to his chief of staff—who is not incompetent; she’s a very savvy political operative, close to Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford, from their Ontario Liberal Party days. So my concern in this whole thing is that the 54 days allowed a big window of opportunity for them once they realized who was on this list—whose communications could be captured when communicating with the target. And the damage control mode, in my opinion, would’ve been quiet conversations somehow with people that are on the Van Weenen list. To say be careful when you’re talking or communicating with so-and-so, because you never know who’s listening.
Images from YouTube videos show Michael Chan attending campaign events and a fundraising dinner with Justin Trudeau and John McCallum.
The Van Weenen list was mentioned briefly in the Commission hearings, but I haven’t seen anyone really delve into it. When the Commission releases its final report, will it be part of the classified reporting? I don’t know. Have they asked people on the list to testify? I don’t know. It definitely needs some sort of review.”
The Bureau:
Based on my understanding, high-level sources informed me from the start that this investigation related to CSIS’s belief that the warrant’s target could influence the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the replacement of a sitting MP. My sources say this could be the most concerning counterintelligence threat for CSIS at that time due to the potential influence on the Prime Minister and his staff from a key party fundraiser to fix an important riding seat. Could you comment on that?
Alan Treddenick:
“If that’s accurate, it certainly would’ve been included in the affidavit to justify the powers for CSIS to further the investigation. I don’t know the specifics, and I haven’t seen the affidavit, nor do I want to, but from what you’re telling me, it’s plausible that all of that would’ve been in the affidavit.”
An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.
The Bureau:
Lawyers seemed to focus on the Van Weenen list and the chief of staff’s unprecedented interest in it. This points to concerns that people on the list could have been quietly alerted to be cautious, doesn’t it?
Alan Treddenick:
“Exactly. That 54 days provided an unprecedented window. Why would it have taken that long? Blair’s chief of staff is no dummy—she’s savvy and has likely seen other applications with Van Weenen lists that didn’t raise issues. This one took 54 days before Blair signed it. So what happened in that time? I suspect there was damage control behind the scenes.”
The Bureau:
What would you say to the layperson who sees this as potential obstruction? Even The Globe and Mail wrote that time was passing with an election approaching in September 2021.
Alan Treddenick:
“Regardless of the election, the 54-day period needs examination from a criminal point of view: obstruction, breach of trust, and possibly infractions of the Security of Information Act. From a criminal perspective, that’s one aspect—but from an intelligence perspective, the last thing we as an intelligence service would have wanted was for the people on the Van Weenen list to be advised that Target X is under surveillance. If they were warned to ‘be careful with your communications,’ it would likely result in a change in behavior, which could compromise our operations.
That’s why it’s very troubling to me that the 54-day window hasn’t been examined. Start with a criminal investigation: conduct interviews with everyone on the Van Weenen list and anyone who had access to the document from the moment it entered the minister’s office. Obtain judicial production orders for all communications to and from the minister’s office and staff, and track where they went. Look for any connections to individuals on the Van Weenen list—I suspect there will be, especially since the list likely included some prominent individuals.
If there was communication between someone on the list and the minister’s office, or a staff member, shortly after the chief of staff raised concerns about the Van Weenen list, that would raise a red flag. I’d then dig deeper into the nature of that communication. Did the communication or behavior of one person toward another change? If it did, it would suggest that someone on the list was warned.”
An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.
The Bureau:
You mentioned production orders. Should those apply here to track communications behind the scenes?
Alan Treddenick:
“Absolutely. Production orders for all electronic communications to and from the minister’s office are essential. I’d focus on links between those communications and people on the Van Weenen list.”
The Bureau:
I have said this seems like a Watergate-type inquiry. Would you agree that the level of investigative diligence here should be that high?
Alan Treddenick:
“Yes. Given the lapses in memory and conflicting testimonies—differences in how testimony from Marco Mendicino (Blair’s successor) treated applications versus Blair’s office—there should be a criminal investigation into this period.”
The Bureau:
Any final thoughts?
Alan Treddenick:
“I think your reporting and that of a few others has been essential. It’s unfortunate that leaks were necessary to expose this—but they were. In the inquiry, I saw bureaucratic machinery in its best—or actually worst—form.”
Editor’s note: Alan Treddenick, former senior counter-terror officer for CSIS, also worked for Blackberry on national security matters after retiring.
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An image from a Globe and Mail profile on key players in Trudeau’s office, with points of interest for this story annotated in red lines by The Bureau.
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espionage
Communist China interfered in BC election that saw far-left NDP re-elected by slim margin: report
B.C. NDP Premier David Eby
From LifeSiteNews
Investigative journalist Sam Cooper has gone on the record to state, ‘In my journalistic assessment, assisted by Mandarin OSINT specialists, there evidently has been significant CCP-affiliated Election Interference in support of Premier David Eby.’
Canadian investigative reporter Sam Cooper says his research has led him to conclude there was “significant” interference by groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the recent provincial election of British Columbia, which saw the New Democratic Party under Premier David Eby win re-election by a tiny margin.
“In my journalistic assessment, assisted by Mandarin OSINT specialists, there evidently has been significant CCP-affiliated Election Interference in support of Premier David Eby,” wrote investigative journalist Sam Cooper on X last week.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Eby’s NDP squeaked out the smallest possible majority government last month in the province’s elections, beating out his up-and-coming Conservative rival John Rustad. The results from the election took weeks to finalize after multiple recounts, as well as reports of ballots going uncounted.
Cooper, who works for The Bureau, then linked to his report, which he said, “collects documents from China and Canada.”
According to Cooper, in 2021, then Attorney General of British Columbia, David Eby, who later became head of the B.C. NDP and premier of the province, approved a $20,000 grant to the “Canada Committee 100 Society (CCS100), a community organization led by Ding Guo, a prominent journalist from Shanghai.”
The grant has now come under intense scrutiny, reports Cooper, from “experts and diaspora citizens due to the group’s documented links to Beijing’s United Front and political donors involved in Eby’s 2022 NDP leadership campaign.”
At the time, a government press release stated that Ding was a personal friend and advisor to Eby.
Ding stated that the project “will help us gather detailed, relevant data on a wide scale. It will also provide opportunities for the Chinese Canadian community, including new immigrants, to engage in the legislative process.”
Cooper observed that while this “mission appears commendable,” findings from The Bureau’s review of public records, “including a report from the People’s Republic that credits CCS100 with mobilizing voters in the 2019 federal election,” suggest a more “complex narrative.”
Of late, Cooper has been instrumental in shedding light on the potential extent of interference from CCP-linked groups in Canada’s most recent elections.
As noted by LifeSiteNews earlier this week, Cooper recently reported that the CCP boasted it had successfully managed to get no less than eight of some 41 preferred candidates elected in Canada’s 2019 federal election.
LifeSiteNews also recently reported about Cooper’s naming of four politicians along with one government advisor as allegedly being involved in a scheme backed by the CCP to purposely interfere in Canada’s electoral process.
In light of multiple accusations of foreign meddling in Canadian elections, a federal Foreign Interference Commission was convened earlier this year to “examine and assess the interference by China, Russia, and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on, the 43rd and 44th general elections (2019 and 2021 elections) at the national and electoral district levels.”
The commission is headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who had earlier said she and her lawyers will remain “impartial” and will not be influenced by politics. In January, Hogue said that she would “uncover the truth whatever it may be.”
A few months ago, the head of Canada’s intelligence agency testified under oath that he gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in the past has said he has an affinity for China’s “basic dictatorship,” multiple warnings that agents of the CCP were going after Conservative MPs, yet the prime minister has denied receiving these warnings.
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