The BC Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint with the CSIS review body following testimony earlier this week that said the spy agency is willing to use information derived from torture.
The complaint to the Security Intelligence Review Committee was filed yesterday in response to comments made by CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O’Brian to the House of Commons public safety committee on Tuesday.
“The quotes suggested that CSIS either uses or would use information that it knew was derived from torture if it knew lives were at stake,” said David Eby, acting executive director of the BCCLA.
“If you use information derived from torture it condones the practice of torture,” Eby said.
According to media reports, O’Brian told the House of Commons public safety committee that CSIS would rarely use such information but it remained a possibility.
"The simple truth is, if we get information which can prevent something like the Air India bombing, the Twin Towers – whatever, frankly – that is the time when we will use it despite the provenance of that information," O’Brian said.
The BCCLA complaint is asking the review body to investigate O’Brian’s comments, finding out if CSIS has relied on information derived from torture in the past and whether it remains current CSIS policy.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan contradicted the lawyer’s testimony on Wednesday, saying that O’Brian’s statements were not government policy.
"We do not condone the use of torture in any circumstances," he said.
"If there's any indication, any evidence that torture may have been used, that information is discounted."
Critics said this denial shows inconsistency between the policies of the government and the spy agency.
“Either the government doesn’t know what CSIS is doing or CSIS doesn’t care what the government says,” said Eby.
The BCCLA helped draft a House of Commons bill to define Canada’s position on torture, following reports of the risk of torture faced by Afghan detainees when transferred by Canadian forces in Afghanistan.
NDP MP Dawn Black introduced the legislation last year to define Canadian policy and practice regarding torture.
“I drafted legislation because I think there is a gap and I think it needs to be addressed,” she said.
Black, who is leaving her seat to run as the NDP candidate for New Westminster in the B.C. provincial election, told The Hook that information obtained from torture is “notoriously unreliable” and violates Canada’s commitment to abolish torture.
According to the complaint filed against CSIS, the BCCLA considers torture to be “the most egregious potential civil liberties violation against the individual short of execution.”
Garrett Zehr reports for The Hook
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Alison Creekside
3 years ago
The don't ask don't tell defence
O'Brian at the public safety committee on Tuesday, via Hansard :
"I would love to give you a simple answer. The simple answer is that we will never use info from torture. I cannot say that because recipients of info do not know how that info was obtained. I can say we do not knowingly... knowingly ... use info extracted by torture."
O'Brian's "clarification" on Thursday:
"I wish to clarify for the committee that CSIS certainly does not condone torture and that it is the policy of CSIS to not knowingly rely upon information that may have been obtained through torture."
Van Loan at public safety committee on Thursday, via Hansard :
"We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture."
That's a whole lot of "knowingly".
I'm not seeing any difference between the three statements.
Rod Smelser
3 years ago
Question for David Eby
A bomb warning is phoned in to your building. Do you evacuate? Do you evacuate if you know that the person relaying this information is prone to violence and to abusing others, and specifically tells you that he got this information from someone he had assaulted and intimidated?
Bailey
3 years ago
Questions for Rod Smelser
A false bomb warning is phoned in to your building.
Nobody tells you that the information comes from a disappeared political opponent of powerful interests, who was being asked "Ve know you haff ze bomb, tell us vhere you hid it!" while having his fingernails pulled out, and listening to the screams of his wife and daughter who were being raped by soldiers in the next room.
Do you believe? Do you suddenly feel terror and hatred of some group you are told is responsible for your false danger?
I know I'm restating your premise. I think it's important to know the techniques and uses of lies, to better resist the temptation to submit in a fit of falsely generated emotion.
dorothy
3 years ago
question
Is there any real solid research on this? I imagine that by toturing people, you will get SOMETHING out of them, but why would it be the truth? they have all the reason in the world to hate you and be desirous of misleading you. Of course, you can torture them further if it turns out to be wrong, but then you can do so anyhow, yes? they may not be improving their odds by giving you the real dope, so why do it?
In those cases where one does get real information, could that not have been achieved by more intelligent, less crude means? I cannot help thinking that in the choice of torture over other methods, there is a catering to our lowest instincts and need to control.
Again, do we have any real knowledge of this, or are we just thinking we can apply some sort of simplistic logic?
Bailey
3 years ago
The need to control
Dorothy, I have been admiring the way you have of finding the nugget at the heart of things.
I think the need to control others is central to this whole political schlemozzle we find ourselves struggling with all across the board.
We live in fear, all of us. People say sex sells, when looking at mass communications techniques in use everywhere now, but I think that the real message is 'be afraid'.
Commercially, politically, ecologically, socially. Certainly around questions of war.
Be afraid that you are hated by the others, who are afraid that they are hated by you.
Be afraid that you are not, will never be good enough, be pretty enough, will never be attractive enough to get a girl like this.
Be afraid that somebody else will get your job, that you'll lose your home, that your family will leave you alone because of it.
Be afraid that somebody will steal your identity, will abuse your computer, will blame you for their crimes.
All of these are ways for the powerful to exert control over massed groups of people who otherwise would probably hang them from the nearest lamppost if they knew who they really were.
The need for such control, evil as it seems, is itself engendered by fear at the highest levels. Fear of exposure. Fear that somebody someday might suddenly somehow strip away the veils of lies behind which these damaged people hide the fact that, far from being a sign of merit, great riches are more often a symptom of psychopathology.
It's not that the emperor has no clothes, it's that his underwear is insanity. That's why he dresses so meticulously in public.
That's why they are so attached to the idea that they must be allowed to torture, so they can absolutely control the outward image that all the rest of us see.