This is a big year for us in Canada. Sure, we are a youngish nation and celebrating 150 years may sound quaint to our older international cousins, but it is a cause for celebration nonetheless. I am looking forward to the commemoration as I was six when we marked our centennial in 1967 and don’t […]
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In Lewis Carroll’s Alice through the looking glass Humpty-Dumpty delivers this famous line: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Alice replied: “he question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” I think this notion that anyone can say anything they like […]
It has now been a few weeks since Alexandre Bissonnette walked into the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City armed to the teeth and carried out his cowardly slaughter of six Muslims at isha prayers (yes, this attack, unlike a suicide one, was cowardly since Mr. Bissonnette’s victims had no way to defend themselves AND […]
Look, I get it. When something along the lines of the shooting in Quebec City on Sunday evening occurs, people want to know what is happening. And they want to know NOW. So, the army of experts – a few actual and most fake – rise up and fill the airwaves with “analysis”. The fact […]
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Terrorism by the numbers
Whenever a new year kicks in we always cast a Janus-like glance back to the previous one to get an idea of what we just went through and, hopefully, gain some insight into what we are in for in the coming 12 months. By all accounts 2016 was not a great year on several fronts, […]
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Who should do CVE?
The fight against terrorism is multi-faceted. As we are seeing in Mosul as I write, forces from a number of countries, including Canada, are heavily involved in an effort to take back Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State. Security intelligence agencies such as my former employer, CSIS, play a vital role in carrying out […]
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What’s up with all the Islamophobia?
I have a fear of heights. This fear makes it hard for me even to climb ladders. I know it sounds silly and irrational but that is what fears often are – irrational. Yes, some fears are valid and they do serve a purpose – for example a fear for snakes and spiders as some […]
Big data is everything these days. There is absolutely no question that there is more information out there than ever before and more ways to collect it. Everyone from companies to police forces are getting into the game with a view to earning more money or making their jobs easier and more efficient. Nor is […]
If there is one spy agency in Canada that is poorly understood and about which much of little veracity has been published it has to be CSE – Communications Security Establishment. CSE has a number of roles but the one that gets the most public attention is signals intelligence or SIGINT. This method of intelligence […]
The public has a complicated relationship with intelligence agencies. On the one hand we love to watch James Bond and Jason Bourne films, despite the fact that the ways these spies work has very little if anything to do with how things really happen. On the other we get frustrated because these agencies tell us […]