Search: “CSIS”

I was listening to CBC’s Writers and Company earlier today while driving down the QEW towards Niagara.  This particular programme dealt with Shakespeare’s works and the differences in the plays he wrote during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.   The interviewee, James Shapiro, did an amazing job of situating some of his plays in contemporary […]

Two recent attacks in the West have gotten a lot of press attention.  A man in Philadelphia shot a police officer in his vehicle before being shot himself and arrested.  He claims to have acted on behalf of Islamic state (see story here).  Across the “pond”, police in Paris were able to neutralise a man […]

Those who have followed my blog in 2015 or have heard me speak at conferences know that I am not a fan of predictive modeling.  I  do not own a crystal ball and I don’t know anyone else who does – besides, those that do exist do so as ornaments, not windows on the future. […]

Like in most fields of study, terrorism analysis has made great contributions to our understanding of this violent phenomenon.  Whether it is in-depth examinations of the ideology or longitudinal data on whether or not de-radicalisation programmes work, we are better off than we would be in the absence of this knowledge. Unfortunately, however, terrorism analysis […]

Most Canadians have heard of the “Toronto 18”,  a group of homegrown extremists who were arrested in the summer of 2006 before they could detonate truck bombs, an act that could have killed and maimed thousands.  At the time, and probably to this day for that matter, it was the largest and most complicated terrorism […]

It should come as a surprise to no one that many Western governments, including Canada’s, are struggling with what to do about their citizens seeking to travel abroad to join terrorist groups such as Islamic State.  Measures to date have included passport revocation, peace bonds, monitoring and, where enough evidence is present, arrest and charges. […]

Whenever a terrorist attack happens we collectively strive both to understand it and to look over what we may have missed.  We do so in order to figure out how we can better identify the signs of violent radicalisation and perhaps act before terrorist events occur. I have long argued that the signs of violent […]

I have just returned from spending three wonderful days in New York City.  Broadway.  Central Park.  American Museum of Natural History.  Bryant Park.  The city that never sleeps.  And the city that is never far from the attention and aspiration of terrorists. When I used to work in security intelligence it always struck me that […]

And so the outrage begins.  A Transport Canada report that states that terrorists could use legitimate, Charter-protected protest activity as a cover to carry out violence (see story here) has caused a kerfuffle.  A director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has expressed concern that the report and its authors paints “(lawful) activism as a […]

One of the greatest challenges a society has to face with respect to the delicate balance between privacy and freedom of thought and national security has to do with when organs of the state are allowed to take an interest in the activities of its citizens when those activities are believed to constitute a threat […]