Intelligence agencies are generally poorly understood in our societies. The agencies themselves are partly to blame since they shroud themselves in secrecy, albeit for good reasons. In addition, public perception is at fault, partly due to the assumption by many that spies are nefarious creatures at heart and partly due to the often highly inaccurate […]
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Well, we are coming up to the six-month mark of the Donald Trump era and it is time for a reckoning. So much print and coverage has been devoted to the Donald that I hesitate to add to this amount. And yet there is quite a bit that bears on counter terrorism policy and strategy […]
When you work for CSIS or the RCMP in national security the one thing that keeps you up at night is the possibility that you might miss something (or, more probably, don’t have enough resources to run down all the leads you discover) and a terrorist act succeeds in Canada. The second thing that makes […]
I am a big Isaac Asimov fan (and a big science fiction fan in general, although I don’t get to read as much as I’d like what with all this terrorism to look at). In his classic Foundation series we are introduced to a character right at the outset named Hari Seldon, a mathematics professor […]
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ISIS in Scarborough?
Once in a while I come across (or, in this case, have someone point me in the right direction) a story related to terrorism that surprises even me, a 30-year grizzled veteran of intelligence and counter terrorism. I saw a lot in my time at CSIS and had the incredibly amazing opportunity to work on […]
The President of the US is a very powerful person. The so-called leader of the free world has a lot of influence on all kinds of issues and has a great deal of leeway in deciding what to say and do (within the system of checks and balances of course). The current holder of office, […]
Now that the recommendations of the Iacobucci Commission in Canada have finally been implemented and three Canadians who claim to have been tortured in Syria with the alleged complicity of the Canadian government and CSIS have settled their case, it is time for a comment. A few weeks have passed and I for one can […]
Knowing that what you are doing is the right thing is important. There are all kinds of ideas in all kinds of fields of study and practice but they are not all equal. Some are clearly better than others. One way of telling which ones are which is to measure what they purport to do. […]
The news coming out of Stockholm is all too familiar these days. A man stole a beer truck and drove it down a popular pedestrian mall in the centre of town, mowing down people before crashing into a storefront. The use of a vehicle to cause terror has become a trend of late and attacks […]
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How safe are Canada’s airports?
Some potentially disturbing news on the terrorism front came out the other day in Canada. According to reports, four employees at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal (it used to be called Dorval) had their security clearances revoked over concerns that they had become ‘radicalised’. The men had access to restricted areas, one had talked […]