I recently asked and received copies of the Completed Access to Information forms from Public Safety Canada:

• A-2010-00209 - Records concerning a potential border security agreement with the United States, authored between July and December 2010
• A-2011-00143 - Recommendations following a cyber attack that led Defense Research and Development Canada to shut down one of their servers.
• A-2011-00220 - All records from March 1 to November 4, 2011 about Canada's privacy commissioners' positions on the proposed lawful access bills
• A-2011-00319 - Emails drafted, sent and received between Feb. 15, 2012 and Feb 21, 2012 regarding the Twitter user VikiLeaks30
• A-2011-00320 - Emails drafted, sent and received between Feb. 15, 2012 and Feb 21, 2012 regarding the Twitter hashtag #tellviceverything
• A-2011-00322 - Briefing notes between February 15, 2012 and February 21, 2012 for the Minister on Bill C-30

The first file is the largest and goes through the negotiations for the "Beyond the Border" action plan. I haven't read through the whole thing yet, but it's definitely worth the time going through it and finding information in that document regarding the new passports that are supposed to be issued in 2013. (It was supposed to be this year, but I'm guessing budget cuts took care of that).

The second file is a Canadian "Cyber War" document which talks about how Public Safety Canada is the lead agency when it comes to Canada's Cyber Warfare strategy. This should frighten people since these idiots can't operate a can opener. However, there's a nice set of slides by DND which talks about what they think "Cyber War" is. It's amazing how much effort can put into a term that was made up as a part of SCIENCE FICTION. I definitely want to get a shirt that says "I'm a part of Red Force" or "FUCK BLUE FORCE". I think the presentation is far more interesting than anything else, since it shows what the DND, CSEC and Public...

The Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit early on did surveillance of Spartacus Books. It had the old address before the fire. We can see this get updated, and the V2010ISU made sure to grab the old ALF and ELF material that the store had. It's interesting to see what they said about Spartacus Books, namely that it wasn't a target because of the longevity of the store, but they still treated it as such anyway. Apparently someone advised against bugging the store, which I found rather interesting. Therefore, the majority of the surveillance of the bookstore was outside it.

What is interesting with this document is how I managed to get on the radar. It appears that the Victoria Anarchist Bookfair in 2008 was where they got their target list. They singled out the Vancouver and Victoria based vendors, and they show the various bookstores they visited, which included Dark Horse Books. It seems that the CBSA was involved with the V2010ISU-JIG early on with the Intelligence Officer Kelly Sandhu actively participating in the activities of the JIG. Also, it seems that the Victoria Kool Aid society knew about the JIG investigating, since the RCMP and CBSA got a tour of the venue before the bookfair occurred.

Also, the documents about Camas confirm that the first photo of me from 2008 was taken by IO Sandu, and that they were set up outside the bookfair and seeing who was going in and out of the bookfair. Later, one of the members of ISU decides to buy some zines from Camas for intelligence purposes. It seems that the CBSA was very involved in the surveillance of NO 2010 Victoria. Unfortunately, the records on Camas are incomplete.

Spartacus, on the other hand, due to my involvement has far more information. It seems that IO Sandu visited Spartacus Books. This was back in 2007 at the old 319 West Hastings location. Following this, the JIG decided to do impromptu visits of the bookstore. It seems that the surveillance of the old store was cut off on February 2008. It seems that later in 2008, the JIG took pictures of people who they believed were part of the Spartacus Collective and kept track of them.

After that, there is the lengthy file on my activities which are boring. They decide that I'm an APC member, despite the fact that I've never attended a meeting. They follow me around to Coffee Shops, take video of me going to lunch with co-workers, and even follow me into 7-11. There are other interesting facts...

I decided to ask about the VMC, and even though I know that there is a lot more information, I managed to get this from the RCMP without having to get the permission of the individual contributors.

It appears that the surveillance of the Dominion started in 2008, although this isn't clear from the document, and that the Dominion itself was a task, similar to how individuals were tasks. However, the documents just show the RCMP conducting Open Source Intelligence on the upcoming releases of the documents, which makes sense since the RCMP are probably one of the most dedicated readers of the Dominion and the Media Coop.

The redactions on this are interesting,since they hit 16(1)(a)(c), 16(2) and 19(1) of the Act. 19(2) is the familiar protection of privacy clause where other persons of interest are obscured, but here's 16(1):

16. (1) The head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this Act that contains
(a) information obtained or prepared by any government institution, or part of any government institution, that is an investigative body specified in the regulations in the course of lawful investigations pertaining to
(i) the detection, prevention or suppression of crime,
(ii) the enforcement of any law of Canada or a province, or
(iii) activities suspected of constituting threats to the security of Canada within the meaning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act,
if the record came into existence less than twenty years prior to the request;

(b) information relating to investigative techniques or plans for specific lawful investigations;
(c) information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the enforcement of any law of Canada or a province or the conduct of lawful investigations, including, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, any such information
(i) relating to the existence or nature of a particular investigation,
(ii) that would reveal the identity of a confidential source of information, or
(iii) that was obtained or prepared in the course of an investigation; or
(d) information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the security of penal institutions.

So, while we're not being slammed by the notorious 16(1)(b), we are stuck with a large amount of information that is redacted. At any rate, here are the documents...

The CBSA has been listing their ATIP responses for a while now, and this means that I was able to receive existing responses for free. We have files detailing the CBSA's Intelligence Gathering practices, which include information on targets and how they spy on them. The information is quite extensive, and I can't cover it all here, but I'm still going to try regardless.

The first file we have is related to the CBSA entering Women's Shelters to deport people from Canada. This has the basic information that was directly related to the case where the CBSA were entering Womens Shelters in Toronto. The second file is a file that appears to be from Atlas, whih is the CBSA Intranet. This is similar to the RCMP INFOWEB, except that it seems to be more about convincing the CBSA employee that they're doing the right thing, where I haven't seen anything like this from a document from INFOWEB. This seems to be a rough survey of all of ATLAS, and has information from the Intelligence and Targeting Operations.

The main document that we have is the CBSA Enforcement Manual. The manual is 1270 pages in length and is what the CBSA enforcement officers have to read. This is an extremely large manual and there is currently no text search available, which makes this difficult to read. That being said, it seems that both hate literature and obscenity are part of the Intelligence Section. This isn't as clearcut as it sounds, since the sections are really vague and fucked up, as well as the obvious. For example, the CBSA is mandated to prevent goods of a treasonous nature or goods of a seditious nature, which can include certain pieces of Anarchist literature. In addition to this, there is the fact that under the Criminal Code the CBSA is out to prevent obscenity from entering into Canada. However, it doesn't state what obscenity is exactly. It does cite the Little Sister's Bookstore Supreme Court of Canada case.

There are intelligence reports featuring the MV Sun Sea, the importation of Khat, and other border enforcement information. The last file is about the CBSA complaints system, or lack of complaints system. What's strange is that it's comparing something called the IG to SIRC. For those of you who don't know what SIRC is, SIRC is the Security Intelligence Review Committee, and the mandate of SIRC is to review the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

The Enhanced Complaint Mechanism appears to be a Public...