In the News

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says a “very clearly articulated list” of military-style long guns the government plans to ban will be published “as quickly as possible.” He says he doesn’t want “individuals going out and acquiring those weapons before the publishing of that list.”

Visitors to the U.S. are still being asked by Customs & Border Protection officers to hand over their mobile phones and notebook computers for inspection despite a U.S. Federal Court ruling in November that such searches were effectively unconstitutional without reasonable grounds. One Canadian lawyer says he continues to tell clients “not to save anything on their devices they would not want an officer to read.”

A Chinese-born Princeton University doctoral student who had been doing research in Iran until his arrest three years ago on suspicion of espionage has been released as part of a prisoner exchange with the U.S. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Dec. 7 that Xiyue Wang, who was being assessed at a U.S. Army medical centre, was exchanged for a scientist, Massoud Soleimani, who was arrested on arrival in Chicago late last year.

A shooting Dec. 6 at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Pensacola has resulted in four deaths, including the gunman who shot himself. He has been identifed as a Saudi Air Force officer training at the base. At least 11 other victims were taken to hospital. Two days earlier, a U.S. submarine crewmember at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii shot two civilians to death and wounded a third before committing suicide.

While the world waits for the outcome of the Dec. 12 British election, Canadians evidently are circumspect about their ally’s future as a trading partner, according to the results of a national poll released Dec. 6 by the Angus Reid Institute. Among things, it found that although there’s still high regard for Britain in general, there has been a significant drop in the number who believe Canada should focus on developing closer trade ties.

Draft legislation designed to deal with an epidemic of automated telephone calling has been approved almost unanimously by the House of Representatives. Among other things, it requires service providers to block robocolls and urges various federal agencies to be more aggressive about potentially criminal calls.

Hoping to control the spread of 5G networks that involve Chinese technology, the State Department says it supports a European Union Council report in which risks are highlighted. State also says Europe and its allies must “ensure only trusted vendors participate” because of the threat from networks controlled by authoritarian regimes.

Faced with intense criticism from privacy advocates, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has scrapped plans to require all citizens to be subjected to facial recognition on entering and leaving the country. An arm of the Department of Homeland Security, CBP has been testing the technology at 20 ports of entry since September 2018 and the airports involved have made it part of their boarding process.

A Canberra-based think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says 43 Chinese universities should be considered “very high” or “high” risk to deal with because of their work on defence projects. The assessment by the ASPI, which is partly funded by the U.S. State Department, comes just weeks after the Australian government published guidelines for universities on how to reduce the threat of foreign entities leveraging academic research. The institute also launched a database that classifies risk posed by research partnerships with some 160 Chinese universities, security institutions and defence industry groups.

Finalizing a Request for Prototype Proposals for testing military uses of 5G at two select U.S bases, the Department of Defense is soliciting input from industry. The notice follows a November announcement that testing at four bases could begin next year. Feedback could guide DoD decision on what level of testing and trials the government would permit.

As Montreal prepares for the 30th anniversary Dec. 6 of the École Polytechnique massacre in which 14 women were killed, the city’s mayor, Valérie Plante, is renewing pressure for tighter gun controls. “I want us to stand strong and talk loud about Canada as a safe place,” she said Dec. 3. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed during the recent federal election campaign not only to a ban on semi-automatic rifles but also to enable municipal governments to restrict handguns.

With a Dec. 15 deadline looming for more U.S. trade tariffs on China, President Donald Trump has suggested he’s open to waiting until after the 2020 presidential election. “In some ways, I like the idea of waiting,” he told reporters in London where he was attending a NATO summit. “But they want to make a deal now and . . . it’s gotta be right.”

The founder of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei has said that it plans to move its U.S. research centre to Canada from the U.S. in response to growing U.S. antipathy to the company on national security grounds. Ren Zhengfei has told The Globe and Mail the company also will manufacture some of its 5G network equipment outside of China. Huawei reportedly spent $510 million on the operations of its U.S. research arm last year before reducing its workforce.

European Commission anti-trust regulators have begun a “preliminary investigation” into the data collection practices of Google and Facebook. Key focuses appear to include local search, advertising practices, sign-in services, and web browsers and how data are collected, processed and monetized. Already fined twice for its practices, Google contends that collected data are used to improve services.

The Communications Security Establishment is looking for approximately 150 new full-time staff and 300 students next year, partly due to personnel shifting to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security which protects federal cyber assets and provides advice to industries, businesses and citizens on how to deal with online threats. An average day can bring more than 100 million malicious infiltration attempts.

Former CSIS Director Richard Fadden says recent Conservative and Liberal governments have “failed abominably” on some foreign policy issues, notably China. He told an Ottawa panel Nov. 27 that having sat in on cabinet meetings for years, he concluded that while the governments of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, tried hard to articulate policy, “they both failed abominably because there was no consensus.”

While it agrees that increased computerization of weapon systems offers many advantages, the U.S. Air Force says it also can make systems more vulnerable to cyberattacks. As a result, it is developing a new training curriculum designed to prepare specific personnel on how to recognize and respond to attacks.

A draft bill which directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help under-resourced lower levels of government to handle cybersecurity has been passed by the Senate. The proposed State and Local Government Cybersecurity Act is designed to improve intergovernmental coordination through the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has begun libel against against a researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research in France. It says the lawsuit stems from the researcher’s televised comments that Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei is a former member of the People’s Liberation Army and that his company is essentially an arm of the Chinese government.The suit comes as Canada and several other countries try to address concerns that Huawei technology could be used for intelligence gathering.

Taking up Prime Minister Trudeau’s election campaign promise to ban military-style “assault rifles,” a Montreal group is urging Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to make good on it. PolySeSouvient includes students and graduates of Ecole Polytechnique, where 14 women were shot in 1989. An aide to Blair says the minister appreciates the group’s support for Trudeau’s commitment.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is losing several senior technical and cyber staff which apparently could limit its to execute a coherent digital policy.

The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, of which Canada is a member, says developments in and around the Sea of Azov and the Strait of Hormuz this year have demonstrated how marine security measures and the disturbance of shipping may have immediate and/or long-term effects on the global economy. Moreover, it points out, the fact that most critical infrastructure is privately-owned makes it difficult for governments to prepare for threats.

The Federal Communications Commission is cutting funding for U.S. telecoms which use 5G technology development by Huawei and ZTE, Chinese companies it considers “a national security threat.” The FCC says it will use its $8.5-billion Universal Service Fund, which underwrites equipment acquisition, to offset the impact of its decision on telecoms already committed to the Chinese products.

South Korea has opted to continue an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan just hours before it was scheduled to expire. The future of the General Security of Military Information Agreement had been threatened by a deepening trade and diplomatic dispute. South Korea had announced in August that it would terminate the pact and Japan responded by canceling Japan’s status as a favoured trading partner.

The latest Halifax International Security Forum has been used by the U.S. as a platform to warn Canada that permitting 5G technology developed by China’s Huawei telecom giant could undermine this country’s relations with its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence community. Robert O’Brien, recently appointed as White House national security adviser, told reporters that Huawei 5G would be a “Trojan horse”, a warning reiterated by U.S. lawmakers during the forum itself.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declined an invitation from South Korean President Moon Jae-in to attend a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations next month. While thanking Seoul for the invitation, North Korea asked for “understanding that we failed to find out the proper reason” for Kim to attend.

Warnings several years ago about gaps in Canada’s protection of ostensibly secure information are said to be gaining new traction as the case against a senior RCMP official moves through the legal process. It is leading to a call for a broad review of how intelligence agencies ensure their own staff do not lose or leak sensitive material.

With adversaries resorting increasingly to cyberattacks against the U.S., trying to disrupt the economy, undermine the political process and steal trade, Congress has joined ranks with public- and private-sector experts to fight back. It stood up a 16-member Cyberspace Solarium Commission which now is expected to release its findings by year’s end. Wisconsin Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, co-chair of the panel, has indicated the report will address, among other issues, interagency coherence, overlapping jurisdiction and the need to convince “the best and the brightest” to work with the government.

Hacking campaigns designed to trick computer users into downloading malicious software have been uncovered by the California-based cloud security company, Zscaler Inc. One typical approach hacks unsecured sites, prompting users to update a false FlashPlayer which actually installs a Remote Access Trojan which then sends encrypted user information to the hacker’s site an allows access to the user’s system.

The U.S. government’s ability to defend against continuously evolving digital threats evidently is being compromised by excessive bureaucracy, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official. He understands the bureaucrats’ role but suggests that conflicting guidance and opinions contribute to organizational stagnation, a weakness exploited by adversaries.

Draft bipartisan legislation which would require law enforcement to have a warrant to use facial recognition technology to track U.S. citizens has been introduced in Congress by Delaware Democrat Chris Coons and Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee. The growing use of facial recognition has raised concerns about individual privacy and civil liberties.

The U.S. Air Force Commercial Satellite Communications Office says commercial satellite companies hoping to sell their services to the Department of Defense will require independent third-party cybersecurity certification. The office plans to have an Information Asset Pre-assessment program in place in early 2020 in an effort to “raise the cultural bar on cybersecurity” in the commercial sector

Canadian legislation designed to protect whistleblowers actually leaves them vulnerable to retribution on the job, according to Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington non-profit founded in 1977. Among other things, he considers the current law a globally-ridiculed “fraud” which is which is nothing more than “a tissue paper shield.”

Amazon Web Services is formally protesting the U.S. Department of Defense’s award of its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract to Microsoft. AWS Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy says political pressure from President Donald Trump had interfered in the contract proceedings.