Making up ‘Terror Identities’: security intelligence, Canada's Integrated Threat Assessment Centre and social movement suppression

Abstract

Drawing on analysis of government records obtained using Access to Information Act (ATIA) requests, we examine policing and surveillance projects developed in preparation for three mega-events that recently took place in Canada – the 2010 Winter Olympics, the G8/G20 meetings and a scheduled (but cancelled) North American Leaders Summit. Based on an investigation of ‘Threat Assessment’ reports produced between 2005 and 2010 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), we discuss transformations within Canada's anti-terror intelligence networks including the establishment of Integrated Security Units (ISUs) and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) which resemble intelligence ‘fusion centers’ in the United States. These organisations became the knowledge-producing hubs for the classification and categorisation of national security threats. Examining shifts in ISU and ITAC Threat Assessments, we demonstrate how knowledge construction practices in security intelligence networks produce new categories of threat. Specifically, we focus on the newly constructed notion of ‘multi issue extremism’ (MIEs). Exploring the deployment of MIEs as a category of national security threat, we show how intelligence agencies have blurred the categories of terrorism, extremism and activism into an aggregate threat matrix.

Keywords:

• security
• intelligence
• anti-terrorism policing
• threat assessments
• social movements

Acknowledgements

We thank the Policing & Society reviewers D.T. Cochrane, S.P. Hier and J. Piché.

Notes

1. The Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, was an attempt by the George W. Bush administration and leading North American corporations to connect the ‘free trade’ and anti-terror agendas. In August 2009, the SPP website stated it was no longer an ‘active initiative’.

2. Due to this continuity, we often refer to the ISU as a single entity.

3. Despite the political importance of G8/G20 meetings of 2010, planning for the event was disorganised. Two related factors delayed the summit planning process: location selection and competing G8 and G20 agendas. The relative absence of the North American Leaders Summit (NALS) in the security assessments is due to the demise of the organisation. After its demise in 2007, the NALS was no longer mentioned in Threat Assessment reports. Over the course of 2005–2010, all the ‘mega-events’ were often mentioned in passing as part of a related security agenda, despite the overwhelming focus on the Olympic Games.

4. In an interview with senior military command Lieutenant-Colonel Pat Koch, the senior Canadian Forces (CF) planner in the ISU said: ‘The Games have created an evolutionary change in the CF and RCMP in terms of how we work together. The results are permanent adaptations of collaborative and institutional policy and procedures that set the conditions for future domestic security events’ (cited Thomas 2010).

5. This parallels what Diab (2008) calls a shift from evidence to intelligence within criminal trials in the post-11 September 2001 Canadian context.

6. The Vancouver ISU is officially known as the VISU and is, technically, separate from the G8/G20 ISU. However, we do not distinguish between these ISUs as their central elements – RCMP, CSIS, the Canadian army and several federal departments – remain consistent actors in both ISUs. The difference between VISU and G20ISU rests in different inclusion of local agencies. VISU included Vancouver and other proximate police services, while G20ISU included Toronto Police Services and the Ontario Provincial Police. Much of the information that proliferated between these hubs was aggregated by the ISU.

7. The final expenditure was over $900 million. Security costs for the G8/G20 in Toronto are expected to be over $1.2 billion. The Vancouver ISU started with a budget of $175 million.

8. This claim is based on reports in the Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star, and Ottawa Citizen concerning officers who had infiltrated social movement groups, sometimes for three years, leading up to the Olympic Games and G8/G20 meetings. In Vancouver, police posed as bus drivers, inviting activists into their bus apparently headed to Olympic Torch Relay disruptions.

9. The activist who undertook a national speaking tour critiquing the Olympics, mentioned above, was arrested post-facto in Vancouver under the charge of ‘counselling mischief’.

10. All documents cited hereafter pertaining to CSIS were produced through ATIP request 117-2010-146. All documents cited hereafter pertaining to RCMP were produced through ATIP requests GA-3951-3-03551, GA-3951-00729, and GA-3951-A0174620. All our data can be accessed using these request numbers.

11. INSET was created after 11 September 2001 as an amalgamated anti-terrorism policing unit. Yet it has never assumed a position as an intelligence hub.

12. This list of acronyms partially substantiates our claim about ‘mandate creep’. FAC stand for Firearms Academy Canada. TC refers to Transport Canada. CSC refers to Correctional Service of Canada, while CBSA refers to Canada Border Services Agency.

13. Although it is not clear from Nause's email, police agencies are responsible for Threat Assessment's pertaining to policing responsibilities other than national security issues during mega-events, including the guarding of Internationally Protected Persons.

14. Policy OPS-100 refers to part of the CSIS Act that sets protocol for targeting persons, groups, or events as security threats. It specifies how domestic and foreign agencies who work with CSIS must conduct intelligence investigations and reporting.

15. MIEs references do not exist before 2007, but Threat Assessments immediately begin re-creating their existence, post-facto. Reports frequently state that multi issue extremism began in the 1970s and 1980s, often mentioning the group Direct Action (Hanson 2001). A newsprint search reveals no mention of the term prior to 2009.

16. The use of the term ‘militancy’, as well as its subsequent transformation into ‘extremism’, reflects our claim about how security intelligence socially constructs threat categories.

17. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) defends international environmental laws with the use of direct action tactics and media-oriented publicity campaigns.

18. The Yes Men are a satirical stunt group who impersonate individuals who are complicit in environmental and/or human rights abuses. Several stunts have targeted Canada's poor environmental record, including the launch of a mock Environment Canada website during a major international climate change conference in 2009.

19. Direct action movements are self-motivated by the ethics of participatory democracy and egalitarianism (Juris 2008, Graeber 2010). Some groups are strictly pacifistic, others advocate the use of self-defence only in the face of unmitigated violence.

20. Although they pre-date the existence of MIE as a category, Direct Action did inadvertently hurt a security guard in their bombing of an arms manufacturing facility in 1982 (Hansen 2001).

21. At other moments, ITAC reports blur their own categories in efforts to continuously conflate public expressions of opposition as potential acts of terror that imminently imperil national security. An April 2009 ITAC report illustrates: ‘In Canada and abroad a change in protest tactics and tone of language appears to be occurring. Tactics against businesses seen to be exploitative have involved confrontational demonstrations, office occupations and low-level criminal damage. Social activist extremists now seem to be focusing on individuals rather than just corporations and their infrastructures. In conjunction with this, there has been an increased naming of public and private figures in numerous Internet postings which proclaim or call for violence. This can also be seen in the lyrics of some punk rocker bands’.