The foreign interference inquiry could backfire on our national security

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Katherine Leung and Ivy Li

Two politicians alleged by security experts to have close connections with the Chinese Consulates have been granted full standing in the inquiry by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue.

Canada’s public inquiry into foreign interference finally began on Monday, but unfortunately there has already been significant controversy in the months leading up to its launch. Chief among these concerns is the inquiry’s questionable ability to safeguard sensitive national security information from being used by individuals with ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Two politicians alleged by security experts to have close connections with the Chinese Consulates have been granted full standing in the inquiry by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue. This decision shocked many, especially communities who have been subjected to the Chinese Communist Party’s transnational repression.

Given the inclusion of these two suspect individuals, human rights activists have expressed concern for their safety if they are called to testify before the inquiry. A human rights coalition, which was also granted full standing, appealed the inclusion of the two individuals – they merely asked Hogue to downgrade the politicians’ standing status in order to protect vulnerable witnesses – but the appeal was denied.

A person who has full standing in the inquiry has the right to cross-examine witnesses and to access documentary evidence not admitted as exhibits, meaning they read and see exactly what the judge reads and sees. Knowing anything and everything the Commission has learned gives unimpeded access to sensitive and confidential information related to Canadian national security, information that is not available to parties with lesser standing.

Information gathered by the Commission will almost certainly reveal how Canadian activists and security experts monitor foreign infiltration and influence. It could expose the methodology used, contacts and information sources, and the strategic approach and rationale of each expert or analyst. Together, these bits and pieces of information will provide a detailed strategic map, exposing how Canadian authorities, non-governmental organizations, grassroots groups, and individuals have attempted to defend Canada’s sovereignty and democratic institutions. This is powerful knowledge; it is not the type of information that should be available to the perpetrators of foreign interference.

By granting standing to individuals with alleged ties to the Chinese embassy, we are potentially offering incredible insight to our adversaries, enabling them to design and execute more effective interference operations and targeted counter actions against the Canadians standing up for our national sovereignty.

Among those granted full standing are Han Dong (the Member of Parliament for Don Valley North) and Michael Chan. Dong was reported by Global News to be at the centre of China’s interference network in Canada as a “willing affiliate”. He subsequently left the Liberal caucus as he works to clear his name, and he continues to sit as an independent MP. Michael Chan, now deputy mayor of Markham, was a minister in the Ontario Liberal government from 2007 to 2018. The Globe and Mail reported that he was identified by CSIS as “too close to the Chinese consulate.” Both Dong and Chan deny these allegations.

Hogue cites the two men’s reputational interest in the Public Inquiry as a direct and substantial interest in the Commission’s work. While that is true, the question remains whether it is in Canada’s interests and appropriate to allow individuals alleged to have close ties with the PRC full access to the Commission’s evidence and records.

The Commission is not mandated to determine if individual suspects are guilty or not. The two politicians could tell their side of the story without full access to non-exhibits and without the power of cross-examination.

Canadians have demanded a public inquiry to protect Canadian sovereignty and democratic integrity. Sensitive information pertaining to Canada’s national security should be handled with the utmost caution. Han Dong and Michael Chan should not be treated as though allegations against them have been proven beyond a doubt – they have not – but the clear potential of inappropriate links to the PRC should disqualify them from accessing information that would be detrimental to our national security if it were to fall into the wrong hands.

The public inquiry meant to protect Canada’s institutions from foreign interference may end up undermining both the safety of individual Canadians and the efficacy of our broader national security apparatus.

Katherine Leung is the policy advisor for Hong Kong Watch Canada. She previously worked as a parliamentary assistant to a sitting MP.

Ivy Li is a spokesperson for Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, and a contributor to The Mosaic Effect – How the Chinese Communist Party started a hybrid war in America’s backyard.

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espionage

EXCLUSIVE: House Committee To Investigate Spike In Chinese Illegal Immigration Following DCNF Report

Published on May 11, 2024

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Dan Bishop, chair of the subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, told the DCNF that a “wide-open border presents a ripe opportunity for the [Chinese Communist Party] to undermine our national security.”

A House committee is scheduled to examine the historic surge in Chinese illegal immigration next week, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability will hold a hearing on Thursday concerning the roughly 8,000% increase in Chinese illegal immigration the U.S. has experienced since March 2021, a committee spokesperson told the DCNF. The DCNF recently revealed an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) email showing that the Biden administration dramatically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023, which has increased the speed of Chinese illegal immigrants entering the country.

The CBP email directed Border Patrol agents to reduce the 40 questions they were required to ask Chinese illegal immigrants down to just five “basic questions” concerning their “Military Service,” “Universities,” “POB/Region,” “Employment” and “Political Party.”

North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, chair of the subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, told the DCNF that a “wide-open border presents a ripe opportunity for the [Chinese Communist Party] to undermine our national security.”

“This dramatic surge calls for intense scrutiny — especially as Border Patrol agents have been instructed to decrease vetting for Chinese nationals in order to process them into the country faster,” Bishop said. “As the CCP continues its quest for geopolitical dominance and threatens our sovereignty, we must examine the risks presented by releasing ever-increasing numbers of minimally-vetted Chinese nationals into our communities.”

READ the leaked @CBP email obtained by the @DailyCaller showing that the Biden Admin radically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/06sZK3Kiuz

— Philip Lenczycki 蔡岳 (@LenczyckiPhilip) January 2, 2024

U.S. authorities have encountered 24,376 Chinese nationals at the southwest border in fiscal year 2024 alone, according to the committee. In February 2024, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution condemning the Biden administration’s immigration policies, citing the national security threat posed by “Chinese military-aged men” entering the country illegally, the DCNF reported.

Ammon Blair, a former Border Patrol agent and Army veteran, told the DCNF that “being a Border Patrol agent during the surge in Chinese illegal aliens felt like confronting a scene from ‘Red Dawn.’”

“Gradually, it appeared that our role was being coerced by current administration policies, from honorably defending our borders to paradoxically laying down a ‘Silk Road’ for our adversaries,” said Blair, who now works as senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “This evolution in policy seems complicit in the CCP invasion and their embedded threats like cyber warfare, drug warfare with Mexican cartel proxies, and economic destabilization.”

The simplification of the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants and other Biden administration policies have “created pitch-perfect conditions” for “the infiltration of Chinese agents of espionage,” Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center For Immigration Studies, told the DCNF.

“Intelligence community assessments show that China intends to ramp up espionage and political suppression campaigns in the coming years inside the U.S. and will need an expanded labor force for the effort,” said Bensman, who is one of three experts scheduled to testify during Thursday’s hearing.

THREAD@BryanDeanWright kindly had me on his podcast to discuss recent @DailyCaller investigations re: CCP influence operations

PART 1/3 covered:

– leaked @CBP email re: how @POTUS simplified vetting process for 🇨🇳 illegals

🙏PLEASE WATCH & SHARE – THANK YOU!🙏 pic.twitter.com/HreHdynFSD

— Philip Lenczycki 蔡岳 (@LenczyckiPhilip) March 8, 2024

Bensman’s testimony will feature photos of identification cards and passports discarded by Chinese illegal immigrants just after crossing the U.S. southern border, a committee source told the DCNF.

Cory Gautereaux, a small business owner and veteran living near the San Diego border, collected those discarded materials and shared them with Bensman.

Gautereaux told the DCNF that he believes Chinese illegal immigration is a “serious national security threat.”

“If they are discarding their IDs and hiding their identity there is a reason,” Gautereaux said. “Since our elected leaders are reluctant to visit the border, I’ll be glad to physically deliver these items to Washington and testify to what I’ve seen.”

espionage

Biden expands government’s power to spy on Americans without a warrant

Published on May 9, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Legal experts have pointed out that under an updated version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers could all be forced to surveil Americans.

U.S. President Joe Biden has quietly signed legislation reauthorizing and expanding the government’s ability to spy on American communications without a warrant.

On April 20, Biden signed the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the government to compel a broader range of businesses to collect the communications of U.S. citizens when they are in contact with foreigners, according to legal experts.

The newly passed, updated version of Section 702 accomplishes this by expanding the definition of “electronic communication service providers” who can receive FISA directives to tap communications by dropping the qualifier “communication” from electronic service providers. The new amendment, therefore, makes access merely to equipment on which communications are carried or stored enough to legally surveil Americans.

While the amendment lists types of businesses that cannot be considered Electronic Communication Service Providers (ECSPs), including public accommodations, dwellings, and restaurants, ZwillGenBlog points out that the law still allows the government to “compel the assistance of a wide range of additional entities and persons in conducting surveillance under FISA 702.”

“The breadth of the new definition is obvious from the fact that the drafters felt compelled to exclude such ordinary places such as senior centers, hotels, and coffee shops. But for these specific exceptions, the scope of the new definition would cover them — and scores of businesses that did not receive a specific exemption remain within its purview,” ZwillGenBlog explained.

The legal experts noted that among the entities that could be forced to surveil Americans under the amendment are “the owners and operators of facilities that house equipment used to store or carry data, such as data centers and buildings owned by commercial landlords,” as well as others who can access such equipment, including “delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers.”

ZwillGenBlog also pointed out that “any U.S. business could have its communications” — if involving a foreigner — “tapped by a landlord with access to office wiring, or the data centers where their computers reside.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois had tried and failed to pass an amendment that would require government officials to obtain a warrant before spying on American communications, according to the Associated Press (AP).

“If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in 2008, the National Security Agency (NSA), operating inside the United States, is authorized to collect communications of foreigners overseas for foreign intelligence purposes without a warrant “because courts have held that foreigners have no Fourth Amendment rights,” according to Elizabeth Goitein.

“Although ostensibly targeted at foreigners, Section 702 surveillance inevitably sweeps in massive amounts of Americans’ communications,” Goitein further noted.

“Recognizing the impact on Americans’ privacy, Congress required the NSA to ‘minimize’ the sharing, retention, and use of this ‘incidentally’ collected U.S. person data. But the government and the FISA Court have embraced an interpretation of ‘minimize’ that is remarkably … maximal.”

“The NSA shares raw data with multiple other agencies — including the FBI and the CIA — and all of them retain the data for a functional minimum of five years. Moreover, the FBI routinely combs through it looking for Americans’ communications to use in purely domestic cases, even in situations where the FBI lacks a factual predicate to open a full investigation,” Goitein continued.

There are other means by which the U.S. government can spy on Americans. In 2022, Biden issued an executive order (EO) that allows the government to surveil Americans for broadly defined reasons including understanding “public health risks,” “political instability,” and the “threat” of climate change.

The EO was ostensibly written to “enhanc[e] safeguards” for “United States Signals Intelligence Activities,” which is intelligence gathering by the interception of signals, including communications, such as through cell phones, or those not used in communication. An accompanying fact sheet explains that the EO is meant to help “implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF)” in an effort to “restore trust and stability” to transatlantic data flows.

Alongside permitting spying for the purposes of sizing up the capabilities of foreign entities, the EO permits signals intelligence collection for “understanding or assessing transnational threats that impact global security, including climate and other ecological change, public health risks, humanitarian threats, political instability, and geographic rivalry.”

The document’s lack of elaboration on such so-called “transnational threats” raises the question of the true scope of activity now officially subject to spying by the U.S. government, which is potentially massive.