Daniel Stanton · uOttawa PDI News · Posted: October 21, 2024 2:20 PM EST | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago
National security as a goal and as a term brings with it a lot of baggage. In the most dramatic cases, it conjures images of G-men in black suits and dark sunglasses interrogating people in off-the-books black sites. Less dramatically, people often imagine secret agents wiretapping people and trading in secrets for blackmail.
In either case, these sorts of clandestine activities are, obviously, at odds with human rights protections. Your right to privacy, freedom of movement, and not being subjected to advanced interrogation techniques don’t exactly align with these practices. That’s why national security and human rights are considered by many to be at loggerheads, if not completely incompatible.
There is some truth to this, but considerably less than people assume. The field of national security has changed drastically over the years, but we’re still living with the labels and categories that defined it since the onset of the Cold War, the 1960s and 1970s, the civil rights movement, and so on. During that time, there’s been considerable growth in the relationship between national security and human rights.
National Security Has Evolved in Both Philosophy and Legal Framework
The way that national security as a field has conceived of its role has changed a great deal over the last 30 years. In the past, much of the focus was on identifying potential threats, foreign or domestic. Much of the emphasis then was on information gathering. As such, the field of national security was largely dominated by clandestine activities, secret gathering and keeping, and so on. Unsurprisingly, this meant that national security as a profession was occupied with a lot of activities that didn’t exactly align with human rights protections.
The role of national security was further impacted by the fact that, back then, the conception of what national security was for was different. Back in the day, there was greater emphasis on state-level interests and, to a certain extent, private interests as well. As such, human rights organizations and protestors weren’t really seen as having a role in national security. In fact, they were usually seen as more of an opposition to those in the national security field. Often as not, they were among the people having files opened on them.
Since then, the focus and legal framework of national security agencies have evolved. For example, the CSIS mandate — established in 1984 — had its intelligence collection powers shifted away from dissent and protest. The convoy protests of 2022 are a good example of this refocus of national security as the intelligence service could not investigate nor disrupt the protest itself. Some criticized CSIS for failing to anticipate and report about the convoy but it was not part of its mandate to safeguard national security by targeting protest movements.
Today Human Rights and National Security Have the Same Goals
The relationship between national security and human rights groups and civil rights groups has also evolved.
There is, of course, a history here, and not always a pleasant one, of people spying on civil rights leaders and so on ostensibly in the name of national security. But today, national security organizations and human rights organizations fundamentally have the same goals: protecting the rights of citizens.
Consider that many of the concerns and challenges in national security have shifted to foreign powers interfering either with our governments or our citizens, particularly our diaspora populations. With so much of national security efforts occupied with identifying and countering foreign interference of various kinds, which are fundamentally civil rights violations of citizens, national security operations and human rights advocacy can be thought of as two sides of the same coin.
This change in national security philosophy is also mirrored by legislative changes. Bill C-70, the government’s response to recent efforts at foreign interference in Canada, includes proposed changes to disclosure, allowing intelligence to be distributed more broadly than it has been historically. It won’t be an all-you-can-eat buffet but there’s an acknowledgement that there’s a need for more transparency and dissemination of intelligence. It’s a recognition that everyone may have a stake in national security.
National Security Has Much to Learn From Human Rights Advocates
Not only has there been an alignment of the goals of all stakeholders but it’s become clear that the national security paradigm has much to benefit and learn from human rights advocates and organizations.
Which is why at uOttawa PDI we’ve started integrating the experience and expertise of human rights professionals into the national security program curriculum. A friend of mine from CSIS, Huda Mukbil, is a former senior intelligence officer with CSIS who experienced harassment and discrimination, and now teaches the Diversity and Inclusion: A National Security Imperative course. This course explores national security efforts from the angle of diversity and human rights protections, and how national security efforts benefit from greater transparency and accountability.