I Served Serial Joe a Slushie

I'm not sure why my usual comments aren't working, so for now M has set it up so that blogger's comments appear.

I am simply in awe whenever I read anything about the Maher Arar case. From the Toronto Star: "The American acted against Arar only because Canadian intelligence agencies
placed his name on a terrorist watch list. The RCMP put him on this list only because he was observed associating with someone else they were watching and who has also never been charged with any crime".

This is insanity. This man was deported to a country against his will, where he was tortured for months, on what? He was associating with someone that might possibly have links to terrorists? What does associating even mean? This is exactly the sort of abuse of the system that is inevitable whenever one reacts to a situation by putting in security measures that restrict individual liberties. There is a reason that one should be at least charged with a crime before one can be held against your will. The job of security services is to find threats to the safety of the nation. They are rewarded by the people they find, not the people they don't. As a result, security agences are inevitably more suspicous of people than is perhaps justified. That is fine, that is the nature of their job. However, to balance the heightened suspicion of security services, these agencies must then be required to provide things like "evidence" before harming individuals. As soon as one stops asking for evidence, cases like Arar's appear.

The whole thing is incredibly frightening.