Defending the Indefensible?US-Canada Cooperation on New Global Security Issues

Address to the Canadian Council for International Peace and Security

Jonathan M. Winer,

former US Deputy Assistant

Secretary of State

for International Law EnforcementFebruary 24, 2000

What are the key global security issues? Abstractly:

• Physical Environment -- air, water, climate, preservation of biostasis, biological infrastructure

• Human Environment -- social, economic, political stability, sustainability, opportunity; maintaining social/economic/business/political infrastructure

• Political Environment -- reducing stresses on states that could impair state’s/private sectors ability to maintain/improve human environment, maintain infrastructure of governance and civil society

Key Global Security Issues Concrete Mega-Threats

• Global warming, over-fishing, acid rain and deforestation, air, water pollution, ozone depletion, desertification

• Illegitimate, incompetent, corrupt, or unstable governments• Poverty and overpopulation• Crime/Drugs/Terrorism (threats to social physical security)• Breakdown of civil society into civil war• Breakdown of critical infrastructures -- social, economic,

political, environmental, and all “utilities” -- especially telecom and electronic

• War between or among nations, including use of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological)

What do these problems have in common?

• No government or nation has “caused” them

• Every government and nation struggle with them

• Each transcends national borders and most transcend region

• Each has potential to impact everyone

• No nation is capable of solving any of them without the help of other nations

• Each problem “swims in its common sea” or infrastructure

Impact of GlobalizationThe Good. . . And the Bad

• Free trade reduces the cost of goods, improves the standard of living

• Global communication spreads information everywhere

• Integrated financial system provides for free movement of capital for investment

• Local communities can be destroyed by impersonal forces that destroy their viability as communities … so can nations

• Dark side of globalization includes drugs, illegal immigrants, terrorists, web info on how to make bombs . . . Leading to:

• Joerg Haider, populist anti-immigrant feeling

How does US view global security issues?

• Strong tradition of strategic use of power to align interests of key nation-states and regions to promote free markets, stability, and opportunity, with democracy and human rights adjacent goals

• Multilateralism useful to build consensus, but leadership on decisions must come from strongest nations -- hard power still matters

How Does Canada view global security issues?

• “Soft security” increasingly important -- development of relations among NGOs and private sector with government to provide broad consensus about social and political change that can be implemented globally.

• “Human security” important alternative to “national security.” Rights of people trump rights of “states.”

Key Nexuses of US-Canadian Cooperation

• Border control of drugs, crime, terrorism

• Military, NATO, NORAD continental defense (cold war relic?)

• NAFTA, WTO• Fishing, Environment• Strategic intelligence

• Energy

• Financial infrastructure and stability issues through the G-7

• UN, OECD, Council of Europe, OAS, APEC, OSCE, etc

• Peacekeeping, failed states

Key Areas of US-Canadian Tension on Global Affairs

• US unilateralism, especially US unilateralism seeking a fig leaf of multilateralism

• Canadian unilateralism especially Canadian unilateralism turned into multilateralism (& sticking it to the US)

• Cuba• Balkans• Iraq/Iran• Sanctions• Ballistic missile

defense?• Int’l Criminal Court• Landmines• Small Arms?

The Sibling Factor:(if this were a schoolyard debate)

• “We’re the world’s last great superpower, but you don’t treat us with respect.”

• “You don’t look out for our interests as a friend and neighbor should. You should be part of our team.”

• “Our intentions are good, and you should trust us.”

• (finally) “Our dollar is bigger than your dollar.”

• “You respect nobody’s needs or ideas but your own.”

• “We don’t want the rest of the world to confuse us with you, we pay our UN dues.”

• “Our ideas and methods work, other nations like them and us.” (Not yours and you)

• (finally) “You may be bigger than us, but we’re smarter and we won’t be bullied, especially by notorious you.”

U.S. to Canada (plaintively) Canada to US (vigorously)

The U.S.-Canada Border at the Millenium & Terrorism

• The bad news: The global millennial threat at the New Year took place at the US-Canadian border!

• The good news: Despite the worst intentions of the terrorists to the contrary, no one was blown up.

• Fact: More than $1 billion in goods and services and some 500,000 people cross the border every day, but the needle in the haystack was found.

• Question: The result of US-Canadian cooperation, just plain luck, or both? (Clearly both.)

US-Canada Terrorism: The Bad News

• Internet web sites publish the formula for RDX explosive in liquid form, manufacture of timing devices for bombs, right out of the U.S. of A

• Ward Elcock, Director of Canadian Security Intelligence Service, January 24, 1998: “With perhaps the singular exception of the U.S. . . . More terrorists active here than in any country in the world.”

• Differences between US and Canada laws plus increased diversity of Canada and undefended border create real long-term risks of terrorism.

Why Canada for terrorists?

• Long borders with US, oceans, lightly defended

• Ethnic communities a sea in which to swim and raise money

• Travel document system is light, easy to become a refugee applicant, refugees claiming asylum regularly disappear into the night

• No security checks made until refugee accepted and application made for landed immigrant status

• Minimal detention system, facilities

• Deportation onerous process for government

• Racist to designate anyone by ethnic group, even if profile matters

Is Canada a low crime society?Yes, but ethnic gangs abound

• Italian mob in cigarettes

• Aboriginal organized crime smuggling

• Jamaican posses• Vancouver Asian

people smugglers• Russian fraudsters and

prostitute rings

• Nigerian advanced fee scammers and heroin traffickers

• Polish car thieves• Tamil Tiger heroin • Dominican heroin and

cocaine • IRA gun runners• Asian heroin

Where’s the Beef? US weak on Border Control

• U.S. has 300 border control agents guarding 4,000 mile border with 90 crossings.

• No visas or documents required for short stays.

• Easier to get across US-Canada border than U.S.-Mexico border or into Miami.

• No investment by USG in equipment, engineering redesign, or personnel on Northern border, though that may change.

Where’s the Beef 2: Canadian Systemic Vulnerabilities

• Charter of rights impairs easy sharing of data among Canadian agencies, between governments

• Generous immigration laws and social services

• Starvation of RCMP budgets

• Devolution for the hell of it

• Late arrival of allophones has meant no tradition of infiltration of cellular structure of immigrant ethnic groups, little participation of these groups in policing. That is changing in Toronto and Vancouver, but improvements are hampered by decade-long lack of investment in RCMP

Where’s the Beef 3: Canada/US laws different on money

• Lack of currency reporting requirements in Canada has provided incentive to criminals, terrorists to engage in “regulatory arbitrage.”

• Lack of national securities regulator equivalent to SEC has encouraged securities fraudsters to congregate in Toronto, Vancouver penny stock and boiler room operations

• Russian OC has found Canada hospitable because of lack of money laundering controls

• New Canadian legislation and framework will help a lot, but rights-based constraints on info sharing could impair its effectiveness

Factors to think about cross-border drugs, crime, terrorism

• Traditionally, Countries focus on inbound, not outbound. That makes them poor partners

• Mexico is source to US of drugs, illegals

• US is source to Mexico of guns, stolen cars, precursors, cash

• Canada is source to US of drugs, illegals, terrorists, criminals

• US is source to Canada of guns, illegals, stolen cars, cash

THE CHOICE: THE BORDER AS A CROSSING, OR THE BORDER AS A SYSTEM

Defense in DepthVs a Maginot Line

• Military planners recognize there is no substitute for defense in depth.

• Defense in depth of the border requires border to be reconsidered in terms that extend well into heartland of country -- national system for discouraging smuggling of people and goods.

• Profound re-examination of rights and responsibilities of citizenship, nationhood, identity. Question of who is “us” and who is “them” may be very different from past. “Us” and “them” may be based not on geographic location, but whether one accepts legal norms, or refuses to abide by them (citizen Vs. criminal, rather than state vs. state)

Defense in Depth, 2

• Enhance the border with new technologies that use high tech to scan high volume

• Re-engineer border to create “baffled” crossings rather than “simple” ones

• Get businesses on side of law enforcement

• Get domestic law enforcement and intelligence looking inward and looking outward to integrate threat assessments

Some principles to improve border security

• Inbound, outbound strengthened, integrated• Redesign of the physical infrastructure of the border• Proper resources, training for personnel• Integrate data systems• Harmonize laws, regulations, policies.• Rethink meaning of sovereignty. Ben Franklin to

colonies: “We must all hang together, or hang separately.”

New Security Threats:attacks on electronic infrastructures

• Our entire economic and communications infrastructure is dependent on digital systems.

• Cyber thugs can disrupt cyber systems.• Electronic stalking, spamming, jamming.• Invasion of privacy.• Identity theft, credit card theft.• Attacking infrastructure for terrorism, profit, or fun (US

“critical infrastructure protection office” created by Presidential Decision Directive, official national security policy).

More internet threats: dangerous communications, dangerous transactions

• Kiddie porn demonstrates global pedophile network.• Prescription drugs, marijuana seeds, advertised online and

transported globally.• Onshore banking can be done online through unregulated

offshore sites with anonymity, risking integrity of financial system, fraud, tax losses.

• Guns and parts widely available.• Intellectual property theft huge looming global issue, since all

info can be digitized and stolen.• Terrorist cookbooks give instructions on how to blow us all up

(www.overthrow.com).

Problems for governments in dealing with new threats

• Privacy and security run up against tracing electronic communications to identify, investigate and prosecute criminals.

• Internet is harmonized technical infrastructure, governments stop at borders.

• Governments do not apply standardized approach.• Internet crosses boundaries, gov’t departments have

limited jurisdiction domestically. . . How can you maintain national laws when they are routinely being transcended and become unenforceable?

Unsolved Problems To Deal with Internet Security

• How do you trace communications across borders in a fashion that protects individual rights and insures rule of law? What about search of such communications? Seizure?

• How do you determine the integrity of information that is communicated across borders to insure that it is true and accurate?

• What credence do you give to electronic information? (E-signature?)

• How do you avoid the creation of communications/ information safehavens for criminals?

• Who harmonizes how? (Canadian model of soft security relevant here, so is US model of aggressive leadership)

Penultimate Thoughts:The Tsunami of Privacy

• Privacy issues are hitting governments and the private sector like a tidal wave.

• Having different privacy laws for different purposes makes no sense in a webbed world.

• Every jurisdiction, every business, every sector has its own different privacy regime.

• Conflicting privacy regimes create loopholes that prevent privacy and security, preclude effective compliance, and may facilitate crime and impair law enforcement, as EU is finding out already.

Improving US-Canada Cooperation on Global Security

• Intensify efforts at legal harmonization, just as NAFTA trumped earlier economic protectionist barriers.

• Tone down the game-playing between US and Canada at multilateral forums so common positions are retained.

• Make a special effort to include the other in one’s plans to forestall the isolation of either country internationally. International Criminal Court and Land Mines avoidable injuries to the U.S.; having U.S. in was desirable outcome.

• Allocate more resources for “hard security” as well as “soft security.” Canada to fund RCMP, invest in military, intelligence and government knowledge of high tech.US to strengthen support for development agencies and NGOs.

Security and Privacy essential and conflicting goals

• Today in US protection against terrorists is being impaired by fears of government intrusion into privacy. The lawyers won’t let the spooks work.

• Today in Canada, privacy/charter issues are impeding law enforcement cooperation with the US and at home.

• If personal data becomes insecure or non-private, personal data can be exploited to injury of persons (identity theft, credit card fraud, cyber-stalking), If personal data is kept securely and privately, governments may not be able to protect against those using security and privacy to commit terrorist, economic, or other crimes.

Where do we go from here to respond to new security environment?

• Harmonize, harmonize, harmonize. Multilateral conventions may be more important than treaty processes.

• Build viable pathways for intragovenrmental and intergovernmental information sharing.

• Insure that law enforcement trumps privacy, and that civil rights trumps law enforcement when power is abused.

• Invest in government so that it retains a tech edge and does not fall behind private sector.

• Overcome mistrust, build bridges between public interest and private interest to protect common infrastructure.