by Steve Mertl
National Affairs Contributor
The Daily Brew

We’ve all heard of diplomatic immunity, the international convention that exempts select representatives of foreign countries from arrest and prosecution unless that protection is specifically waived by their government.

The privilege has been occasionally abused, but it’s a vital element in allowing diplomats to operate in sometimes hostile environments without fear of being detained.

But how do you feel about foreign cops being given similar immunity while operating in Canada?

That’s reportedly what the United States is asking for as part of a cross-border policing agreement with Canada.

The Canadian Press says it has obtained an RCMP briefing memo under access-to-information legislation that details the Mounties’ reservations about allowing American officers to work with legal immunity here.

[ Related: Misbehaving diplomats struggle to hide behind immunity in Canada: reports ]

“Canadians would likely have serious concerns with cross-designated officers from the U.S. not being accountable for their actions in Canada,” says the classified memo prepared for RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, a censored version of which was obtained by CP.

The Conservative government is working on a wide-ranging deal for cross-border law enforcement aimed mainly at reducing the trade bottlenecks at the Canada-U.S. border created after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The program initially allows U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work with Canada Border Services agents at truck pre-clearance areas on the border, with the first two pilot projects set up at Fort Erie, Ont., and Surrey, B.C.

“In addition, we will implement ‘Next Generation’ pilot projects to create integrated teams in areas such as intelligence and criminal investigations, and an intelligence-led uniformed presence between ports of entry,” says a description of the program on Ottawa’s Action Plan web site.

But the October 2012 memo reveals that Canadian and U.S. officials are at odds over whose legal system would apply to the visiting officers, CP said.
According to the RCMP memo, these kinds of cross-border initiatives have operated on the understanding that the laws of the host country apply to illegal acts committed on its territory and that its courts would have jurisdiction, CP reported.

“However, the U.S. has recently expressed concerns with the continued application of the ‘host country law model’ and has requested that its officers be exempted from the laws or the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts in Canada in the context of the Next Gen and Pre-clearance initiatives,” the memo says, according to CP.

Public Safety Canada spokeswoman Josee Picard confirmed to CP that while U.S. customs officers working in Canadian cargo pre-clearance areas would be subject to this country’s laws, the issue remains unsettled for the policing component, which was supposed to be running by last year.

This isn’t the first instance Americans have insisted its uniformed representatives abroad be swathed in a legal bubble of red, white and blue.

The U.S. military was immune from prosecution by Iraqi authorities during its occupation of the country after the 2003 war. As American forces withdrew, the U.S. government tried to negotiate immunity for private defence contractors working for the State Department, the U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes reported in 2011.

Likewise, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were also not liable to the country’s admittedly dubious justice system and talks have been underway to give immunity to American troops remaining after the scheduled 2014 withdrawal of combat units, according to the Associated Press.

[Related: Cross-border policing provokes sovereignty worries]

One of the most infamous cases involved former soldier Raymond Davis, a private contractor working for the CIA.

by RT

The National Security Agency has invited certain members of Congress to a top secret, invitation only meeting to discuss a proposed amendment that could end the NSA’s ability to conduct dragnet surveillance on millions of Americans.

A letter circulated only to select lawmakers early Tuesday announced that NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander would host a question and answer session with members of Congress in preparation of a Thursday vote on Capitol Hill expected to involve an amendment introduced last month by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan).

That amendment, a provision tacked along to a Department of Defense Appropriations Act along with nearly 100 others, aims to greatly diminish the NSA’s domestic spying powers in the wake of disclosures attributed to Edward Snowden, a 30-year-old former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton currently fighting extradition to the US where he faces charges of espionage for his role in leaking state secrets.

One of the leaked files released by Snowden to the UK’s Guardian newspaper details how the government’s interpretation of the PATRIOT Act’s Section 215 has allowed the NSA to collect call logs and other so-called “telephony metadata” pertaining to millions of Americans on a regular basis. If the Amash amendment is approved, it would end that authority.

The amendment, as it appears on the House of Representatives Committee on Rules website, “Bars the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.”

“It’s not a partisan issue. It’s something that cuts across the entire political spectrum,” Amash told the Rules panel. “In order for funds to be used by the NSA, the court order would have to have a statement limiting the collection of records to those records that pertain to a person under investigation,” Amash said, according to Politico. “If the court order doesn’t have that statement, the NSA doesn’t receive the funding to collect those records.”

Amash’s suggestion isn’t unheard of in the wake of a massive public backlash caused by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, but it certainly isn’t sitting pretty with the NSA. According to Huffington Post, a letter circulated on Tuesday only hours after the Amash amendment was confirmed to be in order and expected to go up for vote this Thursday.

“In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency,” HuffPo quoted from the invitation.

The meeting, added journalist Ryan Grim, was scheduled to be held at a security level of top secret/SCI and was only open to certain lawmakers, echoing the secrecy involved in the very programs Amash aims to shut down.

In preparation for Amash’s amendment going up for vote, the activism group Demand Progress has http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/nsa_amash/a campaign in hopes it will encourage Americans to ask their representatives to vote in favor of the bill.

“As the NSA spying revelations continue to unfold, we increasingly find ourselves facing the reality that — at any moment — the federal government could be listening to our phone calls, watching our email traffic, keeping tabs on our Internet browsing, or worse,” the website reads. “But now we have our first real chance to fight back.”

Speaking to Huffington Post, Demand Progress executive director David Segal said, “To invoke that expert on surveillance George W. Bush: After this vote we’ll finally know who is with us in the cause to protect civil rights — and who is against us.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Amash told TIME Magazine on Tuesday afternoon that debate over the amendment is scheduled for Wednesday evening, with lawmakers expected to move for a vote the following morning. The amendment is being cosponsored by Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Amash’s home state of Michigan.