Security fears loom over World Cup

By James Doyle - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

South Africa has been preparing for this summer’s World Cup for six years. The country has been a hive of activity, building sleek new transport services, pouring billions into showpiece stadiums and working feverishly to use Africa’s first World Cup to build a brand for South Africa as a modern country looking to the future.

But that’s not what people are talking about. They’re talking about crime. And South Africa can hardly blame them. Murder, carjacking, muggings and rape are a sad reality of South African life. While the situation is improving—South Africa’s murder rate has dropped a considerable 44 per cent since 1995—the rate of violent crime is extreme: that improved murder rate, at 37.3 per 100,000 people in 2009, still sits at nearly five times the world average, and is dwarfed by South Africa’s estimated rate of incidence of rape (a 2009 study reported that one in four men surveyed admitted to committing the offence).

The government has worked hard to calm fears ahead of the World Cup, which begins on June 11. They’ve pumped cash—1.3 billion rand (US$171 million)—into policing and security. With some 46,000 officers detailed to World Cup security, the police are intent on flexing their muscles as the tournament approaches. Regular—and very public—drills and exercises seem designed to show they’re ready and willing to use their newly acquired cars, helicopters, surveillance aircraft and water cannons.

Despite the stats, some experts say crime fears are exaggerated. Dr. Johan Burger, senior researcher for the crime and justice programme at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, wrote in an editorial to the U.K.’s Telegraph that murder and rape in South Africa, while appallingly frequent, rarely affect outsiders. Those crimes are a problem, but not one visitors need fear too much.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter, in signature impolitic style, has argued that prejudice, not crime, is the real problem. “Every year 11 million tourists go to South Africa and nobody says they should not go there,” he said. “[Security concerns are] an anti-Africa prejudice. There is still in the so-called ‘old world’ a feeling that Why the hell should Africa organise a World Cup?…There’s no respect.”

South Africa is keen to get their respect, arguing that their record as a host nation, having successfully held the world cups of both rugby and cricket, should outweigh crime worries. “South Africa has hosted 146 international events without a single major incident,” said Dr. Danny Jordaan, CEO of the 2010 World Cup Organising Committee, at the 2009 Confederations Cup, also held in South Africa. “Of course people must be mindful of criminal elements, but no more so than anywhere else in the world.”

For all South Africa’s hosting success, security fears were stoked anew at January’s African Cup of Nations in Angola when three of Togo’s team delegation were killed and eight wounded in an ambush by rebels that left the team bus riddled with machine-gun bullets. Different country, different situation, say South African officials, but the tragedy has further unsettled already shaky confidence in security for the coming tournament.

Alas, despite police vigor and repeated assurances that safety will prevail, initial ticket sales were low, leaving some to speculate that security fears mixed with high costs of travel and accommodation were deterring fans. Just a day ahead of the Cup’s opening, however, FIFA reports that 135,000 tickets are remaining, putting ticket sales at 97 per cent.

As kick-off approaches, signs are emerging that though the fans may have materialized, so have the fears police were so desperate to guard against. Two days before the opening match, armed robbers entered the hotel rooms of a group of Portuguese and Spanish reporters, pressing a gun to one’s head as they stole cash and electronics. And on the eve of Africa’s first World Cup, two separate incidents saw a group of Chinese reporters held up at gunpoint, and three Greek players, had cash stolen from their hotel rooms.

Is $1 billion too high a price for G8/G20 summit security?

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 2:52 PM - 47 Comments

The devil made me do it

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 31, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 66 Comments

Vic Toews explains why a four-year-old Liberal campaign ad (and our general notion of what democracy should mean and look like?) compelled to him spend more on security for the G8 and G20 meetings.

Toews said he would welcome any opportunity before the events to trim the budget without compromising security, but balked at the suggestion to use the army instead of the police to maintain security and perhaps save between $100 million and $200 million.

Toews said he was uncomfortable using the army in a civilian context unless under extreme conditions, and went so far as to blame the decision to not consider the measure on what he believed would be a negative reaction from the opposition. ”You know of course what the opposition parties would say. The Liberals would say, ‘The army, in the streets, with guns?’” Toews said. ”It’s exactly the kind of fear that Liberals want to invoke in terms of Canadians. Canadians understand that in a democracy, you have the police rather than the army in the streets. And so those are political decisions you make, but I think they’re from a perception point of view very, very important.”

The full interview is here.

It’s a hold’em-up

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Olaf Wagner/ Bild-Zeitung

With their ski masks and dark clothing, the four men who burst into a televised poker tournament in Berlin last week looked only slightly more sinister than the hooded, sunglassed guys at the card tables. But the audacious heist at the 5.4-million-euro (about $7.5 million) European Poker Tour event was no act of idle melodrama: the robbers stormed into the Grand Hyatt hotel wielding machetes and pistols, fighting off security guards and sending participants diving under tables. Then the men dashed into the streets of the German capital with an estimated 242,000 euros in cash. As of Tuesday, they were still at large.

The stunning spectacle, which unfolded before TV cameras and a live Internet audience, sent a chill through an industry that had up to this point lived a charmed life. Televised poker tournaments like the European tour are part of a rapidly globalizing gambling sector, whose companies stage the events mostly to promote their online gaming. With cameras practically everywhere in the room, Ocean’s Eleven-style robberies seemed unlikely, if not downright foolhardy.

No longer. Clips circulated on German news sites show the robbers were unfazed by the knowledge they were being filmed, gathering around a registration desk where the money was kept to fill several handbags with cash. The men then become embroiled in a melee with a burly, balding security guard, who throws what appears to be his cellphone at them. He can then be seen wrapping one of the bandits in a headlock, letting the man go only after another threatened to bash the guard with a stand-up lamp.

Continue…

It's a tax when they say it's a tax

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 1:21 PM - 16 Comments

As a follow-up to our previous discussion on the important, or merely semantic, difference between taxes and user fees (see here and here), we compare and contrast the following.

Globe and Mail, February 26. Ottawa is slapping higher security fees on airline travellers a week before the 2010 federal budget – yet insists Conservatives are staying true to their pledge not to raise taxes … The government describes the new charges as “user fees,” rather than taxes.

Canadian Press, March 17. Cabinet ministers and MPs are putting up a vigorous defence against the NDP’s move to have a levy applied to all new MP3 players, hard drives and laptops … ”This is a very serious hit to consumers that could impact them, and if the NDP are as committed to raising taxes this week as they always have been, then this is a real threat,” Heritage Minister James Moore said Wednesday.

The Battle for Okinawa

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 7 Comments

Photograph by Shizuo Kambayashi/ Associated Press

It’s tradition to celebrate 50 years of marriage with gold. But in January, the golden anniversary of the U.S.-Japan military nuptials—the landmark 1960 Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security that united the two nations in holy (armed) matrimony—was celebrated not with precious metals or affectionate toasts, but with mounting tension and a growing unease about the future of the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

It’s all come to a head in Okinawa, a southern Japanese prefecture made up of dozens of tiny islands. Ever since the area fell to the Allies in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the U.S. military has used the islands as a stronghold in the Pacific. Today, about half of the almost 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are concentrated here, in an area that represents just one per cent of Japan’s land mass. It is also here that the pugnacious new Japanese PM is making his first stand: threatening, with broad Japanese support behind him, to boot the Americans off the island.

Calls for the U.S. to reduce its military footprint in Japan have been building. In 2006, the U.S. answered those calls head-on: signing a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) deal with Tokyo that would relocate some 8,000 troops to Guam by 2014 and move the bustling Futenma air base to a less populated part of Okinawa. For a while, the situation calmed. But last September, Japan held a general election—and the Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled the country for 54 of the last 55 years, lost. Now, Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, who ran in part on a platform of distancing Japan from the U.S., is at the helm. And while his wife steals headlines with bizarre claims that her “soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Hatoyama has been working more quietly to erode Japan’s relationship with the U.S.

Continue…

Let us now debate the difference between user fees and taxes (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:38 PM - 56 Comments

Officially it is called the Airport Travellers Security Charge. Introduced in 2002, it was reduced from $24 to $14 in the Liberal government’s budget for 2003. Hansard shows two references to the charge from Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance leader and leader of the opposition at the time, during the session of Parliament when that budget was tabled, the first of which links to this speech, delivered in response to that budget.

That speech makes four references to an “air tax.”

It’s all a blur, and it’s not the vodka’s fault

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:31 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Scott Feschuck

Strolling through Whistler Village during the Olympics, hoofing it to the venues, coming together for dinner at night—it’s just like summer camp, except everyone here is thinner and better looking than me. Which makes it…fine, it’s just like summer camp.

It’s hard to be cynical here. The Winter Games are not a place for cynicism or, apparently, snow. They are a place for marvelling at the abilities of the human form, revelling in the power of the human spirit and testing the limits of the human credit card. Picture in your mind shelves crammed with Olympic knick-knacks, stacks of T-shirts and piles of stuffed mascots. This is what every Whistler retail outlet, and Jacques Rogge’s bedroom, looks like.

Mostly, though, the Winter Games are a place for passing through checkpoints. I’m telling you: if getting scanned, searched and body-wanded a few hundred times is your idea of fun, you owe it to yourself to spend a couple of weeks at an Olympics, or fly once to the United States.

Continue…

The big Olympic concerns

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 4 Comments

What if it rains for two weeks?
Let’s be honest, Vancouver doesn’t really have winter. Even light snowfalls paralyze the place. It rains all the time. So the international hand-wringing about the city’s warmest January on record should be put in proper context: they won the Olympics despite—not because of—the weather.

And really, the only problem spot is Cypress Mountain on the North Shore, site of the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events. Whistler has been under a heavy blanket of the white stuff since early December, and 10 more metres of it fell this past month. All of the sports in the city—speed skating, hockey, curling, figure skating—will be held indoors, on artificial rinks.

Games organizers hoped for Mother Nature’s help on the slopes just outside of town, but have hardly been taken by surprise by the thaw. Cypress was closed to the public on Jan. 13—two weeks ahead of schedule—in an effort to preserve the courses. When things continued to melt, they moved to plan B: putting down straw bales, then layering on tonnes of snow pushed and trucked down from higher elevations. The spectators might have to wade through the muck in the parking lots, but for the TV cameras the mountain will look like a winter wonderland.
—Jonathon Gatehouse

Continue…

Please refrain from enjoying the trip

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 3:46 PM - 13 Comments

Welcome to the airport security checkpoint. Please pay attention to all instructions and signage as we guide you through new procedures and attempt to minimize travel delays to and within the United States.

Important: if you need to expedite the screening process in order to make your flight, please identify yourself to uniformed security personnel, who have the authorization to point at you and laugh.

You are now entering the Transportation Security Administration screening zone. Only passengers and masochists are permitted past this point.

Continue…

The scary truth about airport security

By Cathy Gulli, with Tom Henheffer, Rachel Mendleson and Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 7:49 AM - 39 Comments

When it comes to combatting terrorist bombers and hijackers on airplanes, Canada has a secret weapon that is the envy of every nation: our sky marshals, a covert cadre of elite RCMP officers. Armed undercover operatives, they are rigorously trained to detect and eliminate any and every threat to passengers, flight crew and aircraft, and they must be re-certified twice a year. “What happens at 30,000 feet must end very quickly,” the officer in charge of the Canadian Air Carrier Protective Program told Maclean’s on condition of anonymity. “The only way to do that is to be very­, very good at your job.”

Canadian sky marshals are so good at their job, in fact, that they have trained Thailand’s unit, and played a major role in creating the French, Dutch, Czech, Polish and British in-flight security programs. Now even Israel, whose Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv is considered the gold standard of airport security, wants to learn from Canadian sky marshals. “Their training is first-class, next to none,” says Rafi Sela, president of AR Challenges, a security consulting agency active in Israel and North America, who has chastised other aspects of Canadian air transport security. “The air marshal program in Canada,” he told Maclean’s, “is the best in the world.”

But can the same be said about other security measures at Canadian airports? As hyper-competent as our air marshals may be, they are a last line of defence. Before a terrorist meets them, a lot of other airport security measures must fail—or be missing altogether. Ever since a Nigerian linked to al-Qaeda tried to bomb a plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, Canadian airports have come under scrutiny by esteemed aviation experts and frustrated travellers alike. They condemn the ever-expanding prohibited items list and mandatory pat-downs of people going to the United States—after Dec. 25, Toronto and other Canadian cities had the worst travel delays in the world, according to the International Air Transport Association. New security measures, such as the 44 body scanners, each worth $250,000, that will soon be delivered to major Canadian airports, are being called everything from a knee-jerk reaction by the federal government to a waste of money. If a terrorist stuffed explosives in his body cavities, this cutting-edge technology probably wouldn’t catch him, according to Mathieu Larocque of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), a division of Transport Canada in charge of pre-screening passengers and baggage.
Even though Canada wasn’t directly involved in the Christmas Day incident, what happened matters to us because so many flights that originate here head to the U.S., and the two countries share a similar approach to aviation security. Our realities are intertwined, and we are now living in a “post-Dec. 25” society, as Jim Facette, president of the Canadian Airports Council, puts it. “I don’t know if threat levels have changed, but what has changed is the airport experience.” There is a growing sense throughout the global security community that while traditional tools such as metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs are important in a “multi-layered approach” to air transport security, they aren’t the only or even the best ways of fighting terrorists.

Continue…

Saving Colombia

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 3 Comments

When Álvaro Uribe became president of Colombia in 2002, guerrillas were closing in on the major cities, and travel wasn’t safe. José Camilo Vásquez, a history teacher in Bogotá, recalls being unable to visit his farm, one hour outside the capital. Because of the threat of kidnapping or violence, “it was too complicated,” he says. Unlike his predecessors, the right-wing Uribe refused to negotiate with leftist rebels. Security forces pushed them back into the jungle, freeing up the roads. After the crackdown, says Vásquez, 28, “I could go back again.”

Better security has translated into economic gains, a tourism boom, and an enhanced international profile for the South American country. Weary of an internal conflict now over four decades old, citizens have welcomed Uribe’s hardline stance; he’s enjoyed approval ratings of over 70 per cent. Considered a good neighbour in a bad neighbourhood, Uribe has also benefitted from close ties with Washington. Under the anti-drug initiative Plan Colombia, the U.S. has funnelled over $6 billion into the country since 2000, allowing Uribe to put strong military pressure on the highest-profile rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Since 2002, several top commanders have been captured or killed, their numbers have been cut in half to about 10,000 today, and dozens of hostages have been freed.

As well, the Uribe administration negotiated the demobilization of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group—32,000 fighters surrendered “as a bloc,” says Markus Schultze-Kraft, the Bogotá-based director of the Latin America and Caribbean Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG). “Before Uribe’s election, the feeling was that the country was in chaos,” says Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, a Colombian-born anthropologist at the University of British Columbia. “Now, there’s a sense he has everything under control.”

Continue…

Look at us, doing stuff (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 12:40 AM - 52 Comments

Sources tell CTV that terrorists might be headed to Canada with the intent to enter the United States.

Insiders say this potential threat — and what to do about it — was discussed with the prime minister and his national security ministers on Monday.

How to respond to the "Stupid Terrorists Club"

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 10:55 AM - 13 Comments

It took only a few hours after reports emerged of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt at blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day for Internet wags to start making light of the incident, calling Abdulmutallab the “crotchbomber,” the “jockstrap jihadi,” and a member of the terrorist “brotherhood of the travelling pants.”

Soon after, U.S. officials hit upon what must count as one of the greatest innovations in public security in years: mockery. Would-be suicide bombers now know that if they try, but screw up, their scorched underwear will be paraded before cameras for all to laugh at. Add that to the indignity of having your sad I’m-so-lonesome-I-could-die online ramblings read aloud on air by attractive young news anchors, and it makes you wonder why anyone would sign up for this terror business in the first place.

Why, you’d have to be stupid. For aspiring terrorists though, it would appear that being remarkably stupid is something close to a job requirement. The classic case is the Fort Dix six—a group of Islamic radicals who plotted to attack the U.S. army base in New Jersey in 2007. But first they made a DVD of themselves firing weapons and yelling “Allah Akbar,” and it all went sideways when they took the DVD in to Circuit City to be copied; they were promptly ratted out to the authorities by staff.

Continue…

Why the U.S. doesn't trust Canada

By Paul Rosenzweig - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 2:15 PM - 71 Comments

On June 1, for the first time in history, Canadians and Americans crossing the border were required to show a passport (or equivalent) document. By all accounts the transition has, despite Canadian fears, proceeded with remarkably modest disruption. Canadians, however, continue to question the requirement and to object to other U.S. border security measures. As I worked (on behalf of the United States) over the past four years to prepare for these changes, most Canadians expressed a quiet dismay: “How,” they wondered, “could you be doing this to us when we are such good friends?”

After all, it has been a major sea change in the American approach to the land border with Canada. For more than 100 years, though Canadians have thought frequently and almost obsessively about the United States, most Americans have paid relatively little attention to Canada. Except for those who live close to the border (let’s all say it together: “the longest undefended border in the world”) or whose business is linked to Canadian products, most Americans don’t hold any strong opinion about Canada. You’re just like us, we think, only a little different and a little less temperate. We’re the lucky ones, because we have Florida (though each winter the residents of Ontario invade). Continue…

'So, you're the Transport Minister, how was this allowed to happen?'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 13, 2009 at 7:12 PM - 22 Comments

CTV’s Tom Clark has some questions for John Baird. Hilarity ensues.

Keeping an eye on Obama's National Security Adviser

By John Geddes - Monday, March 2, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 3 Comments

The place of the National Security Adviser in U.S. politics is not something most Canadians, including federal officials, have thought much about. But after Barack Obama’s recent visit to Ottawa, that should change. As we reported in the March 9 issue of the magazine, the key White House official in setting the agenda for Obama’s meetings with Stephen Harper was General James Jones Jr., the current NSA.

Continue…

How they do it in Oz

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 12:23 PM - 4 Comments

Beware the Antipodes

Not content to mop the floor at the Summer Games, the Aussies appear to be getting serious about the Winters—lack of indigenous snow notwithstanding (I’m told there are ski hills in Oz, but let’s be serious; 99 per cent of Australians who ski live and work in Lake Louise). The government is building a Aus$58-million ice palace in Melbourne in hopes of qualifying as many athletes as possible for the 2010 Games. A few days ago, Canberra announced it would direct another $12.6 million toward high-performance programs and athlete support for the Winter Olympics and the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

You can also expect Australia to borrow what it can’t grow at home. They’ve already taken Dale Begg-Smith, a Vancouverite who won gold in freestyle moguls in 2006. Begg-Smith, pictured above, parted company with the Canadian team after his coaches got testy about how much time he spent on an Internet startup. Now, both the web company and Begg-Smith are smashing successes. Let’s hope the Aussies don’t decide to get into hockey and steal Sidney Crosby.

Continue…

Can’t put a price on security.

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 7:28 PM - 3 Comments

Maybe terrorists blew up a dirty nuclear device in the Port of Vancouver. Or maybe, an entire national Olympic team was held hostage. It’s happened before. Or maybe, a more likely scenario, a group of Vancouver’s ready supply of anti-Olympic protesters or its roving band of anarchistic bicycle activists have blockaded the Lions Gate Bridge, creating traffic chaos. These could be some of the disasters being considered this week in a huge “table top” exercise by agencies responsible for security during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

Limited news of the exercise came this Wednesday from William Elliott, Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the man ultimately responsible for ensuring that Vancouver’s Games aren’t synonymous with such disasters as the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Games in 1972.

Elliott, while vague on details, confirmed that he and the RCMP were among 70, count ‘em!, agencies participating in the security exercise. Seventy agencies requires one heck of a big  table top and gives just some hint of the coordinating challenges, and the expense, of securing an Olympic Games. Others certain to be participating: the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Canadian Border Services Agency, the Port of Vancouver, the Armed Forces, the Canadian Coast Guard, many of the 11 non-RCMP municipal police forces in B.C., and very probably some of our American friends.

As for that expense, well, good luck finding that out. The Vancouver Olympic bid book put the estimated security costs at a ludicrous $175 million. A somewhat more likely figure came from federal Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, who conceded it would likely be “less than $1 billion.”  Humm, good luck with that. As for Elliott’s estimate: “I have no comment,” he said after a Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon. Continue…

" … Parliamentarians should have the grace to let justice calmly and effectively follow its course."

By kadyomalley - Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:05 PM - 0 Comments

Letter from Jean-C. Hébert, counsel to Julie Couillard, to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (emphasis added):

Dear Mr. Préfontaine:

I regret to inform you that Ms. Julie Couillard chooses to decline the invitation to appear before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on June 18, 2008, for one hour and fifteen minutes. My client chooses to decline this invitation for a number of reasons.

*Background
Continue…

Meanwhile, in another part of the macleans.ca liveblogosphere …

By kadyomalley - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 1:23 PM - 0 Comments

… I’ll be covering the Special Senate Committee on Anti-Terrorism from 1:30 til 3ish, so feel free to pop over if you have time to kill between reading Andrew Coyne’s almost-realtime dispatches from the floor of the BC Human Rights Tribunal.