What country is this again?
Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect's family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny.
. . .
Canadian officials accuse Mr. Jaballah of playing a "communications relay" role in a major terrorist massacre - al-Qaeda's 1998 African embassy bombings. His potential access to fax machines, computers and telephones inside his family home, where he lives with his wife and five children, deeply worries the government.
Mr. Jaballah, who was never charged with a criminal offence, spent nearly all of 1999 to 2007 in jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.
Maybe it's just me, but I was under the, apparently mistaken, impression that I lived in a country where people actually had to be charged or convicted of a offence before we were allowed to throw them in jail for several years or turn the house where he lives, with his family, into a closed-circuit version of Big Brother.
Like four other alleged al-Qaeda-affiliated foreigners held under controversial "security certificate" powers, he has recently agreed to live under extraordinary surveillance, in return for being let out of jail.
Past measures have included the suspects submitting to being followed by federal agents during their few weekly excursions, having their calls monitored, staying away from computers and having video cameras installed - but outside the home. Never before has any Canadian prisoner on bail been known to have had to countenance cameras inside the household.
What's the saying about giving an authoritarian an inch? Allow your rights to be taken away, and they'll just keep taking them.
