Revelations by the Guardian that the Trudeau government is quietly expanding its use of an American anti-terrorism database have critics worried about Canadian sovereignty, privacy and civil liberties

In 2005, Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian professor studying for a PhD in architecture in the US, was arrested in San Francisco while trying to board a plane. She was interrogated about ties to a terrorist group, her student visa was revoked, and her daughter, an American citizen, was forbidden to fly into the US.

After the ordeal, Ibrahim successfully sued to have her name removed from the US no-fly list, one of the first persons in America to do so. But her Orwellian nightmare wasn’t over. It turned out that the FBI had also added her to a security screening list called Tuscan, which is shared with the Canadian government, and it wasn’t until 2014 that she finally had her name scrubbed from that.

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The lawsuit, however, served as a smoking gun – a rare mention of a database that Canadian government officials have downplayed to the point of secrecy.

Last week, the Guardian reported that Canada uses Tuscan, a vast repository of at least 680,000 names – 40% of which have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation” – to screen all travellers coming into Canada from anywhere in the world.

Tuscan is generated and maintained entirely by the US, but if you’re included on the list you could be refused entry to Canada, or have your Canadian visa or immigration application denied. And, unlike Canada’s official no-fly list, Tuscan offers no clear process to remove your name if you think you have been added in error.

Tuscan stands for “Tipoff US/Canada”, and dates back to 1997. Despite the fact that it has existed for two decades, there is scant mention of the program, or exactly what it does, by either government. An equivalent agreement with Australia, known as Tactics, is similarly cloaked in secrecy.

Memos obtained by the Guardian through the Canadian Access to Information Act regarding Tuscan, a database used at border screenings of those with suspected terrorist ties

The revelations have put pressure on Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to explain Tuscan’s significance. “It’s a sovereign Canadian decision what we do with that information,” Ralph Goodale, the security minister, said when questioned about it on television last week. “It is a source of data that is consulted to see if there are any alarm bells that should be going off.”

The privacy commissioner, however, has raised concerns with Goodale that Tuscan infringes on civil liberties. Others are accusing Trudeau’s administration of hypocrisy for championing the transparency of its official no-fly list even while quietly relying on Tuscan.

“Fine, Canada remains sovereign and gets to decide if it wants to use the information,” says Josh Paterson, executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. “But if it is using the information, and a Canadian never knows about it, can’t challenge and has no redress for it, doesn’t know where that report came from … then that is a significant problem for their human rights and due process rights.”



‘We’re not in control of the data’

The American database, according to the briefing notes obtained by the Guardian, is populated by information on individuals “known or suspected of being involved in terrorist activity”. Adding a name to the list can be as simple as filling out a form. Taking a name off, even if added in error, can be a lengthy court process that has been rarely successful.

Canada can file a written request to the US to remove a name from the list – but the Americans are not obliged to comply.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Justin Trudeau has been working since 2016 to expand Tuscan behind closed doors, a process that has continued with the Trump administration. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Given the US record of adding people in error and of confusing similar names, civil liberty groups say they are concerned.

“It’s hard to imagine how this is going to be exceptionally solid from a privacy perspective,” says Brenda McPhail, director of the privacy, technology and surveillance project at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “We’re not in control of the data.”

McPhail says she has heard from Arab and Muslim Canadians who have experienced difficult in travelling despite having confirmed they are not on the no-fly list. “In hindsight, it sounds like they’re on [Tuscan],” she says.

The privacy commissioner warned Goodale that the appeal process was insufficient and raised issue with the length of retention of sensitive information, according to documents obtained by the Canadian Press. A memo in response reportedly promised to “address the outstanding concerns that you have raised”.

There is also a fear that, because the FBI officers of the Terrorist Screening Center update files directly, without external checks, faulty information could permeate widely. As the judge in Ibrahim’s case noted, “once derogatory information is posted to the [Terrorism Screening Database], it can propagate extensively through the government’s interlocking complex of databases, like a bad credit report that will never go away”.



Derogatory indicators

Despite the concerns, Trudeau has been working since 2016 to expand Tuscan behind closed doors, a process that has continued with the Trump administration.

When the Tuscan agreement was first signed, in 1997, it was a very different program than it is now. The US database was managed through the state department and was primarily concerned with consular information; the original Tuscan and Tactics agreements were merely ways to export that list to Canadian and Australian counterparts.



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Following 9/11, the US government began to consolidate its immigration and national security databases. As the final report of the 9/11 Commission noted, Tuscan was part of a program “which included a number of databases containing such derogatory information on individuals as prior visa refusals and federal arrest warrants”. Even then it was not, itself, grounds to arrest someone or deny their immigration or visa application.

That soon changed with the creation of the Terrorist Screening Centre, housed within the FBI, which moved the data to a new Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (Tide) – which is now the the master list for the US government and its intelligence agencies.

Tide comprises more than a million names. The records are reviewed and, if approved, added to the Terrorist Screening Centre database, which in turn populates a variety of other lists, including the US no-fly list; the “selectee list”, which includes those who do not meet the threshold for the no-fly list; Tactics and Tuscan.

The memos obtained by the Guardian detail how border guards and immigration officials “utilize Tuscan information” to vet travellers, in Canada and abroad, and “to intercept and potentially apprehend or refuse entry to known or suspected terrorists”.

Should a Canadian border guard get a hit, the Tuscan policy instructs them to delay the traveller until they can obtain more information from the screening centre. From there, the FBI can send on their passport details, citizenship and a unique identifying number in order to confirm their identity. Once their identity is confirmed, the FBI can provide “derogatory indicators”, which Canada can use to search and question the traveller.

From Obama to Trump

Tuscan became a priority for Trudeau after being elected prime minister in 2015, when he quickly set off to improve relations with Canada’s closest ally on a visit to Washington. There, he and Barack Obama extolled the virtues of improved border information-sharing.



Obama told reporters at a joint press conference in the Rose Garden in March of 2016: “Today, we agreed to share more information – including with respect to our no-fly lists and full implementation of our entry/exit system – even as we uphold the privacy and civil liberties of our respective citizens.”

The project – later dubbed the “Beyond the Border Action Plan” – committed both countries to “share information and intelligence in support of law enforcement and national security, respecting each country’s respective constitutional and legal frameworks”.

Publicly, the Trudeau government said it would share entry and exit data for US citizens with the Americans: basic information on who crossed which border and when. Canada would also share its no-fly list with the US.

Neither government mentioned Tuscan, but soon afterwards, Goodale authorized officials to begin formal negotiations with their American counterparts to update and expand it.

The negotiations sought to vastly increase the information flow both ways. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center and the Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) would share more data on individuals, including details of interviews or searches conducted at the border. It would also empower the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s main spy agency, and Immigration Canada to pass on information to the TSC when there is a match on Tuscan.



The election of Donald Trump caught Canada’s security officials by surprise, and Trump’s executive order barring travellers from several Muslim-majority countries threw Ottawa into crisis mode. For days, it was unclear if the ban would apply to Canadian citizens or green card holders, sowing confusion at the airports and borders.



Nevertheless, Ottawa pushed ahead with its plans to update Tuscan under the Trump administration, with one June 2017 memo reporting that the “implementation of changes would take place into fall 2017”. A government spokesperson says both governments are continuing to “refine details” before the new program comes online.

Paterson of the BC Civil Liberties Association says the deal smacks of hypocrisy. He notes that Goodale has embarked on a public consultation on national security, promising transparency and a review of the official no-fly list – even while staying silent about Tuscan, which has been functioning all along as a second, unofficial no-fly list.

“It feels very much like the conversations we’ve been having with the government have been for show,” he says. “A distraction.”