Category: Law

Posts about law-making, the courts, and legal concepts in general

What Toronto350.org is up to

We are quite busy this summer. We are working on finalizing our brief to the University of Toronto, making the case for why they should divest from fossil fuels. We could definitely use some expert assistance for some of the legal and financial sections, so if you know any lawyers or financial professionals who would be willing to have a look for us and make some suggestions, it would be much appreciated.

We are also taking part in the National Energy Board process on the reversal of the Enbridge Line 9 pipeline to carry diluted bitumen east. We have been accepted as a commenter, and will be providing written evidence in early August.

With the sponsorship of Toronto’s Pure+ Simple spas, we are also holding a massive screening of the film Do the Math on October 9th. It will be at the Bloor Cinema, which seats 700, and there will be two shows at 6:30pm and 8:30pm respectively. We are working to line up some exciting speakers, as well as food and beverage sponsors.

Finally, we are gearing up for a big recruitment drive at the beginning of the school year in September. We will be working to get the 300 endorsements we need for the completed brief, as well as swelling our ranks of supporters and volunteers.

Operational security for disclosing wrongdoing

Wired on the steps now required for whistleblowers to leak evidence of wrongdoing to journalists, in an age of ubiquitous surveillance:

“Get a dedicated computer or tablet: the cheapest Windows laptop will do. And pay cash, as our normal laptops have a host of automatic synchronization and similar services. Our personal web browsers also contain all sorts of location-identifying cookies. Even if you’re logged in to but don’t actually visit Facebook’s home page, a subpoena to Facebook can still reveal where you connect and what pages you visit — every “Like” button reports to Facebook that you are visiting that particular page, at a particular time, from a particular IP address.

Leave your cellphone, your normal computer, and your metro card (like SmarTrip) at home: anything that speaks over a wireless link must stay behind. Then go to a coffee shop that has open Wi-Fi, and once there open a new Gmail account that you will only use to contact the press and only from the dedicated computer. When registering, use no personal information that can identify you or your new account: no phone numbers, no names.

Don’t forget: if you get anything at the cafe, or take public transit, pay cash. Be prepared to walk a bit, too; you can’t stay close to home for this.

Of course, the job still isn’t finished. When you are done you must clear the browser’s cookies and turn off the Wi-Fi before turning off the computer and removing the battery. The dedicated computer should never be used on the network except when checking your press-contact account and only from open Wi-Fi connections away from home and work.”

Related: Wikileaks and whistleblowers

More on climate change and capitalism

My friend Stuart on climate change and capitalism: How to Change the Future — and Why We Need To!

Personally, I can see why the argument that capitalism and sustainability are incompatible is convincing to a lot of people. At the same time, I think we have enough of a project on our hands just in replacing the global energy system with a climate-friendly alternative. Replacing capitalism at the same time may well be impractical – and there is no way of being sure that any system with which we replace it will do any better. To me, the liberal economic solution of internalizing externalities through regulation and tools like carbon pricing seems like the most promising path for checking humanity’s more self-destructive impulses. Admittedly, success will require that governments and citizens take a longer-term view of their own interests and develop a greater ability to resist the influence of fossil fuel companies and the short-term temptations associated with excessive fossil fuel use.

Also, I think there is a critical role that capitalist finance will play in driving the global clean-energy transformation. Right now, the plan is to spend trillions of dollars during the next century extracting and processing the world’s remaining fossil fuels. If we are going to build things like country-sized renewable energy facilities (which we will need for everyone on the planet to develop or maintain lifestyles that will probably be acceptable to them), that massive investment will need to be re-directed and the capitalist mechanisms of innovation, deployment, and return-on-investment will likely be necessary.

There was a discussion about this here before: Climate change and capitalism

Divest McGill arguments rejected

A committee formed by the administration of McGill University has rejected the argument from Divest McGill that the school should sell its stock in “corporations involved with the production, refining, transport and sale of fossil fuels” and “financial institutions which have not adopted a policy of making no further loans to corporations that produce, refine, transport of sell fossil fuels”.

Rather startlingly, the committee concluded that: “Since the Committee is not satisfied that ‘social injury’ has occurred, no action was considered or is recommended.”

Given that climate change is the ‘greatest market failure the world has ever seen’ the case that fossil fuel companies are doing social harm is very strong. While the committee’s decision is disappointing, it is useful for Toronto350.org insofar as it shows what sort of things the committee that will eventually be formed here is likely to focus on. For instance, no discussion of science and a strong emphasis on law. Knowledge that we derive from this response will help us make our own brief stronger.

We are also calling for a different set of actions from the University of Toronto, which I think will make it easier to establish our case. Specifically:

  • Make an immediate statement of principle, expressing its intention to divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies within five years,
  • Immediately stop making new investments in the industry,
  • Instruct its investment managers to wind down the university’s existing holdings in the fossil fuel industry over five years, and
  • Divest from Royal Dutch Shell by the end of 2013.

This seems easier than asking a Canadian university to divest from all financial institutions which invest in fossil fuel companies, which probably includes all those in Canada.

The McGill committee never got to questions of practicality or financial impact on the university, since they rejected the basic claim that fossil fuel companies are doing social harm. If we are able to establish the second point to the satisfaction of the University of Toronto, we will still need to address concerns in the first two areas.

Our brief still requires a lot of work, so if you know anyone in Toronto who would be willing to help, please encourage them to get in touch with us. We could especially benefit from anyone with expertise in law or finance.

Maureen Ramsay on torture

“What is inherently wrong with torture?

Investigation as to what is wrong with torture, independent of its bad effects, may throw some light on why torture is practised and how academics obscure the purpose of torture when they debate its justification as a way of extracting information to save multiple lives in a ticking bomb context. What is inherently wrong with torture is captured by the Kantian idea that torture violates physical and mental integrity and negates autonomy, humanity and dignity, coercing the victim to act against their most fundamental beliefs, values and interests. For Shue, it is that fact that the victim is powerless before unrestrained conquerers that accounts for the particular disgust torture evokes. For Parry, torture demonstrates the end of the normative world of the victim and expresses the domination of the state and the torturer. The torturer and the victim create their own terrible world of over-whelming vulnerability and total control with potential escalation that asserts complete domination. Torture is world destroying in its ability to invert and degrade ideas of agency, consent and responsibility.

Sussman argues that there is a distinctive kind of wrong that characterises torture that distinguishes it from other kinds of violence or physical and psychological harm. What is wrong with torture is not just that torture enacts an asymmetrical relation of complete dependence and vulnerability so that the victim acts against his or her own choices and interests. Nor is it just the profound disrespect shown to the humanity and autonomy of the victim as an extreme instance of using a person as a means to an end they would not reasonably consent to. Torture involves a systematic mockery of the moral relations between people. It is a deliberate perversion of the value of dignity and an insult to agency. Agency is turned on itself. The torturer forces the victim into a position of colluding against himself, so he experiences himself as simultaneously powerless (a passive victim) yet actively complicit in his own debasement. Torture is not just an extreme form of cruelty, but an instance of forced self-betrayal where the torturer pits the victim against himself, an active participant in his own violation.

These accounts focus on what happens when torture takes place, rather than the bad consequences of torture or what specific practices constitute torture. What constitutes torture here is not defined by the severity or intensity of pain, but rather by the logic of the morally perverted structure of the relationship between torturer and victim. If what is inherently wrong with torture is the mockery of moral relations, the asymmetrical relationship of power and defencelessness it enacts which degrades agency, humanity and dignity; which coerces the victims to act against their choices, beliefs, values and interests, then it could be that this is precisely why it is used. The explanation of what torture is, is connected to the point and purpose of torture.

Within a ticking bomb situation, the motive for torture is the need to extract information, but Parry argues that this is not the only purpose:

… the impulse to torture may derive from identification of the victim with a larger challenge to social order and values. The possibility takes on greater salience amid claims that the threat of terrorism requires aggressive self defence in the post September 11 world… when the social order is threatened especially by people seen as outsiders or subordinates, torture may function as a method of individual and collective assertion that creates perhaps an illusory sense of overcoming vulnerability through the thorough domination of others.

Parry points out US interrogation practices take place against a background of terrorism which has created a sense of vulnerability and social upheaval. Given this, it is plausible to suggest that in addition to seeking information from suspects, torture has been used to assert and confirm the unconstrained power of the US, to degrade and dehumanize the enemy, to force the silencing and betrayal of their beliefs and values, to signify the end of their normative world. It would not be surprising to learn that torture has been used as a means of total domination and social control, not only over the prisoners in the cages of Guantanamo, or the cells in Afghanistan and Iraq, but over those communities hostile to US power, to intimidate and to break their collective will in accordance with their own beliefs, values, and interests.

If the impulse to torture is as much about instantiating power relationships as it is about extracting actionable, credible information, then this may explain, though it could never justify, why the US resorted to torture in its war on terrorism. Such an explanation is necessary especially given that counterproductive consequentialist considerations undermine arguments which excuse or sanction the torture of terrorist suspects for alleged intelligence benefits. Such an explanation fits given that the vast majority, if not all cases of torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment since September 11 could not be justified by the belief that the suspects held vital information that could divert imminent catastrophic attacks. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment have become the norm rather than an exception in rare circumstances. Yet, despite this, torture continues to be debated as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information and as if it was this purpose which requires defending.”

Ramsay, Maureen. “Can the torture of terrorist suspects be justified?” in Andrew, Christopher et al eds. Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London; Routledge. 2009. p. 422-3 (paperback) (emphasis added)

Related:

Concept for making use of Google’s ‘Inactive Account Manager’ feature

Presumably after considering the consequences of doing so, Google has become a sort of unusual executor of the digital estates of users who opt in to their ‘Inactive Account Manager’ feature.

They are given the option to set how long a ‘timeout period’ must pass before the system kicks in.

They are then allowed to automatically notify and potentially share data with up to 10 “trusted friends or family members”.

They can then add an autoresponder message, either for anyone who emails them or just for contacts.

Finally, they can set up a system to delete their account.

In a way, this looks a lot like a Dead man’s switch.

The concept

This system relies upon the autoresponder feature.

If you have data that you wish to make publicly available only after your death, encrypt it with a secure-yet-commonly-used algorithm like AES.

Put the key in the body of your Google post-mortem autoresponse email.

In all likelihood, the key will circulate and people will be able to decrypt the files which you wish for them to decrypt.

I am sure Google thought this through, but it seems to me that this system might encourage suicides. There can be a certain attraction in going out by means of a dramatic gesture, and this system makes it a lot easier.

Two James Hansen updates

James Hansen getting arrested at an August 2011 protest against the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House
James Hansen getting arrested at an August 2011 protest against the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House
James Hansen after getting released from Anacostia jail, 2011-08-29
James Hansen after getting released from Anacostia jail, 2011-08-29

NASA climatologist James Hansen

Bonus: a demonstration of why I can’t just hand my camera to passers-by to take a picture

After 32 years as the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, climatologist James Hansen is retiring (New York Times, Nature). He now intends to devote more of his time and energy to pushing for action on climate change.

One recent publication of Hansen’s: “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power” in Environmental Science and Technology. From the abstract:

Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420 000–7.04 million deaths and 80–240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces.

Related:

Toronto350.org bibliography party

One element of developing Toronto350.org has been learning how to do complex cooperative work using a devoted group of volunteers.

This afternoon, we are having a ‘bibliography party’ for our University of Toronto divestment brief.

We will be taking all the sources people have collected and putting them into biblatex format. It will then be easy to incorporate them into our LaTeX document and produce nicely formatted footnotes and a good bibliography.

Then it will just be a matter of finishing each section of the brief and sending it out to experts for comment. It will need to be run by some people who can comment on the science, others who can comment on the law, and others who are familiar with the U of T administration.

In the end, we should have an authoritative and meticulously cited document explaining why divestment makes ethical and financial sense, and why it is in keeping with the university’s existing divestment policy.