Avoiding the False Tradeoff: How Canada Can Use Transparency and Dialogue to Protect National Security and Freedom
Canada shows how the open government values of transparency and public participation can shape national security reforms.
By Mary Francoli, Associate Professor Carleton University and National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG) Co-Chair
Transparency is essential to the health of a democracy. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to be perceived as legitimate by the society they seek to protect: when they have the trust of the population, it is easier to develop ties with communities. Transparency can also ensure that national security professionals are held to account when transgressions arise.
Secrecy, an old argument goes, is fundamental to national security. This seems to be the mindset in OGP action plans as well. Less than 1 percent of OGP commitments deal directly with national security.¹
Yet, among that small number, there are interesting experiments. Canada is one of them.
Canada has been exploring ways to make its national security regime more transparent. The hope is that a more transparent sector will be more efficient and accountable. Most importantly, it can reverse the erosion of trust built up over the last several decades.
The digitization of national security, however, has the potential to trouble and to aid in building trust. It allows for the collection of more information on citizens, new security threats, and the need for rapid responses. Consequently, it could threaten the rights and safety of citizens more than ever. At the same time, it offers new opportunities for information sharing, collaboration, and engagement. Thinking around the relationship between technology and national security should always have transparency at its center.
This blog provides an overview of how the Canadian government worked to center both transparency and public participation in digitizing national security practices.
Canadians speak up
Canada’s first commitment began with a set of public consultations in 2016. The Government of Canada reached out to ask the public about a number of issues related to national security, including counter-radicalization efforts to prevent violence, oversight and accountability, threat reduction, and the 2015 Anti-terrorism Act (formerly Bill C-51).
The consultations revealed that Canadians have little information on matters of national security, a lack of trust in government security agencies, and concerns about how activities related to security impact their rights and freedoms. Concerns and mistrust come from interactions people have had with security agencies, problems with programs such as Canada’s no fly list (known as the “Passenger Protect Program”), and misunderstanding the role and responsibilities of security agencies. Canadians wanted greater accountability, transparency, and confidence that their rights and physical safety would be protected.
In response, Canada established a “National Security Transparency Commitment” (or Transparency Commitment, in this blog) outside of the OGP process. The commitment aimed to integrate democratic values into national security, showing Canadians that the government heard citizens’ calls for accountability and concerns about their rights. The commitment itself is oriented around transparency in three areas — information sharing, executive branch decisions about national security, and security policy-making.
In 2019, as part of the Transparency Commitment, the Government of Canada created the National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG). Its job is to advise the Deputy Minister of Public Safety Canada, and the national security and intelligence community, on how to infuse transparency into their policies, programs, and activities. [Note: The author is the Co-Chair of the NS-TAG.]
New tech, new problems
Over the five years since NS-TAG’s founding, the group identified some recurring themes highlighting a significant gap between the beliefs and work of government security agencies and the perceptions of civil society. While traditional methods of surveillance have been problematic, the use of new technology in the national security sector has become a growing concern. One difficulty is how fast it changes impacts all aspects of national security. Because of its fast evolution, an approach based on guiding principles and values that work across technology types is better than addressing each technology one-at-a-time.
NS-TAG’s newest report focuses on how new digital tools could make national security less transparent. To address this risk, the report develops recommendations to help focus future transparency efforts. Though the report looks at Canada, its lessons are useful for all of OGP.
The report focuses on the topics of cybersecurity and privacy, threats to online safety, ideologically motivated extremism, artificial intelligence, surveillance and encryption, and equity, diversity and inclusion. As the government procures or develops new technologies, it needs to take into account these topics and ensure that they match public values.
This is hard, however, due to certain patterns in government use of tech. According to the report, the use of technology for the sake of national security currently poses four risks.
- Covertness: Digital tools may be deployed covertly, without public oversight.
- Complexity: Without deliberate attempts to explain, digital technologies and algorithms are incredibly complex to understand.
- Opacity: New technologies, including artificial intelligence, rely on elements that are often opaque even to many experts.
- Unpredictability: Automated decision systems may produce unintended consequences, further complicating transparency and accountability.
Security transparency in three dimensions
In total, the NS-TAG’s report offers 16 recommendations for increasing transparency. These are centered around information transparency, executive transparency, and policy transparency — three pillars of the Government of Canada’s Transparency Commitment.
Information transparency: What are national security bodies doing with tech and why?
Information transparency includes the proactive release of information and data about the mandate, and work of national security bodies. As much information as possible should be released as long as it does not compromise national interest, security operations, or the security of an individual.
This group of recommendations suggests that agencies should proactively inform the public about the following.
- What they are doing with a given technological tool
- Why it is necessary
- Whether there are channels for people to raise concerns
- Whether there are safeguards and review mechanisms in place to mitigate risks
Executive transparency: Who decides and how?
Executive transparency includes disclosing information that seeks to explain the legal structures protecting national security and how choices are made within those structures. For example, how are national security activities authorized under the law and what guides them?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is of special interest. The report recommends that relevant stakeholders (including bodies like Public Safety Canada and the Privacy Commissioner) work together to establish mechanisms for open and verifiable standards of algorithmic design, deployment, and review.
The amplification of racism, marginalization, and discrimination through new technology is also a concern. As national security systems become increasingly digitized, they could result in over- or under-policing and surveillance of specific communities. Working with impacted communities is necessary in order to effectively address online misinformation and hate.
Policy transparency: What is the big picture?
Policy transparency means that people can know and discuss broader national security strategies. When they have a voice in new policy proposals, they can help build transparency into future plans and processes.
Conclusion
Canada still has work to do when it comes to regaining the trust of its citizens and making sure that its national security bodies are as transparent and accountable as possible.
It has made progress, however. The very fact that there is an ongoing dialogue about transparency in national security shows a shift in thinking. Hopefully these discussions will continue not only within Canada, but within OGP. Building transparency into national security is challenging, but the peer learning OGP fosters can help improve governance in an area that has worked in secret for most of history. Increasingly, security requires a collective response between citizens and government. Trust and accountability are key to its success.
