News you may have missed #0122

• Canada authorities push for Internet spy bill. The push for new Internet surveillance capabilities in Canada –dubbed the “lawful access” initiative– dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals to institute new surveillance technologies in Canadian fifth-generation networks. Internet Service Providers are skeptical of the initiative, while law enforcement and security agencies argue that the changes are long overdue.
• Peru’s former leader guilty of spying, bribery. Peru’s former strongman Alberto Fujimori pleaded guilty today to charges of wiretapping opponents and paying bribes to lawmakers and publishers during his rule from 1990 to 2000. Unfortunately, the CIA supported Fujimori and his right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos and even suppressed a CIA officer who tried to argue that supporting such lowlifes was politically wrong and ethically immoral.
• CIA honors two spies. CIA director Leon Panetta awarded the Trailblazer Medal (the supreme decoration in the US intelligence community) to two agents, one of whom is the late John Guilsher, who recruited Soviet scientist Adolf Tolkachev at the height of the Cold War. Are we to presume that Panetta has not read the recent paper by Benjamin Fischer, former CIA clandestine operative and retired CIA historian, who claims that Tolkachev was actually a KGB double agent tasked by Soviet intelligence with providing US military strategists with false information?