2
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL WAR
In light of this policy deficit, the threat to democracy and human rights, and the impact
of digital transnational repression on Canadian communities, we make a series of recommendations for the Canadian government where concrete action could be taken to
address digital transnational repression. These recommendations include:
y issuing official statements against digital transnational repression and taking practical
action to deter such activities, such as deploying targeted sanctions, strengthening
export controls for dual-use technologies, reviewing foreign sovereign immunity law,
pursuing criminal prosecutions, and ensuring that the Canadian government’s own
use of digital surveillance technology is transparent and in compliance with Canadian
human rights law and international human rights law
y providing support to the victims of digital transnational repression by creating a
dedicated government agency to address the issue of transnational repression in
Canada, instituting a dedicated hotline or reporting mechanism, and undertaking
community outreach efforts to better understand the scale of the problem and how
to address it
y improving coordination across Canadian government bodies, training government
officials in identifying, addressing, and responding to digital transnational repression,
and providing greater resources for community organizations to address such threats
y requiring transparency from technology companies regarding how they respond to
government requests to remove content or access user information, engaging with
these entities to understand how they address digital transnational repression and
what other measures have to be taken, and examining the role of business actors
more broadly (for example, social media companies and other private sector facilitators such as domain registrars, web-hosting companies, and other companies
whose technology is used in undertaking digital transnational repression) to determine whether new regulation is required to address their role
In Section 1 of the report, we introduce traditional mechanisms of transnational repression and the exercise of extraterritorial authoritarianism. In Section 2, we review existing
research on how digital transnational repression manifests itself and impacts activists
and dissidents in exile. In Section 3, we summarize the findings that were drawn from
interviews we conducted with activists and dissidents who moved or fled to Canada from
their country of origin and who were targeted by various forms of digital transnational
repression in Canada. In closing, in Section 4, we set out a series of recommendations for
the Canadian government to begin addressing digital transnational repression in Canada.