Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

The AIH Transcript for February 15, 2019

Hosts: Carol Off and Nana aba Duncan

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello I'm Carol Off.

NANA aba DUNCAN: Hello. I'm Nana aba Duncan. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

NaD: Tonight...

CO: Action, not words. Last night's speech by Haiti's president did nothing to calm angry protesters -- who see no promise in his promises, and are still demanding that he resign.

NaD: Refusing to hold their peace. India has given its military "full freedom" in Kashmir after the worst terror attack in decades -- and India's High Commissioner to Canada says that it's Pakistan's fault.

CO: Wake-up call. An Amber Alert helped police arrest a man who they believe killed his 11-year-old daughter -- which is why one officer is so distressed that so many people in Ontario complained about the late night alarm.

NaD: Show of hands. A forensic anthropologist says it might be possible to identify child abusers who make child porn by their own hands -- and she's calling on the public to help create a database.

CO: To surveil and protect. For years, the FBI secretly watched a community outside Chicago -- tonight you'll hear from the director of a documentary about the aptly named "Operation Vulgar Betrayal."

NaD: And...just something they've been working on in their spear time. Space junk is their white whale -- so British scientists came up with an appropriate way of cleaning it up: a space harpoon. As It Happens. The Friday Edition. Radio that wonders if the harpoon is working free-lance.

[Music: Theme]

Part 1: Ontarians flooded 911 with complaints that Amber Alert woke them up, police say

Haiti Latest

Guest: Carel Pedre

NaD: It's been nine days of burning tires, looting, roadblocks, and barricades. Seven people have been killed. And there is no sign that the protests in Haiti will stop anytime soon. Last night, President Jovenel Moise addressed the nation -- which did nothing to calm things down. And Haitians are growing more and more frustrated. Because of the ongoing violence, dozens of Canadians -- many of them doctors and nurses providing healthcare -- are stuck in Haiti. Carol spoke with one last night: Doctor Heather Dow, who was unable to get a plane home. But Haitians are home. For them the situation is inescapable. Carel Pedre is a Haitian journalist and commentator. We reached him in Port-au-Prince earlier today.

CO: Carel can you describe the scene today in Port-au-Prince? What's going on?

CAREL PEDRE: Today is a little bit calm in certain areas, but some other areas there are still barricades and small protests. But the president addressed the nation last night. People were expecting him to come up with maybe some announcement, some statement, about what the government is going to do to address the problem -- but that wasn't the case.

CO: And just to be clear the overarching cry is for the president to resign, right?

CP: Yes. Everybody in the streets wants him to resign. Some of the elected officials from the parliament ask him to resign as well.

CO: Okay. So meanwhile you have a serious situation, don't you? I mean this is a real crisis. Just describe what people are going through -- what they're putting up with it.

CP: We have a serious situation because Haiti has always been a poor country. We had we had the earthquake in 2010. We had a lot of political troubles lately. And the economic situation is really really bad. Like right now we need 84 gourdes -- which is the national currency -- to have one U.S. dollar. We have a lot of inflation, and a lot of corruption scandals. And we have a lot of insecurity as well -- there are a lot of gang members and industries and things like that. And those are like big problems that the government needs to fix. We don't really care about who is fighting for power or not -- all we need, as a population, is some leaders to take responsibility to fix those problems or at least address them or at least try to fix them.

CO: And the problem is -- as you mentioned -- is huge: with the runaway inflation, the infrastructure is broken ever since the earthquake. Just give us a sense of what it's like. Take us through kind of a day: what you have to go through to get food, what you do to get medical treatment.

CP: For the average Haitian, we live on two U.S. dollars a day. And it's really hard for those people to even eat and find clean water. And now with the protests it has been since those people can't even go out to beg for food for example. And like the more fortunate -- it's the same thing for us because we can't go to work, we can't send our kids to school, there's no business open -- it is chaotic in Haiti right now. And it's a very tough situation. And I think it's the first time that those protests and violence went for so long -- and now it's nine days.

CO: What's the situation at hospitals or medical facilities?

CP: It's really bad. And actually there's an association of leaders from hospitals -- they were complaining on the radio saying that first of all they can't really provide aid to those in need. They can't refuse medical supplies. The doctors can't come to the hospital. I can talk for myself -- for example yesterday I had to go to a blood donation centre to donate blood for one of my friends who was going to have a surgery. I couldn't give blood just because there's no one at the facility to take the blood. So nothing is working.

CO: Venezuela had an aid program in Haiti for petrol. How did that program factor into this unrest? What happened there?

CP: All right, this is what happened. Back last year -- there's a movement that started on social media, but that movement went on the streets to protests as well because they were asking the government to make a report about how the government did all those expenses about that Petrocaribe fund. So right now that report gives a glimpse of how there is a lot of corruption, how there's a lot of mismanagement of that fund. And you have the name of the president in that report. You have the name of the prime minister in that report. So it is like you have a corruption scandal, you have the bad situation of the economy, you have the inflation -- all together that's the mix that's against the president right now and his government on the streets of Haiti.

CO: It's a perfect storm, isn't it?

CP: It is. It is. I think the average Haitian on the streets don't really care about who is president or not -- all they need is to find a way to send their kids to school, to find a way to get jobs, and to find health care and the basics for example. But you can see the more that the situation is bad for the less fortunate, the better it is for the people in power.

CO: Just finally a question connected to Canada. We have heard that people are quite angry with Canada because of its support or apparent support for the regime -- for the government. How angry are people with us? Are they blaming Canada for any part of this?

CP: All right. So there's that idea in Haiti that everything happening in policies are supported by the international community. Canada, United States, France and other countries. So right now people are really angry because they think that it is only the international community that's holding Jovenel Moise, the president, in power --because they think that since Jovenel Moise has the support, Jovenel Moise can stay in power. So that's maybe why people are really angry at the international community -- not only the Canadian government. I think the problem is a Haitian problem. It is for us Haitians to solve it. And it is for us Haitians to sit down and talk with each other to definitely find a way to solve that problem once for all.

CO: Carel I really appreciate you laying out the crisis and the problems going on in Haiti. And thank you for that. Take care.

CP: Thank you very much.

NaD: Carel Pedre is a Haitian journalist and commentator. We reached him in Port-au-Prince earlier today.

[Music]

Amber Alert

Guest: Akhil Mooken

NaD: Just before midnight yesterday, cell phones across Ontario rang out with an Amber Alert. But by the time Peel Regional Police found 11-year-old Riya Rajkumar at her father's home in Brampton, she was already dead. Now her father will be charged with first degree murder. Police credit the Amber Alert system with his arrest. But to some Ontario residents, the Amber Alert was a noisy disruption. Peel Regional Police say they received a flurry of 911 calls from people complaining the alert woke them up. Constable Akhil Mooken is a media relations officer for Peel Regional Police. We reached him in Mississauga.

CO: Constable Mooken this story is disturbing on so many levels. But I want to start with the complaints that you got about the Amber Alert. This was to 911 dispatchers, right?

AKHIL MOOKEN: That's just part of the complaints we received. So I mean to quantify that, I can say between the hours of 11:36 -- when the Amber Alert went out -- to 9:00 a.m. this morning our 911 centre received a total of 383 calls. Now out of those 383 calls -- within the first hour of the Amber Alert going out we received 124, and the vast majority of those calls were people complaining that the Amber Alert woke them up from their sleep or that it bypassed their do not disturb setting.

CO: I mean people called 911 to complain that they were awakened from their sleep?

AM: That's right. And again that's just calls to 911 centre. We have our non-emergency number as well that our switchboard operators field, and they also had a ton of calls where people were complaining and swearing at them about being woken up because they have to go to work in the morning and get ready, and again like I said, it bypassed their do not disturb systems. And to go even further on that, through our website we received over 100 emails. And I can't even begin to count the number of messages we received through our social media platforms -- people complaining about the system.

CO: If someone has never received one or doesn't know what it's like, just what is it that you send out.

AM: So the Amber Alert system is actually coordinated by the Ontario Provincial Police -- so it's basically a message along with some tones that are sent to cell phones, to TVs, radios indicating that there is an active Amber Alert, and it describes the missing person, any vehicles that they're operating, and any other info that may be pertinent to locating the individuals that are in the Amber Alert.

CO: You sent out on Twitter your response, your feelings, about all these people complaining. Maybe just tell us what you'd like to say to these people who called or wrote to complain.

AM: You know I'm a parent myself to a young daughter. I can't even begin to imagine and understand what the mom of Riya is going through. It's disappointing and upsetting to read some of the comments, to read the emails, and the messages that we received about being awoken. I appreciate that people were sleeping, but the immediate need to locate the child outweighed the momentary inconvenience that some people experienced as a result of this. I think we need to grasp the totality of this and understand why this was issued -- and that again it wasn't issued without our procedures and due process being done on our end to locate Riya using the techniques available to our investigators.

CO: We should tell people, remind them, that this 11-year-old girl was actually found dead just hours after the Amber Alert was issued.

AM: That's right yeah. So tragically Riya was located deceased at a residence in the City of Brampton. As many people know by now, her father is in custody with Peel Regional Police and will be facing a charge of first degree murder.

CO: The girl was picked up by her father -- this was for her birthday -- and they were going to have some kind of a birthday celebration. And then the mother got concerned when the girl wasn't returned home. And she also had some indications that the father might be going to harm the girl and/or himself. At what point did the police know about that?

AM: So we again were made aware of all of that when the mother of the child came into our police station to report it to us. As soon as our investigators were made aware of that, they began working diligently, following the procedures, and conducting our investigation on a local level to try and locate both Riya and her father.

CO: You say the Amber Alert went out at 11:30. The mother came in to say that she was very concerned about the child being missing and the threats that she had heard. She came in around 7:00. Why wasn't the Amber Alert issued earlier?

AM: There needs to be a certain criteria and certain types of information that we need to be able to provide to the coordinators of the Amber Alert system, and to gather all of that we had to do an investigation -- following up on numerous leads to try and locate them prior to issuing the Amber Alert.

CO: The police went to the father's house shortly after the concern was issued by the mother. They went there but didn't force entry into the house. When they did force entry much later in the night, they found her dead in that house. Why didn't they force entry earlier? Why wouldn't they do that right away if there is any concern -- even the slightest possibility -- that that girl is in there and needs help?

AM: There was no indication at the start of this investigation that she would be in that residence -- and as I mentioned, there were several leads that directed our investigators away from the residence that they had to follow up on.

CO: Let's go back to these complaints that you had. Did they yield any results for you -- putting out the Amber Alert?

AM: The suspect in this incident as well as the vehicle was located as a direct result of a motorist traveling on a roadway in the Barrie area receiving the alert on their cell phone. The motorist received the alert and just a few minutes later saw the vehicle in question -- subsequently contacted 911 which directed them to the Ontario Provincial Police -- that motorist stayed on the line with the OPP until officers arrived at which point the man was taken into custody.

CO: This is again, when people complain and say, "well why did you have to get everybody out of bed? Why didn't you just make the call out to specifically the area?" This is why you do it to a wider zone, right?

AM: Absolutely. And you know unfortunately when we send out an Amber Alert, we don't know when someone is sleeping. We want to make sure we get it out to as many people as possible so that we have more eyes on the road or wherever they may be looking for the people that are in the Amber Alert. Again while I appreciate that people may have been sleeping or this alert along with the tones may have startled them, it serves a greater purpose -- we want to find the abducted child and reunite them with their family. And as a parent myself I would certainly expect the same to be done for me if this was me in this situation or any other parent in this situation -- I'm sure they would feel the same way.

CO: Constable Mooken we will leave it there. And I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

AM: Thank you.

NaD: Constable Akhil Mooken is a media relations officer for Peel Regional Police. We reached him in Mississauga. And you can find more on that story on the As It Happens website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Space Junk

Guest: Guglielmo Aglietti

NaD: Hitting a target with a harpoon isn't easy. Neither is hauling in your catch. Especially when that harpooning and hauling is happening in space. But today, the Surrey Space Centre announced that its RemoveDebris satellite had done both of the above, far far above. The Space Centre launched its satellite last year. Since then, it's tested a number of techniques to remove space debris. The space harpoon is the latest experiment -- and according to Guglielmo Aglietti, it was a "total success" in removing space garbage. Mr. Aglietti is the director of the Surrey Space Centre in England. Today, we reached him in Amsterdam.

CO: Professor Aglietti in what way was this experiment what you call a "total success?"

GUGLIELMO AGLIETTI: Well actually we managed to demonstrate that this technology, the harpoon, works and is a viable technology to actually go in future and capture pieces of debris.

CO: And how worried were you that it wasn't going to be a total success?

GA: [Chuckles] Well usually we do a lot of experiments on the ground before launching you know in space. And we had done a lot of experiments. But at the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is when you are in space and when the thing is going to work over there. So there is always a bit of nerves you know. The hours before the experiment itself -- and because we have previously done in order two experiments and they have also been successful -- we were even more nervous because you know -- so the third one was successful as well -- we were delighted as you can imagine.

CO: So the proof was in the pudding -- out in space?

GA: Yes. [Laughs]

CO: Okay now let's get to what you did because this RemoveDebris satellite -- which is what it's called -- was able to catch something, harpoon something. Tell us what it did.

GA: Well we deployed our own target and then we shoot our own target because we just want to demonstrate the technology which is basically this device to throw the harpoon -- and the idea after this successful demonstration is that in future it can be used to go and capture real pieces of debris. And I'm talking about old satellite [inaudible] orbit and no longer work, and so they pose a threat for the new satellites for example.

CO: What does the harpoon look like?

GA: Well it looks like a harpoon, but it's pretty small. This one was -- let's say the size of a pen. And it has got a wire attached to it. And the tip -- it has got you know a steel tip -- like it toggle so when it gets embedded in the target you know the bit comes out like a hook. And so the target can't come off. And the idea is that, again, with that one you can shoot old satellites and then you tow it down until it burns into the atmosphere. And in that way you can remove this piece of debris.

CO: Now I just want to most importantly talk about the problem that you're trying to solve with this. I mean how much space debris is out there? Aren't we just horrible animals for leaving our garbage. How much is out there?

GA: Well you are right. It seems that wherever we start to go, we leave behind a lot of rubbish. And now in space at this moment, we think that there are about eight thousand tons of debris. But if you think that this [inaudible] that we do operation in space -- you putting orbit satellites and so on, most of these satellites are still there. And you know after a few years, they stop working. And then maybe after a few years more, they start to disintegrate. And so that's where the problem comes out. And so we have now to start thinking that we have to go and clean some of the stuff that is left behind because we want to put in orbit more satellites for very useful technology, so it is important that we can continue to put satellites in orbit. But the problem is that if there is too much rubbish -- you put in orbit your new satellite and maybe it gets hit by one of these pieces of debris. So that's why we have to start to clean them up.

CO: But is this the solution? Have you come up with the answer to the problem?

GA: Well there are different ways in which you can do that. And let's say the jury's still out because we have tested also a net. Other people are working you know robotic arm that you can use in order to capture one of these you know large debris. So you know different people are proposing different solutions. What we thought -- the reason why we went for you know the harpoon, net, and so on -- is because we were thinking about low-cost technologies. Because whether or not we will actually do in the future these clean-up operation, it will depend on the cost. It is a bit like you know all the other things are going and cleaning up the ocean -- everybody agrees yeah it is a good idea, we should go and clean it up, but who's going to pay for that? So you know the lower the cost, the better it is. And that's why we're thinking that things like a harpoon or a net seem you know less expensive technologies than maybe things like you know a robotic arms for example.

CO: But you have another test, right? The proof has been in the pudding, but you got more pudding to prove, right?

GA: [Chuckles] Yes. Yes exactly. The last bit of the pudding that we have to try to cook and see how it comes is called the "drag sail." Imagine it as a bit like a parachute. So it opens up, and slows down the satellite, and when you slow down the satellite -- the orbit comes lower and therefore the satellite burns into the high atmosphere. So the idea is that once you have captured a piece of debris, you deploy this sail -- it's called a drag sail -- so you increase the drag, the satellite starts to come down, and burn into the atmosphere. So the last experiment which will be done in the next month, is to deploy this drag sail and see you know hopefully the satellite coming down and burning into the atmosphere.

CO: Well Professo Aglietti I wish you all the luck with your pudding.

GA: [Laughs] Thank you. Much appreciated. It has been very nice talking to you.

CO: It's been nice talking to you too. Thank you. Bye bye.

GA: Thank you. Bye bye.

NaD: Guglielmo Aglietti is the director of the Surrey Space Centre in England. We reached him today in Amsterdam. And if you want to see a photo of that harpoon, you can go to our website: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

No such thing as free lunch

SOUNDCLIP

MILTON FRIEDMAN: There's no such thing as a free lunch. That's it. If you got to restrict me to one piece of wisdom, that's a one piece of wisdom.

NaD: That's the late free-market economist Milton Friedman -- one of the strongest proponents of the idea that everything costs someone something, somewhere along the line. That's what he means by "there's no such thing as a free lunch." That idea has always had its critics. Most recently a member of the Slovenian parliament named Darij Krajcic. But he's had to admit that, at least in his case, Mr. Friedman was right. Lunch always costs you something. In his case, his job. Earlier this week, Mr. Krajcic went to a nearby sandwich shop, picked up a sandwich, and waited to pay. Then, he waited longer. In an interview he later said quote, "I must have stood some three minutes by the counter." As he watched the shop employees ignore him to chat with each other, he came up with what he has since referred to as a social experiment. The experiment consisted of taking the sandwich and not paying. It was, he later claimed, a test of the shop's security system. He also claimed he went back later to pay. Regardless, from this experiment he concluded that people are over-reliant on video surveillance that doesn't always work. His colleagues reached a different conclusion: that he should resign. He did. Because frankly his methodology was out to lunch.

[Music]

Part 2: How photos of your hands could help bring child predators to justice

India-Pakistan

Guest: Vikas Swarup

NaD: Tonight, India is calling on the international community to isolate Pakistan. India's government says it has evidence that Pakistan helped orchestrate yesterday's horrific bombing in Kashmir. The suicide blast took the lives of dozens of Indian soldiers, and left many more clinging to life. It is the worst terrorist incident in Kashmir in decades. India's Prime Minister has responded by saying quote, "Our security forces are given full freedom...We will give a befitting reply." Vikas Swarup is India's High Commissioner to Canada. We reached him in Ottawa.

CO: High Commissioner this is clearly a heinous act. But what evidence do you have that Pakistan is to blame?

VIKAS SWARUP: Well the most important evidence is the video released by Jaish-e-Mohammed itself in which the alleged bomber is himself claiming this attack. And Jaish-e-Mohammed -- we all know where it is based.

CO: And Adil Dar is allegedly the one who did the suicide bombing. So where is he from? Is he not Kashmiri from the Indian side?

VS: Yes he is from Kashmir, but he was recruited by Jaish-e-Mohammed in March 2018. And he went through the entire process of radicalization which eventually led him to become the suicide bomber.

CO: So Pakistan has said it denounced this act -- said they will cooperate in any investigation, and says it's not responsible. What are you saying to Pakistan?

VS: Look our external affairs spokesman has already made it quite clear that we believe Pakistan is squarely responsible for this attack. There is no denying that Jaish-e-Mohammed is based in Pakistan. And they are part of Pakistan's strategy of waging a proxy war against India -- using these terrorist organizations. In the entire 2018, the Central Reserve Police Force lost 30 men to terrorist attacks. And in this one attack alone, we have lost 40. So obviously the scale of this attack is qualitatively different from previous attacks. And it marks a new and dangerous level of escalation.

CO: And again this is very very tragic for all the families of these soldiers who were killed. But at the same time you mentioned escalation. Are you not concerned that India is escalating this as well? That Prime Minister Modi says that Pakistan is responsible, he will not allow it to destabilize, and that there is a lot of really really alarming sabre-rattling going on that might lead to quite a large clash. What concerns do you have in that area?

VS: Look the immediate priority for us Carol is to make Pakistan accountable for this attack. For that whatever steps: tactically, strategically, and diplomatically that need to be taken, will be taken. You know it cannot be business as usual.

CO: So what is it that you want to see Pakistan do?

VS: We want Pakistan to take verifiable and demonstrable action against these terrorist groups which is part of its international obligations as well. I mean the Financial Action Task Force, the U.N. resolutions -- Jaish-e-Mohammed itself as you know is a proscribed organization in India, in Canada, in the United States, and the U.K. -- and yet we see continued evidence that Pakistan mollycoddles these groups, allows them free rein, their leaders who roam around with impunity in Pakistan are even contesting elections. I mean what does that tell you.

CO: The prime minister is warning of a crushing response.

VS: Yep because there is a lot of anger in India.

CO: But are you talking about war?

VS: Look we are never a country which has gone to war. At the same time we cannot allow these terrorist attacks to happen with impunity and with such regularity. Somebody eventually has to take action.

CO: There are of course numerous reports about the Kashmiri Muslims becoming radicalized because of the way India has been prosecuting its crackdown on the region. And just last year we saw just a very very high number of security forces killing militants in the region, but also civilians. The United Nations has released a report in June -- talking about the atrocities committed in Kashmir, calling for an international investigation of what India is doing in Indian Kashmir and in Jammu and Kashmir. Is it not possible that this young man who committed this particular suicide bombing was radicalized --- because of what he said in his remarks -- radicalized because he was watching his fellow Kashmiri Muslims being murdered?

VS: Look Carol you have served in Afghanistan, you know what the virus of a radical violent extremism is all about. I'm not denying that there may be local grievances, but I think Indian democracy is capacitated enough to accommodate people who may hold a grievance into articulating those grievances in a peaceful manner and eventually becoming part of the democratic process. Here what we're looking at, we are looking at somebody with a grievance who is being deliberately radicalized and made into a terrorist and being told, okay strap on your suicide vest and go and ram it against Indian security forces. The government of India has always looked at the best interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The Prime Minister himself announced a 12.1-billion dollar package for Kashmir in November 2015 which includes 63 projects. Projects in areas like roads, power, health, education, tourism. So it's not as if that you know we have turned a blind eye to Kashmir. Kashmir is an integral part of India and we want Kashmiris to be as prosperous as they possibly can be. At the same time we cannot turn a blind eye to people who are openly inciting violence, attacking security forces. So I think we have to look at the larger context in which these things are happening.

CO: We know that Indian security forces have been very much criticized for using excessive force on protesters, for firing into crowds, people being blinded by pellets. We've seen people being arrested. We've seen extrajudicial killings. We've seen 148 civilians killed just last year -- many of them teenagers. Do you think that if this young man -- yes radicalized by terrorist organization -- but that it's easier to radicalize someone when they're watching this happen in their community.

VS: Look was there a single instance of any human rights abuses before 1989...there were none. Whatever has happened has happened after 1989 because of the cycle of violence unleashed by Pakistan based terrorist groups. And as I said I'm not absolving our people of you know something which may have happened, but the larger constructors that here is a neighbor which is deliberately trying to destabilize a state of India by sending in proxy agents in the form of these terrorist groups, and who of course are trying their best to radicalized, to inflame, to incite, and to recruit. And yes, you know our armed forces have the highest reputation as you know of professionalism, of discipline, and there is a standard operating procedure. It's not as if that straight away you see a crowd and you start firing pellet guns -- you know you use tear gas, you use everything possible, but when a crowd turns violent and tries to attack you, what are security forces to do.

CO: High Commissioner. Thank you.

VS: Thank you Carol.

NaD: Vikas Swarup is India's High Commissioner to Canada. We reached him in Ottawa.

[Music]

Directing to make decision

NaD: It must have been a pretty interesting chat. In Kanata, Ontario this morning, the Prime Minister was asked about his account of a conversation he had with Jody Wilson-Raybould. The Prime Minister has been saying that he reassured the then-Attorney General that she alone would decide whether to let the Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin avoid a corruption trial. That's important because there's a rule against the attorney general being pressured about those kinds of decisions. Even if that pressure is coming from her boss, the Prime Minister of Canada. Here's Mr. Trudeau.

SOUNDCLIP

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Obviously there have been many discussions around this government. Questions asked of me from two different Quebec premiers, and representations made by the company, made by MPs. And there were many discussions going on which is why Jody Wilson Raybould asked me if I was directing her or going to direct her to take a particular decision. And I of course said no -- that it was her decision to make and I expected her to make it. I had full confidence in her role as attorney general to make the decision.

REPORTER: Sir in the conversation you just referenced where Jody Wilson-Raybould felt it necessary to ask you if you were directing her in any way, what exactly did you say to her? What preference did you express?

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Oh the discussions as always were ongoing including around the cabinet table which is where cabinet confidentiality kicks in and cabinet solidarity kicks in, so I won't go into the different elements of the argument but I can reassure Canadians that of course as a government we stand up for jobs, we look for ways to keep jobs, to create jobs in this country and that's a responsibility we take seriously. But at the same time, we absolutely will defend and uphold the principles of judicial independence, of the rule of law, and that is what we did at all times.

REPORTER: In your conversation with Jody Wilson-Raybould where she felt it necessary to ask you, were you -- her boss -- directing her in this matter, is it possible that that was the pressure she felt? And given your statements in the past about how women may perceive something differently, is it possible that she perceived what you said to her as pressure?

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I can understand that people have questions about this issue, about these series of events -- as I said if the minister or anyone else felt undue pressure or felt that we were not living up to our own high standards of defence of the rule of law and our judicial system and judicial independence, it was their responsibility to come forward. And at no time in the fall did the former attorney general come forward to me and make those comments.

NaD: That was Prime Minister Trudeau speaking in Kanata, Ontario this morning.

[Music]

Hand Forensics

Guest: Dame Sue Black

NaD: In 1901, Sir Edward Henry -- the Inspector General of Police in Bengal, India -- developed the first system of classifying fingerprints. And ever since, fingerprints have been key to identifying criminals. Now, a group of scientists in the U.K. are expanding from fingers to hands. They want to create a database of hand photos in the hopes of cracking down on child abuse. And, in particular, child pornography. Professor Dame Sue Black is a forensic anthropologist at Lancaster University. We've reached her in Lancaster.

CO: Professor Black can you actually identify people with their hands?

DAME SUE BLACK: Well I think we can. A lot of the work that we've been doing over the last ten years or so in terms of the research has led us to looking at case work with the police -- and we've led to some really quite successful outcomes in being able to identify people from images of their hands.

CO: This is cases where there is a child abuse. And the hands are in there. Without going into so many of the awful details that must be, why are hands in there and not other bits of evidence of who these people are?

DSB: The abuse of children -- the photography of it -- is an unusual crime insofar as very rarely when someone is perpetrating a crime do they film themselves or photograph themselves doing it. Mostly if you're going to rob a bank, you don't film yourself robbing a bank. But in terms of child abuse, often the perpetrator will include a part of their anatomy in that image because they are interacting. And as a result we have a really unusual situation where a part of themselves is in the image -- being able to identify who is it that is the person that is committing this crime.

CO: And they're clever enough to know not to identify themselves or to show any part of themselves -- they think their hands are not going to incriminate them then?

DSB: Yes. I mean you never see faces for obvious reasons. But hands, people forget about. Most of us think that the identifying things in our hands are our fingerprints. And of course they are, but they're on the wrong side of the hands for the part of images that we most frequently see which is the back of the hand.

CO: How successful have you been so far in helping the police with pedophile cases like this?

DSB: You know we probably do about 50 cases a year. So it's about 1 a week, which is the tip of an iceberg. But usually it's about the police being able to say we're pretty sure, can we just take that last step? So when that happens about 82 percent of the cases that we now take on, result in a change of plea. And that's extremely important because that means there's a tremendous amount of money saved in the courtroom -- but much more importantly than that, it means that victims don't have to go into court to give evidence. And we've helped the police to secure 28 life sentences and over 300 years of prison sentencing -- as far as we're aware, it might be more than that because sometimes the police don't always come back to us with what the outcome was, but we think that's about right.

CO: But you want to take this further now. You want to be able to help police even more and you think that setting up a database would do that. Tell us about what you want to do.

DSB: I'm sure you can imagine the work that we do is very laborious -- it takes a long time to be able to look at these images, to abstract all of the anatomical features that we see -- whether it's vein patterns or freckle patterns or skin creases. We want to be able to teach machines to identify -- a computer -- whether it's looking at a vein pattern from an image or a tendon pattern, whether it's looking at a skin crease or not, and to be able to train a machine to do that -- we need to have some really good quality images which we will have to train it. And then we need to be able to set its tasks. We need to be able to say, okay go find me this hands in that database. And the larger our database is, the more we get a better idea of the strengths of the probability or the likelihood of the people being a match within the images. And when you have a large database, we physically cannot look at that number of photographs individually. We need to have computer assistance to do it.

CO: And so you're asking for volunteers.

DSB: We are. So we are asking people you know if you want to join us, if you want to be a part of the citizen science in this, we're going to ask you to photograph -- using your own mobile phone -- your own hands and send us those photographs.

CO: And how will you use those images?

DSB: That we will strip away the image from any means of identifying back to the individual who sent them to us -- so they become totally anonymised images of the hands because we don't really care who they belong to, we are just looking for the extensive variation.

CO: And how many people do you want to give you a hand?

DSB: The only [inaudible] for our first large database be able to locate about 5000 individuals. And yesterday on the website -- because there is a link from the Lancaster University website -- we've already got over 500 people who've been in touch with us to say, I'd like to be a part of this please. So the response already has been absolutely tremendous.

CO: How would police use it? It's not just your domestic police, this would be international police forces. How would they use this database?

DSB: So the police have no access to our research database. We're only using that database to learn about the variations and to train the computers to find the patterns within the hands and that create something called an algorithm. What the police can then do is take that algorithm -- because they know that that algorithm will find the vein patterns or will find knuckle crease patterns in all of the images that they hold. Interpol have millions of images of indecent abuse against children -- and so you can imagine they might pick out the perpetrator's hands on a set of old images that they find on a computer somewhere in Malaysia and then six months later they find the same perpetrator from a set of images that are coming out of Germany -- for the first time for the police they will be able to link perpetrators across the globe. So if people move, we can still track them.

CO: What happens when the perpetrators realise this is how they're being caught and they start wearing gloves?

DSB: Well of course they can. There will be some individuals who will wear gloves, but you've got to bear in mind that the purpose of the image is the touch with the child.

CO: It's not just that you would be able to catch more people who are doing this but it's the children isn't it?

DSB: Oh it's always about the children. If you can take somebody out of circulation who is abusing children, then what you're doing is hopefully safeguarding the ones that they haven't got to yet.

CO: Professor Black thank you.

DSB: You're very welcome.

NaD: Professor Dame Sue Black is a forensic anthropologist at Lancaster University. She wants to create a hand database to crack down on child abuse in the making of child pornography. We reached her in Lancaster, England. And we have more on this story on our webpage: cbc.ca/aih.

[Music]

Travis Kauffman

NaD: Runners fear a lot of things. A sprained ankle. Rain. Unskewed dog poop. Travis Kauffman had another fear -- one that's less common, but much scarier. And he was faced with that fear on February 4th, while he was on a run in the mountains near Fort Collins, Colorado -- when he ran into a young, male mountain lion. Yesterday, at a press conference -- wearing the same jacket he wore during that frightening encounter -- Mr. Kauffman described what happened.

SOUNDCLIP

TRAVIS KAUFFMAN: I ended up hearing some pine needles rustle -- like a stick break. And I turned around, and just was pretty bummed out to see a mountain lion chasing after me. I stopped and I threw my hands up in the air, and I started shouting. And unfortunately the shouts didn't deter it, so it just kind of kept running and lunged at me. It was going toward my face so I threw up my hands to kind of block my face. At which point it grabbed onto my hand and wrists. And from there it started to claw at my face and neck. And that's when kind of my fear response turned into more of a fight response because I realized how close it was getting to my eyes and it got a claw at my lip. I tried to throw it off me at that point. And then we took a little tumble down the south side of the trail. And down there, just kind of had a little wrestling match -- at which point I was able to get on top of it. Pinned its back legs so I didn't get any soft tissue scratched out in my nether regions. At that point I was grabbing around for sticks. I only had my left hand free. My right hand was still locked in its jaws. Tried to see if I could stab in the neck to get it to release. That wasn't working -- the sticks were breaking. So then I picked up a rock that I had seen kind of near us. I knew with two pretty good blows to the back of the head that it didn't release -- that I was probably going to have to do something a little more drastic. And I was able to kind of shift my weight and get a foot on its neck. And at that point I stepped on it -- on its neck with my right foot. And just slowly after a few few minutes I thought I'd be getting close and then it started thrashing again and had a few more scratches that resulted from those thrashes at that point. And I'd say another couple of minutes later it finally stopped moving. And then, jaws opened and I was able to kind of scramble back up the hill and get the heck out of Dodge.

NaD: That was Travis Kauffman describing how he survived a mountain lion attack by killing his attacker. Mr. Kauffman says he will run that trail again, but next time he will run with a buddy.

[Music]

Part 3: Filmmaker describes 'chilling effect' of growing up in Muslim community under FBI surveillance

Encore: That Feeling of Being Watched Feature Interview

NaD: Someone was watching them. And it wasn't just anyone keeping an eye on the residents of Bridgeview, Illinois. It was the FBI. It was called Operation Vulgar Betrayal. And for years, both before and after 9/11, it meant Assia Boundaoui, her family, and her neighbours were under surveillance. Here are some community members remembering what it was like.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: And that damn car is always parked right there.

VOICE 2: It's like how you see in the movies like those pizza vans that are just sitting, staked out in front your house. When you pass the van by they pull up a book, magazine or act like they're not in the car. Like we can see you.

VOICE 3: They put a camera at the corner so they watch all the area.

VOICE 4: I saw one car stop right next to garbage container -- and they're going through it. Now I said well maybe they're homeless, but darn homeless doesn't drive good Dodge van. No spot on it.

NaD: Voices from a documentary called "The Feeling of Being Watched." The film looks at the effect of Operation Vulgar Betrayal on a Muslim community near Chicago. The FBI suspected them of funneling money to terrorist organizations. None of those suspicions were ever confirmed. No terror charges were ever laid. Last April Carol spoke with Assia Boundaoui, the film's director, when her documentary premiered at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto. Here's an encore presentation of that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

CO: Assia, first of all, welcome to the As It Happens studio.

ASSIA BOUNDAOUI: Thank you so much for having me.

CO: Your documentary begins with one of your own encounters with the FBI when you were just a teenager. Can you describe that night and how you felt?

AB: I remember we had you just moved into a house down the block from where I grew up. And it was a was a new block and they had just put in some of the light poles and electric poles and all that construction was happening during the day. And I remember late at night —my bedroom window face the street — and seeing like lights shining into the bedroom window and being really startled and looking out the window and seeing an unmarked van and men in like a utility truck working on the light pole. And I was confused as to why that was happening in the middle of the night and really worried why are these guys out here on this ladder doing something with the light pole in the middle of the night? And I went to my mother's bedroom and I woke her up and I said “This is happening outside the window. What should we do, should we call the police?” My mother was not at all startled and she said you know “Don't worry, it's not a big deal. It's probably just the FBI go back to bed.”

[LAUGHTER]

CO: That moment at the beginning when your mother casually tells you that, did you have any idea the degree to which your community was under surveillance and that everybody knew?

AB: It was something that was so ubiquitous that, you know, it was just part of our daily lives and it would interfere in our daily lives in this way that almost seemed normal. It was such a part of the way we grew up, it was normalized — we would see cars parked on the end of the street. So it was just the way we grew up. Like some kids grow up being warned not to talk to strangers because their parents are afraid of them getting kidnapped, like our parents were afraid of the FBI and we were warned not to talk to the FBI and to be careful. And so it was just, you know, I don't remember anyone ever telling me we were under surveillance or the FBI suspects us, it was just something I always knew.

CO: At what point did you learn about this operation, ‘Operation Vulgar Betrayal?’ The name alone is — when you discover that is the name of an operation of investigation in your own community it must be horrifying. What point did you learn that actually existed?

AB: I started by going door to door and sort of getting people's anecdotal stories in my neighbourhood. There were stories people had whispered but not really talked out loud about and I wanted to collect everyone's witness testimony. And I thought these anecdotal stories were important. And then I wanted to understand how these stories are connected. What actually happened here? What was the FBI officially up to in our community? I started by going to the library and going through microfilm and doing research online. And I happened upon the name of the investigation ‘Operation Vulgar Betrayal’ that started in Chicago in the 90s and went on for more than a decade. And the name alone was startling to me. You know, I mean, how do you name an investigation Vulgar Betrayal? You've already decided that these people are traitors, that they've betrayed their country. And that's the premise that you're entering into that investigation on. What kind of investigation really is it? And knowing and learning the name was just the beginning of understanding this very complicated investigation that really was premised mostly on profiling, profiling of this religious and ethnic community.

CO: And what were they looking for?

AB: They were looking for terrorism. It was terrorism a financing investigation. They made the assumption that all of our institutions — our mosques, our charities, our schools — were basically just one big front for terrorism, that they were raising money and sending money abroad for terrorism financing. You know, after 12 years of investigation, more than that in fact, not a single person was ever convicted of anything related to terrorism in my community. They never found that any of these charities were doing what they suspected or these mosques were doing what they suspected. And yet these investigations continued and persisted way longer than they ought to. And that was because of 9/11. So, you know, in 2000 they were realizing that there was nothing really coming out of these investigations. They haven't found the evidence that they suspected and they were in the process of wrapping them up and closing the investigations and then the 9/11 attacks happened and the environment, the atmosphere in the country changed and they reopened these failed investigations and they continued for another decade.

CO: It's interesting that your community in Bridgeview, Illinois is predominantly Palestinian. And that's they were looking for connections to the Palestinian community to the Middle East. Is that what your sense was?

AB: That was part of it. At first that was the premise, that because the community is predominantly Palestinian American this was — these investigations started in 1993 around the time of the first intifada — that this had something to do with that. But, in fact, while I continue to dig and when I started to get documents from the FBI about these investigations, I found that in fact it began in 1985. Eight years before there was an investigation that started looking at the Muslim Student Associations, which are the organizations at universities and colleges — student organizations, and looking at you know the largest American Muslim organizations in the country starting in the 80s. And that was way before the Palestinian conflict had come to a head. So it was more than just Palestine, it was just the suspicion of immigrants, Muslim organizing and institutions in the country and just kind of blanket suspicion of all of them.

CO: But is there, just I mean, obviously it's a huge net they put out. We'll get into how intrusive and invasive this was into your lives. But at the same time was there no premise on which this was based? I mean there is money that they suspect is being funneled into terrorist organizations from Canada and the United States. I mean, was there no premise in which you think this was based?

AB: I think there was a premise in at least the investigation that started in 1993-1996, the premise was there is all of this activity, geopolitical events that are happening in Palestine and Israel, and we need to look at the communities abroad in the diaspora that are collecting money and sending money back home. And that's something immigrant communities do everywhere. They're concerned with their families that they left back home. They're concerned with the events happening in those places and they raise money for humanitarian causes for those places and that's actually something that is characteristic of our community — that has always been the case that immigrant communities do that. That they started looking at it as something suspicious that was part of the premise and started in the 90s.

CO: And after 9/11. I mean, what I'm getting at is that there is money that does go back to organizations who are sponsors of terror. And, as we know, the biggest victims of terrorism in the world are Muslims in other countries. So this, especially after 9/11, there was a lot of that kind of look. So do you think that that was the baseline? That there was some ok they maybe should have been looking for something, but it was how they did it and who they did it?

AB: I think that was a part of it. I think that also though, terrorism financing investigations are based on a false premise. They’re based on the premise that terrorism costs a lot of money and that you need international donors to sponsor it. But, in fact, what we know about terrorism, it's very localized, doesn't cost very much money and it's usually raised very, very locally. So what the FBI was doing in this time was using a mafia model of organized crime, chasing the money. And they started applying that to terrorism. Whether that was effective, many people have written about that that actually is not an effective way to chase terrorism at all, that it's very hard to trace the money and there's not that much money involved that's being raised for terrorism in any case. So I think the premise itself, on these terrorism financing investigations, were flawed.

CO: But the effect was to intimidate people?

AB: I mean, my conclusion was that yeah, when you put such a large and wide net around an entire community, that the effect is that is that. People feel threatened, they feel targeted and they don't understand why. And the long term effects of that are hyper-paranoia, are fragmentation of trust within a community, the networks that hold the community itself are now under suspicion and under the limelight and so people stop associating, people stop donating to those organizations. People felt safer not going to the mosque if there was so much heat on the mosque and staying home. So it's really had a very chilling effect in our community that people were afraid to associate or afraid to talk to each other about what was going on because you didn't know if perhaps your neighbour was an informant or had they talked to the FBI. And so what it does to a tight-knit community is it goes after the foundations of the connections, of the relationships between people. And that starts to fragment. And that was really — that was the most detrimental impact that these investigations have had on us.

CO: You're listening to as it happens and I'm speaking with Assia Boundaoui. She's the director of a new documentary film called "The Feeling Of Being Watched," which just made its international premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto. Assia, you were describing how people were so afraid to talk about this and you were teasing this out, that you wanted them to know. But then you took the next step you say OK what we need to do is to now go to the FBI and say “What are you up to? I want the documents. I want to know everything you've been looking at.” And that's where you began your first investigation was your own community to know the extent to which this existed and then to actually take that to the FBI and say I want to know what you're up to. How did you go about that?

AB: Well, there's a unique law in the United States, I think they have a similar one in Canada, called the Freedom of Information Act — the FOIA — which grants the public access to government records. And you can ask for government records on yourself and on your family and on your community. So I'm a journalist and what I wanted really was to find hard evidence that would validate or invalidate the stories that I was hearing in my community. And I started by trying to reach first person sources. I reached out to dozens of FBI agents trying to get people to talk on the record. I had a few off the record meetings but, en masse, people wanted to distance themselves from this investigation, didn't want to talk on the record about it. So my next step was to try to find primary documents that would speak to this. So I started to file Freedom of Information Acts. And I thought like okay people don't want to talk about this my only chance of finding out exactly what happened is to get the records themselves. And that was such a long process, long bureaucratic process, basically took years from the moment I filed the first Freedom of Information Act to the moment that I got the first document. And, in fact, I ended up having to sue the FBI in federal court to get these records in an expedited manner.

CO: You did, I think, the impossible from the filmmakers point of view, is that you made documents look dramatic. You had tables covered with tens-of-thousands of pages of documents that you finally got after you wrested out of control — had to pry it out of their fingers and you had all these things, these stickies all over the walls and everything. And it's just when you start to put it together like that in the rooms that you took over and put it in your Mum's house I think, it is extraordinary what you start to put together. Can you describe what you began to understand about the degree to which your community was under surveillance?

AB: Sure. So, basically the FBI admitted to having 33,123 pages of records about the surveillance of my community in this investigation ‘Operation Vulgar Betrayal.’ And, you know, it's not — there is no one document that has all of the answers in it. And I think maybe in the beginning I was looking for that one, you know, the red flag that would show that what the FBI did was so clearly wrong that they had violated our rights. I realized eventually getting all of the documents said it was a picture that it was painting, all of these documents together. And they're heavily redacted, mind you. There are a lot of white holes in them. A lot of pages have been redacted entirely. So it's a lot of context clues that you have to take. But it was a picture that was becoming clearer and clearer the more documents I got. And that was just it was a picture of, essentially, the FBI thought there was a mass conspiracy that was happening among American Muslim institutions, all over the country, not just in Chicago that this conspiracy involved financing terrorism overseas. And there were there were hundreds of people's names on these lists. There were dozens of mosques and elementary schools, my elementary school was listed by name and these documents. They had like a parent-teacher conference like meetings, minutes for parent-teacher conferences in the file, like what is the parent-teacher conference at my elementary school — what does that have to do with this criminal investigation? So it was wild. Basically, they cast the net so far they collected thousands of pages of documents on law abiding citizens en masse. And the problem with that is these files exist in perpetuity in the FBI headquarters and they are shareable and accessible to dozens of other American agencies, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies. So once you have a record it exists forever. And it's not an innocence collection of information, this information is collected with a very particular purpose and it doesn't go away, it stays. So what happens when you collect this much records on people? This is very scary and very dangerous that law abiding citizens have records like this in these agencies and that they will always exist there.

CO: As you pursued this investigation, as a journalist you are very open about it as one must be and transparent, but very sinister things began to happen to you. I mean, and you didn't know if you were just being paranoid, and often you asked the people are you just being paranoid or did you really think the FBI is watching you. And then you were going through the same things. What is going on? I feel that there is something spooky going on. And you didn't know if you're being paranoid. Tell us about some of these more sinister things that began to happen to you?

AB: I mean, we are we are making a film about surveillance while we were under surveillance essentially. And the deeper we got into the investigation, the deeper I got into the rabbit hole, the more paranoid I became. But I think justifiably paranoid, too. So, you know, at a certain point — and this happened exactly when I started reaching out to a lot of the FBI agents — I got to alert from Google. Google basically warned me that government attackers had hacked into my accounts, my Google drives, my e-mail, my calendar account and that I had been hacked. And that was shocking because usually you don't know you're under surveillance until after the fact. It's very rare that in the moment that it's happening you're alerted that it's happening.

CO: And that's possibly because they want you to know that

AB: Maybe. Yeah. And this is kind of the theory that I come to at the very end, that all of this overt surveillance, you know, like there's nothing really secretive about it. This overt surveillance, maybe they wanted us to see them. Maybe they parked the cars down the street and they had this physical surveillance because they wanted us to see them? And this is sort of the conclusion I come to, that the paranoia we experienced was not an accidental effect. You know, perhaps that was the purpose, the purpose was to make people in the community paranoid, to rattle the cage and see if any criminals come out of the woodworks. And the question I ask is, what happens when you rattle the cage and there are no criminals inside? What does that do to the people in the cage? And I think that some of that paranoia, when there are cars parked in front of your house, when you see people taking photographs of you from the car, that that is intentional they want you to see them watching you. And that you know at a certain point your paranoia is as effective tool of control as the surveillance because you start monitoring yourself —you walk a different way, you talk a different way, you interact differently when you think people are watching you. And that in itself is a form of control.

CO: There is a scene, which happens while you're doing your investigation, where the police arrive in your community en masse, and not just police, armed police at night, in the dark — but they arrive with an armoured vehicle, a militarized vehicle that goes down the streets. And what was going, what was happening?

AB: At the time we were told — this happened in Ramadan — there were night prayers going on. So there were at least 2,000 people in the mosque that night. And suddenly, you know, we were at home and I heard helicopters outside and then saw two thought to and I said “Oh no, what's happening?” The first thing we assumed was — this was shortly after Trump was elected we thought maybe this was a hate crime, that people were coming to protest our existence or that we were under attack somehow. And then quickly we realized no that the presence is all police and it's like militarized police, what are they doing here? On the night of they told us this was a bank robbery and three men with assault rifles were loose in the community and that's why they needed that police presence. A lot of people questioned that story because there were no ambulances, there were no EMTs around. If there are people loose with assault rifles shouldn’t there be EMTs? And moreover, the police went and searched inside of a lot of people's houses and there weren't people home. There were young teens home at the time. There were no warrants and there were searches made of people's houses, allegedly searching for these bank robbers that were on the loose. The next day in the press they said the official response from law enforcement was this was not a bank robbery. I contacted both the FBI and the police asking them what was this. They said this is an active criminal investigation and we cannot tell you exactly what's going on. So given our experience with law enforcement in the community, a lot of people assume this was a drill. This is a drill for law enforcement to prepare for something happening when they would need to lock down the neighbourhood and search people's houses, or maybe this was just an excuse to get into certain people's houses. There is such a lack of trust of law enforcement that we had all types of rumors going around and nobody ever confirmed it to us. They came into our neighbourhood and did this and law enforcement never felt they had any obligation to explain to us what that was about. And this is, in my opinion, part of this way that they just treat our community. It's a lack of respect that they can just come sort of and do whatever they want. And that they can count on people not saying anything about it. And I think that is like very exemplary of the relationship our community, and Muslim communities in the U.S., have had with law enforcement in general, that there is just a lack of trust and they don't tell us anything and we assume the worst.

CO: I’m speaking with Assia Boundaoui and you're listening to As It Happens. We are talking about her new documentary film called "The Feeling of Being Watched," which is that the hot docs film festival in Toronto. Assia, your mother, who is, I think, the star of the show, she's the most amazing character, and she's just so — just these moments of insight. But she gets a visit, someone comes to the house and she calls you about it, something very spooky. Tell us about the man who came looking for you at your mother's house?

AB: So essentially the lead FBI agent on Vulgar Betrayal showed up at my mother's house shortly after we won our lawsuit against the FBI and came around asking for me and came to my mom's house and knocked on her door and talked to her looking for me and gave her a number for me to call, not an official FBI business card, just his name scribbled down on a post it note and gave it to my mom.

CO: Bob.

AB: Bob, just Bob. That was it. And so Bob and a phone number and immediately I was like I think this is, this was the lead FBI agent that is getting in touch with me.

CO: But he said something very odd to you in this phone call, which is that oh I didn't know you lived on that street, my old stomping grounds.

AB: Yeah.

CO: What does he mean by that?

AB: I mean, this is the lead FBI agent who conducted surveillance in this community, so he knew — he was back in the end the place where he conducted surveillance for decades.

CO: This is his workplace, it’s your home, this was street where you live, where all these people live and try to just carry on their lives. And for him this is his workplace.

AB: And mind you he has not been active like on ‘Vulgar Betrayal’ for more than 15 years. So he's an active FBI agent but he hasn't worked on this investigation. He was removed from this investigation for more than 15 years, so that he still feels ownership almost of this story, of my neighbourhood, of what I'm doing, was really wild to me that he wanted me to know that he knew what I was up to. And if that was meant to scare me away from what I was doing, it wasn't effective. And this whole film has been about process and about showing the journalistic process. This is not just about the result. It's about how we got there and what we needed to do to access the truth. And we felt that him showing up was part of that process and needed to be included in the film.

CO: The police depend on us, on citizens to help them. They turn to people for information to report on things. Do you think at any point that the police, the FBI, recognize that what they do is the opposite here. That the community you come from are people who are afraid of them? Your mother even says that the biggest effect here is fear. And that drives you in the not out. You don't trust them and they actually diminish their ability to do their jobs because of what they did in this community.

AB: Absolutely. I think it's just like plain and simple — constitutional rights aside, human rights aside — it's just not effective policing. It’s just not effective national security policies. Yeah, it was not effective what they did. And that if you want to be effective law enforcement you need to have a relationship of trust with the communities around you, that you need to be able to come in and say hey we're having this problem or actually count on people to say when there is a problem to come to you. And it creates a lot of other issues beyond terrorism. You know, there are domestic violence issues in the community, people don't call the police. You know, there are a lot of issues when we do need the police because, in fact, it's their obligation to protect us too, you know, not just to protect America from us — but to protect us. And so you have a lot of community issues, and I've talked to social service organizations in the community that talk about this, that it creates a lot of other issues within the community when you don't trust the police, when you don't feel you can call them. And that's a problem because, in fact, they're obligated to serve us as well.

CO: Have people in your community, have they seen your documentary?

AB: Some of them have. I showed it to my family and the people in the film before we finished.

CO: And how do you feel about it?

AB: It's kind of amazing, actually. I feel like they walked out of the screenings with their head held high in a way. This was a thing we whispered about, and I think also internalized a lot of shame about. When people when someone tells you you're bad, you're bad, you’re bad for such a long time, at a certain point you start to believe that and that becomes the way you look at yourself. And I think that we needed to say no there's no shame about this, to stop whispering and talk out loud about it.

CO: There's nothing to hide.

AB: There's nothing to hide, there's nothing to hide. And even though you're afraid you should talk out loud about it because it will help you be less afraid. So I think that there's a real healing that is happening around talking about this out loud, and taking this from the dirty little secret and putting it out in the public and making other people aware that had no idea things like this happen, in other communities, that this is happening and that if you experienced this you have nothing to be ashamed of and that, in fact, sharing your story and realizing it didn't just happen to you happened to her and her and him — that there is a power in that collective story. And I think that's what we're trying to do now get people to share these stories. And it validates their experience, in a way. People who just maybe thought I'm just crazy paranoid, it validated them. No, you're not paranoid, this did happen and it wasn't right. It shouldn't have happened.

CO: The film is "The Feeling of Being Watched". And if you get a chance to watch it you should because it's an extraordinary documentary. Assia, thank you so much for coming.

AB: Thank you so much for having me.

NaD: That was Assia Boundaoui, the director of the documentary "The Feeling of Being Watched." She spoke to Carol last April in the As It Happens studio.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

February 15, 2019 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This