Citizenship and Immigration committee  Primarily U.S. foundations and individuals.... You know, we're actually a department, a centre within a larger organization called the International Freedom Education Foundation, and that's funded primarily by foundations and philanthropic individuals.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes and no. I think it's definitely sufficient for the purposes of screening, but biographical information and fingerprints are really just law enforcement mechanisms. On the intelligence side, which is what I have a little bit more experience with, you also need demographic information.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's used to corroborate with different agencies to see if an individual is on a certain list or what this individual pertains to. It's basically a measurement tool to look at corroborating information.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I mentioned a case earlier, which is essentially that agreements are popping up all over the world, particularly in this hemisphere, country to country. When I was in the military, some of the work we did in Colombia increasingly ran into forged passports. I'm not talking about very amateurishly forged passports; these were very professional, done particularly by Cuban intelligence agents, who were running a fraudulent passport ring allowing drug traffickers and now terrorists, Islamic extremists, to come into the country and change their identity.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The sound cut off a little, so I'm going to rephrase your question. It was to comment a little on the risks of privacy if enhancing intelligence information sharing abroad. Is that correct?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Aside from Islamic extremism and terrorism, I'd probably put cyber warfare as an imminent threat, which is not actually mutually exclusive, and narco-trafficking or, in a broader category, transnational criminal organizations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a good question. I'm not entirely sure, because in a way it doesn't directly travel through physical elements across borders. But it definitely is a law enforcement issue, and I definitely think that immigration authorities need to be aware if any means of cyber warfare are being transferred across the border.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Essentially with any type of biometric, or what I call intelligence collection, there's a privacy risk by default. The only way that I think you can measure that privacy risk is by enhancing the actual abilities—the technological as well as human capabilities—of the enforcement officers abroad.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Frankly, I didn't have a whole lot of time. I was actually just given notice of the testimony a week ago, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to work with anybody specifically. In the network that we work with, we tend to work with all kinds of think tanks in Washington, groups that are particularly focused on economic policies and security policies.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, of course, it's something I would be concerned with. If they're within the United States, they can obviously travel freely to Canada. I would probably be more concerned with those individuals who are coming directly from other countries and not directly from the United States.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Without stepping too far outside my area of expertise, and having never been a consular officer or worked in law enforcement directly, let me just say that the case you presented is essentially a case of civil liberties, if I'm not mistaken. It's a case of somebody trying to come across for a lawful and just purpose, but being denied on grounds that are maybe a little fuzzy.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, ma'am.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure, ma'am. The first is to establish evaluation measures for all immigration security policies—and I have them specified in the written testimony—that will allow people to understand that each security measure that's implemented does not go overboard and infringe on the liberties of Canadian citizens.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I'd say frankly all the countries that have bred Islamic extremist groups. Obviously many of those would be concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, but I want to bring to the committee's attention also groups that originate from Latin America. I've done quite a bit of research on the presence of Islamic extremism in Latin America, which has grown about tenfold in the last ten years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Unfortunately, I can't give you a specific case for Canada, but I will give you a specific case for the United States, which I believe kind of transcends throughout North America. Venezuela has essentially an agreement with Iran that allows for certain flights to travel to and from Caracas and Tehran that have no oversight.