With the important mid-term elections in the United States coming up fast, and the Administration taking a range of steps to tilt the playing field in the GOP’s favour, civil-liberties and democracy advocates are expressing grave concern over Canadian-owned Thomson Reuters’ new $125-million contract to provide US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with tools and support to gather information on citizens to, among other functions, prevent voter and immigration fraud. In the hands of a lawless, authoritarian regime, what could go wrong?
In a recent article, the National Observer describes the core of the company’s services to ICE as “a database that compiles individuals’ private information not normally accessible to law enforcement, which the company obtains through a variety of sources, including credit bureaus, court records and social media.” Other reports indicate that, at the company’s annual meeting in June, 95% of shareholders—notably banks, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds—voted down a resolution put forward by the BC Government Employees Union that called for an independent human rights assessment of how the company’s products are used by law enforcement and immigration services.
Focusing on the complicit role played by Canadian pension funds and banks, federal NDP leader Avi Lewis told the National Observer that the Thomson Reuters contract with ICE is a “reminder of how deeply entwined Canada’s elites are with US corporate and government interests. The savings of hardworking Canadians should not be used to make us complicit in these terrifying, authoritarian activities of the Trump regime.”
For its part, Thomson Reuters espouses in its “trust principles” a commitment to at all times preserve its “integrity, independence, and freedom from bias” and to “pay due regard to the many interests which it serves in addition to those of the media.” So far, the interests of investors and authoritarians are winning.