Ep 29 Spring Cleaning for Russian Embassies ... And Our Facebook Pages

Stephanie and Craig focus on this week's developments in the aftermath of the Salisbury chemical weapons attempted murder. They talk about the political and legal dimensions of the coordinated expulsion of Russian "undeclared" intelligence officers in Russian embassies and consulates in a large number of Western nations. Among the issues they discuss: What can a diplomat do in terms of collecting information? When does it cross a line? And how does "persona non grata" work in terms of expelling diplomats.  We then look at the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal and welcome to the podcast Professor Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Teresa discusses her recent blog analysis of this case (http://www.teresascassa.ca/). Stephanie and Craig then discuss how revelations in this matter might feed ongoing debate about whether relatively permissive rules allowing CSIS and CSE access to "publicly available" information proposed in C-59 (still sitting in committee in the Commons! Sigh) should be tightened. Thanks for Teresa for joining us.  And don't forget: if you think what we're doing with this podcast is useful, let us know on iTunes reviews!