Canada may join U.S.-led energy, environment security project

A sour, small part of me says that worthwhile portion of this effort will soon morph into a tool for criminalizing environmentalists. From the The Canadian Press: Canada may join a new, U.S.-led effort to gather and share intelligence about threats to energy and environmental security, a newly released document shows. The project, spearheaded by the U.S. Energy Department's intelligence and counterintelligence unit, is billed as a "radically different" way of understanding security matters.

The Energy and Environmental Security Ecosystem, or EESE, will include a members only website for governments, industry and experts to swap information and make contacts. There may also be face-to-face meetings. The project, to be launched next year, is meant to improve understanding of the security implications of energy and environmental issues, says the website's architect.

"The whole purpose of the site is to create an online space that fosters discussions, conversations, collaborations at the nexus of energy, environment and national security," said Ashish Soni of the University of Southern California. "Let's say there's something happening in Latin America. Some huge environmental story or some big shift in some energy futures, energy prices or a shortage of energy in some way.

"The notion is to bring that information to the surface and get people informed and made aware of what's going on across the world." Canada dispatched officials to Herndon, Va., in May for meetings to discuss the project, a report from Natural Resources Canada shows….

Placa George Orwell in Barcelona, Spain is watched by video cameras, shot by fibercool, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0)