Ex-CSIS officer briefs U.S. congressional staff on India and transnational crime

A former senior CSIS intelligence officer warned U.S. congressional representatives and staff in Washington Tuesday that foreign states such as India are increasingly using transnational criminal groups to outsource surveillance, coercion, intimidation and lethal violence. Dan Stanton, who spent 32 years in Canada’s spy agency and is now director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa, told a Capitol Hill briefing that this country’s experience with transnational repression shows hostile countries are using criminal organizations to target diaspora groups because it gives them plausible deniability. Mr. Stanton’s remarks to U.S. politicians and their aides come a week…