AN EXERCISE IN OBFUSCATION

  The Halifax Examiner is one of eight media organizations that has been petitioning the court to unseal documents related to the RCMP’s investigation of the April 18/19 mass murders.
   The documents in question are the “Information to Obtain”s (ITOs) a search warrant, which the RCMP submitted to a court in order to get various search warrants. As well, we hope to get the search warrants themselves, and the “return”s, which are lists of what was seized during the searches.
   This is a long and expensive count battle, as federal and provincial Crown attorneys are resisting us at every stage. On May 25, we received redacted versions of the first seven (of an expected 20 or so) ITOs. Those ITOs mostly (but not entirely) duplicate each other, and they are heavily redacted. 

    Thursday, the RCMP released a statement “to provide context to recently unsealed information.”
   I distrust RCMP statements, both on principle and through experience.
   The principle is that the RCMP shouldn’t be attempting to spin the public about material that could conceivably put the RCMP in an unfavourable light. Put simply: the RCMP’s PR wing is not a trustworthy narrator.