Post Tagged with: "surveillance"

Who Is Watching the Watchers?: Ten Questions About Canada’s Secret Metadata Surveillance Activities

The surveillance story may have started last week in the U.S. with the leak of several secret surveillance programs including massive surveillance of the metadata from all cellphone calls, but the Canadian questions continue to mount. The U.S. disclosures immediately raised questions about the possibility of Canadian involvement or the inclusion of Canadian data. Given the common communication infrastructure and the similarity between Canadian and U.S. laws, it seemed likely that Canada was engaged in much the same activities.

By Monday, the Globe was reporting that the CSEC has its own metadata surveillance program with approval granted through a ministerial directive from Defence Minister Peter MacKay in 2011. When questioned about the issue, MacKay sought to assure Canadians that the surveillance only involved foreign communications. Despite those assurances, the questions have continued to mount:

June 13, 2013 — 10 comments — News

20th Century Laws Meet 21st Century Surveillance: Why Metadata Surveillance is a Serious Concern

The concerns about telephone and Internet surveillance moved north yesterday as the Globe revealed that Canada has its own metadata surveillance program. The program was discontinued in 2008 after concerns that it could involve illegal surveillance of Canadians, but was secretly restarted in 2011. It is not clear what change sparked the policy reversal (if there was a reversal – some believe the program was never stopped). The issue was raised in the House of Commons, but the response from the government focuses on two claims: (1) that the surveillance does not target Canadians; and (2) that the data captured is metadata rather than content and therefore does not raise significant privacy issues.

Neither response should provide Canadians concerned for their privacy with much comfort as it increasingly apparent that Canada has 20th century protections in a world of 21st century surveillance.

June 11, 2013 — 6 comments — News

CBC’S Radio Noon Montreal: Government Surveillance Program Raises Alarms

I appeared on CBC’s Radio Noon Montreal to discuss the federal government’s electronic surveillance program. Also on the program were Colin Freeze and A.J. West. For audio of the interview click here.

June 10, 2013 — Comments are Disabled — News Interviews, Tv / Radio

Report Confirms Canada Has Its Own Phone Meta-Data and Internet Surveillance Program

Over the weekend, I posted a lengthy piece on why Canadians should be demanding answers about secret surveillance programs in the wake of the U.S. revelations about Verizon meta-data on all phone calls and the PRISM program that involves access to leading Internet company data. The focus of the piece […]

June 10, 2013 — 7 comments — News

Why Canadians Should Be Demanding Answers About Secret Surveillance Programs

Privacy and surveillance have taken centre stage this week with the revelations that U.S. agencies have been engaged in massive, secret surveillance programs that include years of capturing the meta-data from every cellphone call on the Verizon network (the meta-data includes the number called and the length of the call) as well as gathering information from the largest Internet companies in the world including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple in a program called PRISM. This lengthy post provides some background on the U.S. programs, but focuses primarily on the Canadian perspective, arguing that many of the same powers exist under Canadian law and that it is likely that Canadians have been caught up by these surveillance activities.

The first revelation came from a story by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, in which he reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting phone records from millions of Verizon customers each day. U.S. authorities have sought to downplay the significance of the “meta data” from the phone calls, but many experts note that meta data can be more revealing than the content of the call itself. The cell phone meta data collection appears to be authorized through provisions from the USA Patriot Act, which permits a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to order a business to produce certain documents. As Margot Kaminski explains, there are few safeguards over these programs.

June 8, 2013 — 22 comments — News