Government Scrambling To Explain CSEC Spying

Recent revelations from the Edward Snowden leaks, published by CBC with Glenn Greenwald. Show that CSEC (Communications Security Establishment Canada) has been spying on travelers in Canadian airports.

“The CSEC has reportedly tracked thousands of people by using information obtained from their mobile devices, through the free wifi service at an unnamed airport.The spying did not end at the airport doors either. The CSEC reportedly was able to track the people for weeks. Whenever the device was connected to a wifi signal, anywhere in Canada. The CSEC was able to track them.”
Source

Government responses to this information has been well. Strange and seemingly confused.

The first response from a government source came from Ontario’s privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian. She stated:

“It is really unbelievable that CSEC would engage in that kind of surveillance of Canadians. Of us.

“I mean that could have been me at the airport walking around… This resembles the activities of a totalitarian state, not a free and open society.”

Two days later MP Paul Calandra made these comments.

The lies are endless is his comments, and it truly displays how politicians believe that the Canadian population is out of touch with reality.

Then in an even stranger move. The next day after Calandra’s comments, the globe and mail reported:

Security officials defend snooping on wireless information at airport

Canada’s top security and spy-agency officials have given the first detailed public defence of secret government surveillance programs that collect telecommunications “metadata.”

“We wouldn’t be able to find or locate our targets without it,” John Forster, chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, told a parliamentary committee.

The head of the foreign-intelligence electronic-eavesdropping agency, Mr. Forster said snooping on metadata is fundamental for the Canadian government to pick out foreign terrorists and other targets “in a sea of billion and billions of communications traversing the globe.”

For nearly a decade, Canada’s surveillance sleuths at CSEC have been collecting and analyzing Internet Protocol addresses, phone logs and other metadata. Government lawyers have told them this kind of surveillance is legally sound – and not the same as illegally wiretapping phone calls or steaming open letters.

This means that standard privacy strictures – such as not intercepting Canadian material without warrants – do not necessarily apply. In the search for foreign intelligence “targets” outside Canada, CSEC analysts are allowed to use metadata regardless of whether the underlying communications originate in Canada.

Parliamentarians were oblivious to this because they are not cleared to briefed on secret laws that allow such practices.
Continue Reading

Talk about mixed signals! It resembles a “totalitarian state”, no it is all lies brought forth by a “porn spy” (whatever that is), then we defend are snooping. The only thing that is clear about the “snooping” is that our governments not happy about the information becoming public and are scrambling to find a way to explain this whole thing away. To get people to forget about their illegal spying programs.