Dr. Ann Cavoukian and Avner Levin, Director of the Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute at Ryerson University, wrote the following important op-ed for this morning’s National Post: Last week, Canadians learned that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) conducted a sweeping 2012 mobile, WiFi-driven warrantless surveillance operation. The operation involved the processing of at least two […]
Kent Roach wrote an insightful editorial for this morning’s Ottawa Citizen. He suggests that Canadians need to revisit the vague laws which govern our surveillance: Conclusions of legality are only as good as the underlying law. CSEC’s mandate is broad. It includes acquiring information from the global information infrastructure for the purpose of providing foreign […]
The Globe and Mail published a powerful editorial this morning arguing that there is little difference between spying on metadata and what is considered traditional spying: In the normal course of events, your private possessions, including your information, cannot be snooped into by the state except when authorized by a judge. When it comes to […]
The Toronto Star‘s Thomas Walkom spoke with Commissioner Cavoukian yesterday about mass surveillance and published a powerful column about the methods of CSEC: First, as Ontario information and privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian points out, so-called metadata contains detailed information about individuals. In a July report, Cavoukian said metadata snooping allows the security forces to determine who […]
Yesterday, Commissioner Cavoukian spoke with CBC News (above) and Global News about the urgent need for oversight of CSEC at her International Privacy Day Symposium in Toronto. The conference featuring a variety of civil liberties and security experts is available to view here. Earlier in the week, the Commissioner spoke with Howard Green on BNN’s Headline News, […]
Commissioner Cavoukian contributed the following opinion piece to this morning’s Globe and Mail: Technology allows our every move to be tracked, collected and catalogued by our governments. U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of reforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) demonstrates that free and open societies need a candid discourse on the surveillance powers of […]
CBC’s the National raised questions this weekend about how the Canadian government should respond now that Obama has publicly announced NSA reforms. In the story above, Commissioner Cavoukian expresses her deep concern about CSEC’s lack of transparency and accountability. This Sunday’s New York Times carefully examined Obama’s proposed overhaul and suggested that this is simply the […]
The amusing comic above is from Ruben Bolling’s comic, Tom the Dancing Bug. The humour does not end there as apparently the Pentagon may suspect that big data is a threat to national security. As Obama prepares to address Americans this morning, two articles discuss Canada’s silence on the surveillance issues. Michael Geist published […]
This morning’s Guardian features the results of a poll which asked Americans for their thoughts about the NSA’s data collection programs. It found that 59% said they would like to see an end to the mass collection of metadata and phone records. The poll clearly indicates a dissatisfaction with the status quo: A poll by the […]
Toronto, ON, January 15, 2014 — The Edward Snowden revelations have highlighted how little Canadians know about their own government’s surveillance operations. The questionable activities of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and its “Five Eyes” partner, the NSA, have shown that we are vulnerable to both indiscriminate data collection and warrantless surveillance. There has […]
