A new Snowden leak reported on the CBC reveals that secretive Canadian spy-agency CSEC was illegally spying on Canadians by collecting information from the free Wifi service in major airports and cross-referencing it with intercepted information from Wifi at cafes, libraries and other public places in Canada.
The agency is prohibited from spying on Canadians without a warrant, but it captured data on all travellers in a Canadian airport, ensuring that it captured an enormous amount of sensitive information about Canadians. It claims that because it did not "target" Canadians (that is, it spied on everyone, regardless of nationality), they somehow weren't "spying" on Canadians.
The CBC article features a brilliant and incandescent Ron Diebert (who runs the Citizenlab centre at the University of Toronto and wrote one of the best books on Internet surveillance, Black Code), and an equally outraged Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario privacy commissioner, who is one of the most savvy privacy advocates in any government.
Indeed, the spy agency boasts in its leaked document that, in an apparently separate pilot project, it obtained access to two communications systems with more than 300,000 users, and was then able to "sweep" an entire mid-sized Canadian city to pinpoint a specific imaginary target in a fictional kidnapping.
The document dated May 2012 is a 27-page power-point presentation by CSEC describing its airport tracking operation.
While the document was in the trove of secret NSA files retrieved by Snowden, it bears CSEC's logo and clearly originated with the Canadian spy service.
CSEC used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers: Edward Snowden documents [Greg Weston, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher/CBC News]
report this ad
Tea Party-dominated states across America passed laws banning cities from providing high-speed internet access to their residents, even in places where the cable/telco duopoly had decided not to sell broadband; last year, the FCC issued an order stating that these laws were null and void.
The Citizens United ruling says that organizations like the NRA can spend as much as they want to support political candidates, provided that they don’t coordinate with the campaign, which means that it’s just a happy coincidence that the day after Donald Trump called on gun enthusiasts to assassinate Hillary Clinton and federal judges, the […]
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, “I just got back from the big debate on is free law like free beer that has been brewing for months at the American Bar Association over the question of who gets to read public safety codes and on what terms.”
When the mood strikes you and you’re looking to light up, you shouldn’t have to hunt around for all the things you need: your pipe, your grinder, your favorite munchies, and so on. And with the Happy Kit, you won’t have to.This compact black case houses everything you need, including a grinder, a glass pipe, […]
Everybody knows that if you want to earn the big bucks these days, you need to learn how to code. Luckily, you don’t even need to spend thousands on grad school to make coding your career. The Entry-Level Python & JavaScript Programming Bundle is the easiest way to get started in programming in two of […]
Everything short of a ticket to Canada is here. Read on for the top 3 things you need to do to survive if ‘President Trump’ becomes real life.Start Your Own Business—Not Brought to You By Trump University This legitimate course bundle (they’ll even show you their tax returns) will teach you to make major cash without answering to […]
report this ad
