Warrantless Wiretapping

The warrantless wiretapping case involves President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and many other members of the Bush Administration. They are accused of eavesdropping on U.S. citizens during citizen's international phone calls without a warrant. A Judiciary Committee is investigating the charges and has issued a subpoena for documents related to President Bush's program.

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Domestic Spying In Canada: It Happened And It Is Still Happening

Written by mentarch on

From: pov-mentarch1.blogspot.com

I'll say it again: no one is safe and gratuitous, warrantless domestic spying is happening in Canada as well. Still not sure about this? Then I give you three "blasts from the past" articles for good measure.

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First, from May 1999 (links and emphasis added):

Canada a key snooper in huge spy network
Report says alliance is able to intercept nearly any message
by Jim Bronskill

Canada belongs to a global spy network capable of snooping on virtually every type of communication, from long-distance phone calls to Internet e-mail, says a newly published study.

The detailed report, prepared for the European Parliament, warns that the electronic intelligence agencies of the world's major English-speaking countries increasingly use the information they collect to gain an upper hand on economic rivals.

It concludes the surveillance web controlled by the UKUSA alliance -- Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand -- has evolved into a highly advanced network that automatically sifts through the vast bulk of the messages that traverse the globe daily.

"Comprehensive systems exist to access, intercept and process every important form of communications, with few exceptions", says the report, by Edinburgh-based researcher Duncan Campbell, a longtime observer of the intelligence world.

Canada is represented in the alliance by the Communications Security Establishment, an ultra-secret wing of the Defence Department with headquarters in an Ottawa office building.

The report, Interception Capabilities 2000, was approved as a working document by the Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel of the European Parliament at a meeting in Strasbourg, France, earlier this month.

Mr. Campbell's study raises thorny questions about the scope of global spy operations and their potential to violate privacy.

It is the latest in a string of books and articles in recent years to shine a light on the inner workings of the shadowy UKUSA alliance.

Citing numerous sources, Mr. Campbell reveals new information about the ECHELON computer system that helps Canada's CSE and its alliance partners process the mountains of data collected by monitoring satellites, microwave radio relays, undersea cables and the Internet.

The heightened scrutiny is a welcome development, said Wayne Madsen, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"I think everyone should be asking questions about their intelligence agencies", he said. "Why do they exist, and what are they doing? The more people that ask questions the better."

The UKUSA partnership emerged out of co-operation between members during the Second World War, when signals intelligence, or SIGINT in spy parlance, proved instrumental in helping the Allies triumph.

For decades the alliance's primary purpose was to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies. But the Cold War's end has seen a shift towards collection of information about terrorism, organized crime and, on a more controversial note, an increasing flow of data on economic dealings and scientific developments.

(Read the rest here)

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Then - from December 2005 (links and emphasis added):

Canada also allows spying on citizens
Andrew Mitrovica

In the so-called war on terror, it's disturbingly clear that the ends justify the means.

It is also evident that for George Bush and the cadre of intelligence "experts" north and south of the border, civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law are minor irritants that can be dismissed with an arbitrary wave of the hand.

More evidence of this emerged this past week when The New York Times revealed that days after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush secretly ordered his spy services to eavesdrop on an untold number of Americans without a court order.

News of the possibly illegal domestic espionage authorized by the president has unleashed a firestorm of criticism. There will undoubtedly be Congressional hearings and a possible criminal investigation into the type of spying reminiscent of Richard Nixon's notorious dirty tricks.

Bush and his supporters remain, of course, unrepentant, insisting that the ends do indeed justify the means. Others rightly argue that an imperial president must not be permitted to unilaterally subvert the rule of law in the pursuit of villains or terrorists. To countenance this would effectively grant unlimited and unchecked powers to the executive branch.

The vigorous and necessary debate presently being waged in the United States over the extent to which intelligence services may exercise their extraordinary resources and powers is not, regrettably, mirrored in Canada.

There was pathetically little attention paid among Members of Parliament, civil libertarians and journalists when the federal government moved unilaterally four years ago to lift the ban on the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) — our little-known cyberspace spy service — to intercept the e-mail and cellphone traffic of persons living in Canada.

Without so much as a scintilla of debate in the House of Commons, Ottawa granted an immensely powerful and largely unaccountable spy service the authority to spy on cyber communications in Canada without a court order.

The failure of our politicians to offer up even a whiff of protest to this draconian step is as shameful as Bush's ill-conceived actions.

To be sure, the usual cabal of academics and media-anointed intelligence experts has trotted out the shopworn excuses to defend this affront to Canadians' civil liberties and human rights in the malleable name of national security.

Our secret services, they say, were being unnecessarily "handcuffed" by outdated laws that prevent our intrepid spies from keeping tabs on terrorists lurking in our midst.

This is drivel. Our spy services don't require new powers and money to do their job. What they are in desperate need of is reform and effective oversight.

(Read the rest here)

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And last, but not least - also from December 2005 (links, emphasis added):

Ottawa can eavesdrop on Canadians under law
By Estanislao Oziewicz

Canada's anti-terrorism law opened the door to secret eavesdropping on Canadians and others inside Canada, the same kind of activity that is causing a furor in the United States, intelligence and legal experts say.

U.S. President George W. Bush is under fire after revelations that he authorized the National Security Agency to monitor international telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans and others to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants usually required for domestic spying.

Both Republican and Democratic party legislators say Mr. Bush may have violated the 1978 U.S. law that makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens without court approval and have called on Congress to investigate.

In Canada, the Criminal Code maintained an absolute prohibition against intercepting "private communications," meaning any communication that originated or terminated in Canada, without specific court-ordered warrants.

But that all changed after the Anti-Terrorism Act was proclaimed four years ago in the wake of 9/11. The omnibus anti-terrorism legislation now allows the clandestine Canadian Security Establishment to intercept private communications when directing its activities against "foreign entities" located abroad.

The CSE does not need to go to a court to get such authorization. All it needs to do is get permission from the Minister of Defence.

(Read the rest here)

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And if you think that because the Anti-Terrorism Act remains to be renewed/extended means that any and all warrantless domestic spying has stopped, then you really are a lost fool.

If only because you forget the ever convenient rationale used by police/security agencies to spy "at large" on their citizens (recent examples here, here and here) - the very stuff of security surveillance states.

How else would we get this in Canada?

No two ways about it.

(Cross-posted at ACR)

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