Canada has renewed in 2011 a secret program to collect phone and Internet data, in the context of a scandal triggered last week in U.S. by the disclosure of surveillance programs in the press.
Peter MacKay, Canadian Minister of National Defence, signed in November 2011 a ministerial decree on the renewal of a secret electronic surveillance program, which was originally implemented in 2005 by the previous Liberal government.
The program, which aims to search through telephone records and phone datat for suspicious activity was suspended for a year in 2008, after the intervention of a Supreme Court judge. The magistrate expressed concern that the program provides an inadequate monitoring of Canadians, through large data trails obtained in the name of national security.
In the United States, the disclosure of a data collection program through nine Internet giants sparked a strong controversy last week, forcing President Barack Obama to clarify that it does not apply to American citizens. President Obama also announced that another telephone data collection program through Verizon is not related to the content of calls.
In Canada, data from Canadian citizens are often collected “accidental” officials admitted for The Globe and Mail newspaper. Officials from the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), an agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have given assurances that data collected are immediately destroyed.
In a 2011 report to the MoD, officials have defended the effectiveness of the program, specifying that it doesn’t target communication listening, but harvesting information related to specific telecommunications.
“Current privacy protection measures are adequate,” the same officials said, while trying to renew the program, according to The Globe and Mail.
“Metadata is used to isolate and identify foreign communications, as CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians,” said Ryan Foreman, a CSEC spokesman.
These revelations have caused concern for Privacy Commissioner of Canada, an officer of parliament who reports directly to the federal Parliament.
A spokeswoman said for AFP that Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner since 2003, intends to investigate the extent of these disclosures.
Canada is part of the information exchange program “Five Eyes” which also includes the U.S., UK, New Zealand and Australia, and therefore Stoddart wants to contact her counterparts in Washington, London, Wellington and Canberra, with the aim to carry out the investigation, her office announced.
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