Attention Fliers: Canada’s Electronic Spy Agency is Following You

[Turk]

January 31, 2014 05:41 Edited time: January 31, 2014 06:21

Documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden show the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) used airport Wi-Fi to track passengers from around the world.

Travelers passing through a major Canadian airport were potentially caught up in a vast electronic surveillance net, which allowed the nation’s electronic spy agency to track the wireless devices of thousands of airline passengers - even for days after they had departed the terminal, a document obtained by CBC News revealed.

The document shows the spy agency was then able to track travelers for a week or more as the unwitting passengers, together with their wireless devices, visited other Wi-Fi "hot spots" in locations across Canada - and even across the border at American airports.

The CBS report said any place that offered Wi-Fi internet access, including "airports, hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, libraries, ground transportation hubs" was vulnerable to the surveillance operation.

After reviewing details of the leaked information, one of Canada's leading authorities on internet security says the secret operation was almost certainly illegal.

"I can't see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law, under our Charter, under CSEC's mandates," Ronald Deibert told CBC News:

The CSES is specifically tasked with gathering foreign intelligence by intercepting overseas phone and internet traffic, and is forbidden by law from collecting information on Canadians - or foreigners in Canada - without a court warrant.

As CSEC Chief John Forster recently stated: "I can tell you that we do not target Canadians at home or abroad in our foreign intelligence activities, nor do we target anyone in Canada.

"In fact, it's prohibited by law. Protecting the privacy of Canadians is our most important principle."

However analysts who have had access to the document say that airline passengers in a Canadian airport were clearly on the territory of Canada.

CSEC spokesperson Lauri Sullivan told the Star, an online Canadian news outlet, that the “classified document in question is a technical presentation between specialists exploring mathematical models built on everyday scenarios to identify and locate foreign terrorist threats.”

Disclosure of the program puts those techniques at risk, she said.

Teaming up with NSA

Early assessment of the leaked information indicates the passenger tracking operation was a trial run of a powerful new software program CSEC was developing with help from its American partner, the National Security Agency.

The technology was to be shared with the so-called “Five Eyes” surveillance bloc composed of Canada, the United States, Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

In the document, CSEC described the new spy technology as "game-changing," saying it could be used for powerful surveillance on "any target that makes occasional forays into other cities/regions."

Sources told CBC News the “technologies tested on Canadians in 2012 have since become fully operational.”

CSEC claims "no Canadian or foreign travellers' movements were 'tracked,'" although CBC News questioned in its report why the comment "put the word "tracked" in quotation marks."
http://rt.com/news/canada-snowden-spying-nsa-airport-442
Not only US, UK, Canada but also most likely all other Anglo-American (AU, Ireland, NZ) Spy agencies involved in this shame, too :) Time will show.

[dMog]

well now not that i agree with any of this but you not think China is doing this exact same thing too..or russia...or any other country that "knows" other countries are out to get them...paranoia.,.. real or imagined does not host itself on single individual people