CSEC insists its activities all legal
NDP demands data on domestic spying
A day after a report raised questions about whether Canada’s electronic eavesdropping agency may have illegally targeted Canadians’ private communications, a spokesman for Communications Security Establishment Canada insisted that its activities “have always been found to be in compliance with the law.”
Still, the Opposition urged the defence minister to “come clean” on what the government knew about possible domestic spying.
“Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson needs to release all information related to this spying immediately,” NDP defence critic Jack Harris said in a statement.
A report tabled in Parliament Wednesday by retired judge Robert Decary, the agency’s watchdog, noted that a “small number of records suggested the possibility that some activities may have been directed at Canadians, contrary to the law.”
But Decary said he was unable to reach a definitive conclusion because a number of CSEC records related to those activities were “unclear or incomplete.”
Ryan Foreman, a CSEC spokesman, said Thursday that the records in question dated back to the early 2000s and were related to spy activities directed at a “remote foreign location.”
“This conclusion does not indicate that CSEC has acted unlawfully,” Foreman said. “It indicates that certain material upon which the commissioner would have relied for his assessment was incomplete or not available for a number of reasons.”
Foreman said CSEC has since upgraded several of its systems to store and retain information better.
CSEC’s chief mandate is the collection of electronic communications from foreign intelligence targets. It also helps to protect vital information held by the federal government.
The agency is forbidden from spying on Canadians, no matter where they are in the world. It is also prohibited from eavesdropping on individuals within Canada.
“CSEC respects this Foreman said.
Julie Di Mambro, Nicholson’s spokeswoman, echoed that statement, saying in an email that the privacy of Canadians is of the “utmost importance. CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians anywhere in the world or at any person in Canada,” she said.
Questions surrounding CSEC’s activities come at a time when the U.S. government has been embroiled in controversy over the collection of thousands of Internet communications by Americans.
prohibition,” The federal government has already removed more than 7,500 failed asylum claimants this year, 60 per cent of them to countries listed as “safe” under new legislation aimed at cracking down on so-called bogus refugees.
The deportations come amid growing concern from refugee advocates over the unprecedented zeal they say immigration enforcement officers have brought to the job ever since the Conservatives won a majority two years ago, and particularly over the last eight months since the new asylum system was implemented.
“I think there’s an emphasis on enforcing measures against people, whatever the human cost of it,” said Janet Dench, executive director of Canadian Council for Refugees.
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers, she argued, have been intimidating claimants even before their deportation and many have had their request for a stay of removal on serious health grounds denied contrary to the advice of their physician. Furthermore, she’s troubled by reports that Citizenship and Immigration
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President Barack Obama