CSE’s fears are to be feared

Re Spies fear home-grown Snowden, July 26

Canada’s electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), is worried about a Canadian Edward Snowden. But while its fear of whistleblowers on the scale of Snowden suggests it has something to hide, the Star’s most alarming discovery is the CSE’s attitude toward protest. Apparently, the CSE views “civic protest activities” on its properties as a threat.

Those who oversee the CSE need to answer important questions this posture of suspicion raises. First, does the CSE or any of its domestic and international partners conduct surveillance on the CSE’s critics? Secondly, does the CSE reflexively characterize as threats any exercise of Charter rights in the service of protest against surveillance?

The greatest danger to Canadians is neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda, but rather a police apparatus run amok, like the RCMP’s former Security Service until the implementation of the McDonald Commission’s report in the 1980s.

Let’s hope a similar turning point is nearing for the vastly more powerful and invasive CSE. Brian Alexander, Mississauga