The Canadian government has been spying on its people by monitoring their telephone records and Internet data,Press TV reports.
Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported on June 10 that Defense Minister Peter MacKay had approved a “metadata” surveillance program in 2011 that tracks online activity and phone calls in search of suspicious activities.
However, in response to a question whether the Ottawa government was monitoring the phone and email records of the Canadian people, MacKay claimed that the “program is specifically prohibited from looking at the information of Canadians.”
“This program is very much directed at activities outside the country, foreign threats in fact,” he added.
The program, introduced by the former Liberal government in 2005, was put on hold on account of concerns that it could lead to warrantless surveillance of Canadians.
But according to the daily, the program was quietly reinstated in 2011, after MacKay signed a ministerial directive, which is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
“I don’t feel like safe anymore here, so maybe I plan to move to other countries, I don’t know,” a Canadian citizen told Press TV in reaction to reports about the spy program.
Under Anti-Terrorism Act, the super-secret Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which is an arm of the Department of National Defense, is allowed to listen to or monitor online communications.
Meanwhile, the program has come under harsh criticism from the critics in the North American country.
“There’s a whole lot of secrecy associated with this,” said Michael Geist, a professor of law at the University of Ottawa.
On June 6, The Guardian revealed that a top secret US court order allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect data on millions of Americans who are customers of the major US phone company, Verizon.
According to the order, Verizon should “on a daily basis” give the NSA data, including phone numbers, location, and duration of all phone calls in its systems, both in the US and between the US and other countries.
US President Barack Obama has defended the scheme as “legal and necessary to combat terror.”
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/12/308654/canada-government-spies-on-its-people/
