By: Brandon R. Cottrell 
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America 

OTTAWA, Canada – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported today that leaked documents by Edward Snowden show Canada’s electronic spying agency collected data from “ordinary airline passengers” travelling through Canadian airports over a two week period.

Though Canadian law prohibits the Communications Security Establishment Canada (“CSEC”) from targeting any individual in Canada without a warrant, the CSEC has defended its action by citing its mission, which is to collect foreign intelligence by intercepting phone and internet traffic in order to protect Canadians.  CSEC has also said that no Canadians were spied on, yet most find no merit to that claim, as it is mostly Canadians that frequent Canadian airports.

Ronald Deibert, one of Canada’s foremost authorities on cyber-security, said, however,  that he “can’t see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law, under our Charter, under CSEC’s mandates.”

The CSEC further defends its action by saying that it only collected metadata, which it is legally authorized to collect and analyze.  Metadata, the information about a communication, such as the date and location of the communication but not the details of what was said or written, is however, still valuable information and considered by most to be an invasion of privacy.

Deibert, in regards to metadata, said that it is “way more powerful than the content of communications . . . you can tell a lot more about people, their habits, their relationships, their friendships, even their political preferences, based on that type of metadata.”

The report also indicates that the metadata was collected using a new powerful software program that was being developed by the United States’ National Security Agency (“NSA”), and is now fully operational.  Experts say that the program, after initially capturing information, “would have enabled the agency to track them for a week or more as they showed up in other wi-fi ‘hot spots’ around Canada, such as other airports, hotels or restaurants.”  The new program is also considered to be “game-changing,” as it could be used for tracking “any target that makes occasional forays into other cities/regions.”

A spokeswoman for the Canadian agency was critical of the leak, and defended the document as a “technical presentation between specialists exploring mathematical models built on everyday scenarios to identify and locate foreign terrorist threats [and that] the unauthorized disclosure of tradecraft puts our techniques at risk of being less effective when addressing threats to Canada and Canadians.”

Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, is currently living in Russia after fleeing the US in May 2013 after he leaked thousands of documents that revealed extensive internet and phone surveillance by US intelligence services.

For further information, please see: 

BBC – Snowden Leaks: Canada ‘Spied On Airport Travellers’ – 31 Jan. 2014 

Bloomberg – Spy Agency Tracked Canadians At An Airport – 31 Jan. 2014 

CBC News – CSEC Used Airport Wi-Fi To Track Canadian Travellers: Edward Snowden Documents – 31 Jan. 2014 

RT – Attention Fliers: Canada’s Electronic Spy Agency Is Following You – New Snowden Leaks – 31 Jan. 2014