The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward
Dr. Christopher Parsons published a comment piece in the National Post today that summarized the importance and harms of Canada’s signals intelligence activities, especially as they pertain to persons living in Canada. The key takeaway was:
Canadians are routinely accused of having sleepwalked into a surveillance nation. We haven’t. Instead, the federal government of Canada has secretly deployed mass-surveillance technologies focused on domestic and foreign communications alike and, even when caught red-handed, the government refuses to have a reasonable conversation about the appropriateness or legality of such technologies. Canadians deserve better from their government. More oversight and accountability is needed at a minimum, and cannot be dismissed as “red tape” given the magnitude of the surveillance operations conducted upon the population of Canada by its own government.
You can read the whole piece over at the National Post.