Canada: #Data-collection program got green light from MacKay in 2011 - The Globe and Mail
▻http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/data-collection-program-got-green-light-from-mackay-in-2011/article12444909
It is illegal for most Western espionage agencies to spy on their citizens without judicial authorization. But rising fears about foreign terrorist networks, coupled with the explosion of digital communications, have shifted the mandates of secretive electronic-eavesdropping agencies that were created by military bureaucracies to spy on Soviet states during the Cold War.
The Canadian surveillance program is operated by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), an arm of the Department of National Defence.
In recent days, disclosures of secret surveillance programs operated by the U.S. National Security Agency have set off a storm of debate. Leaked documents and accounts have described an NSA project known as #PRISM that allegedly gives the agency access to data from nine U.S. Internet companies including Google and Facebook. Another leaked document describes the existence of a government program that collects the “telephony metadata” surrounding millions of phone calls placed by Americans every day, without anyone listening to the actual conversations.