Since June, the world has watched the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States slowly be exposed by former employee Edward Snowden's leaks. During this period of forced transparency from below, Canada's surveillance state has largely escaped attention. The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), participates as one of the “Five Eyes” of global surveillance headed by the NSA. The US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand share information ostensibly for our safety against terrorism.

Unlike the NSA, which is constantly written about and criticized by a small but significant fold of journalists, Canada has no such adversarial watchdogs; though we should. Canada is just as much a part of the nefarious “national security” complex that has seen priorities shift from the Threat of Terrorism in 2001, to the Threat of Everything in 2013.

On October 6, Brazilian news program Fantastico revealed from the Snowden leak that Canada had been collecting metadata on Brazil's Mines and Energy Ministry. It was suggested that it was probably a “scenario-building exercise” by former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director Ray Boisvert. You might believe that only if you’re gullible enough to assume the government is creating hypotheticals based on actual metadata.

If it's just a scenario, why secretly collect info from an ally? Why go through the trouble of mapping the communications of a foreign government?

Boisvert's comments beg another question: why is a former director of an agency that is not CSEC given a voice of speculation as to what CSEC may or may not be doing?

The idea that this has anything to do with the protection of Canada is almost insulting. Canada is not under threat from Brazil, and furthermore all of our mining companies are private. That taxpayers may be funding economic espionage for private corporations is highly unsettling to say the least. Our mining companies are hardly angels when it comes to respecting the environment and indigenous peoples of South America.

Canada has many mining corporations with intense interest in remote regions of South America, often leading to protests and resistance from local communities. Manitoba's HudBay Minerals is currently involved in a suit alleging the brutal 2009 murder of a Guatemalan community leader and activist. In 2011, a protest at Bear Creek Mining Corp's Peruvian silver mine turned deadly as police opened fire on protesters, killing six and wounding 30.

After Fantastico's report, The Guardian reported that CSEC has been meeting twice-yearly with energy companies since 2005, to brief them on security risks. Though it is worthwhile to note that these are likely in reference to domestic security risks, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that those “security risks” have since extended past our borders.

There is ample documentation of Canada's National Security institution's mission creep away from terrorism. A 2012 paper by sociologists Kevin Walby and Jeffrey Monaghan show how CSIS' surveillance priorities gradually shifted, from terrorism in 2001, to protesters leading up to the Vancouver Olympics, pipeline protesters, and even the Yes Men. Recent events have shown that even Idle No More has been under surveillance.

Protecting Canada's “national security” has become an all-encompassing term.

“ “What is clear, however, is an alarming and vast expansion of Canada’s spying powers with virtually no oversight, incredibly scarce access to information and operating completely in the dark.”

Yet we are consistently told that the agencies have rigorous oversight, that they never surveil Canadians nor break the law. The current head of CSEC, John Forster, had this to say to pacify Canadians:

“Everything we do, and I mean everything we do, is reviewed by an independent CSE commissioner. He and his office have full access to every record, every system and every staff member to ensure that we follow Canadian laws and respect Canadians’ privacy.”

This should make Canadians sit up and take notice. The head of CSEC, that is to say the guy in charge, is insisting to us that everything is alright because all data is reviewed by an independent commissioner. With such erroneous logic, the shortlist of things an independent commissioner has let slip could be quite astounding. At the top of that list is a 2006 decision to – when Canada led the world in writing a new encryption standard – quietly afford the NSA sole editorship of drafts and rewrites, ensuring it could access encryptions through its own backdoors, and setting the stage for the current global dragnet surveillance paradigm.

Did an independent commissioner really approve that? Is our privacy protected by allowing the NSA to capture all of our communications, even if encrypted?

With such dismissive commentary, the CSEC head cannot be taken seriously. Canada's laws may not have been broken while allowing the NSA that access, nor while spying on legitimate protest movements as long as they are labelled “threats” to the country. And of course, no evidence that our laws have or have not been followed has ever been provided since Edward Snowden's leaks were first published.

What is clear, however, is an alarming and vast expansion of Canada's spying powers with virtually no oversight, incredibly scarce access to information and operating completely in the dark. The CSEC head’s assurances that laws are being followed passes nobody's test of “transparency.”

We as Canadians are simply supposed to trust that no laws are being broken, and that oversight occurs, while CSEC works hand-in-hand with four other governments and undertakes economic espionage in Brazil.

Currently, CSEC is getting a brand-new $1 billion (yes, one billion dollar) facility. By contrast, the NSA is anticipating a $2 billion building in Utah. That a country of 33 million needs a Versaille-like surveillance palace – dubbed “Camelot” in government documents – with 2000 employees, should shake our nation’s collective institutional trust.

Welcome to Canada. Our home and surveilled land.

Published in Volume 68, Number 7 of The Uniter (October 16, 2013)