How Bureaucrats and Spies Turned Canada into a Surveillance State | Hacker News Reader

How Bureaucrats and Spies Turned Canada into a Surveillance State

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75 pointsdsr129 comments

What I want to know is how did CSIS and the Justice Department utilize the information they have. Was someone wrongly convicted, was a reporter stopped from publishing something? Evidence that gives the general public a concrete example is what is needed to spur any real action here, and unfortunately I think that will be the hardest part.

That's a very good point.

It's unlikely that a single person was put at risk, and not a single person was put in a negative/unfair situation because of it.

CSIS capturing phone call records (not content, just who contacts who) sounds all very scary and nefarious ...

But Google is doing 1000x more than that - and they sell that information to others - and those 'others' act on that to sell you stuff.

The phone companies probably do it. Maybe even your internet provider.

At least CSIS has a communitarian purpose, which is real.

I'm definitely weary of CSIS doing things which are outside the law, but I'm less weary about the meta-data collection than most people - so long as there is oversight and it's kept secure.

The "metadata" distinction is pure sophistry, metadata matters every bit as much to privacy as the data itself (often moreso). Telling Osama bin Laden you are really excited about your new dog is much less significant than the fact you know and talk to Osama bin Laden.

As for oversight, there is next to none.

A) 'Metadata = sophistry' is totally false. Metadata can never capture thoughts, statements, intentions, motivations, etc.. It captures who at number/email ABC has communicated with number/email XYZ. That's a huge distinction.

In fact - the address and return address you put on your parcels is fundamentally different from the contents.

Moreover - the argument fails to grasp the materiality of the situation - public good vs. private profit. There's 100x more sensitivity over entities operating in the public good, than there are corporations like Google who do in fact 'read all your emails' - and use that information purely for their own gain and profit.

B) 'There is no oversight' - this is again, false. There is a lot oversight - legal, administrative, operational - every step of the way there are checks and balances either external or internal. Do we have the type of public oversight we want - maybe, maybe not. There is definitely public oversight of CSIS: it's called the 'Security Intelligence Review Committee'. But it's wrong to suggest there is 'no oversight'.

Metadata can reveal intent, motivation, and far more than you intend especially when collected in mass. Metadata = Data. Saying that metadata doesn't matter, or matters less is just wrong.

I didn't say it metadata is irrelevant, I said that it is fundamentally different than the content of messages.

Trying to derive 'intent' from 'knowing who you talk to' is not possible with any degree of reliability. You can make some minor probabilistic inferences, but that's it.

The most important advantages of metatadata are establishing those engaging in criminal networks - which is very salient, in which case I think metadata is the right solution.

I have a distant family member (barely related) - who sells cocaine and is a grade A douche-bag/thug/criminal. He beats people. Proudly. I think he was caught because of this - the RCMP was able to establish his network and they took down him and his thug buddies. Guns, beatings, I think a murderer in there. I'm glad they finally got him.

500m from my flat in Montreal, there is a polytechnic school where 11 young men decided to join ISIS - they were caught just before getting on the plane - again, I think that the tech worked the right way here, but again, it's hard to be specific.

FYI - even 'socialist utopian paradises' usually have more aggressive policies than this. Sweden, for example, captures 100% of packets leaving/entering the country and look at all o it's contents - as just one example.

As a Canadian citizen, I have zero problems with CSIS thus far - there hasn't really been a single case of this information being abused in a manner that affected the lives of a citizen in a negative way. The lack of these cases of abuse is salient.

I'm far more concerned about 'other countries' surveillance programs, as a non-US citizen, the NSA is free to capture anything they want about me without really any oversight and that's a little too nefarious.

As an operational compromise, I would try to enact the following: CSIS can capture metadat long term, but then to actually access that data - they need a warrant from a judge.

This way - my idiot second cousin's rights are protected, but as soon as the RCMP catches a local thug and can access that thug's 'network' - with a warrant, it's shown that my dirtbag cousin's name comes up, with criminal intent easy to identify in ensuing investigation. Similarly with 'terrorism'. A local Imam contacts CSIS and says 'so and so in my congregation is asking about how to join ISIS' - then, with a warrant, CSIS can see who he's communicating with, and with further investigation, get a proper warrant for more information.

Somewhere in there, there is a solution, I think.

So if metadata is irrelevant why is it collected?

CSIS has been intercepting domestic traffic (full packet, at their discretion) without needing any kind of warrant since before 9/11.

Source?

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