14 DAY TRIAL // A new set of documents from the Snowden stash indicate that Canada allowed the United States’ intelligence agency to conduct widespread surveillance during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits.
According to CBC News, the top secret files indicate the United States turned the country’s embassy in Ottawa into a security command post during the aforementioned events when Barack Obama was meeting with other state leaders.
Unlike many other cases, given the fact that they’re both part of the Five Eyes, the Canadian authorities were actually aware of everything that was happening and actually closely co-ordinated with the Americans.
The two partner countries intercepted phone calls and hacked computer systems in order to gather information for their respective governments. The target of the spying is not specified in the files, so it’s probably not directed at one individual alone, but rather at the entire group of state leaders. However, the files indicate that the agency’s mandate at the summit was to provide support to policymakers.
Furthermore, the NSA top secret documents list all the main agenda items for the summit in Toronto, namely international development, banking reform, countering trade protectionism and a lot more; things the United States would be glad to know ahead of time in order to better negotiate key points.
Another big part of the secret files indicate that a big part of the event’s surveillance was actually devote to security details at the summit. “The intelligence community assesses there is no specific, credible information that al-Qaida or other Islamic extremists are targeting” the summit, they wrote.
Other acts of vandalism took place that year, however, with some 10,000 marching in protest, which eventually led to the involvement of some 20,000 police officers and a series of arrests.
This wasn’t the first time the two nations spied on world leaders, since they had also done the same at the G20 summit in London in 2009, where they collaborated with the GCHQ.