14 DAY TRIAL // Sometimes, it seems, the National Security Agency can’t or won’t do all the work, but simply chooses to delegate some of the spying responsibilities to its partners. This time, a newly published report indicates that Canadian spies were asked to set up covert spying posts around the world and snoop in on trading partners.
According to CBC News, Canada is involved with the NSA in clandestine surveillance activities in about 20 countries that are considered “high-priority.”
While a lot of information was withheld for security purposes, the report indicates that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been chosen because the country has something that the NSA doesn’t – geographic access to certain areas that are unavailable to the United States.
“The intelligence exchange with CSEC covers worldwide national and transnational targets,” the document reveals. The file is dated this past April, which means that the operation is quite recent and it’s one of the most recent files that Edward Snowden got his hands on.
The CSEC has been delving in advanced collection, processing and analyzing the data gathered through the covert sites opened at the request of the NSA. Furthermore, the intelligence agency contributes to the partnership with the United States by providing cryptographic products, cryptanalysis, technology and software.
“That's been the case for years. Just think of certain foreign agreements or relationships that Canada actually enjoys that the United States doesn't, and under the cover of those relationships, guess what you can conduct? These kinds of secret surveillance or collection efforts,” said Thomas Drake, former NSA exec that eventually blew the whistle.
According to CBC News, Canada has a very robust role in intelligence gathering around the world, which makes the country a valuable partner of the United States.
“I think we still trade on a degree of an international brand as an innocent partner in the international sphere. There’s not that much known about Canadian intelligence,” says Wesley Wark, a Canadian security and intelligence expert at the University in Ottawa.
This means, he states, that the Canadian operations might escape the same degree of notice that the US surveillance operations have attracted.
The reports on the Canadian involvement in the NSA scandal were a long time coming. Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who has access to the entire trove of files from Snowden, took the time, a few weeks back, to remind everyone that the reports on the United States' neighbors were coming.