Citizens and advocacy groups are demanding transparency of Canadaâ„¢s surveillance operations – which lack legislative oversight, Press TV reports.
Å“You can say that anybody today that does anything and just says, Ëœoh, itâ„¢s to protect the population, itâ„¢s to save lives against terrorismâ„¢, thatâ„¢s just a lot of baloney. These people know what the intent of these policies are. Theyâ„¢re going to use the terrorism argument to defend those policies,” said Jean-Philippe Lebleu, committee for the Republic of Canada, in an interview with Press TV.
Other advocacy groups like the Civil Liberties Association and the Council of Canadians criticized Ottawa for failing to explain the governmentâ„¢s practice of collecting information, which experts say has kept Canadians in the dark regarding the spy program.
Å“Weâ„¢re just being fed a lot of nonsense about celebrities, about hockey players, and then you forget reality and then it hits you: the economy is crashing, youâ„¢re being watched by your politicians, and everything in society is broken down,” said Lebleu.
Canadaâ„¢s Department of National Defense recently confirmed that the government uses metadata to track data trails of suspicious activity.
Under Canadaâ„¢s Anti-Terrorism Act, the super-secret Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which is an arm of the Department of National Defense, is allowed to listen to or monitor online communications.
The Canadian Defense Minister Peter Mackay said the program spies on foreign threats, and is prohibited from targeting citizens.
Meanwhile, recent revelations showed that the USâ„¢ NSA and Canadaâ„¢s security agency spied on senior officials during Londonâ„¢s G20 summit in 2009.
This is while, documents recently disclosed to The Guardian and Washington Post revealed that the United States has a top-secret surveillance program known as PRISM, tracking the use of US-based web servers by Americans and other nationals.
The leaks also exposed Å“Boundless Informant,” a powerful tool developed by the NSA, which enables it to record and categorize intelligence it secretly collects from countries around the world.
GMA/PR
This article originally appeared on: Press TV