{"id":82615,"date":"2016-11-07T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82615"},"modified":"2016-11-06T17:46:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T17:46:29","slug":"three-new-scandals-show-how-pervasive-and-dangerous-mass-surveillance-is-in-the-west-vindicating-snowden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/three-new-scandals-show-how-pervasive-and-dangerous-mass-surveillance-is-in-the-west-vindicating-snowden\/","title":{"rendered":"Three New Scandals Show How Pervasive and Dangerous Mass Surveillance Is in the West, Vindicating Snowden"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"GCHQ<\/a>

GCHQ Spy Agency Headquarters UK
Photo: Barry Batchelor\/PA Wire\/Press Association Images<\/p><\/div>\n

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4 Nov 2016 – <\/em>While most eyes are focused on the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, three major events prove how widespread, and dangerous, mass surveillance has become in the west. Standing alone, each event highlights exactly the severe threats which motivated Edward Snowden to blow his whistle; taken together, they constitute full-scale vindication of everything he\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a special British court that rules on secret spying activities issued an emphatic denunciation<\/a> of the nation\u2019s domestic mass surveillance programs. The court found that \u201cBritish security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade.\u201d Those agencies, the court found, \u201coperated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"gchqillegal-1000x344-surveillance-spy-uk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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On Thursday [3 Nov], an even more scathing condemnation<\/a> of mass surveillance was issued by the Federal Court of Canada. The ruling \u201cfaulted Canada\u2019s domestic spy agency for unlawfully retaining data and for not being truthful with judges who authorize its intelligence programs.\u201d Most remarkable was that these domestic, mass surveillance activities were not only illegal, but completely unknown to virtually the entire population in Canadian democracy, even though their scope has indescribable implications for core liberties: \u201cthe centre in question appears to be the Canadian Security Intelligence Service\u2019s equivalent of a crystal ball \u2013 a place where intelligence analysts attempt to deduce future threats by examining, and re-examining, volumes of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"globeand-540x335-gchq-uk-spy-surveillance\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The third scandal also comes from Canada \u2013 a critical partner in the Five Eyes spying alliance along with the U.S. and UK \u2013 where law enforcement officials in Montreal are now defending<\/a> \u201ca highly controversial decision to spy on a La Presse columnist [Patrick Lagac\u00e9] by tracking his cellphone calls and texts and monitoring his whereabouts as part of a necessary internal police investigation.\u201d The targeted journalist, Lagac\u00e9, had enraged police officials by investigating their abusive conduct, and they then used surveillance technology to track his calls and movements to unearth the identity of his sources.\u00a0Just as that scandal was exploding, it went, in the words of the Montreal Gazette<\/a>, \u201cfrom bad to worse\u201d as the ensuing scrutiny revealed that police had actually \u201ctracked the calls and movements of six journalists that year after news reports based on leaks revealed Michel Arsenault, then president of Quebec\u2019s largest labour federation, had his phone tapped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking this week at Montreal\u2019s McGill University, Snowden called for the resignation<\/a> of Montreal\u2019s police chief and denounced the spying as a \u201cradical attack on the operations of the free press.\u201d Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said \u201cobviously I think that the troubling stories \u2013 troubling for all Canadians \u2013 coming out of Qu\u00e9bec,\u201d adding: \u201cwe must and can continue to ensure protection of the press and their rights.\u201d The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression\u2019s Tom Henheffer made the key point<\/a> \u2013 about this specific abuse but also\u00a0mass surveillance systems generally<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t even make the argument that this is just a few bad apples because it was authorised by a justice of the peace. This is the system as it\u2019s supposed to work. Which just goes to show that the whole system is broken.<\/p>\n

So just\u00a0this month alone, two key members of the Five Eyes alliance have been found by courts and formal investigations to be engaged in mass surveillance that was both illegal and pervasive, as well as, in the case of Canada, abusing surveillance powers to track journalists to uncover\u00a0their sources. When Snowden first spoke publicly, these were exactly the abuses and crimes he insisted were being committed by the mass surveillance regime these nations had secretly erected and installed, claims\u00a0which were vehemently denied by the officials in charge of those systems.<\/p>\n

Yet with each new investigation and judicial inquiry, and as more evidence is unearthed, Snowden\u2019s core claims are increasingly vindicated. Western officials are indeed addicted to unaccountable, secretive, abusive systems of mass surveillance used against their own citizens and foreigners alike, and the more those systems take root, the more core liberties are eroded.<\/p>\n

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\"Glenn-Greenwald-Original_350\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Glenn Greenwald<\/a> – \u2709glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each new investigation and judicial inquiry proves Snowden’s core warnings were correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}