''“The NSA doesn’t limit itself to foreign intelligence. It collects all communications that transit the United States. There are literally no ingress or egress points anywhere in the continental United States where a communication can enter or exit without being monitored and collected and analyzed.”
-Edward Snowden
Guardian interview
July 8 2013
From the Order Paper Question archives: Do the "Five Eyes" watch each other?
by Kady O'Malley
With Jeffrey Delisle's surprise guilty plea drawing fresh attention to the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance between the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, it may be worth revisiting the (largely overlooked at the time) reply to an Order Paper Question submitted by New Democrat MP Craig Scott last June.Sure.
At the end of a wide-ranging series of questions on Canada's anti-terrorism strategy, Scott posed the following query:
Has Canada ever accepted communications intelligence from one of the traditional "Five Eyes" allies mentioned in Minister Toews' testimony from June 5, 2012, where that intelligence consisted of communications that took place between persons both or all of whom were within Canada at the time the communications occurred?Courtesy of National Defence, here's what he got in response -- which, I must confess, despite multiple rereadings, still leaves me somewhat unsure of whether constitutes a 'yes' or a 'no' to what would seem to be a fairly simple question:
The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) is prohibited by law from directing its activities at any person in Canada or Canadians anywhere, and cannot ask its international partners, including the Five Eyes allies, to act in ways that circumvent this legal restriction. Five Eyes allies, in their own national interests as sovereign states, can lawfully collect intelligence in accordance with their own domestic laws while respecting the long-standing convention not to target the communications of one another.With respect to Five Eyes reporting derived from a communication where both or all communicants were in Canada at the time the communication occurred; in accordance with CSEC's legal mandate CSEC does not pursue the receipt of such intelligence and has clearly expressed its expectations to partner agencies.
