Canadian spy agency tracks millions of downloads every day, Snowden document reveals

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      Ottawa’s most secretive spy agency has been accessing millions of individuals’ data on a daily basis via file upload sites, CBC News reports, citing a newly released Edward Snowden document.

      “Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects,” reads the CBC News story published today (January 28).

      “The presentation provides a rare glimpse into Canada's cyber-sleuthing capabilities and its use of its spy partners' immense databases to track the online traffic of millions of people around the world, including Canadians.”

      The operation conducted by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and called “Levitation” monitored people’s activity via online services such as Megaupload, Sendspace, and Rapidshare.

      CSE (previously known as the Communications Security Establishment Canada [CSEC]) would not comment on the program but claimed metadata analysis is conducted to identify foreign terrorists. The organization is also claiming it does not direct its activities at Canadian citizens or people located within Canada’s borders.

      The CBC News report notes exactly how Levitation operated remains unknown; however, it states the operation may have been conducted with the cooperation of Internet service providers.

      “The Levitation document says that access to the data comes from unnamed 'special sources,' a term that in previous Snowden documents seemed to refer to telecommunications companies or cable operators,” CBC News wrote.

      It goes on to explain how spy agencies can translate metadata—bits of information such as the date a photograph was taken—into a person’s identity and go on to track that individual.

      “Once a suspicious file-downloader is identified, analysts can plug that IP address into Mutant Broth, a database run by the British electronic spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), to see five hours of that computer's online traffic before and after the download occurred,” it reads.

      “That can sometimes lead them to a Facebook profile page and to a string of Google and other cookies used to track online users' activities for advertising purposes. This can help identify an individual.”

      A new headquarters for Canada's top-secret spy agency, Communications Security Establishment (CSE), is under construction in suburban Ottawa at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
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      CBC News’ report was produced in collaboration with The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who first began reporting on the Snowden documents in the summer of 2013.

      A report by Greenwald states CSE has refused to say whether or not the Levitation program is still active.

      It goes on to quote Vancouver-based privacy advocate David Christopher of OpenMedia.ca.

      “These revelations make clear that CSE engages in large-scale warrantless surveillance of our private online activities, despite repeated government assurances to the contrary,” Christopher said.

      In a related development, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper recently reported on a Snowden document that reveals GCHQ was collecting bulk data that included the emails of journalists working for the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC, and the Washington Post.

      “GCHQ information security assessment listed 'investigative journalists' as a threat in a hierarchy alongside terrorists or hackers,” the Guardian’s report states.

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      Comments

      3 Comments

      Gul Abul

      Jan 28, 2015 at 11:04am

      Good!!! Keep up the good work. If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be worried.
      The rest of you can go f*@k urselves if you don't like it.

      Hrmm

      Jan 28, 2015 at 12:50pm

      Surveillance is an act of war.
      Conducting surveillance without warrant is completely illegal.
      We need war crimes tribunals to bring these hostiles to account.

      JC

      Jan 28, 2015 at 1:39pm

      Old news. Snowden's trending days are long over and social media is now more concerned about how women athlete's are interviewed, which is far more important than something as trivial as this.