VANCOUVER – U.S. security contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed documents alleging Canada spied on “high-priority countries” on behalf of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
The latest batch of documents, released to the CBC and reported Monday night, detail a collaboration between CSEC and the NSA that saw Canada “set up covert spying posts around the world.”
Canada’s intelligence-gathering activities have already come under fire following a report alleging the secretive eavesdropping agency, the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC), allowed the U.S. to spy on world leaders at the G20 in Toronto.
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The CBC reported the documents contain “hyper-sensitive operational details.” The public broadcaster, which collaborated with journalist Glenn Greenwald on the report, said it chose not make the documents public.
The report said Canada carried out “clandestine surveillance activities” against approximately 20 of its trading partners.
According to the CBC, the document was dated Apr. 3, 2013, which was just weeks before Snowden took leave from his job with security consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and flew to Hong Kong to meet with then-Guardian reporters Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who first broke the story about of the NSA’s secret communications surveillance programs based on documents the 29-year-old obtained.
Since that time, Greenwald and Snowden have revealed a number of documents detailing Canada’s alleged spy activities.
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Aside from allowing the NSA to use the U.S. embassy in Ottawa as a base to keep tabs on G20 leaders in 2010, Canada has also used its embassies abroad to conduct surveillance (according to a report in Germany’s Der Spiegel) and monitored communications of Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy.
CBC reported the latest four-page document contained “briefing notes” that touted the CSEC’s “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis” and that the agency “opened covert sites at the request of NSA.”
Canada is involved in an intelligence-gathering partnership with the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, known as the “Five Eyes.”
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The latest revelations came as CSEC watchdog Jean-Pierre Plouffe warned that some of the information released in the Snowden documents “is often taken out of context.”
“One of the key objectives of my office is to help to clarify this information and to correct it if necessary, so that it is no longer propagated as a myth,” Plouffe reportedly told senators on the national security and defence committee.
*With files from The Canadian Press
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