Two-Thirds of Canadians Say Journalistic Source Material Should be Shielded From Police
But Canadians divided over whether security agencies should use public data to monitor citizens
TORONTO (May 22, 2018) – A strong majority of Canadians say journalists should not be required to turn over confidential information to police, according to a survey released today. But Canadians are divided over whether national security agencies should have the power to collect and analyze publicly available information on Canadians.
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Hard Questions for Canada’s Most Secret Agency
The lack of transparency of Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the CSE, makes it impossible to fully understand how it operates, or how the proposed CSE Act will change elements of its operations. Before having a debate about what the CSE should be allowed to do under the new law, we need to better understand both its past and present conduct.
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Why we sent copies of a video game to Canada's Parliament and Senate
CJFE has partnered with publisher Surprise Attack Games to send 443 license keys for the video game Orwell: Ignorance is Strength to Canadian Members of Parliament and Senators. We are doing this as part of an educational initiative to familiarize Canada’s lawmakers with the ethical implications of new espionage powers that would be created for Canada’s spies following the passage of Bill C-59, An Act respecting national security matters. CJFE is concerned that many of the same fictional powers on display in Orwell: Ignorance is Strength are being made available to Canada’s very real cyber spies through Bill C-59, a deeply troubling update to the widely opposed Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015 (Formerly, Bill C-51).
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Play this game. Don't play games with our rights.
It sounds like science fiction: a shadowy government entity builds a multi-billion dollar high-tech campus in the nation’s capital. It begins a massive recruitment drive gathering thousands of employees with a wide array of skills and technical aptitudes. Then, the government tables a law that would award this entity new and unwarranted powers to eavesdrop on and hack targets connected to foreign countries as well as gathering and storing open-sourced data on citizens. The proposed new law would also give the nation’s spies the power to produce or disseminate false information (including news reports) in order to achieve investigative goals or mislead foreign targets.
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