Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act is just one step away from becoming law, with its controversial information-sharing and secret police powers still intact. France’s cyber-snooping bill is facing broad political support. And the United Kingdom’s nanny state law has been in effect for months, despite protestations of a coalition of anti-spying activists.
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Christopher Parsons, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said that while neutering the Patriot Act might impede how Americans’ data gets scooped up, nobody should expect these changes will do much to kneecap the NSA’s mass spying regime.
“I think they can do it anyway,” Parsons told VICE News, pointing to Executive Order 12333 — the directive issued by Ronald Reagan that first permitted the NSA to spy on foreign soil.
“In an era of cloud computing, there is a strong argument to be made that even after that section of the Patriot Act goes away, where and when Americans’ data flows across international boundaries, it can be collected anyway,” he said.
And while the NSA’s ability to collect data within the United States might be “slightly diminished,” other American agencies with mandates to surveil domestic threats could simply take over.
Parsons says the emerging relationship between Washington and its Five Eyes partners – Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — is evolving into something much more advanced.
“All the various signals intelligence agencies have become increasingly sophisticated in, not just their ability to collect data, but also their ability to share data with one another,” Parsons said.
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