Tag: Media

Mass surveillance program defended by Conservatives:

There is nothing in the documents that indicate CSE is intentionally targeting Canadian citizens. But Christopher Parsons, with Citizens’ Lab, said the sheer size of the program makes it unlikely Canadians’ data weren’t caught in the drag net.

“The scope at which they are processing data means it is highly likely that Canadian information is — they would use the term ‘incidentally’ — being collected,” Parsons said.

Canada Agency Monitors File-Sharing, Reports Say :

Some Internet privacy experts said they were concerned that the program captures and examines a vast amount of online activity that had no connection to terrorism or extremists.

“It means that these agencies have an immense amount of information,” said Christopher Parsons, an electronic surveillance researcher at Citizen Lab, part of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “That raises the prospect that at some point laws could be changed to make it available to other branches of the government.”

The program also suggests that Canada plays a larger role in electronic surveillance than previously thought, he added.

NOTE: This also ran in the print version of the New York Times for January 29, 2015, on page A13, with the headline: Canada Agency Monitors File-Sharing, Reports Say

This episode of The Current discuses the Communications Security Establish’s LEVITATION program. The interview is with Dave Seglins, the lead CBC reporter on this story, and Anna Maria. The discussion is intermixed with comments from experts, including myself.

Spies Know What You’re Downloading on Filesharing Sites, New Snowden Docs Show:

Where is all this data coming from?

Rather than monitor each file sharing company individually, the documents hint at a “special source” known only by the codename ATOMIC BANJO, which is responsible for the collection of “HTTP metadata” from 102 known file sharing sites (Sendspace, Rapidshare, and the now-defunct Megaupload are the only three identified by name).

“‘Special Source’ typically refers to access to corporate data stores, or corporate data flows, so ISPs or data centers or something like that. Trans-atlantic cables,” said Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab, which studies surveillance and other digital policy issues within the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “Access is predicated on either contractual term or a monetary payment or something of that nature. Which is to say that someone or some individuals within the special source organizations are aware of what’s going on.”

…

As for CSE, a document released by Ge​rman newspaper Der Spiegel earlier this month describes a “cyber threat detection platform” called EONBLUE. According to the document, EONBLUE had been under development for over eight years as of November 2010—the date the document was published—and is made up of over 200 sensors deployed across the globe using “collection programs including S​PECIALSOURCE.”

What makes EONBLUE significant, said Parsons, is that we now know “Canada has sites around the world. And based on previous documents around special source operations, we quite often see large volumes of data being accessed. So it’s possible that EONBLUE is similarly used to access large quantities of data.”

One of EONBLUE’s capabilities is the collection of metadata. It is not clear whether the metadata collected from ATOMIC BANJO is related to the metadata produced by EONBLUE.

“It’s certainly possible, but there’s no definitive evidence, that would indicate a direct correlation,” Parsons said.