MPs should listen to Canadians on CSEC bill

MPs should listen to Canadians and support Liberal bill to make spy agency CSEC more transparent and accountable to citizens

Privacy advocates hail Joyce Murray’s Private Members Bill as a step forward to boost transparency, oversight, and accountability for secretive spy agency CSEC

October 30, 2014 – Today, Members of Parliament will have an historic opportunity to start reining in Canada’s secretive spy agency CSEC (Communications Security Establishment Canada). Community-based OpenMedia.ca is calling on MPs from all parties to throw their support behind a Private Members Bill proposed by Liberal MP Joyce Murray.

MPs are set to debate the bill in the House of Commons later today. Calls for reform have been growing since it was revealed earlier this year that CSEC had spied on thousands of law-abiding Canadian air travellers and tracked their precise movements around the world.

The CSEC Accountability and Transparency Act would give MPs stronger powers of oversight and review over CSEC’s activities. It would also improve CSEC’s public reporting obligations, and require the Minister responsible for CSEC to obtain a Federal Court order whenever there is a reasonable expectation that CSEC might collect the protected information of Canadians at home or abroad.

Significantly, the bill ensures that metadata - which can reveal a huge amount about citizens’ private lives - is defined as “protected information” which CSEC would be prohibited from collecting without a court order.

“This bill is a positive step forward and I hope MPs listen to Canadians and support these common sense measures,” says OpenMedia.ca Executive Director Steve Anderson. “Canadians have been hugely disappointed to learn how CSEC has been monitoring law-abiding citizens, while recklessly engaging in overseas spying activities that have done enormous damage to Canada’s international reputation.”

Anderson continued: “Joyce Murray’s sensible proposals may not solve all of CSEC’s many problems, but they would mark a significant improvement if made into law. The Conservative government seems intent on extending its spying powers and it’s critical that we balance those powers with appropriate oversight. That’s why we’re working with Canadians from across the political spectrum to develop crowdsourced policy recommendations to ensure we get the robust privacy protections we deserve.”

Revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald have exposed how CSEC and its foreign intelligence partner the U.S. NSA have been spying on citizens. They revealed that CSEC spied on innocent Canadian air travellers, facilitated a massive U.S. spy operation on Canadian soil, monitored important Canadian trading partners at the behest of the U.S. NSA, and even spied on the private communications of Brazil’s energy ministry.

OpenMedia.ca is leading a national coalition calling for effective legal measures to protect Canadians’ privacy from government surveillance. The coalition is supported by over 40,000 Canadians and now comprises over 60 major organizations from across the political spectrum.

In less then a week thousands of Canadians have already participated in an effort to crowdsource policy recommendations for pro-privacy safeguards at https://OpenMedia.org/PrivacyPlan

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