Phone interception law, Was: Re: Gmail phone

[Malcolm O'Brien]

Sorry! I won't encumber the list like this again but you need to know 
this...

> I'm pretty damn paranoid and basically assume all phone conversations
> are being intercepted

And you are correct. This was stated explicitly in a Canadian book on 
CSIS back in 1990. But because it was part of Canadian publishing, no 
one knows about it. :/  In fact, it essentially spilled the beans about 
Echelon before there were rumours about it.

The book is "Official Secrets: The Inside Story of The Canadian Security 
Intelligence Service" by Richard Cleroux. The ISBN on my 1991 McClellan 
& Stewart paperback is 0-7710-2160-7. (Amazon and Chapters find the 
short title and surname by ISBN.)

"Good muckraking fun." -- The Globe and Mail

This is from page 77:

"This section [the one that lets CSIS surveil all foreigners as if they 
were spies] also permits something else which is so secret no one dared 
mention it at the time the bill was presented. It allows CSIS to work 
with Canada's ultra-secret, multi-million-dollar Communications Security 
Establishment. The CSE, which is considered the only government agency 
more secret than CSIS, employs more than 1,700 people, and uses highly 
sophisticated radio and telecommunications equipment to listen in 
simultaneously to thousands of embassy, ship and airline telephone and 
telecommunications transmissions and voice conversations across Canada 
and around the world. Its headquarters are located in the Sir Leonard 
Tilley Building near Vincent Massey Park in Ottawa, which from the 
outside looks like any one of half a dozen ordinary government buildings 
in the neighbourhood. Inside there is space-age equipment linked to 
installations at six ultra-secret military bases across Canada that is 
so sensitive it can home in on two Russian sailors talking about lunch 
aboard a Soviet freighter off Vancouver Island, or eavesdrop on a 
businessman in Toronto trying to make a deal with a firm in Spain, or a 
young man whispering sweet nothings to a girlfriend in England. *** The 
CSE functions as a funnel. EVERYTHING THAT IS TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN 
CANADA IS SUCKED INTO IT. IT NEEDS NO JUDICIAL WARRANTS BECAUSE IT IS 
PART OF THE MILITARY, NOT PART OF CSIS. *** What it picks up can be the 
most sensitive information as well as the most banal trivia. And CSIS is 
there to "assist" in this process, the CSIS Act says. It does not say 
how. *** MOST OF THE INFORMATION PICKED UP BY CSIS IS IN THE FORM OF 
ELECTRONIC DATA RATHER THAN VOICE CONVERSATION. NINETY-NINE PERCENT IS 
SHIPPED WHOLESALE, WITHOUT EVER BEING ANALYSED HERE, TO THE U.S. 
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY [now part of DHS, IINM] IN FORT MEADE, 
MARYLAND. ->>> THE AMERICANS IN TURN TELL THE CANADIANS WHAT THEY THINK 
THE CANADIANS SHOULD KNOW." <<<- ***   [emphasis added]

And that, my friends is the reality Canadians have been living under for 
a MINIMUM of 20 years. (The following paragraph _does_ go on to talk 
about complaints about the CSE in the '80s and to say that voice taps 
mostly aren't needed because the voice is digitized and the CSE just 
picks up the digits.)

BUT YOU DIDN'T HEAR IT FROM ME!!!!  You heard it from Richard Cleroux.
-- 
Malcolm