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Snowden Document Shows Canada Set Up Spy Posts For NSA
An anonymous reader writes with news that even Canada is getting its hands dirty in the international dragnet fiasco. From the article: "The leaked NSA document being reported exclusively by CBC News reveals Canada is involved with the huge American intelligence agency in clandestine surveillance activities in 'approximately 20 high-priority countries.' ... Wesley Wark, a Canadian security and intelligence expert at the University of Ottawa, says the document makes it clear Canada can take advantage of its relatively benign image internationally to covertly amass a vast amount of information abroad. 'I think we still trade on a degree of an international brand as an innocent partner in the international sphere,' Wark said. 'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'"
I thought it was common knowledge for quite a long time that the canadian Communications Security Establishment set up all the american embassies with their SIGINT gear and such.
They can't be trusted. Obama's unspecified "checks and balances" aren't working. Time to start encrypting everything by default.
No sig today...
eh?
* 'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'*
As A Canadian, I kinda resent that :)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
We elected Harper, so I don't think so....
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Nationality most offended by this news: Canadian
Nationality least surprised by this news: Canadian
As long as Steven Harper and his "Conservative" cronies have power, surely the world knows that Canada has gone over to the dark side. There is still good here ... but it sure as hell isn't to be found amongst the ruling party. Shortcomings in our political system allow a government that has always been opposed by the majority of Canadians to hold the reigns of government.
There is no higher praise.
It's like being called a traitor by Dick Cheney ; ).
On the other hand the amount of surprise at these revelations is surprising. Where is peoples sense of history? Remember the second world war (Axis and Allies anyone?) and extrapolate from that incorporating the events since.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.
Too easy..
That famed Canadian politeness has made you too polite to say NO, EH?
The NSA is like cancer spreading through the lymph nodes.
smilies are for reetards
Throw in a box of Timbits or some bacon, and we're nothing but your bitches, you macho Yanks, you.
DaveyJJ
The Swedes 'cooperated' too.
http://www.thelocal.se/20131205/sweden-spied-on-russia-for-nsa-report
It's pretty hard to say no when the guy with the biggest guns and millions of murders to back them asks you to do something.
ayottesoftware.com
Why is parent modded troll?
We knew his platform, we banked on his minority status during his first two terms for him to not actually implement it. Then we give him a majority, then we cry bloody murder like raging retards when he gets to work on implementing his platform THAT WE ALL KNEW ABOUT ALREADY.
It's true, Canadians aren't all that bright.
"Wesley Wark"
Wow, I really misread that name...
Art is the mathematics of emotion
No, the real problem is that after ten years of unfettered spying on everyone, the NSA is now at the top of that list, with dirt on everyone from the POTUS on down. THIS is why no real reform will ever occur.
Well, it is dark for like 6 months a year up there.
rewriting history since 2109
Little by little they thumb their noses at freedom. Slowly the door swings shut.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
"'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'"
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
This is why Canada is going to take over the world.
By the time anyone is willing to take the reports of some fisherman in slicks and a dingy sinking battle ships seriously we'll own three quarters of the world. The only country that *could* do anything about it is the US and we'll just stop printing Canada on world maps and globes, the Americans will never find us. The plan is working perfectly, eh.
The collusion & co-operation between Canadian and American intelligence agencies can be traced back to "Camp X" during World War II. Google it yourself to see, but Sir William Stephenson, who was I think head of British intelligence at the time, was a Canadian who was friends of both Churchill and Roosevelt, and head of Camp X.
Just go get yourself a copy of the book A Man Called Intrepid, which was publish 4 or 5 years ago, and if you read it, none of this should come as any surprise to anyone at all. Canada does "fly under the radar" as far as world view is concerned, which sometimes makes us a perfect place or partner for intelligence for the big guys, but I can tell you, this country has very sharp teeth of it's own. You just never hear about it, which is exactly the way they want it.
Well, to be fair the Cons won the majority with just 39% of the vote so 61% of Canadians didn't vote for them. The problem is most of the seats are in Ontario (NDP/Con 95), BC (Con/NDP 28), Alberta (Con 21), Saskatchewan(Con 14) make up 158 of 282 seats, which is 56% of the seats for four out of 13 provinces and territories. Alberta, the Texas of Canada, and Saskatchewan are almost competently conservative. Ontario and BC are at least half Con. So conservatively speaking (pun intended) there's about 96 seats, or 37% of Canada.
Nova Scotia (Con/Lib 11), Newfoundland (Lib/Con 10), PEI (Lib/Con 4) and New Brunswick (Con 7) only make up 32 seats altogether, less than 12%. The territories have 3 seats, just over 1%. Who cares how they voted, sorry guys. Quebec is the only province that has any amount of sway with 75 seats, but they voted almost completely NDP, which showed as the NDP is the official opposition with 103 seats. Then there's poor lonely Manitoba (NDP/Con 14) out there all on his own.
The only way to get the conservatives out would be to get Ontario, Quebec and BC to vote NDP or Liberal. Saskatchewan and Alberta are always going to be conservative. The Maritimes can be swayed, but will always default to liberal, not that it matters with only 32 seats combine. We might as well join up with the territories and their 3 seats in the "no one cares about you" category. Ontario and Quebec are really the only two that matter for an election, they do have a large percentage of the population, but they were each guaranteed a minimum number of seats under confederation so even if they only had 100 people living in each province they'd still have the majority sway over Canada.
Then there's the "The Fair Representation Act" (passed with the Con's majority in 2011 to take effect in the 2015 election) which grants even more seats to Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC so it's likely the Cons will win another majority because they basically set it up so the provinces that are most likely to vote them in, with the exception of Quebec, also have the most seats. For Quebec the Con's continue to give special rewards in the hope that catering to them will pick up a few conservative ridings. They basically set the board so they can't lose.
Canada is much more left-wing (~60%) than right-wing (~40%), but we have two left wing parties that split the left vote allowing the right-wing to monopolize. Which consequentially was because of the 2003 merger of the two right-wing parties and the event that gave Harper his initial minority government and lead to the cons being in charge for the last 10 years. If it was still two right, two left parties the Con's wouldn't have a chance, and IF we ever go to a two party system because the Liberals and NDP merge they'll cripple the conservatives.
Not that I have anything against the Cons. I personally don't like Harper or agree with his Bush Jr., ignorance is bliss, leadership style, but I like a lot of the core conservative values. Unfortunately, execution is everything and the Cons have just sucked at it since Harper took the wheel.
I still remember when I first moved from Nova Scotia to North Carolina and having an argument with the geography teacher over where Nova Scotia was located. After about five minutes of arguing we went to the map and I was kicked out of class for the rest of the year for "show boating" as he put it. Then even when I was living in Bar Harbor, Main I still met people that didn't know where *Canada* was. It's like come on, Main is right on the border with New Brunswick and there's a ferry that runs from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, How could you not know where Canada was?
The rest of the world loves to joke about how bad Americans are with geography, but I've lived it first hand. To be fair though, we did have to spend a lot of time memorizing the 50 states and their capitols and the 100 counties in NC. So I can see where geography for the rest of the world might get neglected. When I was in middle school in Nova Scotia we covered the ten provinces and two territories (it's three territories now) of Canada, which is a piece of cake as long as you don't have to spell Saskatchewan.
There is no hope for you if you honestly believe that the Liberals wouldn't cooperate with the U.S., Britain, or any other ally in exactly the same way. The NDP, on the other hand, would start spying for China and Russia instead.
"'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'"
Clearly they also don't know that Canada became the 51st state during the Cold War. Kept secret so they could do stuff that we can't get away with.
It's known in the intelligence community as the Maple Leaf State.
I still remember when I first moved from Nova Scotia to North Carolina and having an argument with the geography teacher over where Nova Scotia was located. After about five minutes of arguing we went to the map and I was kicked out of class for the rest of the year for "show boating" as he put it. Then even when I was living in Bar Harbor, Main I still met people that didn't know where *Canada* was. It's like come on, Main is right on the border with New Brunswick and there's a ferry that runs from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, How could you not know where Canada was?
Your geography teacher didn't know where Nova Scotia is? SMH. And then he/she kicks you out of class for making him/her look bad for not knowing his/her own damn material. BTW, it's spelled "Maine". ;-)
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I don't think anything I said eluded to what I believe the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP would do if they were the ones in power. All I said, other than providing a bunch of factual numbers, was I don't like Harper's Bush Jr., ignorance is bliss, leadership style. Which is basically to lock the media out, fire or gag anyone that can provide evidence his policies aren't based on facts and and flood every channel with attack and economic action plan ads.
The conservatives have done a few good things under Harper, but they choose to focus on things Trudeau said over a decade ago for a documentary taken out of context or his non-existent pot smoking habit (especially since the cons are the ones that legalized pot for medical use) or that he's having some female degrading women and politics event (because you know women don't need to know or care about politics) rather than saying, "Yeah, you like tax cuts? Guess what, we did that for you Canada! You like not being dragged into a world wide recession? We did that for you to! You like not having your housing market crash? Yep, that's us as well!".
BTW, it's spelled "Maine". ;-)
Thanks, I wasn't paying attention.
And yes that actually happened. I was given a "pass" on geography because the teacher didn't want me back in his class, and frankly I didn't want to be there. I don't know what my Mom was screaming at the principal, but I'm guessing because I was only at that school for six months anyway the principal didn't think it would be worth the PR nightmare to fail me.
but surprise isn't the issue here.
When it was revealed that the NSA spies on everyone and everything, there was some outrage in the US, but unfortunately not enough to change anything.
Hopefully Canada is different, and now that Canadian citizens know rather than suspect what there government is doing, they will get together and force their government stop collaborating with the NSA.
It's actually kind of weird because that's what I expected, but most of the people I met in NC were actually really nice and didn't come off as the super major bible thumpers I was expecting them to be. It's a shame their very visible representatives or overly vocal religious extremist make them out to look so foolish.
Actually it was the Liberals who put in the regulations that saved us during the recession and housing market crash. Given a little more time the Conservatives would have removed all those evil regulations.
As nice as the tax cuts were, the fact is that we are in more debt per capita then the Americans and cutting taxes instead of paying off the debt and actually increasing the debt seems as stupid as a household cutting back on going to work because they finally started paying down the credit cards and had their credit rating raised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's true. The biggest tip off is the presence of Canadian Intelligence Gathering Centres throughout the USA.
Fair enough, I was just trying to point out they'd stand a better chance of getting my vote if they focused on what they were actually doing/did rather than focusing on what their opposite is doing wrong. Especially when what they're focusing on seems to be extremely superficial non-political issues. Every time I hear a conservative poke fun at Trudeau's hair or how good he's only going to win because of his charming smile attracting the female vote it just makes me want to punch them in the mouth and vote Liberal for no other reason than to be spiteful to the ignorant racists sexist masses the conservative party seems to be turning into. Up until I actually researched the first attack ad the cons put out on Trudeau, days before he was even elected as the party leader, and found out it was all BS and taken completely out of context I would have voted against Trudeau in the next election. So really the cons screwed themselves over with that one.
Boston cream donuts actually contain mind control drugs, and the coffee is primarily nicotine and chocolate to get people addicted and keep them coming back for the donuts. I know, I use to work there baking and filling muffins with hallucinogenics.
And that would be laughable.
Now excuse me while I finish my morning breakfast of poached eggs on english muffins and backbacon, followed up by some Earl Grey tea.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The attack ad mentality is horrible for democracy with the Conservatives position being basically that those other guys have problems and trust us, we're Conservatives. And as you point out, most of the attacks are BS or worse anyways. The marijuana attack ads where they pretend that making pot harder for kids to get is a bad thing, the personal attacks on Trudeau, the lies about the NDPs plans for a carbon tax etc. If they actually campaigned on their real agenda they would never have got a majority and they know it. The sad thing is that Harpers promises of open government make Obama look honest and open.
I usually vote for the Rhinoceros party but couldn't even do that last election due to the Conservatives changes to the elections act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism