Evidence of meeting #33 for Public Safety and National Security in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parliamentarians.
Ron Atkey
Overview is less than review. Overview is the oversight that's taking the overarching broad view of things.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
That was my exact question, so thank you for that.
I would like to keep drilling down on this because we have heard through a lot of these proceedings of accountability and looking at what the different bodies are doing. Now, when you talk about oversight, that puts a distance between that, so we're relying.... From your model, we're going to go back to those bodies to task them to undertake work to look after themselves.
I think that is contrary to what we've been hearing in terms of looking at those bodies to see how they function and review how they're functioning. Are they functioning correctly? Are they interacting with one another? All of that work, as per the model that you're explaining, doesn't allow for that to occur. Basically, there's a committee of parliamentarians that is tasking these different bodies with bringing back answers, so I don't think that gives us or the general public the accountability factor. Can you comment on that?
Ron Atkey
Quite the contrary, I think in other parts of my remarks today I was saying there should be co-operation, sharing of information, and the removal of some of the stovepipes between organizations, and the review body should be able to exchange information.
Similarly, Parliament—
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
You just said “review body”, or is it an “oversight”? This is what I'm trying to get. A review body has a different mandate.
Ron Atkey
Let me be very clear. I avoid the word “oversight” because I think it would be a mistake for the committee of parliamentarians to get involved in oversight, as I understand that, and I've spent some time with the intelligence oversight bodies in the U.S. Congress and the Senate. They get briefed in advance of operations that haven't yet occurred. It has two impacts. First of all, if the operations are a success, the politicians can't avoid not talking about it. Second, if it's a failure, they're going to have to wear it. That's the real reason. The third thing is that it has financial implications. By bringing the CIA or the FBI, congressional oversight bodies, into the tent, if you will, and saying, “We're thinking of doing this, what do you think?”, they say, “Yes”, and they ask if they can have $3 million or $4 million to carry this out. It has financial implications that totally skewer the budgets of the security agencies.
As we embark on this new process for us in establishing a committee of parliamentarians, I think it would be a mistake for you to jump right in and to get involved in the oversight function as I've described it.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Okay.
My next question is that you were talking about the national security adviser working with Parliament as opposed to the Prime Minister, right?
Conservative
Ron Atkey
—or the Privacy Commissioner. He may be called the national security adviser to the Prime Minister because he has authority, and in our system the buck stops with the Prime Minister on national security issues. I think it's proper he be called the national security adviser to the Prime Minister, but he should be appointed on the recommendation of the Governor in Council, with the approval of Parliament.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Right. Okay.
Because I know time is running out here, I want to quickly move to the gathering of information. We have talked about that, and I've heard a lot about security versus human rights and those pieces within the context of Canada. It's very well known in many circles—and I'm sure you are well aware—about all the systems that are being hacked by China, Russia, and North Korea, and about the independent contractors that are out there selling intelligence. If we are not to be in a space where we are dealing with that on the exterior level, how do we deal with that with our own intelligence folks when we know that this is going on at a global level and those people are also gathering information within our country? How would you suggest we deal with those issues?
Conservative
Executive Director, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
In terms of broad-scale surveillance, yes, China, North Korea, and these other countries might be hacking, but they're not doing it on anywhere near the same scale as what's going on from governments from within their own countries. Whereas within Canada, through any number of means, whether it's warrantless access through the telecommunications companies, whether it's back doors that could be put into different programs like in BlackBerry, whether it's like what we saw in the United States, where Yahoo actually allowed the United States government to go in and analyze every email that was sent ever on its servers.... That is something that is far beyond, as far as I know, the capabilities of these other actors—state, governmental, non-governmental, or whatever. You don't need to have broad-scale digital surveillance in order to counter that. You simply need to home in on the people you need to analyze. In fact, by having a government database that actually collects all this information, that collects all of Canadians' metadata—which, by the way, gives you a clearer picture of someone's life than the content of their emails, far more—you can tell everything from that, and obviously you're already familiar with that. To have all of that in some government database somewhere makes it suddenly extremely vulnerable.
October 19th, 2016 / 2:35 p.m.
Conservative
Executive Director, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Yes. That is extremely dangerous. To scrap that broad-scale digital surveillance, which has never been proven to stop an imminent attack anywhere in the world, and instead target individual people, solves the problem of having these massive databases that are hackable. If you have that information, then other people can access it, plain and simple. If that information isn't stored on government servers, then they can't, because it's in a number of disparate places. They would have to go to Yahoo and to BlackBerry and to Health Canada and to all of these other places in order to get a holistic picture. But under the new information sharing provisions and under the data collection provisions—and we only know there is no transparency around because of the Snowden leaks—then that is a huge vulnerability that Canada has in terms of outside hackers because they could go into a government database and get all of that information and have a holistic picture, which is a serious security vulnerability.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you, Mr. Henheffer. We're at the end of your time.
Mr. Dubé, you have seven minutes.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It doesn't matter that the time ran out, because I want to continue on the same point, actually. Metadata is something that has come up, and far from being a semantic distinction from data, there is a huge difference there and it's extremely important. Unfortunately, I don't think many people quite realize the point that you made about how much you can glean from metadata.
I wanted to look at something, and particularly for journalists, I think, an interesting point to look at is in terms of information sharing, with foreign entities, whether they be allies or otherwise, and the fact that the legal protections that exist for privacy aren't the same under other jurisdictions.
Do you folks have thoughts on that, particularly with regard to your organization and more broadly speaking?
Executive Director, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Absolutely. To go into what could be found, there was a study done in the United States where basically a bunch of university professors got people to agree to let them access their metadata, and the professors would see what they could glean from that. They were able to determine people's political affiliation. They were able to determine their religion. They were able to determine that one women had had an abortion, through this information. This was all through just their metadata, just through the information that's collected. To have that holistic picture in the government services is quite dangerous.
To address the second part of your question in terms of outside actors and information sharing, there's already been a case where CSE was found to be sharing information that it was not allowed to be sharing with outside actors, a massive amount of information, about Canadians. This is extremely problematic because all of a sudden we don't know who else has access to our information and what it's being used for.
On top of that, under the information-sharing provisions, in our read of the ATA 2015, essentially it seems that under the right circumstances, and without judicial oversight, any information could be shared with any outside state actor. I believe it's from a 100 different government institutions within Canada, which, again, is extremely dangerous.
Speaking just from a journalistic perspective, the idea that the state could be reading our emails, could be using our metadata to construct who we've been speaking with, who are stories are, who are our sources are, it makes it extraordinarily chilling. It makes it impossible for whistle-blowers to come forward because there's no way for them to know that their information will be protected, and that they can be protected as a source. It makes it extremely frightening for journalists because they're afraid they could be prosecuted.
I know a lot of national security reporters. I know all of the national security reporters in Canada; they're aren't that many of them. They are very frightened by this legislation. As for the idea that the government would never prosecute them, one of those national security reporters is Ben Makuch, who works for Vice, and right now he could be thrown in jail, depending on what the results of his appeal are, over the RCMP's production order that Vice is fighting.
He has said he'll refuse to provide that information, which would mean he would be found in contempt of court and put in jail. We're already in a system where journalists could be jailed in Canada simply for doing their work. If this is allowed to continue and these powers are exercised.... You are the government of sunny ways, as a Liberal government, but what happens with the next government that isn't quite so sunny? They still will have those legislative powers. It just becomes more dangerous over time.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
I will say, perhaps in fairness, we're not all in the Liberal Party here.
We have seen a precedent of that. Joël-Denis Bellavance was followed by the RCMP, for example. Is that intrinsically linked as well with the vague definitions that you mentioned, the fact that the two go hand in hand, you're collecting data then analyzing it based on these horrible definitions?
Executive Director, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Absolutely.
It's both the vague definitions and the lack of oversight and review that lead to massive potential for abuse. The idea that we would give CSIS enforcement powers when they were stripped from the RCMP in the 1970s because of the dirty tricks that they were doing....
You look at the United States and you can see that police in the United States.... There was just a study released by the AP, that found that there is mass, hundreds, thousands of cases across the United States where police are using their powers to surveil ex-girlfriends, to stalk women, to do any number of things that they are not allowed to do but by accessing the databases they can, because there is very little oversight of that.
The idea that we would restore that power without meaningful oversight to our spy agencies, to our national security agencies, is extremely dangerous.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
I don't want to interrupt you, but my time is limited.
Quickly, for journalists detained abroad are there concerns there? A couple of weeks ago there was an access to information request that showed us that consular services and CSIS have an information sharing agreement. We know often Canadians who are detained abroad in many cases are journalists. Is there concern there from your organization?
Executive Director, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Yes, absolutely.
Data security is extremely important for journalists abroad. One of the main things we do is fight to get journalists out of jail overseas. We only communicate via encryption. We do everything we can to minimize that. But if the government is intercepting our communications then there's a possibility that that information could get to another state actor. Even with Turkey or Egypt, countries like that—routine jailers of journalists—we do have strong diplomatic ties and may share information. You can certainly see our security agency sharing information with those countries. If journalists get caught up in that, their lives could easily be at risk.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Beloeil—Chambly, QC
I appreciate that.
Mr. Atkey, I did have questions for you, but my time is coming to an end. It's all related to Bill C-22, so we'll see you when you come before us again.