National Defence committee  Certainly private commercial companies use metadata, so when I click onto my CBC website in the morning, it's providing me with the Ottawa weather and the Ottawa news because it knows I'm in Ottawa, so it's providing that information to me. If I'm a retailer, as you said, it's providing information that I might be interested in.

National Defence committee  Sure. Thank you. I'd be happy to. Again, although we collect metadata, it's very much limited in its use to our existing mandate, which is foreign intelligence collection and cyber-defence. The restrictions we have around that is to understand global networks to find foreign targets.

National Defence committee  No, not at all. The ministerial authorization is there if we're pursuing a foreign target outside Canada, somebody in another country. When we're collecting intelligence on that target we have no way of knowing if that person may be in communication with someone in Canada, so the authorization says if you're pursuing a foreign target and they are talking to someone in Canada, if the minister authorizes it according to the criteria in the act, you may collect that one-ended communication.

National Defence committee  No, that doesn't apply. It was the date the first ministerial direction was signed by a minister around metadata.

National Defence committee  Yes, I think the report implied that we had accessed the computer networks of an airport to collect the information. I think what we clarified was we were using an historical sample of metadata from our global collection that was used to build an analytical model that helped us find foreign targets.

National Defence committee  It's in 16 years of the commissioner's existence, not to go back to the Second World War.

National Defence committee  Not in his annual report. He's required by law to immediately notify both the Minister of National Defence and the Attorney General of Canada if he feels the agency has acted outside the law. In addition, if our employees suspect there is any unlawful activity going on in the agency, we have an internal ethics officer they can report to, or they can go directly to the commissioner who performs that role if one of our employees felt we had gone outside the law.

National Defence committee  Metadata is the data around a communication that allows it to be rooted and managed through global communication networks. That's not to say there aren't important privacy interests in that data that we are required to manage and protect in accordance with Canadian law. We use metadata to understand global networks, so when we're trying to find a foreign target in a sea of billions and billions of communications, we can then know where to look to find our target.

National Defence committee  No, we would have the technical assistance—

National Defence committee  No, it may be helping them with forensics on a piece of computer equipment that the RCMP has obtained under warrant. It could be a range of technical assistance.

National Defence committee  We would have capabilities.

National Defence committee  No, I wouldn't say that.

National Defence committee  No, sir, we would provide technical assistance to them. It could range from computer assistance to collection to other aspects they would need for their investigation, and it would be done lawfully under their authority and their warrant.

National Defence committee  Only if they've gone to court and got a warrant—

National Defence committee  It's their operation, their authority, and we would provide some technical assistance.