Internet monitoring sparked a CSIS investigation

[sanch]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...044&call_pageid=976163513378&col=969048863474

Last night's dramatic police raid and arrest of as many as a dozen men — with more to come — marks the culmination of Canada's largest ever terrorism investigation into an alleged homegrown cell.

The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad.

Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them.

According to sources close to the investigation, the suspects are teenagers and men in their 20s who had a relatively typical Canadian upbringing, but — allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home — became increasingly violent.

 

[sanch]

I thought this article was interesting as the general investigation stemmed from monitoring internet usage in Canada. How was this monitoring taking place? Were ISPs handing over records? Was there some other way internet use and browsing was being monitored? It's more than a bit Orwellian.

 

[darkbeaver]

RE: Internet monitoring s

Big Brother's watching everybody. Terrorists are everywhere
terrorists are doubleplusgood for business. Be careful Winston.

 

[sanch]

Re: RE: Internet monitoring s

Big Brother's watching everybody. Terrorists are everywhere
terrorists are doubleplusgood for business. Be careful Winston.

It is obvious that Big Brother watches very closely in Canada. Why are Canadians so passive about it though? In the US there would be an uproar. In fact there is right now over the same issue and the targeting was not as specific as in Canada. And in the US there are access and privacy laws that work and people can find out what the government is collecting on them. This is not the case in Canada. Harper was supposed to fix it but has not.