This Was No Mistake

Tom Mulcair says it was a "mistake" for Canada to spy on Brazil but there was no mistake involved.  On behalf of Canada's extractive industries the government targeted Brazilian companies.  It was an extensive and protracted exercise in commercial espionage.  It's the sort of skulduggery that has Stephen Harper's hoofprints all over it.

CBC News has just released a look at the Communications Security Establishment Canada agency's new, $1.2-billion headquarters now nearing completion.   Not surprisingly, it will house the most powerful computer in the nation, the better to spy on everyone from security threats to competitors to dissidents to ordinary, everyday Canadians.

The nerve centre of the agency is a separate concrete bunker the size of a football field, home to what is being touted as the most powerful super-computer in the country, along with its mammoth electrical power generators and cooling systems.

When fully operational, the data centre alone will apparently suck up enough electricity to light much of the nation’s capital.

Adams says a lack of electrical and computing power is the main reason the agency is having to move from its current location in south Ottawa, a cluster of buildings dating back to the 1960s, the main one previously occupied by the CBC.

He says the agency’s existing computers could only run at 60 per cent capacity without overloading the local power grid.

CSEC also needs about three times more computing power than it has, plus a full backup, Adams says. “There are more transactions at CSEC on a daily basis than all of our banks combined.”

Make no mistake about it.  With Stephen Harper at the wheel, the CSEC presents a grave and unaccountable threat to Canadian democracy and to the privacy of every Canadian.

Why PRISM Matters

The Guardian has done an excellent and vital job digesting the U.S. National Security Agency PRISM data leaked by Edward Snowden.  A good deal of it had come out, in part, in dribs and drabs but it was the British newspaper that put it all together in chilling context.

It's partly a warning about our governments spying on us and why.  It's also a warning of  what they might have in mind for us in the future.   They foresee unrest and potential upheaval in the future from climate change impacts.  Theirs is a world in which today's environmental activists are viewed as tomorrow's potential terrorists and they're gearing up for domestic military responses.

Read this summary.  Read it from top to bottom, the whole thing.  Then consider it in light of recent controversy over domestic spying on Canadians by Communications Security Establishment Canada or CSEC.

CSEC denies it is spying on Canadians.  That's bullshit.  The Americans, under the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, do the heavy lifting and share it with Canada's security agencies.  And we know that CSIS, in conjunction with the Calgary and Edmonton police and the RCMP, is running an active intelligence operation targeting environmentalists opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline project.   This is, after all, HarperLand. 

It's infuriating to realize that these same governments that drag their heels on doing anything meaningful about climate change nonetheless see it as a major threat warranting preparations for military intervention against their own populations.