Our phone calls not being tracked, spy agency says

[CHIMO]

OTTAWA -- Canada's electronic spy agency says citizens need not worry their phone calls are secretly being tracked by the government -- a reality Americans woke up to on Thursday.

Reports in the United States suggest the National Security Agency, the world's most advanced electronic surveillance operation, has been collecting details of billions of domestic phone calls. Advanced computer systems mine the data for suspicious calls and patterns, and then flag them for further investigation if deemed warranted.

The raw information was first handed over by three of the country's biggest telecommunications companies at the request of the government following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, USA Today reported.

A spokesman for Canada's Communications Security Establishment, a cryptologic agency embedded in the Department of National Defence which works closely with the NSA, insisted no such program exists here.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=52557646-2d0d-4ffe-8b46-ed08bbdae95d&k=98017

Bunch of garbage rolled up in doublespeak.

BC Telecom/Telus Merger

George Petty is a plain-speaking guy, not prone to superlatives. So when he told Telus Corp. shareholders last April that he wanted to turn the Alberta telecommunications company into one of the world’s "premier communications" firms, he was not bluffing. Petty’s determination to transform Telus from a company that only eight years ago was provincially owned into a national contender was apparent earlier this year when he tried to ink a deal with Halifax-based AT&T Canada Long Distance Services Corp. When that merger foundered in April, the calculating and obstinate Petty, Telus’s president and chief executive officer, refused to retreat. By July, he was deep in talks with BC Telecom Inc., controlled by GTE Corp of Stamford, Conn., the third-largest local telephone company in the United States. And last week, the two companies announced a merger that will permanently change the landscape of the roughly $22-billion Canadian telecommunications industry. Together, says Brian Canfield, the company’s new chairman, "We can take on anybody."

http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011790

[Spazito]

1. My, my, isn't this reassuring....

"CSE doesn't require a warrant to intercept, but a ministerial authorization must be signed."

With the faux Cons in charge, anybody think a ministerial authorization couldn't be had at the drop of a dime?

Edited to correct spelling error.

[arikara]

2. These kind of statements are ridiculous

Canada, US, UK, Australia etc have had it all set up to spy on us through the Echelon system. The countries involved spy on the others but supposedly not their own. They then pass the info on to each other in order to get around the laws of the land. They've all been cooperating with each other for decades.