Canada is in the spotlight of an ongoing spying scandal as Glenn Greenwald has promised to disclose more details of the espionage of the Five Eyes global intelligence alliance that has already sparked unprecedented fury in Brazil.
American journalist Glenn Greenwald has promised to leak more
secret cables he obtained from Edward Snowden in a series of
interviews conducted on Monday.
“There is a huge amount of stuff about Canada in these
archives because Canada works so closely with the NSA,”
Greenwald, who lives in Brazil told the Globe and Mail.
Without providing details into the soon to be revealed secret
documents, Greenwald suggested that the new material will shed
more light into Canada’s global spying activities, including
economic and industrial espionage against Brazil, which has been
at the center of the recent scandal.
“There's a lot of other documents about Canadians spying on
ordinary citizens, on allied governments, on the world, and their
co-operation with the United States government, and the nature of
that co-operation that I think most Canadian citizens will find
quite surprising, if not shocking, because it's all done in
secret and Canadians are not aware of it,” Greenwald told CBC
radio.
“It’s not like Brazil is the only target for Canada,” the
journalist assured the press.
Greenwald’s interviews follow the latest revelations Canadian and
US intelligence agencies targeting Brazil’s mining industry.
On Sunday, Brazilian TV Globo released the latest leaks
showcasing how the US National Security Agency (NSA) along with
Communication Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada used
software called Olympia to data mine information from phone
calls, internet traffic and emails flowing out of the Brazilian
ministry.
It also claimed the method of cracking the Ministry’s cyber
defenses were discussed and shared among the ‘Five Eyes’ spy
network, which includes the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and
Australia.
Following the leak, President Dilma Rousseff condemned the
“cyberwar” launched by the US and its allies against
Brazil and demanded they stop the espionage.
Commenting on the scandal, Greenwald told the Globe and Mail that
the US and its allies are more interested in industrial espionage
than preventing the global terrorist threat.
“The reason this is so newsworthy is that the US and its
allies love to say the only reason they are doing this kind of
mass surveillance is they want to stop terrorism and protect
national security – but these documents make clear it is
industrial and economic competition, it’s about mining resources
and minerals,” Greenwald said.
Furthermore, the US journalist accused the US intelligence
machine of being hypocritical when it comes to spying activities
in the world.
“The US is running around publicly accusing China of using
hacking for industrial advantage – well, this is a really clear
cut example of this – of how Canada and the rest of the Five Eyes
are doing it,” the Globe and Mail quotes.
One of the leaked slides on Sunday has suggested that Canada’s
CSEC shares their intelligence with NSA’s “Tailored Access
Operations” unit.
“TAO is one of the most aggressive and insidious parts of the
NSA – they’re hackers – they hack other people’s computers
exactly the way hackers that the US puts in prison do,”
Greenwald said. “Canada is working with the NSA on some of the
most aggressive techniques that the NSA did.”
On Tuesday Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed
concern about the allegations that Canada’s intelligence agency
has spied on the Brazilian Mines and Energy Ministry.
"Canadian officials are reaching out very proactively to their
counterparts ... I'm obviously very concerned about this story
and some of the reports around it, very concerned," Harper
told reporters in Indonesia on the sidelines of an Asian summit.
"That said, you know I cannot comment on national security
operations."
Brazilian-US relations have also been ruined by the recent leak,
with Rousseff postponing a state visit to Washington in response
to the US spying on her communications with top aides. Rousseff
has demanded a full public apology from President Obama. However,
no such apology has been made.