© CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERSCommunications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) chief John Forster waits to testify before the Senate national security and defence committee in Ottawa February 3, 2014.
"We wouldn't be able to find or locate our targets without it," John Forster, chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, told a parliamentary committee.
The head of the foreign-intelligence electronic-eavesdropping agency, Mr. Forster said snooping on metadata is fundamental for the Canadian government to pick out foreign terrorists and other targets "in a sea of billion and billions of communications traversing the globe."
For nearly a decade, Canada's surveillance sleuths at CSEC have been collecting and analyzing Internet Protocol addresses, phone logs and other metadata. Government lawyers have told them this kind of surveillance is legally sound - and not the same as illegally wiretapping phone calls or steaming open letters.
This means that standard privacy strictures - such as not intercepting Canadian material without warrants - do not necessarily apply. In the search for foreign intelligence "targets" outside Canada, CSEC analysts are allowed to use metadata regardless of whether the underlying communications originate in Canada.
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