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Canada's ultra-secret eavesdropping agency said Thursday it has stopped sharing intelligence with international partners after revealing it had illegally collected Canadians' metadata in sweeps of foreign communications.
In a report to parliament, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said the breach was unintentional and had been discovered internally in 2013.
A CSE official blamed a software flaw that resulted in sharing of metadata, used to identify, manage or route communications over networks that could identify Canadians.
The agency said the likelihood of this leading to any abuses was "low."
But as a precaution, the CSE suspended its sharing of metadata with its Five Eyes intelligence partners—Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and the United States—until it finds a fix to the problem.
Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said he was satisfied that any data that had already been shared with the intelligence alliance before the software glitch was discovered "did not contain names or enough information on its own to identify individuals."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Soybean on Monday February 01 2016, @03:47AM
"did not contain names or enough information on its own to identify individuals."
The key phrase being "on its own," which conveniently sidesteps the primary risk: That when combined with other seemingly innocuous data, like a telephone book, it becomes enough to identify individuals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 01 2016, @12:18PM
Exactly. Came here to say the same thing. The devil is in the details and how do you know a politician is lying to you? His lips are moving...