Surveillance of reporter a 'serious attack on freedom of the press in Canada' (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Surveillance of reporter a 'serious attack on freedom of the press in Canada' (2016)

cbc.ca

83 pointsdmbche19 comments

He was under 24 surveillance orders, for an investigation on police planting false evidence. His phone's location was shared, as well as the time and recipient/caller of all calls and texts.

Journalists are protected in the canadian law and are not forced to share their sources, unless a court of law decides it's in the public interest (bit more to it than that, but that's the gist).

The SPVM didn't care. Horryfing

Par for the course in most countries it seems. Including the US

It's a recent backslide in norms, pioneered by a Nobel Peace Price winner: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/opinion/spying-on-the-ass...

> The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.

> On Friday, Justice Department officials revealed that they had been going through The A.P.’s records for months. The dragnet covered work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 people at one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations. James Cole, a deputy attorney general, offered no further explanation on Tuesday, saying only that it was part of a “criminal investigation involving highly classified material” from early 2012.

Was not aware of that - that's absolutely nuts. Thank you for the link - and on-topic username!

Did A.P. ever followup? It's hard to believe they just let it slide.

> Journalists are protected in the canadian law

But Canada is a democracy so the law applies to fit the rullers. /s

And look how good it scores on the Freedom of the press index.

Well, if you do anything that might piss off some of the big players, especially in Canada where only few families control everything, you should assume you are already under surveillance -directly or indirectly- and act upon it, even if it means to use a dumb phone, no clouds, no home assistance, and other usual measures.

Not Canadian, my step-family are, but that's the first I've heard of that. Can you elaborate further?

The location data and call information is available to the cellular service provider and governments for anyone. In that sense, everyone is under surveillance.

Anything more than that (like asking Apple for help, or getting into the phone)?

He could enable locked down mode and end to end iCloud encryption. If the government still hacks the iPhone (probably using spyware bought from abroad), that’s concerning.

This story was made public in 2016, here's one from a 2022 I believe? They do use malware.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/29/canada-national-pol...

It's just incredibly blatant diregard for canadian's rights that they were able to bug a journalist this way.

Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice the date! The lockdown mode and e2e encryption were not available back then.

I didn’t see mentions of Canadian police hacking into the phone.

>> In fact, police obtained warrants to track his whereabouts using the GPS chip in his iPhone and obtain the identities of everyone he has spoken with and messaged.

But, yeah, the politico link that you cited clearly mentions that the Canadian government is a user of the phone hacking tools.

No you're right, they reportedly did not hack his phone to get the data - you're right!

My comment was more to mention that if a journalist of that guy's standing (he's basically quebecs top columnist) was not encrypting his stuff, ans that the police got to his sources, basically no source is safe.

I personally live with the acceptance that everything on my phone is public, and act accordingly, but I doubt most people reaching out to journalists-or even jouralista for that matter- have the same view.

So sadly, in effect, everyone is under surveillance, even if it's supposed to not be the case under the law.

It was also mentionned that rogue RCMP officers (FBI equivalent) spyied on a journalist without oversight - which rubs me the wrong way.

The reporter was clearly thinking the wrong way. You can’t do that.

(2016)

Something new here? A number of stories about this 7 years ago

Had a hard time finding these when I posted - still have a hard time finding them - if you have any pertinent ones I'd be glad to look at them.

Here is RCMP commenting on their use of malware to hack phones and rogue agents spying on journalists without supervision.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/29/canada-national-pol...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com