Canada Trades on Benign Image to Spy for US

Canada enjoys a relatively benign image worldwide as a peaceful democracy full of friendly people without the nasty tendencies towards violence and imperialism the United States has. NOT. The latest revelation out of Edward Snowden's cache of top secret documents show Canada in a much more sinister role as the imperial lacky who does the master's spying in places Americans are not welcomed ("unique geographic access to areas unavailable to the U.S."). A four page memo dated April 3, 2013 and marked top secret shows Canadian operatives at work in stations abroad amassing data on 20 high-priority countries at the request of NSA. There is a close working relationship between the Canadian signals intelligence group, Communications Security Establishment (CSEC) and the National Security Agency according to the briefing paper. The relationship dates back to 1949 and is driven by "the defense of North America as a whole." For informed people the relationship is not that surprising since Canada has cooperated in mutual military defense of the continent from the beginning of the Cold War. Another Snowden document shows that Canada cooperated with US spying on the G20 summit held in Toronto in 2010. What is important is that Canada's powerful technological spying is safe from the prying eyes of US politicians looking to score points against an agency being vilified for widespread abuse of domestic spying powers granted in the so-called Patriot Act passed in the wake of 9/11 hysteria. Much of the computer hardware and software used by CSEC for encryption, decoding and interception of electronic data comes from NSA. Compared to NSA with a budget of over $40 billion CSEC is tiny, costing Canadians a mere $1.2 billion. Nevertheless, revelations about Canada spying for the US as part of the "Five Eyes" partnership of Anglo-Saxon nations could imperil its diplomatic operations abroad, so it requires high-level political approval.