Foreign spy agencies spy on Canadians abroad: Federal Judge

A Canadian federal judge says the country’s intelligence agency has asked foreign security agencies to spy on Canadian nationals abroad.

Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley censured the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for deliberately keeping the country’s Federal Court “in the dark” to bypass the law to spy on Canadians, Russia Today reported on Sunday.

The judge said that he had been deliberately misled by CSIS to authorize interception of electronic communications of unidentified Canadians abroad.

CSIS had also assured Mosley that the surveillance was to be carried out from inside the country. However, the spy agency outsourced the task to intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

“It is clear that the exercise of the court’s warrant issuing has been used as protective cover for activities that it has not authorized,” the judge wrote in a court document, adding, “The failure to disclose that information was the result of a deliberate decision to keep the court in the dark about the scope and extent of the foreign collection efforts that would flow from the court’s issuance of a warrant.”

Moseley also said that such actions put the life of Canadian citizens abroad at risk as they “may be detained or otherwise harmed as a result of the use of the intercepted communications by the foreign agencies.”

Under the country’s law, the Federal Court has does not have the authority to issue warrants involving surveillance of Canadians by foreign intelligence agencies, the judge added.