Guardian

• Britain denies using U.S. spy schemes to circumvent law

• ‘Canada eavesdropping on phone, Internet records too’

CONTROVERSIES surrounding America’s intelligence surveillance programmes have also  linked Canadian security architecture to similar scandal just as the British Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted Monday that United Kingdom (UK) spies have not used the United States (U.S.) investigation schemes to get around laws restricting their ability to eavesdrop on the public.

A report on Canadian scandal and British denial came on a day that a former employee of United States Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA), who turned whistleblower to reveal the vast American surveillance programmes, Edward Snowden, narrated how his conscience drove him to spill the beans to “protect basic liberties for people around the world”.

According to a newspaper report, Canada has also been electronically eavesdropping on Canadians and others, scouring global telephone records and Internet data for patterns of suspicious activity.

The daily Globe and Mail reported that Defence Minister Peter MacKay signed a ministerial directive renewing the programme in November 2011, after a brief hiatus over concerns that it could lead to surveillance of Canadians without a warrant.

The programme, operated by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), originated during the Cold War to spy on Soviet states but its mandate shifted in 2005 amid rising fears of terrorist networks.

But CSEC spokesman, Ryan Foreman, told the Globe and Mail that the CSEC “incidentally” intercepts Canadian communications but primarily “is used to isolate and identify foreign communications, as CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians.”

Meanwhile, Snowden – the 29-year-old who joined the army in 2003 to fight in the Iraq War, explained to British newspaper, The Guardian that “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.”

He added: “Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.”

But the whistleblower, who is now hold up in a hotel in Hong Kong, never made it to Iraq as he broke both legs in a training accident and was discharged from the military.

Snowden’s career took a new turn when he got a job as a security guard for the NSA, one of the largest and most secretive of the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Despite never finishing high school, the computer whiz quickly rose through the ranks, and by 2007 was in a CIA post with diplomatic cover in Geneva.

It was there he first considered going public with government secrets.

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” he said.

“I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

But he said he hesitated, hoping President Barack Obama’s election would mark a change.

When the reforms he hoped for failed to materialize, Snowden said he decided to take matters into his own hands: “I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act.”

He soon began setting in motion the steps that would lead to last week’s newspaper exposes, published first in The Guardian and then in the Washington Post.

It was one of the most significant security breaches in U.S. history, joining the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and Bradley Manning, who released U.S. diplomatic cables and war logs to the WikiLeaks website.

Snowden cited both men as inspiration.

“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he said in a video posted on the Guardian’s web site Sunday.

Snowden told the Post he was not afraid, despite the intelligence authorities’ threat to hunt him down.

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end,” he wrote in early May.

“You can’t protect the source,” he wrote, “but if you help me make the truth known, I will consider it a fair trade.”

Snowden, who most recently was working as a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor at the National Security Agency, left behind a “very comfortable life” in Hawaii, am annual salary of $200,000, a girlfriend, a stable career and a loving family.

“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world,” Snowden said in The Guardian video.

Before the whistleblower’s identity was revealed, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper vowed to “track down whoever’s doing this” and accused the leaker of causing “huge, grave damage” to U.S. intelligence.

The Guardian said Snowden had mostly remained ensconced in his Hong Kong hotel room since boarding a flight on May 20, stepping outside for only about three times during his entire stay.

“All my options are bad,” Snowden said, with possible extradition proceedings, questioning by Chinese authorities or an extra-legal detention by the CIA hanging over his head.

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China with its own legal system, has an extradition treaty with the United States.

But experts said yesterday that Hong Kong might not prove to be a haven for the US whistleblower, but any extradition bid will be long and complicated, in a city that cherishes civic freedoms despite Chinese sovereignty.

Though he said he was uncomfortable in the spotlight – “there’s no precedent in my life for this kind of thing,” he wrote to the Post after his identity was revealed. “I’ve been a spy for almost all of my adult life” – he thought the attention might help keep him safe.

Meanwhile, Hague, who cancelled a trip to Washington to address parliament yesterday on the issue, said Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ operated within a strict legal framework.

“It has been suggested that GCHQ uses our partnership with the United States to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the United Kingdom,” Hague said.

“I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless.”

The Guardian newspaper, which along with The Washington Post revealed details last week of two vast electronic surveillance programmes operated by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), reported that GHCQ has had access to the Internet-monitoring scheme PRISM since at least June 2010.

Seeking to calm public concern, Hague told lawmakers that every time GCHQ wants to intercept an individual’s communications, the agency must seek a warrant signed by him, the interior minister or another secretary of state.

“This is no casual process,” Hague said.

“Every decision is based on extensive legal and policy advice. Warrants are legally required to be necessary, proportionate and carefully targeted.”

He added: “We take great care to balance individual privacy with our duty to safeguard the public and the UK’s national security.”

Hague said that since the 1940s, the NSA and its forerunners have had a relationship with GCHQ that is “unique in the world”.

This relationship “has stopped many terrorist and espionage plots against this country and it has saved many lives,” he said.

“The growing and diffuse nature of threats from terrorists, criminals or espionage has only increased the importance of our intelligence relationship with the United States.”

But asked by an opposition spokesman if it was possible that GCHQ has made mistakes and spied on innocent members of the public, Hague admitted: “Everyone is capable of error... there will always be ways of improving our procedures.”

He insisted that the rules surrounding surveillance “minimise the chance of error” and praised GCHQ for its “professionalism, dedication and integrity”.