The RCMP is Spying on You!

 

A 3,000-page batch of internal communications from the RCMP obtained by The Tyee provides a window into how the force builds its capabilities to spy on internet users and works to hide its methods from the public. The emails and documents pertain to the RCMP’s Tactical Internet Operational Support unit based at the national headquarters in Ottawa and its advanced web monitoring program called Project Wide Awake.

The documents reveal the RCMP:

* Gained permission to hide sole-source contracts for Project Wide Awake from the public through a “national security exception.”

* Discussed “tier three” covert operations involving the use of proxies — intermediary computers located elsewhere — to hide RCMP involvement with spying activities.

* Purchased software with an aim to search “Darknet,” which it defined to include “private communications” and those from “political protests.”

* Has used a tool to unmask lists of “friends” on Facebook for users that specifically set friends’ information to private on the platform.

* Was “wasting resources, wasting time, wasting money” on IT projects, according to the then RCMP chief information officer.

* Took the names for Project Wide Awake and other internet surveillance programs from the X-Men comic book series, in which illegal government programs hunt human “mutants.”


‘You Have Zero Privacy’ Says an Internal RCMP Presentation.

Read the complete report from Tyee here.