Written by Russel Johnsen   

While Americans rant and rave over the intrusions by the NSA and its anti-Constitutional adventures thieving its way through cyber-space Canada and Canadians have been awfully damned quiet and seem the be ignoring the black fact that there are no limits of what the NSA can do to invade Canadian privacy and to such up volumes of data that may be useful down the road to pick up a Canadian for speaking out against the USA.

Of course, for many Canadians they just don't give a damn as they're virtual Americans anyway and hold high value for the American violence continuing round our globe as they pretend that this is a Muslim problem when the facts clearly show otherwise.

But then there are the Canadians that are Free Thinkers and look below the headline stories and are interested in gleaning pieces of truth rather than soaking in a hot tub of preconceived nonsense that flows round us all the time. It is the Free Thinkers of Canada that are at risk and it seems the Harper government just doesn't like Free Thinkers because they, for the most part, wouldn't vote him team captain of a dodge ball squad even though he's been adept at dodging for quite some time.

It may come as a surprise to some that Google, Facebook etc have been buddies of the American snoop programmes for some years. Their systems, it seems, have had wide open doors for those in the snoop business.

Even as we look at the massive collections of data by the USA we've been ignoring our governments collection of information on and about Canadians. Gone is the Census and in is the
Canadian Security Intelligence Act. CSIS can do exactly as does the NSA under the rules of law created before the Harper conservatives came to power and afterward.

Very little is being said in our government nor in our news with regard to the NSA collections of Canadian's data nor of the collection of data internally in Canada.

In the old days of surveillance movies people could be talking in a restaurant and have and eavesdropper with a tiny parabolic disk listening in on your conversations. Kind of funny really and these movies were not taken that seriously. Now, the NSA can 'watch' you type on your computer if you're online, it can collect your telephone information; the TV shows you watch; the cell phone activity and so on.

Billions upon billions of data bits can be copied and stored for later investigation. This can be done by the Canadian government too but not to such a high degree. More subtlety, though, Harper may have 'under the table agreements with the USA; certainly CSIS does.

If you're anti-Harper in any manner, I'd be concerned. If you've concerns about environmental issues, I'd be concerned. If you've qualms about Israel, I'd be concerned. If you back the Palestinians to any degree, I'd be concerned. Overall, I'd be concerned unless you're an abusive, racist, brutal right wing nut job, I'd be concerned.

RC