Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald to debate privacy and CSEC spying at Ottawa event sponsored by OpenMedia.ca

Greenwald has worked extensively with whistleblower Edward Snowden to report on how spy agencies like Canada’s CSEC and the U.S. NSA are monitoring the private lives of law-abiding citizens on a massive scale

“I'm​ ​really looking forward to speaking directly with​ ​Canadians about privacy and state surveillance,” says Glenn​ ​Greenwald. “Privacy is a fundamental human right that is vital for​ ​the health of any democracy. Canadians pride themselves on their democratic values - but sadly their own government is responsible for building a state​ ​surveillance apparatus, in cooperation with the N.S.A,​ ​that is unparalleled in human history. More and more​ ​Canadians are seeing through their government’s deceit​ ​and obfuscation, and I’m eagerly anticipating this opportunity to contribute to that debate."

“Glenn Greenwald’s groundbreaking journalism has sparked a lively and hugely important discussion about how to rein in secretive spy agencies like CSEC,” says OpenMedia.ca Executive Director Steve Anderson. “I’m delighted that Canadians will soon have an opportunity to hear first hand from Glenn about the reckless activities of CSEC and their NSA partners. We’re talking about secret government spying on the private lives of anyone, at anytime and we can’t even tell when we’ve been victimized by it. This government has left Canadians with a huge privacy deficit that we’ll all need to work together to fix - and this event will be a great opportunity to learn more about how best we can do that.”

Tickets for the event cost $35 ($20 for seniors and students) and are available at http://glenngreenwaldspeaks.eventzilla.net. The event will also be recorded by CPAC and live-streamed by Rabble.ca

CSEC has over 2000 employees and an annual budget of over $420 million. Taxpayers are spending over $4 billion to build and operate a lavish new CSEC headquarters, which the CBC has described as a “spy palace” and as “the most expensive government building ever built”.

Over 40,000 people have pledged their support to calls for new legislation to protect citizens’ privacy from government spying, with more signing on every day at http://OurPrivacy.ca

About OpenMedia.ca

OpenMedia.ca is an award-winning community-based organization that safeguards the possibilities of the open Internet. We work toward informed and participatory digital policy by engaging hundreds of thousands of people in protecting our online rights.

Through campaigns such as StopTheMeter.ca and StopSpying.ca, OpenMedia.ca has engaged over half-a-million Canadians, and has influenced public policy and federal law.

Contact

David Christopher
Communications Manager, OpenMedia.ca
1-778-232-1858
[email protected]

About OpenMedia.ca’s privacy campaign
OpenMedia.ca led the successful StopSpying.ca campaign that forced the government to back down on its plans to introduce a costly, invasive, and warrantless online spying law (Bill C-30). Nearly 150,000 Canadians took part in the campaign. To learn more, see this infographic.

Last October, OpenMedia.ca joined with over 50 major organizations and over a dozen academic experts to form the Protect Our Privacy Coalition, which is the largest pro-privacy coalition in Canadian history. The Coalition is calling for effective legal measures to protect the privacy of every resident of Canada against intrusion by government entities.

OpenMedia.ca and the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) recently announced they will work together to put a stop to illegal government surveillance against law-abiding Canadians. OpenMedia.ca has launched a national campaign encouraging Canadians to support a BCCLA legal action which aims to stop illegal spying by challenging the constitutionality of the government’s warrantless collection of data on Canadians’ everyday Internet use.

More Information

• New Snowden docs show U.S. spied during G20 in Toronto. Source: CBC News
• Five highlights from the Canada-Brazil spying revelations. [Source: The Globe and Mail]
• Privacy watchdog on spy agency’s data collection: ‘We want to find out more’. [Source: The Globe And Mail]
• Canada’s spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians: watchdog. [Source: National Post]
• Inside Canada's top-secret billion-dollar spy palace. [Source: CBC News.]
• Data breach protocols deficient in 9 federal departments, watchdog finds. - [Source: CBC News]
• Lawful Access back on the agenda this Fall? - Michael Geist.
• The secretive CSEC agency has a staff of more than 2,000 and a budget of about $400 million. [Source: CBC News]
• Surveillance expert Ron Deibert on the threat spy agencies pose for citizens.
• Internet Law expert Michael Geist on why Canadians should be concerned about government spying.
• Privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says there are significant concerns about the scope of information that CSEC are reported to collect. [Source: CBC News]
• In this article, The Globe and Mail describes the revelations about Canadian government spying as “disturbing and unacceptable”
• This document, obtained by The Globe through Access to Information, shows how Minister MacKay authorized a top secret program to data-mine global ‘metadata’ in 2011.