Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) revealed, in collaboration with The Intercept, that Canadian intelligence agency Communications Security Establishment (CSE) monitors over 100 file-sharing websites in search of "extremist-related" content in a project dubbed "Levitation."
"Every day we sort through the 10-15 [million Free File Upload] events for the interesting ones. We're finding about 350 interesting download events per month," an internal CSE presentation dating back to 2012 reads.
However, according to the Canadian public broadcaster, the CSE's 350 monthly "interesting download events" amount to some 0.0001 percent of the total data collected.
"Every single thing that you do – in this case uploading/downloading files to these sites – that act is being archived, collected and analyzed," Ron Deibert, director of security watchdog Citizen Lab, was quoted as saying by CBC.
Critics say a lack of oversight allows Canada's equivalent of the NSA to carry out spying activities with impunity.
"These revelations make clear that CSE engages in large-scale warrantless surveillance of our private online activities, despite repeated government assurances to the contrary," Canadian Internet advocacy group Open Media spokesman David Christopher told The Intercept.
Snowden's previous revelations implicated Canada in carrying out espionage missions on behalf of the NSA in nearly 20 countries despite its "neutral" reputation on the global stage.
"[CSE] offers resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis, and has opened covert sites at the request of NSA," a leaked confidential memo from the agency in December 2013 reads.
Since June 2013, the former NSA contractor has been leaking portions of nearly 2 million confidential documents to a number of publications and news carriers across the world.
