CSIS saw ‘no high privacy risks’ with metadata crunching now under fire: docs
OTTAWA — The national spy service saw little risk to the personal privacy of Canadians in a self-penned evaluation of its secret data-crunching centre — a shadowy program now at the centre of intense controversy, newly released documents show.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service centre touched off a firestorm late last year when a judge said CSIS had broken the law by keeping and analyzing the digital metadata of innocent people.
The ruling also prompted debate about what future role the spy service should have — if any — in using such potentially revealing information in its work.
But a privacy impact assessment of the Operational Data Analysis Centre prepared in August 2010 — and secret until now — offered little hint of such concerns.