It is not only American and British secret agents who would like to understand what you are downloading. The attempt, codenamed Levitation, is intended to see foreign terrorists using these file services to run their operations. It might just net a user’s IP address most of the time, but its findings can run through databases from allied intelligence agencies (including the NSA as well as GCHQ) to get names, email addresses and other private details.

Officials will merely say they’re “certainly mandated” to scoop up foreign data to be able to defend the nation, and there is evidence that it occasionally works — they discovered details of a hostage-taking strategy in this manner , as an example. As with other mass surveillance systems, however, the concern is the fact that innocent individuals (including Canadians) are becoming caught up in the dragnet. It is not clear how much data the CSE has, whether it’s, and how much time it is permitted to retain that content giving information over to other countries for their own goals.