It could happen to you.

I'm indebted to Pacanukeha for providing this link: Andrew Mitrovica over at the Toronto Star wrote a scathing article on the Canadian government's ability to monitor the communications of citizens:

The vigorous and necessary debate presently being waged in the United States over the extent to which intelligence services may exercise their extraordinary resources and powers is not, regrettably, mirrored in Canada.

There was pathetically little attention paid among Members of Parliament, civil libertarians and journalists when the federal government moved unilaterally four years ago to lift the ban on the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) — our little-known cyberspace spy service — to intercept the e-mail and cellphone traffic of persons living in Canada.

Without so much as a scintilla of debate in the House of Commons, Ottawa granted an immensely powerful and largely unaccountable spy service the authority to spy on cyber communications in Canada without a court order.

With all the hullabaloo (here and elsewhere) about Bush's decision to override constitutional guarantees of privacy and security, it's easy to overlook similar actions taken by our own government. I mean, I'm someone who's actually interested in these issues and I was only dimly aware of how the CSE's powers had been extended and obfuscated; I can't imagine the average person being any better informed, especially with Canada's major media outlets giving the government a free ride on this.