He was under 24 surveillance orders, for an investigation on police planting false evidence. His phone's location was shared, as well as the time and recipient/caller of all calls and texts.
Journalists are protected in the canadian law and are not forced to share their sources, unless a court of law decides it's in the public interest (bit more to it than that, but that's the gist).
> The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.
> On Friday, Justice Department officials revealed that they had been going through The A.P.’s records for months. The dragnet covered work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 people at one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations. James Cole, a deputy attorney general, offered no further explanation on Tuesday, saying only that it was part of a “criminal investigation involving highly classified material” from early 2012.
Well, if you do anything that might piss off some of the big players, especially in Canada where only few families control everything, you should assume you are already under surveillance -directly or indirectly- and act upon it, even if it means to use a dumb phone, no clouds, no home assistance, and other usual measures.
The location data and call information is available to the cellular service provider and governments for anyone. In that sense, everyone is under surveillance.
Anything more than that (like asking Apple for help, or getting into the phone)?
He could enable locked down mode and end to end iCloud encryption. If the government still hacks the iPhone (probably using spyware bought from abroad), that’s concerning.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice the date! The lockdown mode and e2e encryption were not available back then.
I didn’t see mentions of Canadian police hacking into the phone.
>> In fact, police obtained warrants to track his whereabouts using the GPS chip in his iPhone and obtain the identities of everyone he has spoken with and messaged.
But, yeah, the politico link that you cited clearly mentions that the Canadian government is a user of the phone hacking tools.
No you're right, they reportedly did not hack his phone to get the data - you're right!
My comment was more to mention that if a journalist of that guy's standing (he's basically quebecs top columnist) was not encrypting his stuff, ans that the police got to his sources, basically no source is safe.
I personally live with the acceptance that everything on my phone is public, and act accordingly, but I doubt most people reaching out to journalists-or even jouralista for that matter- have the same view.
So sadly, in effect, everyone is under surveillance, even if it's supposed to not be the case under the law.
It was also mentionned that rogue RCMP officers (FBI equivalent) spyied on a journalist without oversight - which rubs me the wrong way.
Having one's assets frozen in Canada for protesting is pretty much the economic equalilant of being gunned down. Blocking business as usual is pretty typical for protests. The insidious nature of the government's response is not.
Journalists are protected in the canadian law and are not forced to share their sources, unless a court of law decides it's in the public interest (bit more to it than that, but that's the gist).
The SPVM didn't care. Horryfing