While Edward Snowden leaked documents exposing the wide breadth of National Security Agency surveillance in 2013, the repercussions of those documents still inform conversations around online privacy concerns. And University of Toronto researchers have created an interactive database to show how NSA surveillance can even have an impact on Canadians.
The
IXMaps database helps Canadians understand how their internet traffic moves—specifically, it helps Canadians understand how certain traffic routes, known as boomerang routes, move data into the United States and into the jurisdiction of the NSA before the data returns to Canada. The tool is funded by the
.CA Community Investment program, which is dedicated to funding initiatives “keep Canadians at the forefront of the digital age,” according to its website.
“IXmaps highlights just how much of our Canadian web traffic is unnecessarily being routed through the U.S. and back againwithout our knowledge. The biggest concern about our data moving into the NSA's jurisdiction is that Canadians do not have the same protections from NSA surveillance that Americans do, so our information is more vulnerable.” says Laura Tribe, digital rights specialist at Open Media. “ And as the Snowden revelations have highlighted, the amount of information being shared between the Five Eyes governments (Canada, U.S., U.K, Australia and New Zealand), means that our information doesn't likely stop with just the NSA.”
Many of the major Internet providers in Canada have networks that favour north – south connections, pushing Canadian data flows toward key American routing hubs in New York, Chicago, Seattle, or California, and popular sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon leaves Canadian data vulnerable to American mass surveillance.
For Canadians looking to protect their privacy online, Tribe recommends services like VPNs or a Tor browser for protecting internet activity, PGP for a secure way to encrypt emails and secure instant messaging services like Signal. “Also, being aware of just how much information we are putting online, and what that information can say about us is crucial,” Tribe adds. “I frequently hear the argument that ‘I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear’ as justification for indifference about digital privacy. But when people are faced with the offline equivalents of that argument, such as removing all of the curtains from their windows and the doors from their homes, they quickly realize just how much we really do value our privacy.