Pop quiz: Who is Jane Shorten?

You don’t have a clue, do you? Well, you’re not alone. Most of official Ottawa and Canada’s press corps likely don’t know or remember who she is either.

They should, particularly in light of the diplomatic and media tizzy triggered by the latest “revelations” from Edward Snowden, former contractor to the U.S.’s National Security Agency (NSA), that Canada’s cryptological espionage agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), may have trained its technological wizardry to spy on Brazil.

Long before Snowden began spilling his world-reverberating secrets, a courageous and brilliant young Canadian named Jane Shorten exposed the notoriously secretive CSEC’s questionable conduct in the amorphous name of national security.

I met Shorten in the mid 1990s while I was an investigative producer at CTV National News. At the time, Shorten had worked for several years at CSEC as a much-respected linguist and translator. Her job was to pluck intelligence from the mountain of raw data that CSEC vacuumed from cyberspace.

What Shorten discovered disturbed her conscience. Shorten learned, for example, that CSEC was routinely collecting industrial and commercial secrets from Canada’s trading allies and partners, notably Japan, Mexico and South Korea. She eavesdropped on South Korean officials secretly negotiating the purchase of nuclear reactors, as well as Mexican officials involved in NAFTA talks.

She also discovered that the spy service was breaking the law by intercepting the communications of Canadians emanating in Canada. The tipping point for her was listening to a conversation a young Canadian woman working at foreign embassy in Canada had with her gynecologist.

Alarmed, she raised her concerns with senior CSEC officials, who promptly told her to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t. Instead, risking her career and freedom, she went on national TV and blew the whistle about it all and insisted that CSEC’s unchecked powers needed to be reined in.

That was in 1995.

Shorten’s revelations and the momentary diplomatic ripple they caused had the salutary effect of forcing the then Liberal government to create the first oversight agency over CSEC. Since its inception, however, the agency has proven to be limp, underfunded and understaffed. Still, the long-forgotten Shorten can justifiably take credit for having forced Ottawa’s hand.

Fast forward to 2013 and Canada is again being accused of spying on its trading allies. And just as in 1995, the usual pack of go-to security “experts” is trying to dismiss it all as inconsequential.

Exhibit A: Ray Boisvert, the ubiquitous former CSIS officer and media darling, has been on TV and in newspapers these past few days suggesting it’s much ado about nothing.

Here’s what he told the National Post on Tuesday: “We were all too busy chasing bad guys who can actually kill people. The idea that we spend a lot of time, or any time at all, on a country like Brazil is pretty low margin stuff, not likely to happen.”

Apparently, Boisvert has forgotten about Shorten too.

As for CSEC and its sister intelligence services in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand (known as “Five Eyes”) devoting all their time and technology to chasing the “bad guys,” well, that’s a hoot.

It was recently revealed that an untold number of NSA spooks haven’t, in fact, been manning their stations to catch the “bad guys.” Rather, they have been preoccupied with keeping electronic tabs on their girlfriends, first dates and former paramours.

Then, last week, in little-noticed testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee, NSA director General Keith Alexander admitted that the NSA had thwarted 13 so-called “terror plots,” not the “dozens” he enthusiastically proffered earlier this year at the apex of Snowden’s revelations. Of course, the “dozens” figure attracted widespread media attention. Not surprisingly, the much lower and more accurate number has received little, if any, coverage.

Despite this, there remain influential, but ill-informed voices who argue: So what’s all the fuss about?

Taken together, Shorten’s and Snowden’s disclosures have shown that the cobweb global intelligence connections that make up the West’s surveillance apparatus aren’t largely directed at terrorists, but at all of us and our so-called allies too.

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That is the central meaning of these cascading revelations that Boisvert, Washington and Ottawa are loath to admit publicly. And that’s the rebuttal to the “so what” crowd, who are busy trying to bury some uncomfortable truths.

And Canadians will do well to remember that 18 years ago Shorten raised the alarm first.

Andrew Mitrovica was as an investigative reporter for the CBC, CTV and the Globe and Mail. He is the author of Covert Entry: Spies, Lies and Crimes Inside Canada’s Secret Service.

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