OTTAWA — Leaked documents suggest Canada helped the United States and Britain spy on participants at the London G20 summit four years ago.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper says spies monitored the computers and intercepted the phone calls of foreign politicians and officials at two G20 meetings in London in 2009.
The paper says the effort included penetration of delegates’ BlackBerry smartphones to monitor their email messages and calls.
The Guardian published PowerPoint slides describing the operation, including one featuring the emblem of the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s electronic eavesdropping agency.
One excerpt titled “BlackBerry at G20” reads, “Delivered messages to analysts during the G20 in near real-time.”
“We remain confident in the superiority of BlackBerry’s mobile security platform for customers using our integrated device and enterprise server technology,” Waterloo, Ontario- based BlackBerry said in an e-mailed statement today. “There is no ‘back door’ pipeline to that platform.” The company said it couldn’t comment specifically on media reports of government surveillance.
It appears alongside the logos of key allies — the U.S. National Security agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters — along with an icon labelled Joint Apps.
The documents were leaked to the Guardian by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
BlackBerry has built a following among lawyers, bankers and government workers because of the security of its devices and the fact that it operates a network of servers on behalf of its clients. The company is counting on that reputation as it seeks to claw back market share lost in recent years to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.