Canada's Military Data Scandal: Amateur Disaster

0:00A new Internal Military Report shines a light on how Canada's Operation Laser turned into a total mess back in early 2020. Untrained personnel from three units started scooping up social media data as intelligence without even realizing what they were doing, all during the pandemic from March to July. This was supposed to track potential protests that might mess with military COVID support, but it spiraled way out of control. The worst offender was a team in the greater Toronto area called the Precision Information Team. With zero intel background, they lacked official laptops and secure networks so they grabbed personal devices from home and even used their own social accounts to spy, ignoring. Direct orders. They also went overboard monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement with no clear link to the mission. Experts are ripping into this, hard. Social Security Pro, Wesley Wart calls it an amateur disaster from start to finish, badly planned and managed, operating in a legal grey zone.

1:02Retire Colonel Brett Boudreau points to outdated rules and pandemic chaos as excuses for some slip ups, but slam senior leaders for willful. Negligence on the bigger influence push. Jen Jonathan Vance tried shutting down the shady influence campaign verbally in April 2020, but parts dragged on six more months until he put it in writing. The military admitted they crossed lines, launching probes that exposed eroded public trust, and this report just dropped after a four year. Freedom of info. Wait. Defense officials haven't commented on privacy risks, despite repeated asks, leaving questions about lessons learned hanging. With that legal vacuum still wide open, it's a wake up call on keeping military ops tight and transparent. You've been listening to Vancouver News today, AI-powered local news.