The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, citing a confidential briefing paper obtained by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, reported on Wednesday night that the N.S.A. turned the United States Embassy in Ottawa into a command post for a six-day surveillance operation that coincided with the Group of 20 summit meeting in Toronto and the Group of 8meeting in Huntsville, Ontario.
According to the document, the operation was “closely coordinated with the Canadian partner,” an apparent reference to the Communications Security Establishment Canada, a Canadian electronic surveillance agency.
Exactly who or what the N.S.A. was monitoring, however, was unclear from the CBC’s description of the report. The document does indicate, however, that the N.S.A. believed that its mandate during the summit meetings included “providing support to policy makers.”
In the House of Commons, several opposition politicians said that the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping operation violated several Canadian laws. Among other things, they pointed out, Canada’s electronic eavesdropping agency is prohibited from monitoring the communications of anyone within Canada’s borders. It is also barred from effectively contracting out that task to a foreign agency.
“Why would the prime minister allow a foreign agency to set up shop on Canadian soil and spy on some of our closest allies?” asked Joyce Murray, a Liberal member of Parliament.
The defense minister, Rob Nicholson, whose portfolio includes the eavesdropping agency, repeatedly avoided commenting on the CBC report during the question period in Parliament.
Instead, he cited the law governing the agency and noted that the independent official charged with overseeing its operations had never found that it broke any laws. In a report released in August, however, that official, Robert Décary, said that a lack of information had made it impossible for him to determine if laws had been broken in some cases.
“We know it was prohibited. The question is, did they do it?” a visibly frustrated Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party, said to Mr. Nicholson, a member of the governing Conservative Party.
Another N.S.A. document leaked by Mr. Snowden in June suggested that Canada and the N.S.A. worked with British intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on world leaders at conferences in London in 2009.
Given Canada’s role in spying on world leaders in London, Wesley K. Wark, who studies intelligence issues at the University of Ottawa, said that “the obvious inference to draw” was that the N.S.A. had again spied on world leaders, this time in Canada. But he said that the relatively limited information reported by the CBC made it impossible to definitively reach that conclusion.
While Professor Wark said that a joint effort by the Canadian and American agencies to monitor other countries’ leaders at the meeting would be “quite alarming and possibly illegal,” it was also possible that the N.S.A. operation in Ottawa was nothing more than a part of the general security operations surrounding President Obama’s trip.
He also noted that the Canadian agency was not identified in the news report, leaving open the possibility that the N.S.A. worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s equivalent to the C.I.A.
In an emailed statement, the N.S.A. said that “the U.S. government has made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.”