Snowden Warns against Canada’s Anti-Terror Bill

(FNA)- NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned Canadians against a new anti-terror bill proposed by Stephen Harper's government in a live video link address to Toronto.

Addressing a group of high school students at Toronto's Upper Canada College, Snowden warned the audience to be "extraordinarily cautious" about the proposed security law, Global News reported.

Snowden said, "We saw just recently on Friday, the prime minister of Canada propose a new law. And I'm not an expert on Canadian law, I'll leave the debate to Canadians; they're the ones who have to live with this. But I would say we should always be extraordinarily cautious when we see governments trying to set up a new secret police within their own countries; when they're asking for intelligence authorities, intelligence powers - which is to say extraordinary powers - to be used in new means. Particularly related to political ideologies, radicalisation, influence on governments and how people develop their politics, which governments refer to nowadays as radicalisation. We need to be very careful about this because this is a process that is very, very easy to begin."

The former NSA analyst spoke to an audience of around 1,300 students at the annual World Affairs Conference.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an appearance in Richmond Hill last week to unveil new anti-terror legislation. Deemed harmful to civil liberties, it would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service more power to control people.