Police in Quebec secretly tracked phone calls received and made by at least six French-language reporters in 2013, the broadcaster Radio-Canada has reported, widening a media surveillance scandal that had already sparked furore in the Canadian province. Quebec’s provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec, obtained warrants to track the journalists’ calls but did not register their conversations, the public broadcaster reported on Wednesday. Radio-Canada named three of its own journalists – Marie-Maude Denis, Isabelle Richer and Alain Gravel – as among those affected. Denis tweeted: “I just learned that my incoming and outgoing calls have been spied on by the Sûreté du Québec in 2013.”Marie-Maude Denis (@mmdenisrc) Je viens d'apprendre que mes appels entrant et sortant ont été espionnés par la Sûreté du Québec en 2013. Legislation to be introduced by the provincial government would make it harder for police to obtain a search warrant against journalists, local media reported.

Source: The Guardian November 03, 2016 01:25 UTC