Asking journalist Jeremy Scahill about asking others about things they don't want him asking about

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Globetrotting investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill has spent years prying into state secrets and secret wars. In 2007, he wrote Blackwater, a book about Washington's favoured private-security corporation, while 2013's Dirty Wars centred on battles waged by U.S. spies and special-forces soldiers.

Now, as one of three founding editors of the online news site The Intercept, he is delving into documents leaked by Edward Snowden. He spoke to The Globe and Mail about the U.S. National Security Agency, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and their Five Eyes adjuncts in Canada. Mr. Scahill will be in Toronto on Thursday to speak at a Canadian Journalism Foundation event hosted by The Globe's editor-in-chief, David Walmsley.

Last week, you wrote about the international data exchanges surrounding U.S. drone strikes. The average Canadian does not think our government is privy to these programs.

If you look at what we just published, at the very top is the top-secret designation, and then it describes who that information is shared with: The U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

Canada, being a member of the Five Eyes coalition, is not simply a passive player. Canada is very well aware of the extent of the U.S. targeted-killing program. Canada feeds intelligence into systems that are widely distributed.

Say that Canada has sent intelligence to the United States that was used to track and kill a Canadian [terrorism suspect abroad]. Now, is Canada firing the missile? No. Is Canada piloting the drone? No. Would they have been able to kill that individual without Canadian support? I don't know.

That's a debate that should be had in countries who claim: "We're not involved in that dirty business…"

Last decade, federal commissions of inquiry looked into Canadian citizens detained and sent to Syria by the CIA. But with drone strikes, nobody could come back to seek redress.

One of the key revelations of the Edward Snowden affair is that the so-called Five Eyes are part of a behemoth. Because surveillance has intensified in all of these countries, including Canada, it means they are playing a key role in what is becoming a global national-security state imposed upon the rest of the world by a handful of governments.

How accountable are the Five Eyes to their respective governments?

There is very high turnover in Western governments in terms of who the figureheads are. In Canada, as in the United States, there is a parallel sort of shadow government that exists. This isn't tin-foil-hat conspiracy stuff – the national-security bureaucracy is unelected, and those people don't have to worry about approval ratings.

Canadian politicians who authorize surveillance often don't familiarize themselves with all the details of the request before they sign off.

How is a politician who doesn't specialize in these issues going to stand up to a career intelligence official who says, "If you don't give us these things, we are going to be in danger?"

It would be an extraordinary person of principle who would say, 'I'm going to hit pause on all of it until I fully understand it.'

What is all this going to look like in 25, 50 or 100 years time?

The future is here in a lot of ways when it comes to how the U.S. wages wars. Part of it is use of drones, part of it is a wider embrace of covert lethal actions, or kidnap operations. It's only a matter of time before China and Russia start to assert the same right that the United States is asserting: To fly a robot into another country and kill someone because they labelled them a terrorist.

In Canada, two Canadian Forces soldiers were killed by individuals who allegedly claimed allegiance to the Islamic State. The government is now campaigning on its ability to fight terrorism.

The ISIS propaganda videos are most appealing to lost souls. This is not about Islam hypnotizing people into becoming terrorists. We should be reviewing some of these cases in the same way we view an investigation into why someone shoots up a high school.

But the 1999 Columbine shooting had 13 murder victims; the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had [nearly] 3,000.

The 9/11 attacks – these [hijackers] were people who were part of actual al-Qaeda cells. Devoted ideologues. These were people who viewed themselves as committed guerrillas fighting a war for their religion.

They are totally different than people who get radicalized by watching a beheading video. Completely different narratives.

Looking at the plots that the FBI has broken up in the United States, what you are largely seeing are people who were already very vulnerable, already very lost. We need to be more nuanced.

You wrote about the NSA hacking the European phone-chip maker Gemalto.

They had gone into the computer network of the manufacturer of SIM cards that provides [the chips] to huge telecom companies and gained access to the network in an effort to steal encryption keys before they were shipped.

After we did that story, we've heard from all sorts of people who have worked in U.S. intelligence. This is a very common, widespread tactic. One being used to target companies housed or incorporated in the borders of U.S. allies.

You also wrote about the CIA fiddling with iPhone operating systems.

The CIA wants that option. They don't want to have to hack into an individual phone. They want an existing back door.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has been standing up against U.S. government calls to put back doors in their phones.

The other way [for U.S. intelligence] is to study ways to force a back door and essentially hack the iPhone's hardware and software. But it's not just Apple. They also went after Microsoft. They are going after Androids.

This interview has been condensed and edited. The Globe and Mail's SecureDrop service provides a secure way to share information with our journalists.