Canada

Ambassador: More care needed with info sharing

The U.S. ambassador to Canada says U.S. departments will have to be more careful about sharing information in the wake of the latest WikiLeaks release of documents.
U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson denies that Canada suffers from an inferiority complex. ((CBC))

The U.S. ambassador to Canada says U.S. departments will have to be more careful about sharing information in the wake of the latest WikiLeaks release of documents.

"The United States after Sept. 11th decided that they weren't going to have the same problem that they had on Sept. 11th where one person knew something, another person knew something else and there wasn't any ability to connect the dots," David Jacobson said Wednesday on Power & Politics with Evan Solomon.

"There was an effort to try to share information more broadly to solve that problem. I think one of the things we've done, and this has been a learning experience for all of us, but one of the things we've realized is that perhaps we need to be a little bit more careful in that regard," he said.

A U.S. army private has been charged with leaking classified material to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Questions have been raised about how the suspect could have accessed such sensitive material.

Jacobson said they have imposed some safeguards.

"But the fact is that there are a lot of things we can do and a lot of things we should do. This is just plain unacceptable," he said.

Jacobson also denied that Canada suffers from an inferiority complex regarding its neighbour to the south, as suggested by U.S. embassy officials in documents released by WikiLeaks.

"My reaction is that Canadians are justifiably proud of their country, and I just don’t see it," Jacobson said.