Canada

In 2020, Briant, writing for a non-governmental group called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, exposed details about the Canadian Armed Forces spending more than $1 million on training on how to modify public behaviour. That training was similar to that used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, the company at the centre of a 2016 scandal in which personal data of Facebook users was provided to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s political campaign.

Other initiatives revealed by the Ottawa Citizen included military efforts to keep tabs on members of the public including those involved with the Black Lives Matter movement as well as a plan to use similar propaganda tactics to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan.

An internal investigation by the Canadian Forces determined that some of the efforts violated government rules but no military personnel were ever charged or disciplined.