As part of Marc Carney’s extreme militarism, he’s putting $2 billion into one of the most secretive, US aligned parts of the Canadian government. But the media focus has been almost entirely about controversy over data centres.
On Friday the Globe and Mail and several other outlets reported that the Communication Security Establishment (CSE) will construct a data centre in Ottawa expected to cost up to $1.85 billion. The new 60 MW facility would be among the largest such projects in the country though smaller than several planned data centres. According to the paper, “the national security source told The Globe the data centre project is possible now because of the Carney government’s significant increase in defence spending.”
Under the Department of National Defence, CSE employs over 3,800 mathematicians, engineers, linguists, analysts, computer scientists, etc. Its annual budget is over $1 billion. The secretive agency has a variety of high-tech gadgets, including surveillance planes. In 2011 CSE moved into a new $1.2 billion home. The seven-building, 110,000 square-metre complex is connected to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa.
Unlike CSIS, CSE is largely foreign focused. It seeks to “protect the computer networks and information of greatest importance to Canada” from international attack. CSE also gathers international signals intelligence (SIGINT), which it defines as “intelligence acquired through the collection of electromagnetic signals.” Historically, CSE largely intercepted electronic communications between embassies in Ottawa and other nations’ capitals. Today, CSE monitors phone calls, radio, microwave and satellite, as well as emails, chat rooms and other Internet exchanges. It engages in various forms of data hacking, sifting through millions of videos and online documents daily.
CSE has long had close ties to its US counterpart. NSA has trained CSE cryptanalysts and in the 1960s the US agency paid part of the cost of modernizing Canadian communications interception facilities. CSE has opened interception posts at Canadian diplomatic outposts at NSA’s behest. CSE long spied for the US from an interception post inside Canada’s embassy in Havana and in the 1970s sought to open a communications site in Algeria to help NSA spy on Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. CSE also gathered intelligence on Palestinians for Israel. Former CSE intelligence officer Mike Frost wrote, “[former Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman] Yasser Arafat’s name, for instance, was on every [CSE] key word list. NSA was happy about that.”
An NSA history of the US–Canada SIGINT relationship released by whistleblower Edward Snowden labelled Canada a “highly valued second party partner”, which offers “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis, and has opened covert sites at the request of NSA. CSEC shares with NSA their unique geographic access to areas unavailable to the US.”
As part of the Snowden revelations, it came to light that CSE hacked Mexican computers and spied on Brazil’s Department of Mines and Energy. CSE also planted sophisticated malware on mobile phones and maintained a network of infected computers to attack targets without being detected. To mask their involvement CSE hacked into random computers outside the US/Canada/UK/Australia/New Zealand Five Eyes alliance to use them to launch cyberattacks.
The September 11, 2001, attacks in the US spurred a major expansion of CSE. During this period CSE took an ever more active role in ‘counterterrorism’ and foreign intelligence. The agency’s sophisticated equipment and analytical and linguistic resources contributed significantly to the 2001-14 occupation of Afghanistan. The agency’s website said it played a “vital role” in the central Asian country and CSE head John Adams boasted that they were responsible for more than half the “actionable intelligence” Canadian soldiers used in Afghanistan. That included monitoring Taliban forces and leaders as well as allied Afghan government officials. Information CSE provided protected Canadian troops from attack and helped special forces assassinate Afghans.
CSE contributed intelligence to the March 2006 special forces operation to rescue two Canadians and a British hostage held by insurgents in Iraq. CSE aided the deployment to Iraq-Syria that began in 2014. The agency probably hacked ISIL computers and smartphones, and CSE officials likely staffed a state-of-the-art intelligence centre in Kuwait. (Presumably, CSE supported the 2011 bombing of Libya, 2004 coup in Haiti and other Canadian Forces deployments, but I couldn’t confirm this.)
For more than half a century CSE (and its predecessor) functioned without official mandate. CSE operated under secret orders in council until 2001. That year’s Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-36) gave CSE a statutory mandate, which amended the National Defence Act. Among other things, it called on the agency to acquire foreign intelligence from the “global information infrastructure” and detailed the defence minister’s role in authorizing information collection that might “inadvertently” target Canadians’ private communications.
As the Internet came onto the scene CSE was instructed to conduct Computer Network Exploitation. It went from intercepting communications (“data in motion”) to seeking information on foreign computer systems (“data at rest”). According to Bill Robinson, who runs SIGINT focused blog Lux Ex Umbra, “it became a hunter as well as a gatherer.” CSE could hack into computer systems, implant malware and copy information.
In 2017 CSE was further empowered to carry out offensive operations against foreign actors. The Communications Security Establishment Act authorized CSE “to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities” of international targets. In effect the intelligence agency could seek to take a government offline, shutter a power plant, knock a drone out of the sky or interfere in court proceedings and elections in countries Ottawa doesn’t deem “democratic”. There is no requirement that the target threaten Canadian security.
The legislation forbids offensive cyber activities that could cause injury or death or “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice or democracy.” But these limitations don’t apply if CSE conducts cyberattacks on behalf of a Canadian Forces operation or receives approval of the foreign minister. Additionally, there is no independent oversight of CSE’s new offensive capabilities and CSE is allowed to do “anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain the covert nature of the activity.”
The Communication Security Establishment is a secretive, US aligned government agency. We need a public discussion about putting $2 billion more into bolstering it.
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