Communications Security Establishment Canada
Photograph by blueoxenon Flickr.
Along with these services from the United Communications Security Establishment Canada States, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, CSEC is believed to form the ECHELON system. This unit successfully decrypted, translated, and analyzed these foreign signals, and turned that raw information into useful intelligence reports during the course of the war. The CSEC and the information it gathered and shared was secret Communications Security Establishment Canada for 34 years, when the CBC program The Fifth Estate did a story on the organization, resulting in an outcry in the Canadian House of Commons and an admission by the Canadian government that the organization existed.
The CSEC is accountable to the Minister of National Defence through Communications Security Establishment Canada two deputy ministers, one of whom is responsible for Administration, the other Policy and Operations. The new act amended portions of the National Defence Act and officially recognized CSEC s three-part mandate: The Anti-Terrorism Act also strengthened CSEC s capacity to engage in the war on terrorism by providing needed authorities Communications Security Establishment Canada to fulfill its mandate. CSEC is forbidden, by law, to intercept domestic communications.
The intercepted data, or dictionaries are reported linked together through a high-powered array of computers known as ‘Platform’. There has been some criticism over the years of CSEC. A former employee of the organization, Mike Frost, claimed in a 1994 book, Spyworld, that the agency eavesdropped on Margaret Trudeau to find out if she smoked marijuana and that CSEC monitored two of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher s dissenting cabinet ministers in London on behalf of the UK s secret service. In 1996, it was suggested that CSEC had monitored all communications between National Defence Headquarters and Somalia, and were withholding information from the Somalia Inquiry into the killing of two unarmed Somalis by Canadian soldiers. In 2006, CTV Montreal’s program On Your Side, conducted a three-part documentary on CSEC naming it “Canada’s most secretive spy agency” and that “this ultra-secret agency has now become very powerful”, conducting unlawful surveillance by monitoring phone calls, e-mails, chat groups, radio, microwave, and satellite. In 2007, former Ontario lieutenant-governor, James Bartleman, testified at the Air India Inquiry on May 3 that he saw a CSEC communications intercept warning of the June 22, 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182 before it occurred. The success of this process is founded on CSEC’s understanding of the leading-edge technologies used by the global information infrastructure.
The CSEC is now publicly known, and occupies several buildings in Ottawa, including the well-known Edward Drake Building and the neighbouring Sir Leonard Tilley Building. During the Cold War, CSEC was primarily responsible for providing SIGINT data to the Department of National Defence regarding the military operations of the Soviet Union. Since then, CSEC has diversified and now is the primary SIGINT resource in Canada.
It now extends its expertise past its traditional technical clients to those within the Government of Canada who are responsible for the formulation and implementation of policy and program managers, and is committed to ensuring cyber networks and critical infrastructures are trustworthy and secure. CSEC relies on its closest foreign intelligence allies, the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand to share the collection burden and the resulting intelligence yield.
Its capabilities are suspected to include the ability to monitor a large proportion of the world s transmitted civilian telephone, fax and data traffic. Since the end of the Cold War, Government of Canada requirements have evolved to include a wide variety of political, defence, and security issues of interest to a much broader range of client departments. While these continue to be key intelligence priorities for Government of Canada decision-makers, increasing focus on protecting the safety of Canadians is prompting greater interest in intelligence on transnational issues, including terrorism. Formerly known as communications security (COMSEC), the CSEC’s IT Security Program grew out of a need to protect sensitive information transmitted by various agencies of the government, especially the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), DND, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Canada is a substantial beneficiary of the collaborative effort within the partnership to collect and report on foreign communications. During the Cold War, CSEC’s primary client for signals intelligence was National Defence, and its focus was the military operations of the then Soviet Union. Once a year, the Commissioner provides a public report on his activities and findings to Parliament, through the Minister of National Defence. As of 2009, there have been four Commissioners: In Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, CSE Chief John Adams, indicated that the CSE is collecting communications data when he suggested that the legislation was not perfect in regard to interception of information relating to the envelope . Under the 1948 UKUSA agreement, CSEC s intelligence is shared with the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the Australian Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) and New Zealand s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).
The CSEC collects foreign intelligence that can be used by the government for strategic warning, policy formulation, decision-making in the fields of national security and national defence, and day-to-day assessment of foreign capabilities and intentions. Administered under the Department of National Defence (DND), it is charged with the duty of keeping track of foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT), and protecting Canadian government electronic information and communication networks.
When intercepting communications between a domestic and foreign source, the domestic communications are destroyed or otherwise ignored (however, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, CSEC s powers expanded to allow the interception of foreign communications that begin or end in Canada, as long as the other party is outside the border and ministerial authorization is issued specifically for this case and purpose). The origins of the CSEC can be traced back to the Second World War where the civilian organization worked with intercepted foreign electronic communications, collected largely from the Canadian Signal Corps station at Rockcliffe airport in Ottawa.
The Minister of National Defence is in turn accountable to the Cabinet and Parliament. The CSEC was established in 1946 as the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC), and was transferred to the DND in 1975 by Order-in-Council. The CSEC also provides technical advice, guidance and services to the Government of Canada to maintain the security of its information and information infrastructures. In early 2008, in line with the Federal Identity Program (FIP) of the Government of Canada, which requires all federal agencies to have the word Canada in their name, CSE adopted the applied title Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) or (French: Centre de la sécurité des télécommunications Canada) (CSTC). Unique within Canada s security and intelligence community, the Communications Security Establishment Canada employs code-makers and code-breakers (cryptanalysis) to provide the Government of Canada with information technology security (IT Security) and foreign signals intelligence services.
CSEC also provides technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies. CSEC’s SIGINT program produces intelligence that responds to Canadian government requirements. The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC or CSE) (French: Centre de la sécurité des télécommunications Canada) (CSTC or CST) is the Canadian government s foreign intelligence and national cryptologic agency.
CSEC is bound by all Canadian laws, including the Criminal Code of Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Privacy Act. The Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner (OCSEC) was created on June 19, 1996, to review CSE s activities for compliance with the applicable legislation, accept and investigate complaints regarding the lawfulness of the agency s activities, and to perform special duties under the Public Interest Defence clause of the Security of Information Act. CSEC also conducts research and development on behalf of the Government of Canada in fields related to communications security. In December 2001 the Canadian government passed omnibus bill C-36 into law as the Anti-terrorism Act.
