When Intel services go public, you know it means business

Commentary

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Canadians say that CSIS stands for the “Canadian Secret Intelligence Service”. It does not. The first “s” stands for “security”, and a security intelligence agency is different from a foreign intelligence agency, although in some countries the mandates overlap (think CIA). Likewise, many are convinced that CSE is short for “Canadian Security Establishment.” Again, wrong. The “c” stands for communication and is a hint at what this agency does (it collects information on signals, aka SIGINTand helps keep our communications secure).

In any case, it’s not hard to understand why their acronyms are misinterpreted. Both organizations are very secretive and don’t often share their findings openly. They are reluctant for a very simple reason: the protection of resources and methods is critical to their continued success. If they opened the files to everyone, they wouldn’t be active much longer.

So what should Canadians think of three recent announcements from these institutions? What did they have to say? Why would they shamelessly do that? Do we have to worry?

The releases in question relate to China’s influence trading in Canada, Russian interference, and online criminal activity. A wash produced by CSIStitled “Don’t be a target of Chinese intelligence agencies’ online recruitment,” and the other two from the CSE.

That CSIS would give Canadians advice on how not to get on China’s target list seems, in a way, an exaggeration. After all, we’ve been hearing so much about Chinese illegal activity lately, especially in regards to the regime’s attempts to influence our two most recent federal elections. Beginning with a “leak” of several CSIS reports to Canadian media, we’ve all been subject to “he said, she said” in the form of an inadequate report from former Governor General David Johnston and countless debates over what the government knew or did not know about these blatant attempts to undermine our democracy.

Many believe that the government did not act appropriately when intelligence was passed on. Consequently, does CSIS act independently when it puts forward its ideas of not being subject to China’s actions?

As for CSE, that agency has been even more secretive throughout its history (I worked there as a senior multilingual analyst from 1983 to 2001 before moving to CSIS). Canadians rarely hear about what it does and how it does it; the current chief, Caroline Xavier, was careful not to reveal too much about how it acts to prevent online criminal activity in her interview with the CBC. Still, the head honcho’s move may indicate that a slightly more open spy agency is moving forward – and that would be a good thing in my opinion.

Our intelligence services are very good at what they do. While they need to protect resources and methods, involving Canadians in various aspects of the threat landscape (Russia, China, terrorism, etc.) demonstrates that they care about these issues and can provide insight to collectively help us all become wiser about who is trying to harm us.

But is there another message here? Is it possible that both organizations choose this rather unorthodox method of communicating their knowledge, ultimately obtained through the collection of classified intelligence, out of a sense of frustration at the federal government’s utter inability to use their information to take action against threat actors? It has become painfully obvious that the liberals have no idea what intelligence they are receiving and what to do with it. Maybe CSE and CSIS are just skipping the middleman, being seen as incompetent and talking directly to Canadians.

In the end, knowing more is always better than knowing less. If CSIS and CSE can better prepare us all to fend off attempts to undermine our societies, but in a way that doesn’t compromise their functions and capabilities, I say hip hip hooray. At least someone in the federal government seems to care about doing the right thing.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.