The Communications Security Establishment (CSE; french: Centre de la sécurité des télécommunications, ''CST''), formerly (from 2008-2014) called the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), is the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...

's national cryptologic agency. It is responsible for foreign

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

(SIGINT) and communications security (COMSEC), protecting federal government electronic information and communication networks, and is the technical authority for cyber security and information assurance. Administered under the

Department of National Defence Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

(DND), the CSE is accountable to the Minister of National Defence through its deputy head, the Chief of CSE. The National Defence Minister is in turn accountable to the

Cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filin ...

and

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

. The current Chief of the CSE is Caroline Xavier, who assumed the office on 31 August 2022. The Agency recently built a new headquarters and campus encompassing . The new headquarters totals a little over and is adjacent to CSIS.

History

CSE originates from Canada's joint military and civilian code-breaking and intelligence efforts during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

Examination Unit

The Examination Unit (XU) was established during the

, in June 1941, as a branch of the National Research Council. It was the first civilian office in Canada solely dedicated to decryption of communications signals; until then,

SIGINT Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

was entirely within the purview of the Canadian military, and mostly limited to intercepts. In March 1942, XU moved next door to Laurier House in

Sandy Hill, Ottawa Sandy Hill (french: Côte-de-Sable) is a neighbourhood in Ottawa, Ontario, located just east of downtown. The neighbourhood is bordered on the west by the Rideau Canal, and on the east by the Rideau River. To the north it stretches to Rideau S ...

; this location was chosen because they felt it would draw no suspicion to the enemies. In September, the

Department of External Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

established its Special Intelligence Section at XU with the purpose of reviewing decoded SIGINT with other collateral information to produce intelligence summaries. The original mandate of the Examination Unit was to intercept the

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its t ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. Its mandate later expanded to include interception and decryption of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese communications after Japan entered the war. The unit was estimated to have had 50 staff members at any one time. In total 77 people worked there. By 1945, the disparate SIGINT collection units of the Canadian Navy,

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

, and

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

, were consolidated into the Joint Discrimination Unit (JDU), which was headquartered in Ottawa in the same building as the XU. By the end of the War, the military JDU and the civilian XU were able to coordinate SIGINT collection, analysis, and dissemination so efficiently that it led officials to consider the establishment of peacetime SIGINT operations. In September 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman declared it would be vital to carry out such operations, and Canadian authorities came to the same conclusion in December later that year. On 13 April 1946, a secret

Order in Council An Order-in-Council is a type of legislation in many countries, especially the Commonwealth realms. In the United Kingdom this legislation is formally made in the name of the monarch by and with the advice and consent of the Privy Council (''Kin ...

allowed for postwar continuation of wartime cryptologic efforts and thus the Communications Branch of the National Research Council of Canada (CBNRC) was founded. This agency would be the predecessor to today's Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

Communications Branch of the National Research Council

Beginning operations on 3 September 1946, the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (CBNRC) was the first

peace-time Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. ...

cryptologic agency and was kept secret for much of its beginning. The CBNRC was established through a secret

signed on 13 April 1946, combining the civilian Examination Unit (XU) and the military Joint Discrimination Unit (JDU) and was located at LaSalle Academy. With Edward Drake as its first director, the agency worked with intercepted foreign electronic communications, collected largely from the Royal Canadian Signal Corps (RCCS) station at

Rockcliffe Airport Ottawa/Rockcliffe Airport or Rockcliffe Airport , a former military base, is a non-towered airport located on the south shore of the Ottawa River, northeast of Downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The airport is the home of the Canada Aviation and S ...

in Ottawa. CSE also worked with Canadian Forces Station Leitrim (CFS Leitrim; formerly 1 Special Wireless Station till 1949, and Ottawa Wireless Station till 1966), Canada's oldest operational

signal intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

(SIGINT) collection station, established by the RCCS in 1941 and located just south of Ottawa. In 1946, the station's complement was 75 personnel (compared to its around 2,000 employees in 2013–2014). 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. CBNRC finally began domestic COMSEC efforts on 1 January 1947. During the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

, the CBNRC was primarily responsible for providing SIGINT data to the Department of National Defence regarding the

military operation A military operation is the coordinated military actions of a state, or a non-state actor, in response to a developing situation. These actions are designed as a military plan to resolve the situation in the state or actor's favor. Operations ...

s of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. In February 1950, R. S. McLaren was appointed the first CBNRC Senior Liaison Officer (CBSLO) to Washington, D.C. In March 1962: CBNRC installed its first IBM

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...

, costing CA$372k. In December 1964, CBNRC began collaboration on "Canadian ALVIS" (CID 610), the first and only Canadian

cipher machine In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

to be mass-produced; based on the British ALVIS (

BID 610 BID 610 or Alvis was a British cipher machine used by both British and Canadian governments. It was the first fully transistorised full-duplex online cipher machine used by the British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare ...

). CBNRC and the information it gathered and shared was kept secret for 34 years until 9 January 1974, when the

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French- ...

documentary show, '' The Fifth Estate'', aired an episode focused on the organization, with research by James Dubro.The Espionage Establishment of 1974
" produced by William MacAdam, researched by James R. Dubro. ''The'' ''Fifth Estate''. 1974 January 9. via ''CBC Archives''. This was the first time that the organization had ever been mentioned in public. This resulted in an outcry in the House of Common and an admission by the Canadian government that the organization existed.

Communications Security Establishment

In 1975, the CBNRC was transferred to the

(DND) by an

, and became the Communications Security Establishment. CSE was now publicly known, and had diversified since the Cold War becoming the primary SIGINT resource in Canada. In 1988, CSE created the Canadian System Security Centre to establish a Canadian

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

standard among other goals. This led to the publication of the Canadian Trusted Computer Product Evaluation Criteria. Following the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

in 2001, Canada's ''Anti-terrorism Act'' (''ATA'') was ratified, receiving

royal assent Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in oth ...

on 18 December 2001. It amended the ''

National Defence Act The ''National Defence Act'' (NDA; ; ''LDN'') is an Act of the Parliament of Canada, which is the primary enabling legislation for organizing and funding the military of Canada. The Act created the Department of National Defence, which merged th ...

'' to formally acknowledge and mandate the activities of CSE. It also made amendments to the '' Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act'', the '' Criminal Code'', and the ''Official Secrets Act'' (later the ''

Security of Information Act The ''Security of Information Act'' (R.S.C. 1985, c. O-5), formerly known as the ''Official Secrets Act'', is an Act of the Parliament of Canada that addresses national security concerns, including threats of espionage by foreign powers and terror ...

''). 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; french: Centre de la sécurité des télécommunications Canada, CSTC). Since mid-2014, the organization has used its legal name (Communications Security Establishment) and initials (CSE) on its website and in public statements. In November 2011, CSE was made an independent agency, though still operating under the National Defence portfolio and constrained by the ''National Defence Act''. In June 2019, the ''Communications Security Establishment Act'' was passed as part of an omnibus national security bill called the ''

National Security Act 2017 The ''National Security Act, 2017'' is a Canadian statute enacted by the Parliament of Canada to reform the oversight of the National Security Agencies of Canada, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canadian Security Intelligenc ...

''. Coming into force two months later, in August, the act set out the mandate and powers of CSE. As part of the omnibus bill, oversight of CSE activities was assumed by the newly created

National Security and Intelligence Review Agency The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA; french: Office de surveillance des activités en matière de sécurité nationale et de renseignement, OSSNR) is an independent government agency organized to review all national security ...

(NSIRA).

Insignia

CSE uses generic identifiers imposed by the Federal Identity Program. However, CSE is one of several federal departments and agencies (primarily those having law enforcement, security, or regulatory functions) that have been granted a badge by the Canadian Heraldic Authority. The badge was granted in 1994, while CSE's pennant was first raised in 1996 to mark the organization's 50th anniversary. From the 1990s to the mid 2000s, CSE's Information Technology Security program used a logo to identify its products and publications; the triangle represented threats, while the arc symbolized protection.

Operations

Unique within Canada's security and intelligence community, the Communications Security Establishment employs code-makers and code-breakers (

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic s ...

) to provide the Government of Canada with information technology security (IT Security) and foreign signals intelligence services. CSE also provides technical and operational assistance to the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal and national police service of Canada. As poli ...

and federal law enforcement and security agencies, including the

Canada Border Services Agency The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA; french: Agence des services frontaliers du Canada, ''ASFC'') is a federal law enforcement agency that is responsible for border control (i.e. protection and surveillance), immigration enforcement, and c ...

and the

Canadian Air Transport Security Authority The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA; french: Administration canadienne de la sûreté du transport aérien) is the Canadian Crown Corporation responsible for security screening of people and baggage and the administration of id ...

Signal intelligence

CSE's

program produces intelligence that responds to Canadian government requirements. At CFS Leitrim, the main military SIGINT facility in the south end of Ottawa, the establishment collects foreign intelligence that can be used by the government for strategic warning, policy formulation, decision-making in the fields of

national security National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military att ...

and national defence, and day-to-day assessment of foreign capabilities and intentions. The station at Leitrim specializes in intercepting electronic communications to and from embassies in Ottawa. Other Canadian military SIGINT facilities are located at:

CFB Gander Canadian Forces Base Gander (also CFB Gander, ), is a Canadian Forces base located in Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is operated as an air force base by the Royal Canadian Air Force and is home to search and rescue operations that cover a ...

Newfoundland with a detachment from CFS Leitrim, CFS Masset, BC (under remote control from CFS Leitrim) and CFS Alert,

Nunavut Nunavut ( , ; iu, ᓄᓇᕗᑦ , ; ) is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the '' Nunavut Act'' and the '' Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act'' ...

. CSE relies on its closest foreign intelligence allies, the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand to share the collection burden and the resulting intelligence yield.

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

is a substantial beneficiary and participant of the collaborative effort within the partnership to collect and report on foreign communications. During the

, CSE's primary client for signals intelligence was National Defence, and its focus was the military operations of the then

. 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 Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

Code breaking equipment

CSE code breaking capabilities degraded substantially in the 1960s and 1970s but were upgraded with the acquisition of a Cray X-MP/11 (modified) supercomputer delivered to the Sir Leonard Tilley building in March 1985 and the hiring of code breaking analysts. It was, at the time, the most powerful computer in Canada. In the early 1990s, the Establishment purchased a Floating Point Systems FPS 522-EA supercomputer at a cost of $1,620,371. This machine was upgraded to a Cray S-MP superserver after Cray acquired

Floating Point Systems Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Rob ...

in December 1991 and used the Folklore Operating System supplied by the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collec ...

in the US. These machines are now retired. Little information is available on the types of computers used by the CSE since then. However, Cray in the US has produced a number of improved supercomputers since then. These include the Cray SX-6, early 2000s, the Cray X1, 2003 (development funded in part by the NSA),

Cray XD1 The Cray XD1 was an entry-level supercomputer range, made by Cray Inc. The XD1 uses AMD Opteron 64-bit CPUs, and utilizes the Direct Connect Architecture over HyperTransport to remove the bottleneck at the PCI and contention at the memory. The ...

, 2004, Cray XT3, Cray XT4, 2006, Cray XMt, 2006 and Cray CX1, 2008. It is possible that some of these models have been used by the CSE and are in use today.

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS or Cyber Centre; french: Centre Canadien pour la Cyber Sécurité) is the

authority responsible for monitoring

threats A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation for co ...

, protecting national

critical infrastructure Critical infrastructure (or critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the UK) is a term used by governments to describe assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy – the infrastructure. Most commonly associated w ...

against cyber incidents, and coordinating the national response to any incidents related to cyber security. As a unit under the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the agency is Canada's

computer emergency response team A computer emergency response team (CERT) is an expert group that handles computer security incidents. Alternative names for such groups include computer emergency readiness team and computer security incident response team (CSIRT). A more modern ...

(CSIRT) and the Canadian government's computer Incident response team (CIRT). Officially created on 1 October 2018, CCCS consolidated the existing operational cyber-security units of several federal government organizations, including

Public Safety Canada Public Safety Canada (PSC; french: Sécurité publique Canada, SPC; PSP), legally incorporated as the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (PSEPC), is the department of the Government of Canada responsible for (most) matters of ...

's Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre,

Shared Services Canada Shared Services Canada (SSC; french: Services partagés Canada (SPC)) is an agency of the Government of Canada responsible for advancing, consolidating and providing information technology services across federal government departments. It was e ...

's Security Operations Centre, and the CSE's Information Technology Security branch.

History

Formerly known as communications security (COMSEC), the CSE's Information Technology Security branch 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 Global Affairs Canada (GAC; french: Affaires mondiales Canada; AMC)''Global Affairs Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (). is the department o ...

(DFAIT),

(CBSA), DND, and the

(RCMP). The Cyber Centre was developed in response to CSE's consultations with Canadians in 2016 which identified various issues pertaining to cyber security in relation to the federal government, including accountability, departmental coordination, and leadership. In February 2018, the federal budget allocated funds for CSE, in collaboration with

and

, to launch the Cyber Centre. Officially created on 1 October 2018, CCCS consolidated the existing operational cyber-security units of several federal government organizations, including the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre of Public Safety Canada; the Security Operations Centre of Shared Services Canada; and the Information Technology Security branch of CSE. Prior to opening, in June 2018, Minister Ralph Goodale appointed Scott Jones the head of the new Centre.

Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing

The Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing (TIMC) is a

research institute A research institute, research centre, research center or research organization, is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often i ...

programme of the

responsible for conducting

classified Classified may refer to: General *Classified information, material that a government body deems to be sensitive *Classified advertising or "classifieds" Music *Classified (rapper) (born 1977), Canadian rapper * The Classified, a 1980s American ro ...

research in the areas of cryptology and knowledge discovery to support the Canadian Cryptologic Program and its Five-Eyes international partners. Though officially founded in 2009, TIMC officially opened and formally named in September 2011. Named after cryptanalyst and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

William T. Tutte, TIMC is based within CSE's Edward Drake Building in

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

. Sponsored and funded by the Communications Security Establishment, the institute is partnered with Institutes for Defence Analyses, CCR Princeton, CCR La Jolla, CCS Bowie, the

Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research The Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research is an international research institute for mathematics based at the University of Bristol. It is named after the distinguished number theorist Hans Heilbronn who worked at Bristol University from 19 ...

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Wo ...

, and the

University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...

and is working to create partnerships with other research institutes, government agencies and universities. Researchers Leland McInnes and John Healy at the Tutte Institute developed a technique called

Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection Nonlinear dimensionality reduction, also known as manifold learning, refers to various related techniques that aim to project high-dimensional data onto lower-dimensional latent manifolds, with the goal of either visualizing the data in the low-d ...

(UMAP), originally designed to analyze

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depr ...

. The algorithm and software of UMAP has since been released by TIMC to the open-source community, and is now being used to answer questions about

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...

Facilities

CSE occupies several buildings in

, including the Edward Drake Building and the neighbouring

Sir Leonard Tilley Building The Sir Leonard Tilley Building and Annex (french: Édifice Sir-Leonard-Tilley), is a Government of Canada office building property consisting of two buildings and operated by the Public Works and Government Services Canada and located at 719 Her ...

. CSE moved to the Tilley Building in June 1961. On 26 February 2015, CSE officially inaugurated the Edward Drake Building, named for

Lt. Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

Edward Drake, a pioneer of the Canadian

. With the rapid expansion in the number of CSE personnel since the

9/11 attack The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

in the US, the CSE has built new facilities. A new CA$1.2 billion facility, encompassing , has been built in the eastern part of Ottawa, immediately west of the headquarters building for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Construction began in early 2011 and was completed in 2015.

Governance and mandate

Legislation

In addition to those mentioned below, CSE is bound by all other Canadian laws, including the Criminal Code, the ''

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms The ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' (french: Charte canadienne des droits et libertés), often simply referred to as the ''Charter'' in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part ...

'', the ''Privacy Act'', ''

'', and the ''

Avoiding Complicity in Mistreatment by Foreign Entities Act In law, void means of no legal effect. An action, document, or transaction which is void is of no legal effect whatsoever: an absolute nullity—the law treats it as if it had never existed or happened. The term void ''ab initio'', which means " ...

''. In December 2001, the Canadian government passed omnibus bill C-36 into law as the ''Anti-Terrorism Act''. The Act amended portions of the ''

'' and officially recognized CSE's three-part mandate: * To acquire and use information from the global information infrastructure for the purpose of providing foreign intelligence, in accordance with Government of Canada intelligence priorities. * To provide advice, guidance and services to help ensure the protection of electronic information and of information infrastructures of importance to the Government of Canada. * To provide technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies in the performance of their lawful duties. The ''Anti-Terrorism Act'' also strengthened CSE's capacity to engage in the war on terrorism by providing needed authorities to fulfill its mandate. In the 2007 Proceedings of the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, then-CSE Chief John Adams indicated that the CSE is collecting

communications data Communications data (sometimes referred to as traffic data or metadata) concerns information about communication. Communications data is a part of a message that should be distinguished from the content of the message. It contains data on the com ...

when he suggested that the legislation was not perfect in regard to interception of information relating to the "envelope."

''Communications Security Establishment Act''

In June 2019, the ''Communications Security Establishment Act'' (''CSE Act'') was passed, as part of the ''

''. The Act, which came into force two months after passing, notes that there are five aspects of CSE's mandate: *The acquisition of foreign intelligence (SIGINT) *Cybersecurity and information assurance to help protect electronic information and information infrastructures of the Canadian government and those designated to be of importance to the government *Defensive cyber operations *Active cyber operations *Technical and operational assistance to federal law enforcement and security agencies, the Canadian Forces, and the Department of National Defence. The ''CSE Act'' requires that CSE activities do not target

Canadians Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

anywhere in the world, or any person in Canada, "unless there are reasons to believe that there is an imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. The Act also requires the CSE protect the

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of ...

of Canadians and persons in Canada. As such, CSE is forbidden, by law, to intercept domestic communications. When intercepting communications between a domestic and foreign source, the domestic communications are destroyed or otherwise ignored. (After the

on the United States in 2001, however, CSE'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.)

Governance and oversight

The Minister of National Defence guides and authorizes the activities of CSE using ministerial directives, ministerial authorizations, and

ministerial order A ministerial decree or ministerial order is a decree by a ministry. With a ministerial decree the administrative department is delegated the task to impose a formal judgement or mandate. Ministerial decrees are usually imposed under the authority ...

s, all of which are based on the "government’s intelligence priorities as set out by

through discussion and consultations with the security and intelligence community." The Defence Minister cannot authorize any activities that are not included in the CSE mandate or grant CSE any powers that do not exist in Canadian law. Ministerial directives are how the Minister of National Defence instructs the Chief of CSE. CSE operates under a system of independent oversight: *

(NSIRA) – NSIRA is fully independent of government and of CSE. Its committee members are appointed by the sitting Prime Minister in consultation with Parliamentary leaders, and handle complaints against all Canadian national security agencies. * Intelligence Commissioner – the Intelligence Commissioner is independent of CSE and has oversight of all national security and intelligence gathering activities of the Government of Canada, including CSE. The Commissioner issues an annual report to the Prime Minister, who must table it in Parliament after removing confidential and classified information. The Commissioner is entitled to receive all reports that are compiled by NSIRA. *

National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP; ; ) is a body composed of members of the House of Commons and Senate which reviews the activities of the Government of Canada's national security and intelligence age ...

(NSICOP) – NSICOP is a committee of Parliamentarians that have the security clearances to review and report on any aspect of CSE's activities. CSE activities are also subject to several external oversight and review bodies. As with any other federal department or agency of Canada, the activities of CSE are also subject to review by various federal bodies, including: * the Privacy Commissioner * the Information Commissioner * the Auditor General * the Canadian Human Rights Commission * the Commissioner of Official Languages

Heads of the CSE

Communications Security Establishment Commissioner

Oversight over CSE was formerly provided by the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner (OCSEC; , BCCST), which was created on 19 June 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 In the context of secrecy laws, a public interest defence is a defence that allows a defendant who disclosed classified or protected information to avoid criminality by establishing that the public interest in disclosure of the information outw ...

' clause of the ''

''. The Commissioner provided an annual public report on his activities and findings to Parliament, through the Minister of National Defence. Between 1996 and 2019, there were six Commissioners: *

Claude Bisson Claude Bisson, (born May 9, 1931) is a Canadian retired jurist. Bisson was a judge of the Quebec Court of Appeal and a former Communications Security Establishment The Communications Security Establishment (CSE; french: Centre de la sécurité ...

(1996 June 19 – 2003) * Antonio Lamer (2003 June 19 – 2006) *

Charles Gonthier Charles Doherty Gonthier, (August 1, 1928 – July 16, 2009) was a Puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Canada from February 1, 1989 to August 1, 2003. He was replaced by Morris Fish. Early life Gonthier was born in Montreal, Quebec to G ...

(2006 August 1 – 2009) *

Peter Cory Peter deCarteret Cory, (October 25, 1925 – April 7, 2020) was a puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, from 1989 to 1999. Early life and education Born in Windsor, Ontario, the son of Andrew and Mildred (Beresford Howe) Cory, he was ed ...

(2009 December 14 – 2010) *

Robert Décary Robert Décary (born May 26, 1944) is a former judge on the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal. Also per a June 13, 2013 CBC article he is the "watchdog" at the Communications Security Establishment The Communications Security Establishment ( ...

(2010 June 18 – 2013) * Jean-Pierre Plouffe (2013–2019) As part of an omnibus national security bill (the '' National Security Act, 2017)'' passed by Parliament in 2019, the OCSEC was abolished and its responsibilities divided between two newly created entities: employees of the OCSEC were transferred to the Office of the Intelligence Commissioner; and the review functions of the former OCSEC were assumed by the

(NSIRA). The previous Commissioner of CSE, Jean-Pierre Plouffe, was appointed to the role of Intelligence Commissioner on 18 July 2019.

ECHELON

Under the 1948

UKUSA The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA, ) is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The alliance of intellig ...

agreement, CSE's intelligence is shared with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the British

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

(GCHQ), the

Australian Signals Directorate Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), formerly the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) is the federal statutory agency in the Australian Government responsible for foreign signals intelligence, support to military operations, cyber warfare, and i ...

(ASD), and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

Government Communications Security Bureau The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) ( mi, Te Tira Tiaki) is the public-service department of New Zealand charged with promoting New Zealand's national security by collecting and analysing information of an intelligence nature. ...

(GCSB). Along with these services from the United States, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia, CSE is believed to form the ECHELON system. Its capabilities are suspected to include the ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's transmitted civilian telephone, fax and data traffic. The intercepted data, or "dictionaries" are "reported linked together through a high-powered array of computers known as 'Platform'."Rudner, Martin. (2007). "Canada's Communications Security Establishment, Signals Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism". ''Intelligence and National Security'': 22(4) pp. 473–490

Controversies

CBNRC and the information it gathered and shared was kept secret for 34 years until 9 January 1974, when the

documentary show, '' The Fifth Estate'', aired an episode focused on the organization, with research by James Dubro. This was the first time that the organization had ever been mentioned in public. This resulted in an outcry in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

and an admission by the Canadian government that the organization existed. A former employee of the organization, Mike Frost, claimed in a 1994 book, ''Spyworld'', that the agency eavesdropped on

Margaret Trudeau Margaret Joan Trudeau ( Sinclair, formerly Kemper; born September 10, 1948) is a Canadian activist. She married Pierre Trudeau, the 15th prime minister of Canada, in 1971; three years after he became prime minister. They divorced in 1984, ...

to find out if she smoked

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various t ...

and that CSE had monitored two of former British prime minister

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

's dissenting cabinet ministers in London on behalf of the UK's secret service. In 1996, it was suggested that CSE 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.Desbarats, Peter. "Somalia cover-up: A commissioner's journal", 1997 In 2006,

CTV Montreal CFCF-DT (channel 12) is a television station in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, part of the CTV Television Network. It is owned and operated by network parent Bell Media alongside Noovo flagship CFJP-DT (channel 35). Both stations share studios at ...

's program ''On Your Side'' conducted a three-part documentary on CSE naming it "Canada's most secretive spy agency" and that "this ultra-secret agency has now become very powerful," conducting surveillance by monitoring phone calls, e-mails, chat groups, radio, microwave, and satellite. In 2007, former Ontario lieutenant-governor,

James Bartleman James Karl Bartleman (born 24 December 1939) is a former Canadian diplomat and author who served as the 27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 2002 to 2007. Bartleman grew up in the Muskoka town of Port Carling, and he is a member of th ...

, testified at the Air India Inquiry on May 3 that he saw a CSE communications intercept warning of the June 22, 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182 before it occurred. Two former CSE employees have since testified that no CSE report was ever produced. In 2013, a coalition of

civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties ma ...

associations launched a campaign directed against the government's perceived lack of transparency on issues related to the agency, demanding more information on its purported domestic

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

activities. Further criticism has arisen surrounding the construction costs of the agency's new headquarters in

. The project is slated to cost over CA$1.1 billion, making it the most expensive government building in Canadian history. In 2014, a leaked, top-secret presentation entitled “IP Profiling Analytics & Mission Impacts” summarized experiments tracking the cellphones of travellers passing through

Toronto Pearson International Airport Lester B. Pearson International Airport , commonly known as Toronto Pearson International Airport, is an international airport located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It is the main airport serving Toronto, its metropolitan area, and the surr ...

. Critics argued that the experiment was invasive and indiscriminate, while CSE countered that it was consistent with all relevant laws and mandates. In 2016, the CSE Commissioner found that one of the agency's metadata activities did not comply with the law. Specifically, CSE had failed to properly minimize certain Canadian identity information before sending it to foreign governments, contravening parts of the ''

'' and the '' Privacy Act''.

Media portrayal

In '' The Good Wife'' episode " Landing," both the

and the CSE are shown monitoring personal phone calls and hacking private cell phones' recording devices in order to listen in on personal conversations. One plaintiff describes the CSE as "the Canadian version of the NSA."

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Department of National Defence (Canada) Federal departments and agencies of Canada

Canadian intelligence agencies Government agencies established in 1946

Military intelligence agencies 1946 establishments in Ontario pt:CSE

History

Examination Unit

Communications Branch of the National Research Council

Communications Security Establishment

Insignia

Operations

Signal intelligence

Code breaking equipment

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

History

Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing

Facilities

Governance and mandate

Legislation

''Communications Security Establishment Act''

Governance and oversight

Heads of the CSE

Communications Security Establishment Commissioner

ECHELON

Controversies

Media portrayal

See also

References

External links