statism watch

This journal has criticized Mr. Freeze in the past for characterizing the ability of Canada’s SIGINT establishment to conduct espionage on Canadian citizens abroad – first granted publicly in September 2009 – as the closing of a ‘loophole’. Now he’s back on the online intelligence beat, writing soothingly that CSIS is ‘reaching out’ to Canadian business in order to keep us safe from the newly devastating threat of cyberterror. To characterize botnets and hackers as a massive new threat to the security of the West is patently false. The net has gotten along very nicely, thank you, by organically adapting to new issues as they arise. Colin Freeze is simply following the talking points coming out of the mouths of Pentagon contractors (Like Michael McConnell) that are seeking to establish control of global information flow via federalization and nationalization of the Internet. A single article may not give one enough information to see which way the wind is blowing on an international level when such a massive project is underway. And indeed this particular CSIS program, establishing links between CSIS and strategically important corporations, is just one small indicator of the overall trend – but it follows on the American initiative to roll business networks into an NSA program through the agency of the CSE on this side of the border. StatismWatch has already done much of the research needed to collate this info – all you need to do to get up to speed is read through it. Please? Jesse Brown’s latest Search Engine podcast over at TVO, “The Enemy of The Internet” is also recommended.

Flashback: United States weighs massive expansion of Internet monitoring | Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet | Google, NSA may team up to probe cyberattacks | UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users | Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites | Australia introduces web filters | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | UK Internet surveillance plan to go ahead | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | Case for Internet spying not closed | Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | UK ISPs condemn Internet surveillance plans | UK to found new ‘cyber-security’ units attached to national eavesdropping centre | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Sweden approves wiretapping law | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail
March 8, 2010

As economic espionage and hacking become growing threats to the West, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is stepping up efforts to persuade businesses to safeguard secrets deemed vital to national interests.

CSIS’s corporate-outreach program, which started in the 1990s, largely fell by the wayside during the years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, when fighting terrorism absorbed nearly all the spy service’s energies.

But emerging threats — including shadowy-but-powerful hacker networks based in China — are sparking a renewed federal interest in forging partnerships between the corporate and intelligence worlds.

“CSIS has and continues to speak with various corporations in Canada on potential security threats, which may have an impact on national security interests,” CSIS spokeswoman Isabelle Scott said in an e-mailed response to questions from The Globe and Mail. “CSIS alerts firms to common covert methods used by those who may target them.”

She did not elaborate on which hostile entities may be targeting Canada, and added that any information shared during briefing sessions with corporations is confidential.

Cyberattacks, however, have emerged as a major threat. China-based hackers in particular have forced Western corporations and governments into alliances to protect shared interests.

For example, Google, the multibillion-dollar high-tech company based in California, has lately teamed with the U.S. government’s ultra-secretive National Security Agency to improve ways of preventing Google’s state-of-the-art Internet services from being breached.

The New York Times reported that U.S. investigators suspect attacks against Google have emanated from computers in certain Chinese postsecondary schools, though Beijing denies knowledge of this.

Britain and Australia have both recently launched cybersecurity operations centres meant to help insulate their own national secrets from spying or attack. The Canadian government, meantime, lags behind in the cybersecurity world and is still trying to draft a formal federal strategy.

CSIS corporate-outreach efforts amount to one behind-the-scenes way of addressing the threat. The spy service has long suggested that states once fixated on stealing military or political secrets are now mostly after economic targets. Two years ago, CSIS’s leadership said Chinese entities are the leading spy threat to Canada.

Although Canada is relatively small compared with the U.S., intelligence officials have said that leading companies in several sectors — aerospace, agriculture, biotech, oil, military and communications — make it attractive to foreign spies.

Some of the CSIS outreach takes the form of information sessions in which agents start conversations with officials from corporations that have been spied on or fear they are at risk. Briefing sessions “allow organizations to gain a better appreciation of the risks that they may be facing and describe steps they should consider in assessing their vulnerabilities,” said Ms. Scott, the CSIS spokeswoman. [Ed. Note: In other words, here's what you're going to do to ensure compliance.]

By law, the spy service cannot veer far from its mandate of protecting Canadian lives and interests from serious security threats. But “while counterterrorism continues to be a priority for CSIS, in the post-9/11 world, espionage and foreign-influenced activities against Canada and its interests remain serious threats to the security of Canada,” she said.

Another line of defence is a secretive “signals” intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment. To the extent it is known, the CSE — which has close ties to the NSA in the United States — has a reputation for its ability to eavesdrop in foreign countries, tapping trunk lines or sucking satellite signals out of the air.

But the CSE also has the mandate of protecting the federal government’s computer systems from being breached.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 3:03 pm and is filed under militarization, surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.