SPYING ON THE HILL
If someone is tracking cellphones on Parliament Hill and the surrounding area, the world of espionage is an obvious guess
It’s the stuff of spy TV shows — of subplots and intrigue, of Homeland or The Americans.
Someone is using a device that tracks and spies on cellphones in the Canadian capital, specifically in an area that encompasses the seat of government, national military headquarters, and the U.S. and Israeli embassies.
This real-life story, brought to the fore this past week by the CBC, is now under investigation by CSIS and the RCMP, which uses comparable technology, but officials insist this wasn’t one of theirs.
Should it prove to be a case of spying on politicians or others, it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Espionage is nothing new, and there is certainly no shortage of targets here in Ottawa, from the halls of Centre Block to the offices of DND, to the well-decorated embassy chambers that dot the capital.
The choice of them “depends on the interests of the state actor,” says digital-security expert Christopher Parsons.
Could someone be monitoring text messages and phone calls in the Prime Minister’s Office, for instance? If so, it would likely involve someone acting for another country, he says.
“Getting eyes and ears on what’s happening in the PMO is going to be very useful,” explains Parsons, a research associate at the Citizen Lab in the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, which conducts research on the intersection of digital communications, human rights and global security.
So how would it work?
LOWER ON FOOD CHAIN
Justin Trudeau wouldn’t necessarily be the target, since the prime minister’s communication would be the most secure on the Hill. Spies would, instead, look to penetrate emails and smartphones down the political food chain.
Discussions within departments, documents being drafted and ministerial background briefs are among the most sought-after government intelligence, and that “varies based on what your opponent wants to get,” says Parsons, who holds a PhD in political science focusing on electronic surveillance and digital privacy.
He explains that one “key” piece of information spies collect is “how people think.”
If another country wants to know how Canada might respond to a particular provocation, action or situation, “It helps to have insight into how the government behaves behind the scenes — and who matters and who doesn’t,” Parsons says.
For instance, a junior cabinet minister or backbench Liberal MP might not outwardly carry a lot of power and influence on the Hill, but that person might have the prime minister’s ear and serve as a valuable source of intel for interlopers.
Parsons explains that if hacking into a minister’s email is too challenging, sending a phishing message to the personal email of the minister’s spouse or partner could enable the spy to gain a “beachhead” into the minister’s private home network, or to send the minister phishing email in the spouse’s name.
If that doesn’t work, a systems administrator managing a government network could be targeted.
Or, a spy might just cast a wide net, scan vulnerabilities on government servers and “go after lowhanging fruit and see what’s there,” Parsons says.
He explains that what spies are looking for often involves economic intelligence, such as details about Canada’s trade policy and the extent to which government officials can be “pushed” in negotiations.
Ottawa espionage expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya recalls that when he was a senior intelligence officer at CSIS in the late 1980s, there was an element of spycraft surrounding the free trade talks between Canada and the United States.
“We had evidence during the negotiations that we were spied upon,” he says. “The U.S. was aware of our position before we came to the table, because Canadian diplomats were naïve and were not taking the security measures they were supposed to be taking.”
Back then, the preferred method of communication would have been land lines and faxes — not today’s digital choices of email, texts and cellphones. But basic security precautions regarding classified information are the same today as they were then, explains JuneauKatsuya, who was an RCMP officer from 1979 until the force’s security service was folded into the new entity called CSIS in 1984.
“Don’t consider phones secure,” he warns.
In fact, Parsons says that’s why politicians and bureaucrats in the United Kingdom involved in discussions over intelligence matters must “talk in person” and not bring any electronic devices to a meeting.
As for email, one only needs to follow the news to know how unsecure they can be. Last month, the FBI indicted four men — including one in Canada — alleged to be behind a Yahoo email hack in 2014.
GOVERNMENT NETWORKS ARE FAR FROM SPY-PROOF
Parsons says the major reason why parliamentarians and civil servants are required to use government email accounts is that they are “supposed to be provided with an extra level of security managed by government experts,” through Shared Services Canada in consultation with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Department of National Defence agency responsible for both collecting foreign signals intelligence and protecting government computer networks.
But those networks have been breached, too.
Six years ago, access to the Internet was temporarily blocked for Finance and Treasury Board employees after it was discovered a cyber-attack — reportedly originating from computer servers in China — resulted in hackers taking control of the computers of senior bureaucrats in both departments.
At the time, the Chinese government denied any responsibility for the attack. However, Parsons says the Russians and Chinese are “certainly involved in a lot of industrial and political espionage” — from capturing trade secrets to infiltrating governments in order to understand the rationale for political decisions. The countries remain “a high concern for the Western intelligence community.”
North Korea is a source of spying, which might not be surprising. But two other seemingly friendly countries to — and allies of — Canada, which Parsons identifies as conducting active surveillance abroad, might shock Canadians.
“Israel and France are two of the most aggressive, foreign-espionage actors in the western world,” he says.
In today’s highly competitive global race for market share, the quest for confidentiality is quixotic as secrets are more often unwittingly shared than kept.
As Juneau-Katsuya explains by recasting an oft-repeated maxim: “States do not have friends, they only have interests.”
And there’s interest in Canada, based on what and whom we know.
WE’VE GOT OUR SECRETS, AND FRIENDS’ SECRETS
Intellectual property from Canada is a major target for spies, who can pass along that information to another country or company, which in turn could commercialize and sell the technology or product.
The federal government’s research-and-development hub for intellectual property — the National Research Council — is located right here in Ottawa and, nearly three years ago, had its computers hacked by “a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor,” the Treasury Board said after the CSE confirmed the infiltration.
Among the research projects underway at the NRC at the time were a state-of-the-art computer encryption system and a new treatment for brain cancer.
The Chinese embassy denied that the attack had Beijing’s blessing.
Ottawa is also a target for spies as the capital city of a country that holds membership in major alliances, such as the G7, NATO and NORAD, protecting North American aerospace with the U.S.
“Not only do we have our own secrets, but we also need to protect our friends’ secrets,” says JuneauKatsuya, who now runs a consulting firm in Ottawa specializing in counter-intelligence assessment called The Northgate Group Corp.
He says the threat from spying in the capital — and Canada as a whole — is “huge” and extends beyond nation state actors to include corporate espionage, organized crime and hacktivist networks, such as Anonymous.
But federal Liberal and Conservative governments, critics say, have done little to safeguard Canada against spies of all forms over the past two decades.
“One of the problems we are facing is that with 9/11, a lot of intelligence resources were diverted to counter-terrorism,” explains Juneau-Katsuya, who left CSIS 16 months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. “Unfortunately, we did not re-establish the level of resources that we used to have in order to protect ourselves against espionage, so the importance of counter-intelligence was neglected, if not downplayed.”
In releasing CSIS’s public report for 2014-16 two months ago, outgoing director Michel Coulombe said terrorism and violent extremism remain the most immediate threats to national security.
But the report also says that statesponsored entities and terrorists alike are using computer network operations (CNO) directed against Canadian interests, at home and abroad. “Canada remains both a target for malicious cyber activities, and a platform from which these hostile actors conduct CNO against entities in other countries,” according to the report.
CSIS spokeswoman Tahera Mufti says the agency’s mandate is “to investigate and advise the government” on threats to Canada’s national security, “which includes espionage and foreign interference.”
ECONOMIC WARFARE
Juneau-Katsuya says that with the end of the Cold War, there is a need to refocus protection against a foreign menace from the risk of military conflict to the reality of economic confrontation.
“When we talk about state-sponsored espionage, everybody fights for the same market share, the same market contracts. Given the interests of a country, regardless of whether they’re a friend or not, they will spy on Canada,” JuneauKatsuya explains.
“The name of the game now is who will capture political influence, markets and major contracts that drive our national economy, which in turn drive our national security. If you do not have the economic stability to compete internationally, the stability of your country, your government and your democracy is directly affected.”
However, he argues that the current and former “law-and-order” Harper governments have both demonstrated a “lack of maturity” in failing to address the seriousness of the threat.
“Because we don’t have any awareness or law that is serious about spy activities, because we neglect to have our intelligence agencies working hard on it, we’ve become a playground for international spies who get access to our technology or other strategic secrets,” Juneau-Katsuya says.
“The rules of engagement in this schoolyard with the big boys are different than what we believe they are.”
Parsons goes further, suggesting that there really are no rules.
He says that if a country’s intelligence agency previously detected some form of breach and the perpetrators knew about it, they would “cover their tracks” and perhaps “change their behaviour.” But Parsons cites reports by U.S. security companies that he says indicate there has been an “increasing level of belligerence” by state actors over the past 18 months.
“Even when they know you know, they don’t necessarily slink away,” he says.
Although it might be virtually impossible for the federal government to entirely stop spying, Trudeau could follow Barack Obama’s lead to at least curb some forms of it at the state-sponsored level.
In 2015, the then-U.S. president reached a “common understanding” with his Chinese counterpart over putting a halt to economic cyber-espionage — with Obama’s added warning the U.S. would impose sanctions against Chinese hackers if the détente was not honoured.
“It led to an immediate decrease of Chinese attacks on American businesses, but not necessarily attacks on the U.S. government,” says Parsons.
He explains that Canada could launch multilateral negotiations with nation state actors stating that espionage against the respective countries’ commercial interests would cross a “red line.”
Could Canada achieve unanimous consent to such an initiative?
“Almost certainly not,” says Parsons. “But you don’t need everyone to agree. There are a few big parties, and even if one or two of them say ‘We’re going to just target you as a government, and less your industry,’ maybe that’s enough to buy some relief.” Special to the Citizen
Canadian diplomats were naïve and were not taking the security measures they were supposed to be taking.