On June 18, 2021, the National Security Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) released a review of how the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) disclosed Canadian Identifying Information (CII) to domestic Canadian agencies. I draw three central conclusions to the review.

1. CSE potentially violated the Privacy Act, which governs how federal government institutions handle personal information.
2. The CSE’s assistance to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was concealed from the Federal Court. The Court was responsible for authorizing warrants for CSIS operations that the CSE was assisting with.
3. CSE officials may have misled Parliament in explaining how the assistance element of its mandate was operationalized in the course of debates meant to extend CSE’s capabilities and mandate.

In this post I describe the elements of the review, a few key parts of CSE’s response it, and conclude with a series of issues that the review and response raise.

Background

Under the National Defence Act, CSE would incidentally collect CII in the course of conducting foreign signals intelligence, cybersecurity and information assurance, and assistance operations. From all of those operations, it would produce reports that were sent to clients within the Government of Canada. By default, Canadians’ information is expected to be suppressed but agencies can subsequently request CSE to re-identify suppressed information.

NSIRA examined disclosures of CII which took place between July 1, 2015 – July 31, 2019 from CSE to all recipient government departments; this meant that all the disclosures took place when the CSE was guided by the National Defense Act and the Privacy Act.¹ In conducting their review NSIRA looked at, “electronic records, correspondence, intelligence reports, legal opinions, policies, procedures, documents pertaining to judicial proceedings, Ministerial Authorizations, and Ministerial Directives of relevance to CSE’s CII disclosure regime” (p. 2). Over the course of its review, NSIRA engaged a range of government agencies that requested disclosures of CII, such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). NSIRA also assessed the disclosures of CII to CSIS and relevant CSIS’ affidavits to the Federal Court.

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