If the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) was supposed to be secret, they forgot to tell us. After more than 30 years of relaxed access to most aspects of government in Canada, the recent revelations about Canada’s spying are no surprise to this writer. As head of public affairs for a large computer company that did hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the government, the job was simple. You gain little by talking. If you want to learn, you listen.
Life in those years seemed to be an endless series of idle conversations. You could go to the old CSEC facility on Heron and pose an idea to some of the people there. It was their questions that told you what they were doing and where they were going. And watching the shift of Bell Northern Research to Nortel and listening to those conversations was fascinating. And it was international too: there was an intriguing chat with the CIA station chief in Quebec City and other chance meetings in Washington. And there are hundreds of international visitors; a casual chat with a vice-premier of China at a Royal Bank reception turned out to be a highly memorable event—and very good for business.
The point is business means access and access means business. Other writers seek fame and fortune writing about black ops and drug money but the reality is embassies and consulates are there around the world to further business interests. And so is CSEC.
CSEC had its roots in the England’s Bletchley Park and the Hydra radio centre on Lake Ontario in the early days of the Second World War. Bletchley’s deciphering algorithms became child’s play as more and more powerful computers came into use. And then the lead establishment was not in England but in Ottawa. The early interest was in transoceanic radio and cable traffic. There is far more business traffic of interest than drug deals. All the snoopers had to do was set the computers to listen for key words in a range of languages. When you ultimately let the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand in on what you are doing, you can stop worrying about listening to your own nationals. Someone else is doing it for you.
And if the Brazilian’s get angry at intrusive business espionage, so be it. You can always blame the Americans, if you need to.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his hair and his hairdresser are travelling the world, an uptight salesman for Canada. He is selling resources first and manufactured goods second. He is setting up opportunities. It looked at one point that he was too busy selling bad economics but thankfully the G8 leaders have learned to ignore him on that subject. His best sales tool is having CSEC help him. Just think what he could do if he was a more likeable salesman—or cared about us.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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