Re: CANADIAN PRESS REPORTS (was Re: CSE gets flak on TV)

[anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com]

On Sat, 18 Nov 1995 anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com wrote:

> >Taking three successive news stories from three days ... (press stories,
> >I've since pulled for my own reference) and pasting them together to
> >indicate some type of Machiaevellian?? (sp) exercise is simply "not done." 
> 
> I still feel such a sense of violation with what LD did, such an utter
> sense of helplessness at the character assassination I've suffered at his
> hands, that I feel that I must take some token action to "set the
> record straight".  Something which clears my name.
> 
> Here is the TRUE unedited story for the list which Deitweiler felt he
> had to TWIST to the nth degree.  His attempt at making mountains out
> of mole hills will not succeed with this one.

This story truly is a non-starter.  Big deal.  It really has no
relevance to this international list.  This is simply a Canadian matter.

So Canada spied on its allies -- Mexico and South Korea particularly --
and possibly picked up some information which helped Canada to outbid
the United States on a lucrative wheat deal with China.

So what??  As they say ... you snooze you loose.  

Deitweiler's attempt to get American farmers into the picture isn't
going to work.  The part about wheat sales isn't even remotely
relevant to the story.  It's a single paragraph.

CSE has a mandate and follows it.  No one needs to listen to
Deitweiler's rantings and whinings, and his so-called outrage.

As the box at the end of the story shows, Canada simply doesn't
currently have the budget to do a really broad search of the United
States or Mexico.  It just can't pick up every American's phone calls.

The story isn't about that.  It's simply about listening in on a
woman's phone call to her doctor.  His attempt to make more out of
this than what is actually there, and in the process to sully my good
name won't work.

Let the readers judge for themselves, based on the ORIGINAL stories
rather than LD's cut and paste and his personal *commentary*.  And
hopefully no one will judge me, for his words.  

Let the story simply speak for itself.




SPY WORLD
Electronic snooping part of the trade game with friendly countries

Intelligence agencies comb the airwaves for useful data

Jim Bronskill
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA

  Intelligence experts said Monday it's no big secret that Canada's
high-tech spy agency snoops on friendly countries for financial gain.
  Increasingly, intelligence agencies around the world are using their
antennas, computers and codebreakers to gather economic information,
said Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto history professor.
  Some of Canada's largest trading partners -- including the United
States, France and Japan -- comb the airwaves for useful information,
so Canada would be foolish not to join the game, said Wark.
  "I don't know what a friendly power in the economic sphere is,
exactly, these days," he said.  "That seems to be a very ambiguous
term."
  Canada's secretive Communications Security Establishment -- an arm
of the Defence Department -- collects and analyses communications
traffic on the activities of foreign states, corporations and people.
  Jan Shorten, a former CSE employee, told CTV News in an interview
Sunday the agency spied on Canada's allies and trading partners --
including Mexico and South Korea -- by eavesdropping on embassies,
consulates and diplomats.
  In a follow-up segment for broadcast Monday, Shorten said the CSE
frequently intercepted telephone conversations and faxes of Canadians
working at foreign embassies in Canada.
  The government acknowledged earlier this year it uses CSE data to
help develop foreign and defence policies.
  In New Zealand where a meeting of Commonwealth countries just
wrapped up, Prime Minister Jean Chretien did not deny Canada is spying
on allies.
  "This is an organization that works within the law of Canada,"
Chretien told reporters. "They do not report to me on a daily basis
and I cannot make any comments on if they are spying on anybody, I
don't know.
  "But they have a mandate to check a few things around the world.
Probably somebody is listening to us at this moment."
  The prime minister also said that of any laws have been broken,
"somebody will have to pay the price."
  In a book published last year, former CSE employee Mike Frost told
how the agency electronically picked up information that helped Canada
outbid the United States on a lucrative 1982 wheat deal with China.
  Such clandestine behaviour may be unethical, but countries do it,
said U.S. journalist David Kahn, who has written extensively on
intelligence matters.
  "It's just too valuable to give up," said Kahn, a visiting historian
at the National Security Agency, the CSE's much larger U.S. cousin.
  "I wouldn't be surprised if the United States was trying to break
Canadian codes."
  Ottawa maintains that the CSE, the NSA and their counterparts in
Britain, Australia and New Zealand have all agreed not to spy on each
other.
  The government also says the CSE does not target Canadians and
scrupulously abides by Canadian laws.
  Shorten said the CSE stepped up its operations against foreign
embassies in Canada in 1991.  She recalled hearing conversations of
Canadinas employed there -- even one woman's phone call to her doctor.
  An appalled Shorten eventually confronted her boss, who assured her
the practice was legal.
  The agency is obligated to destroy information about Canadians it
scoops up in its electronic net, said Wark.  A rare exception might be
a phone call describing a terrorist plot.

[The story also had a little box with some Quick Facts in it]


                   QUICK FACTS

 EMPLOYEES:  About 900
 
 1995-96 BUDGET: $113 Million

 HQ:   Sir Leonard Tilley Building, 
       behind a three metre fence tipped
       with barbed wire in south Ottawa.

 ROLE: Secretive arm of Defence Department monitors and anlyses
       communications about activities of foreign states, corporations
       and individuals.  Also helps government stop Canadian signals
       from being intercepted.

SHARES: Intelligence with counterparts in United States, Britain,
        Australia, New Zealand.



And that's all she wrote ...