It's against the law!

It's not often those of us outside the SIGINT world get to engage in a venerable intelligence tradition like reading other people's secret diplomatic traffic.

And what fun it is too. You can see why government ministers get such a kick out of it.

But personally the biggest chuckle I've had out of the whole affair so far was in response to this comment:

The French Foreign Ministry called the WikiLeaks release "irresponsible" and said it violated international law concerning the secrecy of communications between embassies and their home bases (Edward Cody, "Leaks undercut relations with U.S., nations say," Washington Post, 30 November 2010).

I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find gambling going on in this establishment!

October 2010 CSE staff size

1720.

(If you click through on the link and get a different figure, it's probably because the Canada Public Service Agency has updated its website; they update the numbers once a month.)