Sunday, February 16, 2014

Who has Five Eyes and deep pockets?



Back in October (and August) I asked who is funding CSEC through the "Foreign Partners -- Security" account and what is the purpose of the fund.

The Globe and Mail picked up on those questions, and now, thanks to the Access to Information Act (h/t Carl Meyer), we can read CSEC's official quasi-answers:



In brief, "The money came from the Five Eyes partnership", and it "reflects investments received from partners for cryptologic research and development that will enhance Canada's national security."

So it's Five Eyes money.

Now, maybe the Five Eyes have some kind of Top Secret Dragon's Den operating where they all get together to decide whether to fund struggling SIGINT agencies that are trying to bring bright cryptologic ideas to market. But I doubt it.

The only member of the Five Eyes with the kind of deep pockets to go around tossing money at partner agencies is the NSA. Even GCHQ, the only other Five Eyes agency that is larger than CSEC, is a recipient of NSA money (£34.7m in 2011-12).

It looks like the cash comes from the NSA.

1 Comments:

Blogger P/K said...

Nice that you could clarify this! It's interesting that they said it's from the Five Eyes, but hiding that it came from NSA was probably more important than speaking about their secret partnership. But it fits what we know from many other countries - that NSA helps them with lots of money.

February 17, 2014 8:35 pm  

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