Suddenly there came a tapping...

On 15 November 2005, the federal government introduced Bill C-74, "An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to facilitate the lawful interception of information transmitted by means of those facilities and respecting the provision of telecommunications subscriber information." The purpose of the bill is to help CSIS, the RCMP, and other Canadian police agencies bring their wiretapping abilities into the internet era.

The proposed law would have no direct effect on CSE or CFIOG (as far as I can tell), but CSE might well end up called upon to assist CSIS or the police in cryptanalysis of some intercepted messages, as they already sometimes are. The law also might facilitate the occasional collection by CSIS of material for CSE.

In any case, it's all moot at the moment. The bill is virtually guaranteed not to pass before parliament is dissolved for the next election, at which point–if the same government is still in power–the bill would have to be reintroduced and start again from scratch.

See the Canadian Press report here: Liberals introduce wiretap bill, Globe and Mail, 15 November 2005.

Spooks "out of the closet"?

Hugh Winsor has a commentary piece in today's Globe and Mail heralding a new spirit of openness within Canada's intelligence agencies ("Our spooks come out of the closet: It's about time Canada's security agencies brought the public in on what they're up to, says national affairs writer HUGH WINSOR," 31 October 2005, p. A13; Google link here).

Citing recent instances of glasnost on the part of CSIS, the RCMP, JTF2, and CSE, Winsor says the new approach represents "part of a carefully co-ordinated if unannounced shift in government policy aimed at demystifying the shadowy world of security and intelligence. One objective is to improve the tainted image of the security services, and offset criticism from immigrant communities and civil-rights groups."

In the case of CSE, Winsor says "John Adams, the recently appointed chief of the Communications Security Establishment (the highly secretive agency that intercepts foreign communications) gave his first media interview" last week. (See Michelle Shephard, "Web snooping vital, spy agency boss says," Toronto Star, 22 October 2005).

He also notes that "Both Mr. Adams and [CSIS Director] Mr. Judd participated openly in the annual convention of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, and the CSE even had a display of some of the historic tools of its trade."

Adams's predecessor, Keith Coulter, already attended CASIS conferences, so there's not much new about that, but CSE does seem to have a very gradually growing public profile.

Resources available on CSE's website include a nine-page PDF "Media Kit" posted about a year ago and a recently updated version of the document that (inexplicably) is only available as a Powerpoint file.

The documents in question are marred by annoying little errors*, but at least they're a start.

* Some examples:

• "Established in 1940 as a civilian organization under the National Research Council, the Examination Unit...": 1941. But, heck, there was a war on. Things get confused.
  
  
• "In 1974 the television program “The Fifth Estate” broadcast an exposé of Canadian involvement in signals intelligence.": The CBC broadcast a documentary entitled "The Fifth Estate: The Espionage Establishment" in 1974. The televison program "The Fifth Estate" did not exist at the time.
  
  
• "In 1974, it was renamed the Communications Security Establishment and moved to the National Defence portfolio.": 1 April 1975. Things apparently still confused.
  
  
• "Canadian Armed Forces Supplementary Radio Service": Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System.

[Update 18 February 2008: The first two mistakes have been corrected. Why not the others? Are we to conclude that CSE thinks its name change and transfer really did take place in 1974? Maybe word of the impending switch came down in 1974, but the Order in Council that actually made the changes specifies that they took effect on 1 April 1975. The Order in Council itself is dated 16 January 1975.]

Still growing...

The latest staff figures published by the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency indicate that CSE now has 1,475 staff members, up 31 from the 1,444 reported in July. CSE is currently undergoing the largest expansion in its history, with the target staffing figure of 1,650 "full-time equivalents" scheduled to be achieved in 2007. (More about the expansion here.)

NSG 73

The US Navy's Naval Security Group (NAVSECGRU) has been disestablished. On 30 September 2005, the NSG's personnel and assets were "aligned" under Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM). The former NAVSECGRU is now NETWARCOM’s Information Operations Directorate.

As part of the realignment, NSG’s subordinate commands and detachments worldwide will be renamed either Navy Information Operations Commands (NIOC) or Navy Information Operations Detachments (NIOD).

Of the four Service Cryptologic Elements, NSG was for many years the organization with which Canada's SIGINT organizations worked the most closely. Many NSG personnel (typically 25 at a time) have served at Canadian SIGINT stations and a comparable number of Canadian personnel have served at NSG stations through the CF/USN Personnel Exchange Program.

According to Naval Network Warfare Command Public Affairs, "Through the alignment, NETWARCOM will now be able to provide an integrated and responsive team of IO and network professionals to deliver information-age solutions for the fleet and joint commander in the maritime domain." Maybe the NSG's codebreakers will let us know what that's supposed to mean.

Stations of the past: Gloucester

Jerry Proc has produced another great compilation of history, photos, anecdotes, and other information about one of the Royal Canadian Navy SIGINT stations: the latest one covers HMCS Gloucester, which operated from 1943 to 1972.

Initially known as No. 1 Station HMCS Bytown, the Gloucester station was built as a high-frequency direction-finding station tracking U-Boats in the North Atlantic. Later known as Naval Radio Station Gloucester, HMCS Gloucester, and finally CFS Gloucester, the station continued its HFDF role into the Cold War period. In 1948 it also became the training school for the Communications Special trade. The station also hosted the headquarters of the RCN's Supplementary Radio System. The station closed in 1972, at which time the CFSRS training school was moved to Kingston. Only the former gymnasium at the station still stands, now serving as the Greely Legion Hall.

Go to the HMCS Gloucester page for more details of the story. Jerry Proc's other pages are also well worth checking out.

New DG Military SIGINT

The Department of National Defence announced today that "Captain (Navy) Andrea Siew, a Reservist, will be promoted Commodore AWSE (Acting While So Employed) and appointed Director General Military Signals Intelligence at the Communications Security Establishment."

Commodore Siew (shown at right) will replace BGen Glenn W. Nordick (bio), who was the first to hold the position of DG Military SIGINT, having been appointed to the newly created job in July 2004. Nordick also served as J2 Intelligence Capabilities at NDHQ, but Siew apparently has not been appointed to that position. Siew's official bio doesn't seem to be up yet on the DND website, but a quick tour around the web shows that she was a member of the INT 82 occupation, presented a paper entitled "Maritime C4I And Surveillance: The National Perspective" at the 2001 conference of the Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies, and served as Director Quality of Life in 2002-2003. She retired from the Reg Force in October 2003 after 24 years of service. She has also served as Intelligence Branch Advisor.

As noted above, the position of DG Military Signals Intelligence is a relatively new one (and certainly a new one to me: Nordick's appointment slipped by me entirely), and it evidently implies that a new directorate of Military SIGINT was created in CSE in 2004. CSE already maintained dedicated resources to the Support for Military Operations (SMO) role, but this suggests that there has been a considerable increase in those resources, which I suppose is what then-Chief Keith Coulter was telling us when he said in May that "these days [CSE's business] is hugely a support to military operations ... because we have troops deployed abroad and we're very involved in helping to intercept communications so they can paint the picture of what the local threats are to them."

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy... Screw?

Keith Coulter, the recently departed Chief of CSE, is moving on to new challenges. The Prime Minister has appointed Coulter Commissioner of Corrections in the Correctional Service of Canada, effective immediately. The official announcement is on the PM's website.

Huff-duffers go postal

I'm no philatelist and I wouldn't think of dispensing philatelic advice. But I'm guessing that CFS Bermuda is the only HF-DF station featured on a postage stamp, given that information about such places used to be more typically mailed on microdots.

Issued by the Bermudian government in 1996 as part of a set commemorating former Second World War and post-war bases in Bermuda, the CFS Bermuda stamp shows the Canadian Forces symbol, some generic looking antenna masts, and Canadian personnel at work in the operations room. The actual HF-DF array is not depicted.

(Belated kudos to DND's Defence Matters, vol. 2, no. 3, April 1997 for mentioning the release of the stamp.)

NRS/CFS Bermuda operated from 1963 until 1993, providing cut-off bearings on Soviet missile submarine transmissions and other maritime targets.

Interestingly, the Bermuda HF-DF station was not the only Cold War-era naval SIGINT system immortalized by its own postage stamp. The U.S. Navy's WHITE CLOUD ocean surveillance satellite system, first launched in 1976, was actually shown in some detail on a U.S. stamp issued that year.

[Update 28 June 2015:



As can be seen here, the satellite was actually depicted on something called a "space cover", an unofficial, commercial product created for collectors, rather than a government-issued stamp. The artwork and other information on such items was often far from accurate, but in this case it was apparently pretty close.

An almost identical image was later printed in Aviation Week and Space Technology ("Navy Ocean Surveillance Satellite Depicted," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 24 May 1976, p. 22). According to space historian Dwayne Day, that image "is consistent with a series of [subsequently] declassified drawings dating from 1973 and depicting the Multiple Satellite Dispenser and outlines of the sub-satellites" (Dwayne A. Day, "Above the clouds: the White Cloud ocean surveillance satellites," Space Review, 13 April 2009).

Update 29 June 2015:

Based on his own research into the question, Dwayne Day concludes that the Aviation Week article came first and that the space cover, although apparently postmarked on the day of the launch, was printed later.]

Are there any other SIGINT stamps out there?

Panic stations at the National Post

Al-Qaeda is out to destroy us through our satellites. So warns the National Post in a front-page story today.

Western civilization depends on its communications satellites, weather satellites, GPS satellites, and spy satellites—yes, there is a SIGINT link to this story—and Al-Qaeda is poised to knock them out. Access to just a couple of nuclear bombs and the rockets to lift them to orbital altitudes would really mess up our satellites, with disastrous consequences for everyone.

And that's not the only way to do us in. Just destroying the GPS satellites, "an attractive but complicated target," would mean the end of life as we know it: "While GPS could be destroyed bird by bird, with lasers or RF beams, the ground stations make better targets, with the same result—24 lumps of scrap metal orbiting a dark, cold, silent planet."

(So look out, Schriever Air Force Base, if the mutant Sea Bass with frickin' laser beams don't take out GPS, Al and the boys will be coming for you.)

Alternatively, just a few dozen space launchers and a whole lot of ball bearings...

I mean, WTF? Except for one dubious claim in the second-last sentence of the article—terrorists in the Chechnya area purportedly "have the capacity for hijacking satellites" (and, who knows, maybe someday it will occur to them to demonstrate such a capability)—there isn't a shred of evidence cited to support the article's central claim that Al-Qaeda is after our sats.

Hasn't the National Post got anything better to do than write crummy Tom Clancy plots?

And speaking of Tom Clancy, at least he sometimes gets some of the technology right. This piece of dreck falls for the Omniscient SIGINT Agencies mythology.

"Echelon, satellite-based and operated by the National Security Agency, gives the United States the capacity to monitor every cellphone conversation and e-mail exchange in the world."

"The U.S. National Security Agency is guaranteed access to Canadian domestic conversations—yours, mine—as well as access to conversations in other countries by a 1948 agreement called UKUSA."

The TRUMPET satellites "were launched by the U.S. exclusively to monitor cellphones." I particularly enjoyed this bit: "Some SIGINTs fly low and others high, and when a Trumpet is in a low orbit you can actually see it coming up over the horizon."

It has always been my opinion that the National Post is run by, written by, and presumably subscribed to primarily by ignoramuses, but, damn, this has to set a new record in the annals of the abominable.

Double-O 120...

MOCs are no more. MOS IDs, Military Occupation Structure Identification codes, are the new designators in town, and the Formerly Frozen Chosen, until recently known as 291ers in reference to the 291 Communicator Research trade, are now members of the 00120 trade.

Like the commentator on the Online Oldtimers page, I just can't see "the 00120ers" ever catching on as a nickname, though...

Phil Barnesosophy

Sure, it was a mildly amusing typo in the new Chief's bio. But how is it that everyone and his internet-surfing dog all of a sudden wants to check it out? My lonely little blog is being virtually stampeded (compared to the usual traffic around here) by Phil Barnesosophy seekers.

Welcome, and do come back.

New DIRNSA

There's a new UKUSA capo di tutti capi in town: effective 1 August 2005, the 16th Director of the NSA and Chief, Central Security Service, is Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Army. LTG Alexander's recent assignments include Deputy Chief of Staff (G2) for the U.S. Army (2003-2005) and Commander, INSCOM (2001-2003). Alexander replaces Lt Gen Michael V. Hayden, U.S.A.F., who has moved to the newly created position of Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

Alexander's full bio is on the NSA website.

CSE growth continues

Growth continues apace at CSE. The latest staff figures published by the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency indicate that CSE now has 1,444 staff members. The SIGINT agency is currently undergoing the largest expansion in its history, with the target staffing figure of 1,650 "full-time equivalents" scheduled to be achieved in 2007. (More about the expansion here.)

Adams's bio

The official biography of new CSE Chief John L. Adams has disappeared from the government of Canada website, so for the sake of posterity I will post the relevant bits here:

Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet du Premier ministre

Prime Minister announces changes in the senior ranks of the Public Service

May 18, 2005
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Paul Martin was pleased to announce today the following changes in the senior ranks of the Public Service: ...

John L. Adams, currently Associate Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard, becomes Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence, where his role will be to serve as Chief of the Communications Security Establishment, effective July 1, 2005. He will succeed Keith Coulter who will retire as Chief of the Communications Security Establishment at the end of June.

...

JOHN L. ADAMS

Date of Birth: May 1942

Education: Masters, Philosophy, University of Oxford
Bachelor, Chemical Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada

Professional Experience

December 2003 to Present
Associate Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard

1998 - 2003
Assistant Deputy Minister, Marine Services and Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Fisheries and Oceans Canada

1993 - 1998
Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment, National Defence

1992 - 1992
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Materiel, Canadian Armed Forces

1990 - 1992
Chief, Construction Properties, National Defence Headquarters, Infrastructure and Environment, Canadian Armed Forces

1989 - 1990
Commander, Canadian Forces Base, Petawawa, and the Special Service Force, Canadian Armed Forces

1987 - 1989
Chief of Staff/Operations Officer, Defence and Foreign Affairs Secretariat, Privy Council Office

1985 - 1987
Deputy Commander, Canadian Forces Base, Petawawa, and the Special Service Force, Canadian Armed Forces

1978 - 1985
Senior Staff Officer, Construction Engineering Requirements, Canadian Forces Training Systems then Director, Construction Engineering Requirements, National Defence Headquarters, Canadian Armed Forces

1974 - 1978
Commanding Officer, Combat Engineer Regiment, then Administrative Officer, Logistics, Technical Services and Personnel Canadian Forces, Canadian Armed Forces

1967 - 1974
Various appointments from Lieutenant to Major, Canadian Armed Forces

[Update 26 July 2005:
The amusing typo in the original version of the press release (declaring that Adams's Masters degree was in "Phil Barnesosophy") has finally been corrected, and the corrected version is now available on the Prime Minister's website. Looks like the intel boys (and girls) are staying on top of the details after all. Maybe they read my blog!]

Adams becomes new Chief

As of today, 1 July 2005, John L. Adams has become Chief of the CSE.

Previously Commissioner of the Coast Guard and originally an officer in the Canadian Forces, Adams is the seventh Chief in CSE/CBNRC's 59-year history. He takes charge as the agency is in the midst of its largest expansion ever and while it is still undergoing a major reorientation from Cold War military targets to "Global War on Terror" targets. Should make for an interesting tenure.

Adams replaced Keith Coulter, who had been Chief since 2001.

CANUSA anniversary?

As part of its participation in the UKUSA community, Canada is reported to have bilateral SIGINT agreements with the U.K. and the U.S. The latter is apparently called the CANUSA Agreement (although some sources say CANUS Agreement), and today may be its 56th anniversary.

Very little is publicly known about the CANUSA agreement. One thing we do know is that Canada-U.S. negotiations for the agreement were well underway by mid-1948. According to a U.S. Air Force memorandum dated 7 June 1948 that described a draft version of the agreement, it is modelled at least in part on the U.K.-U.S. BRUSA agreement (presumably the 1946 version) and governs Canada-U.S. co-operation on Communications Intelligence, which, for the agreement's purposes, is "understood to comprise all processes involved in the collection, production and dissemination of information derived from the communications of countries other than the U.S.A., the British Empire, and the British Commonwealth of Nations."

According to the memorandum, the agreement provides for the exchange of COMINT information "on the request of each authority to meet the requirements of the COMINT centers for assistance in the efficient discharge of their mutually agreed-upon COMINT activities and undertakings" and "on a 'need to know' basis as determined by the originating authority." It also provides for the exchange of COMINT liaison officers between Canada and the United States. [Brig. Gen. Walter Agee, USAF, Acting Deputy Director of Intelligence, "Memorandum for the Coordinator of Joint Operations: Proposed U.S.-Canadian Agreement," 7 June 1948.]

Sources disagree on when the CANUSA Agreement was finalized. Martin Rudner, one of the best informed commentators on CSE matters, says the agreement was finalized in May 1948. [Canada's Communications Security Establishment: From Cold War to globalisation, NPSIA Occasional Paper 22, 2000.] But this date seems incompatible with the June 1948 Agee memorandum. David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein put the date at some time in 1949. [D.J. Bercuson and J.L. Granatstein, The Dictionary of Canadian Military History, Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 43.] Others have suggested that the "Security Agreement between Canada and the United States of America" signed 15 September 1950 may have been the CANUSA agreement.

My own sense is that 1949 is about right. In fact, this declassified letter from the Chairman of the U.S. Communications Intelligence Board to the Chairman of the Communications Research Committee (the Canadian government interdepartmental committee then responsible for SIGINT policy), dated 29 June 1949, may be the actual document that finalized the agreement.

In any case, the Public Accounts for FY 1949-1950 show that Robert S. McLaren, Canada's first SIGINT liaison officer to the U.S., received his moving allowance and the initial installment of his representation allowance during that fiscal year (i.e., between 1 April 1949 and 31 March 1950). This also suggests that CANUSA was finalized in 1949 or very early in 1950.

Canada and the U.S. continue to post liaison officers at each other's agencies. Information about one former Senior U.S. Liaison Officer/Ottawa (SUSLO/O), Velva Klaessy, can be found on the NSA website.


Update 30 May 2009: According to Secret Sentry, the letter above is indeed the document that finalized the agreement. The agreement was formally signed in November 1949.

Update 23 April 2017: The 1949 version of the CANUSA Agreement, including Cabell's reply shown above, was released in April 2017.

Update 31 March 2019: See here for a substantial part of the appendices.

R291 on the recruiting site

The official blurb on the Reserve Communicator Research Operator (R291) trade is now up on the Canadian Forces Recruiting website. "Training takes approx 128 days spread over two summers."

Communication Reserve Communicator Research Operators work approximately one to two evenings a week and up to two weekends a month at their local unit. Once trained there are full time opportunities for employment with the Canadian Forces, either in Canada or deployed overseas, such as with a United Nations operation.

In the news: CSE's expansion

Jim Bronskill of the Canadian Press reports on CSE's ongoing expansion: "Canada's secret eavesdropping agency is undergoing its biggest expansion in decades as it takes on a greater role in the fight against terrorism" (CP story, Globe and Mail pick up, Winnipeg Sun pick up...).

Its biggest expansion ever, if you want to get pedantic about it, and its fastest. CSE has had three major growth episodes during its 59-year history: an increase of about 600 over the 15 years between the agency's inception in 1946 and 1961; an increase of about 300 over the 10 years between 1980 and 1990; and the current increase, which is projected to total about 750 personnel over the six years between 2001 and 2007. When it reaches its final target level of 1,650 "full-time equivalents", CSE will have nearly twice as many employees as it had the year the Berlin Wall came down (1989 average: 835) and more than three times the average number it had over the Cold War as a whole (525).

Anyway, a good article by one of the only reporters (or the only reporter?) who regularly covers the Canadian intelligence beat. Read it while you can: newspapers don't tend to leave their stuff available online very long anymore.

This date in history: XU began operations

On this date in history, 9 June 1941, Canada's first cryptanalytic agency, the Examination Unit, began operations. Housed in rooms 202 and 203 of the National Research Council Annex on Montreal Road in Ottawa, the XU had an initial staff of nine: Herbert O. Yardley, his assistant Edna Ramsaier, mathematician Dr. Gilbert de Beauregard Robinson (no relation), RCMP Constable Robert McLaren, Dr. Douglas Cameron, Richard Rudey (or Ruddy?) from the NRC, Vern Gavel from the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, and two typists.

Yardley and Ramsaier were gone within six months' time. Robinson (shown at right) later ended up running the XU but returned to his position in the mathematics department at the University of Toronto at the end of the war. Some of the other members of the original staff ended up making a career in signals intelligence. Robert McLaren stayed on to become one of CBNRC's initial employees and later served as CBNRC's first liaison officer at AFSA, forerunner to NSA. Vern Gavel also stayed on with CBNRC after the war, eventually retiring in 1972.

Previous posts about the XU here and here.

Coulter speaks again

More tidbits from the soon-to-be-departed Chief of CSE, Keith Coulter. On 4 May, Coulter testified to the Subcommittee on Public Safety and National Security of the House of Commons' Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, which is examining the operations of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001. He previously testified to the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-Terrorism Act on the same subject (blogged about here).

Coulter, accompanied by Deputy Chief Corporate Services Barb Gibbons, Director General Policy and Communications John Ossowski, and Director and General Counsel Legal Services David Akman, provided extensive new details on CSE's budget and staffing.

• CSE's budget prior to September 11th, 2001 was $140 million per year.
• The December 2001 federal budget approved a 25% increase in CSE's budget, to take effect over several years.
• The March 2004 budget approved an additional 25% increase in CSE's budget, to take effect by fiscal year 2007-08, for a cumulative increase of 57% , at which time CSE will have a budget of $220 million per year.
• The 2001 budget also approved a 35% increase in CSE's staffing, from about 950-1,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) to about 1,300.
• The 2004 budget approved a further 25% increase in CSE's staffing, i.e., another 350 FTEs, for a total staff of 1,650 in FY 2007-08.

The 1,650 figure is more than 100 FTEs higher than the previous publicly acknowledged figure of 1,546. (CSE's current staff size is 1,381.)

The testimony also provides some general information on CSE's intelligence-gathering priorities. Coulter's written submission (PDF file) notes that

CSE has greatly increased its focus on security issues. CSE now devotes the majority of its foreign intelligence efforts to gathering and reporting intelligence on issues such as terrorism, proliferation and cyber threats. CSE also supports deployed Canadian Forces operations abroad.

His spoken testimony, however, provides the more precise claim that

Right now, if you look at the reporting as one metric on this, over 75% of our business is in the security domain, and that's a little broader than terrorism. That's proliferation as well. It is counter-intelligence as well. It's cyber-threats as well. And these days it is hugely a support to military operations ... because we have troops deployed abroad and we're very involved in helping to intercept communications so they can paint the picture of what the local threats are to them.

The testimony contains lots of other interesting comments as well.

The FRD-10: An endangered species

In the early 1960s the U.S. Naval Security Group began deploying a network of large high-frequency direction-finding (HF-DF) circularly disposed antenna arrays, the AN/FRD-10s, to detect, monitor, and plot the location of Soviet submarines and other radio emitters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Sometimes dubbed Elephant Cages or Dinosaur Cages, the FRD-10 arrays were enormous structures. In the centre of each array was a two-storey operations building, about 40 metres square, where the station personnel worked. Surrounding this building were two concentric rings of HF antennas, one for shorter HF wavelengths, containing 120 sleeve monopoles, and one for longer HF wavelengths, containing 40 folded dipoles. The shorter wavelength ring was about 260 metres in diameter and the longer wavelength ring was about 230 metres in diameter. Inside each ring there was also a large wire screen, supported by 80 towers, which was designed to prevent HF signals from crossing the array and interfering with its operations. The inner screen, corresponding to the longer HF wavelengths, was roughly 36 metres high. A horizontal ground screen about 390 metres in diameter surrounded the entire site. (Aerial views of an FRD-10 array here.)

Fourteen of the huge arrays were eventually deployed by the NSG (not counting two built at Sugar Grove, WV, for communications rather than intelligence-gathering):

• Adak, Alaska
• Edzell, Scotland
• Galeta Island, Panama
• Guam
• Hanza, Okinawa
• Homestead, Florida
• Imperial Beach, California
• Marietta, Washington
• Northwest, Virginia
• Rota, Spain
• Sebana Seca, Puerto Rico
• Skaggs Island, California
• Wahiawa, Hawaii
• Winter Harbor, Maine

Another two were built by the Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System: one at Gander, Newfoundland and one at Masset, British Columbia (both built in 1970-71).

The FRD-10 arrays became the backbone of the BULLSEYE net, the Atlantic and Pacific HF-DF nets. They were supplemented by a number of smaller, simpler CDAAs known as Pushers, including a Canadian Pusher in Bermuda. (Canada also has Pushers deployed at Leitrim and Alert.)

The FRD-10s offered four major improvements over their predecessors, the GRD-6 in NSG service and the GRD-501 in Canadian service:

1. transmissions could be recorded for immediate or subsequent DF-ing;
2. bearings were four times as accurate;
3. antenna gain was about four times higher than previous systems; and
4. the system had the ability to select wanted signals and reject interfering signals or noise.

As noted in the Supplementary Radio Activities Consolidation Plan (30 May 1966), the improvement expected as a result of deploying the FRD-10s was "a combination of more accurate and reliable fixes, producing reduced search areas in ocean areas of prime responsibility so fresh in time as to enable maritime commanders to deploy their forces more economically and with much greater prospect of making contact with the target than is now the case."

The following maps show the locations of FRD-10 (black circles with pink dots) and Pusher arrays (empty black circles) during the system's heyday.


Click to see full-sized image


Click to see full-sized image

In the mid-1990s, however, the NSG began to close down its FRD-10 arrays. The demise of their Soviet targets, a desire to refocus collection efforts and cut costs, and, presumably, a decision to rely on alternative ocean surveillance technologies has led to the near-extinction of the FRD-10. Canada's two arrays are the only ones left in service. The others have since been dismantled. (Al Grobmeier has written more on the fate of the NSG FRD-10s.)

The Canadian FRD-10s themselves were converted in 1997 so they could be remotely operated from CFS Leitrim. Presumably they are primarily used for HF intercept operations now, although DF remains as a secondary capability. The Masset and Gander arrays no longer have other FRD-10s to work with, but they can still work with the Canadian Pusher arrays at Leitrim and Alert, and presumably with other HF-DF sites still operated by UKUSA allies and other partners. (This leaked NSA document (see p. 3) confirms that the agency continues to operate the "world-wide CROSSHAIR HFDF geolocation service", and that 2nd Parties and other countries participate.)

The first step in this direction may have been Project Polo (G1777), which was established in the late 1980s to "modernise the CFSRS High Frequency/Direction Finding (HF/DF) system at CFS Masset and Gander, and to equip CFS Alert for netted DF Operations."

Did Canada see the demise of the FRD-10 network coming? It seems unlikely that the authors of Challenge and Commitment, the 1987 Defence White Paper (précis: "The Soviet Threat will go on forever"), expected the UKUSA allies' main ocean surveillance networks to be shut down within a decade, so assuming the two sites remain useful and we're not just stuck with a couple of White Elephant Cages, maybe we got lucky.


Update 25 August 2005: Corrected to include the FRD-10 built at Marietta, Washington, and update info on the fate of the NSG FRD-10s. The FRD-10 at Marietta was dismantled in 1972, possibly as a result of the Masset array's entry into service. [A comment dated 12 September 2015 (see below) states that the Marietta array had continuing problems with inaccurate bearings due to the presence of nearby aluminum smelters, so it was probably pointless to keep the site in service once Masset was complete.]

Update 14 December 2007: As noted in the comments, the NSG detachments at US Army/Air Force FLR-9 CDAA sites also participated in the BULLSEYE net, as did some older NSG sites that continued operating the GRD-6 system (and older Canadian sites operating the GRD-501 system) for a number of years.

Update 24 June 2009: Information on the roughly equivalent Soviet Krug HF-DF network here.

Update 9 March 2015: Updated Pacific HF-DF map to include the Panama FRD-10, as suggested in comments.

Update 13 September 2015: Added some information on problems at Marietta, as suggested in comments, and updated a few other dated sections of the text.

More on the R291 trade

An article in the 25 May 2005 edition of Maple Leaf provides more information about the new Reserve Communicator Research occupation.

The new occupation will both complement and augment (where necessary) Regular Force operations in three broad areas: tactical electronic warfare, strategic signals intelligence and linguistic support. ...

Currently there are over 100 members of 772 EW Squadron in Kingston, Ont. whose primary mission is to provide augmentation on operations to their Regular Force counterpart, 2 EW Squadron. The Res Comm Rsch occupation has been developed with the Army in mind to produce a better communicator in-theatre by broadening their knowledge of SIGINT. Personnel who understand strategic SIGINT capabilities and capacities while working the EW mission at the tactical and operational level will provide commanders with better information faster. ...

“A Reserve Communications occupation will pay significant dividends by helping sustain current and future CF operations, thus reducing the toll of high operational tempo,” said Col Dave Neasmith, commander of the Canadian Forces Information Operation Group (CFIOG). The operational demands on Communicator Research personnel have steadily grown. With only 600 Regular Force personnel in the occupation, deploying personnel to all theatres and to sea has placed a severe strain on its members who must also maintain 24/7 support to all theatres via CFIOG units here in Canada.

Only 600 Reg Force 291ers? The PML in 1998 was 665, so this new number probably shouldn't come as a surprise, but CFIOG's establishment was recently reported to be 900. Granted, that number would also include other trades, and it was acknowledged that the Group is not at full strength. But maybe the Reg Force number is also soon to go up?

Retraining of 772 EW Squadron personnel will begin in 2006. Other Communication Reserve units will also be involved:

In addition to the unit in Kingston, a troop will be established in Ottawa at 763 Comm Regiment to provide operational support to CFIOG. This troop will supply Res Comm Rsch operators on a full- and part-time basis to augment their Regular Force counterparts at CFS Leitrim, as well as deploy into theatres of operations. To address the need for personnel with specialized language skills, five test sites have been initially chosen to recruit native speakers—Victoria, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal and Halifax. By reallocating existing Comm Res positions from across Canada, the goal is to have the complete Res Comm Rsch occupation fully staffed by 2009-2010.

Still no word on the CFIOG Support Dets proposal, however, unless the plan to recruit specialized language speakers is part of or has now replaced that idea.

Current Canadian SIGINT sites

Following on from the earlier post on Canadian SIGINT sites past and present, here is a list of the current Canadian SIGINT sites, including links to additional information on some of the sites.

• CSE headquarters campus (map/air photo): Edward Drake Building (map/photo) + Sir Leonard Tilley Building (map/photo) + Insurance Building (map), Ottawa, Ontario
• CFS Leitrim (map/air photo/photo) and CFIOG headquarters, Ottawa, Ontario
• CFS Alert (photo), Nunavut
• CFS Leitrim Detachment Gander (photo), Gander, Newfoundland
• CFS Leitrim Detachment Masset (photo), Masset, British Columbia
• Canadian Forces Electronic Warfare Centre, Ottawa, Ontario
• Cryptologic Support Element, AIRCOM headquarters, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Cryptologic Support Element, MARLANT headquarters, Halifax, Nova Scotia
• Cryptologic Support Element, MARPAC headquarters, Esquimalt, British Columbia
• 2 Electronic Warfare Squadron, Kingston, Ontario
• 772 Electronic Warfare Squadron (map/photo), Kingston, Ontario
  

Canadian personnel are also located at the following U.S. sites (and possibly some others):

• NSA headquarters (map/air photo), Fort Meade, Maryland
• Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center (map/air photo/photo), Schofield Barracks, Hawaii
• Medina Regional SIGINT Operations Center (map/air photo), San Antonio, Texas
• Naval Security Group Activity Whidbey Island (?) (map/air photo), Oak Harbor, Washington state
• Naval Security Group Activity San Diego (?), San Diego, California
  
• Naval Security Group Activity Norfolk (?) (map/air photo), Norfolk, Virginia
  

(The listings for Washington, California, and Virginia sites are speculative, based on the questionable assumption that the posting locations listed in DND's description of the 291 trade are accurate and up-to-date.)

Canadian personnel also are located at

• GCHQ (map/old air photo/new air photo), Cheltenham, United Kingdom

Not included on the list are the covert intercept sites reported to operate in some Canadian embassies and consulates.

Update 22 May 2006:
According to the History of Canadian Signals Intelligence and Direction Finding, there are no longer any Canadians at the San Diego and Whidbey Island sites, but there are some now at the Gordon Regional SIGINT Operations Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Question du jour: CFIOG Support Dets?

The Communication Reserve Development Plan 2004-2009 (PDF file) reported that "CFIOG has proposed that the IO support capabilities within the Communication Reserve be expanded by developing the Communicator Research Operator (R291) trade within the reserves and by standing up CFIOG Support Dets at CFIOG HQ Ottawa and in Halifax, Victoria, and Winnipeg", i.e., at MARLANT, MARPAC, and AIRCOM headquarters, where there already are Cryptologic Support Elements from the Reg Force. A team was to be set up no later than August 2003 to report by March 2004 on a number of outstanding issues related to these proposals, including "the financial options for expansion of the IO support capabilities within the Communication Reserve to include CFIOG Support Dets" and "Command and Control for the proposed CFIOG Support Dets in Ottawa, Halifax, Victoria and Winnipeg".

The plan to create the R291 trade is going ahead. Question: What, if anything, has been decided with respect to the CFIOG Support Dets?

Canadian SIGINT sites past and present

Here’s a list I’m working on of the main Canadian SIGINT operating sites past and present and their years of operation. The information that I’ve seen on the Second World War sites tends to be spotty, so a lot of the dates associated with those are guesses. I hope to get better information on those and other stations as time goes by. Any suggestions readers can make for additions, corrections, etc would be gratefully received!

Canadian SIGINT sites past and present

Location	Years of operation
Aklavik, Northwest Territories (RCN)	1949 - 1961
Alert, Nunavut (RCAF/RCCS/SRS/CFIOG)	1956 - present
Amherst, Nova Scotia (RCCS)	1941 - 1942
Augsburg, Germany (SRS detachment)	1989 - 1992?
Bermuda (RCN/SRS)	1963 - 1993
Botwood, Newfoundland (DOT)	1939? - 1945?
Cap D’Espoir, Quebec (RCN @ RCAF)	1941 - 1945?
Churchill, Manitoba (RCN/SRS)	1948 - 1968
Coal Harbour, British Columbia (RCN @ RCAF)	1941 - 1942
Coverdale, New Brunswick (RCN/SRS)	1944 - 1971
Darwin, Australia: McMillan’s Road Camp (RCCS)	1945 - 1945
Esquimalt, British Columbia (RCN intercept for RN)	1925 - 1940?
Esquimalt, British Columbia (MARPAC support element)	? - present
Flin Flon, Manitoba (AFTAC only?)	1959? - ?
Forrest, Manitoba (DOT)	1940 - 1942
Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq), Quebec (RCN)	1949 - 1952
Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit), Nunavut (RCN)	1953 - 1967
Gander, Newfoundland (RCN/SRS/CFIOG)	1940 - present
Gloucester, Ontario (RCN HF-DF/training/admin site)	1943 - 1972
Gordon Head, British Columbia (RCN)	1940 - 1945
Grande Prairie, Alberta (RCCS)	1942 - 1947
Halifax, Nova Scotia (MARLANT support element)	? - present
Harbour Grace, Newfoundland (RCN)	1940? - 1945?
Hartlen Point, Nova Scotia (DOT)	1941? - 1945?
Inuvik, NWT (RCN/SRS)	1961 - 1986
Kingston, Ontario (SRS/CFIOG training)	1972 - present
Kingston, Ontario (2 EW Sqn of 1 CSR/1CDHSR/CFJSR)	? - present
Kingston, Ontario (Res EW Sqn/772 EW Sqn)	1986 - present
Ladner, British Columbia (RCCS/SRS)	1949 - 1971
Leitrim, Ontario (RCCS/SRS/CFIOG)	1941 - present
Louisbourg, Nova Scotia (DOT)	1939 - 1945?
Lulu Island, British Columbia (DOT)	1945 - 1945
Masset, British Columbia (RCN/SRS/CFIOG)	1944 - 1945 and 1949 - present
Ottawa, Ontario (various headquarters)	1939 - present
Ottawa, Ontario (DOT)	1939 - 1945?
Ottawa, Ontario (771 CRS)	1987 - 2002
Pennfield, New Brunswick (RCN @ RCAF)	1941? - 1944?
Point Grey, British Columbia (DOT)	1940 - 1945?
Portage la Prairie, Manitoba (RCN @ RCAF)	1942? - 1945?
Prince Rupert, British Columbia (RCN)	1946? - 1948?
Riske Creek, British Columbia (RCCS; never operational)	1944 - 1946
Rivers, Manitoba (RCN @ RCAF)	1941? - 1945?
Rockcliffe, Ontario (RCCS)	1939 – 1941
Shediac, New Brunswick (DOT)	1939 - 1945?
St. Hubert, Quebec (DOT)	1939 - 1945?
Ste. Hyacinthe, Quebec (training)	1944 - 1945?
Strathburn, Ontario (DOT)	1939 - 1945?
Sydney, Nova Scotia (RCN @ RCAF)	1941? - 1945?
Ucluelet, British Columbia (RCN @ RCAF)	1941 - 1942
Victoria, British Columbia (RCCS)	1942 - 1949
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory (RCAF/SRS)	1948?- 1968
Winnipeg, Manitoba (DOT)	1942 - 1945
Winnipeg, Manitoba (AIRCOM support element)	? - present

The list does not include the various operating sites of the Special Wireless Sections Type “A” and Type “B” in Britain, Italy, and North-West Europe from 1941 to 1945 or similar operations that may have taken place in the years since the Second World War when Canadian forces have been operationally deployed. Also not included are the covert intercept sites reported to operate in some Canadian embassies and consulates.

Canadians are also posted to a number of U.S. sites under the CF-USN Personnel Exchange Program. Currently, these sites include Fort Meade, MD; Kunia RSOC, HI; Medina RSOC, TX; and possibly San Diego, CA; Norfolk, VA; and Whidbey Island, WA. At various times, Canadians have also been posted to other U.S. sites under this program, including Northwest, VA; Homestead, FL; Skaggs Island, CA; Imperial Beach, CA; Wahiawa, HI; and Naval Security Group Headquarters (Washington, DC).

[Update 1 May 2006:
See updated version of the list here.]

John L. Adams to be next CSE Chief

As of 1 July 2005 the Communications Security Establishment will have a new Chief. On 18 May 2005 Prime Minister Martin announced the appointment of John L. Adams as the next Chief of CSE. Adams will replace the current Chief, Keith Coulter, who will retire at the end of June.

Adams spent most of his career in the Canadian army and is currently Associate Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard. More information can be found in his online bio, including the intriguing news that he holds a Master of Phil Barnesosophy degree from Oxford University (an obscure field, but—who knows?—maybe it will come in handy).

Unlike previous CSE Chiefs, Adams is being appointed "Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence, where his role will be to serve as Chief of the Communications Security Establishment". Will all future CSE Chiefs be appointed to this position or is this something specific for this officeholder? Born in 1942, Adams is presumably only a few years away from retirement, so it probably won't be too long before we find out.

John Adams will be the 7th Chief CSE/Director CBNRC in the agency's 59-year history:

• Edward M. Drake (1946 - 1971)
• N. Kevin O'Neill (1971 - 1980)
• Peter R. Hunt (1980 - 1989)
• A. Stewart Woolner (1989 - 1999)
• D. Ian Glen (1999 - 2001)
• Keith Coulter (2001 - 2005)
• John L. Adams (2005 - )

This date in history: 1 CSWG took over operations in Darwin

On this date in history, 18 May 1945, 1 Canadian Special Wireless Group took over operations at McMillan's Road Camp in Darwin, Australia. Numbering 325 personnel all ranks, 1 CSWG operated at Darwin from 30 April 1945 until 11 October 1945, working at first in conjunction with the Australian Special Wireless Group before taking over operation of the station.


Photo by Don Vaughan-Smith courtesy of Jim Troyanek

The unit intercepted approximately 1200 messages (70,000 code groups) a day, forwarding the traffic to the US-Australian Central Bureau in Brisbane, and later to Manila. A number of members of 1 CSWG's Intelligence Section also worked at Central Bureau and/or Manila during the unit's time in Australia.

By all indications, the Canadians did excellent work. According to Central Bureau,

The Canadian Special Wireless Group at Darwin has been doing a magnificent job continuously in all its contacts with us. They have increased the totals of traffic copied, improved the standard of the teletype service, and turned in a much finer grade of traffic than we have ever before received from any other station. At the present time they are sending us between 1000 and 1200 messages daily over the teletype and the quality of these is such (90% accuracy) that results are about 20% better than those from any of our other stations.

Lots of additional information is available at Jim Troyanek's 1 Canadian Special Wireless Group page.

This date in history: BRUSA signed

On this date in history, 17 May 1943, the BRUSA agreement was signed by Britain and the United States. The direct forerunner of the 1946 BRUSA agreement (which was renamed the UKUSA agreement in 1954), the 1943 agreement formalized wartime communications intelligence cooperation between Britain's Government Code and Cipher School (later known as GCHQ) and the U.S. Army's Signal Security Agency. The "Holden agreement" of 2 October 1942, also a forerunner of the UKUSA agreement, had earlier laid out the parameters of British-American naval COMINT cooperation.

The text and appendices of the BRUSA agreement were released to the public in 1995 and were published in the journal Cryptologia in 1997 ("The BRUSA Agreement of May 17, 1943," Cryptologia, vol. 21, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 30-38).

[Update 28 May 2009: Details of post-war BRUSA/UKUSA agreement updated to reflect more recent information.]

This date in history: XU approved

On this date in history, 12 May 1941, the Interdepartmental Committee on Cryptography met in the East Block of Parliament Hill and approved the establishment of Canada's first code-breaking agency, the Examination Unit (XU). The Committee decided that the XU would be headed by Herbert O. Yardley, with the unit's policy and operations controlled by the Department of External Affairs. Present at the meeting were Hugh Keenleyside of the Department of External Affairs, Chairman of the Committee; Captain Eric S. Brand, Director of Naval Intelligence; Lieutenant C. Herbert Little of the RCN's Foreign Intelligence Section; Lieutenant Colonel William W. Murray, Director of Military Intelligence; Tommy A. Stone of the Department of External Affairs; Herbert Yardley; and "Miss Geary", sitting in for C. J. (Jack) Mackenzie, the President of the National Research Council.

The XU began operations in June 1941 with a staff of nine. It was housed in rooms 202 and 203 of the NRC Annex, located on Montreal Road.


Photo source: CSE

The photo above shows the XU staff, then about 20-25 strong, in front of the NRC Annex in mid-1942. By the time this photo was taken, Yardley had already been replaced by GC&CS cryptanalyst Oliver Strachey (third row from front, second from left). Strachey was replaced by another British cryptanalyst, F. A. (Tony) Kendrick, in July 1942.

Reserve EW Squadron re-established as 772 EW Squadron

The Reserve Electronic Warfare Squadron was re-established as 772 Electronic Warfare Squadron, under the command of 70 Communication Group, on 7 April 2005. According to DND's 2005-06 Report on Plans and Priorities, 772 EW Squadron will be staffed by "a cadre of Reserve communicator research operators" (i.e., the reserve force equivalent of the regular force 291 trade). "This new trade is currently undergoing the Occupation Specification Implementation Process."

Created in 1986 and based in Kingston, Ontario, the Reserve Electronic Warfare Squadron was under the direct command of the CFSRS/CFIOG from 1994 until 2005. More information about the Reserve Electronic Warfare Squadron/772 EW Squadron is available at the Reserve Electronic Warfare Squadron Association website.

Growth continues at CSE

As noted in a recent post (Coulter speaks: CSE builds), CSE is projected to grow to a staff of 1546 "full-time equivalents" in fiscal year 2005-06. The graph below shows the evolution of CSE's staffing from its origins in 1946 (then known as the Communications Branch of the National Research Council, or CBNRC) to the present.

As the graph demonstrates, CSE is now in the midst of the third, and largest, buildup in its history. The first buildup occurred during the early days of the Cold War in the late 1940s and 1950s. The second dates to the renewed Cold War tensions of the 1980s (and to the surge in global communications traffic that began in the 1970s and continues to this day). The third is evidently primarily a response to the events of September 11th, 2001.

This date in history: Herbert O. Yardley

On this date in history, 10 May 1941, Herbert Osborn Yardley came to Ottawa to discuss setting up Canada's first code-breaking organization, the Examination Unit (XU). Yardley was an American citizen who had worked as a code-breaker for the U.S. Army during the First World War and subsequently headed the United States' first peacetime code-breaking organization, MI-8. Left out of work when MI-8 was shut down in 1929, in 1931 he wrote a book about his code-breaking exploits, The American Black Chamber, that to the consternation of the U.S. government quickly became an international bestseller.

The Canadian government recruited Yardley to run the XU at the suggestion of the U.S. Army's Chief Signal Officer, Major General Joseph Mauborgne. The XU began operations under Yardley's direction on 9 June 1941, focusing initially on Vichy French codes, German agent traffic, and Japanese diplomatic messages. Unfortunately for Yardley, however, it very soon was made clear to Ottawa that neither the U.S. government (despite Mauborgne's recommendation of Yardley) nor the British government had any intention of co-operating with Canada on code-breaking as long as the author of The American Black Chamber was associated with the effort. In December 1941 Yardley was shown the door. He was replaced by British-supplied cryptanalyst Oliver Strachey in January 1942.

Yardley remained blacklisted from Western code-breaking work for the rest of his life, but in 1999 he was posthumously inducted into the NSA's Hall of Honor as "one of the pioneers of modern American cryptology." A biography of Herbert Yardley, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking, was published in 2004.

CFIOG birthday

Sixty-seven years ago today, on 8 May 1938, Minister of National Defence the Hon. Ian Alistair Mackenzie approved the creation of a "Tri-Service Wireless Intelligence Service". The road that ultimately led to the Canadian Forces Information Operations Group (CFIOG) of today included a number of twists and turns: aside from the Joint Discrimination Unit, which operated from 1943 to 1946, the separate service SIGINT organizations operated largely independently of each other until the creation of the Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System (CFSRS) in 1966. The CFSRS then became the CFIOG in 1998. But May 8th is considered to be the official birth date of the CFIOG, so Happy Birthday CFIOG!

Coulter speaks: CSE builds

CSE Chief Keith Coulter testified before the Special Senate Committee on the Anti-Terrorism Act on 11 April 2005. Among other interesting nuggets is the news that CSE is in the process of building two new buildings to house its burgeoning staff and is looking at more sweeping accommodation changes over the longer term:

We have a campus of facilities. My office is in the old CBC building at 1500 Bronson Street. We have, on Heron Road, a major foreign intelligence complex. We have another building, soon to be two more, going up, because we are growing on that campus. We are working with Public Works and Treasury Board on a longer-term solution. The plan is, by the fall, to have a government approved, long-term accommodation plan for CSE. We have been adding buildings out on our campus because we needed floor space in a hurry.

The old CBC building, now called the Edward Drake Building (after CSE's first chief), is the Y-shaped building to the right of centre in this photo. The Heron Road complex is the L-shaped building (Sir Leonard Tilley Building) and the adjacent square building ("Annex") located to the left of centre. The building under construction is not shown on the photo (which probably was taken in 2003 or 2004). The need for new accommodations is undoubtedly related to the rapid growth that CSE has undergone in recent years. The agency had a staff of about 900 in 1997, when it acquired the Drake Building. In fiscal year 2005-06 it is projected to have a staff of 1546.

Stations of the past: HMCS Coverdale

National Archives of Canada photo PA204141

HMCS Coverdale, located just south of Moncton, New Brunswick, was an intercept and high-frequency direction-finding station from (approx.) 1944 until 1971, when operations were transferred to 770 Communications Research Squadron at CFB Gander.

During the Second World War the station was staffed by the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service and used primarily to monitor and track U-Boats. After the war, the station served as Alternate Net Control Station for the joint US-Canadian Atlantic HF-DF net, tracking Soviet instead of German submarines, as well as other North Atlantic sea and air traffic.

Jerry Proc's HMCS Coverdale webpage is an outstanding resource on the wartime and post-war operations at Coverdale, the equipment and facilities at the station, and the people who served there.

New book: Chatter

Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping by Patrick Radden Keefe (Random House, New York, 2005).

Chatter provides an easy-to-read and entertaining overview of the UKUSA SIGINT alliance, the privacy and security issues surrounding SIGINT, and the people who in various ways make it their mission to watch the SIGINT listeners. Be warned, however: the book provides very little new information on the SIGINT world and essentially nothing on Canada's role in that world.

In the introduction to the book Keefe advances what he calls the SIGINT Postulate: "there is an inverse proportion between how much a person is willing to talk about signals intelligence and how much he or she actually knows." As one who has frequently talked about it and who even has a blog about it fer cryin' out loud, I'd have to say Keefe is pretty close to the truth on that score. But, hey, he wrote a whole book about it, and occasionally the SIGINT Postulate shows there too. The United States has about 100 spy satellites in orbit? No, no, no. US photoreconnaissance satellites operate in molniya orbits? Gimme a break.

"Gotchas" like these are of very little importance, of course. A more substantive critique is that the book does a better job of raising questions than it does of answering them, or even of pointing towards the glimmer of possible answers. On the whole, however, it's well worth the read.

A mystery wrapped in an Enigma?

The keys are punched, the rotors turn, the lamps light up, and out of the reshuffled wiring comes a new organization chart and a new set of alphabetical designators for CSE's groups.

Presumably there are good reasons behind CSE's frequent reorganizations, not just an inclination to encipher the organization chart every now and then. But to CSE's oft-shuffled employees the process sometimes must feel like being trapped in an Enigma machine.

By my estimate, CSE has undergone major reorganizations at least nine times in its short post-war existence, on average at least once every six years. It reorganized three times in the five years between 1995 and 2000. Throw in the 1998 transformation of the Supplementary Radio System into the Canadian Forces Information Operations Group, and for a while there the CSE staff must have needed a Bombe just to figure out who was who.

The most recent reorganization that I am aware of took place on 5 September 2000, when the organization shown below was established. I'd be surprised if there hasn't been at least one other reorganization since.

Organization Chart as of September 2000

Chief CSE	SIGINT	Deputy Chief SIGINT	Dir E Group Mission Applications/Systems Development
			Dir G Group Acquisition
			Dir K Group Facilitation
			Dir J Group Analysis
			Dir L Group Client and Mission Operations
			Critical Infrastructure Protection
	INFOSEC	Deputy Chief Information Technology Security	Dir I Group ITS Information Protection
			Dir T Group ITS Operations
			Dir S Group ITS Strategic Services
	ADMIN	Director- General Corporate Services	Counselling and Advisory Program
			Dir Review Services
			Dir R Group Policy, Plans & Financial Management
			Dir F Group Assets Management
			Dir U Group Human Resources Management
			Dir Z Group Information Management/Information Technology
	Chief Information Officer
	Dir Legal Services
	Canadian Special Liaison Officer/Washington (CANSLO/W)
	Canadian Special Liaison Officer/London (CANSLO/L)

Source: Public Service Staff Relations Board files 172-13-1990 (2001) and 125-13-96 (2001)

Overhead intel on Leitrim

Google Maps' new satellite photos feature provides a detailed and apparently reasonably up to date (probably 2003 or 2004) look at CFS Leitrim, Canada's main SIGINT collection site, located just south of Ottawa.

Here's a close-up look at the buildings. You can see the two new satellite dishes added in 2003, one on the west end of the line of radomes and the other on the east end. Interestingly, neither dish has yet been covered by a radome of its own (as of the time this photo was taken, anyway).

You can also zoom out a bit for a look at the whole station. Note the Pusher high-frequency direction-finding antenna array, codenamed CENTREVELIC, located just north of the buildings (shown in more detail here). Also interesting is the landscaping done in the 1960s for a considerably larger HF-DF array a short distance to the north-west of the Pusher array. As far as I can tell, this array, possibly intended to be an AN/FLR-9, was never built, and the site is gradually reverting back to nature.

Finally, the Google images provide evidence of another—even larger—type of circularly disposed array at the station. Note the two semi-circular fans radiating out from the vicinity of the station buildings, one fan north of Leitrim Road and the other south of the road. The change in vegetation makes their outlines easily apparent. A close-up look at the southern fan makes some of the structural details visible. Anyone know what kind of array this is? I'm guessing it's a series of vertical log periodic antennas strung between towers and oriented at 15-degree intervals from each other to form a semi-circle. But that's a guess, and not what I would call an informed one, either.

[Update 7 October 2008: Well, it turns out I was right—about it not being an informed guess. I did a drive-past in August and there are no LPAs in the new array. Jerry Proc has some details of the rhombic arrays formerly at the station and the decision to replace them with the new system on his Leitrim - Old Antennas page.]

[Update 27 May 2009: Should have updated this about six months ago. The new array is known as a Beverage rosette array. The ever-reliable Jerry Proc has the details on his Leitrim - Current HF Antennas page.]

Canada, SIGINT, and this blog

This blog is about Canada's signals intelligence (SIGINT) activities, past and present, including Canadian participation in the global UKUSA SIGINT alliance.

Signals Intelligence was defined by the Canadian government in 1977 as "all processes involved in, and information and technical material derived from, the interception and study of foreign communications and non-communications electromagnetic emissions." Subcategories of SIGINT include intelligence derived from communications, also known as Communications Intelligence (COMINT); intelligence derived from non-communications emissions such as radar, also known as Electronics Intelligence (ELINT); and intelligence derived from the telemetry transmissions of missiles or other equipment undergoing testing, also known as Telemetry Intelligence (TELINT). In 2001, the range of potential Canadian SIGINT targets was formally broadened to incorporate data or technical information carried on, contained in, or relating to the electromagnetic emissions, communications systems, information technology systems, and networks that comprise the "global information infrastructure" when obtained for the purpose of providing foreign intelligence.

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is Canada's national Signals Intelligence organization. Formerly a civilian agency of the Department of National Defence, in November 2011 CSE became a separate agency of the government of Canada. CSE processes SIGINT, produces analyses, and disseminates reports to Canadian and allied intelligence clients. The collection of SIGINT is conducted primarily by the Canadian Forces Information Operations Group (CFIOG), formerly the Canadian Forces Supplementary Radio System (CFSRS), a component of the Canadian Armed Forces that operates under the direction of CSE for SIGINT purposes. CSE and the CFIOG in turn work in close co-operation with the US National Security Agency (NSA), Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), and New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in a global intelligence alliance known informally as the UKUSA community.

The purpose of this blog is to collect, compile, analyse, and discuss publicly available information about the Communications Security Establishment and SIGINT activities in general. I have never had any role, direct or indirect, in the SIGINT business, and I consider myself neither a critic of nor an advocate for the Canadian agencies involved in these activities. A certain amount of secrecy is essential to the operations of these agencies. Nonetheless, a greater level of public knowledge about the privacy and national security issues raised by signals intelligence activities, and about the SIGINT agencies in general, would, in my view, be a good thing. My primary motivation in pursuing this topic, however, is simply to satisfy my own curiosity about the business of signals intelligence and Canada's role in it.


[Updated 16 January 2012: Since November 2011, CSE has been a separate agency of the government of Canada.]