I've been thinking on the comments made by the CSIS director yesterday for a bit.

Summary: while I think I understand them, I also worry about their nature and possible effects.

(Background: https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/02/09/canadas-spies-are-working-under-outdated-laws-csis-director-says.html) #cndpoli

The Director has asserted that new legislation is needed for CSIS to undertake activities needed to conduct its investigations. I suspect that, at least in part, this is a reference to a federal court ruling limiting CSIS' s.16 powers.

(FCC decision: https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/491878/index.do)

Key to that decision was that s.16, which governs CSIS' foreign intelligence mandate, restricts CSIS' activities to those that take place within Canada. This is a challenge for CSIS given that the agency wants to undertake digital activities extending past Canada's borders.

The court found that while some of CSIS' activities did have a mandate extending beyond Canada (specifically its s.12 activities) this was not the case for s.16 activities.

The result? CSIS is limited in its ability to conduct foreign intelligence even when directed to conduct FORINT by the Government of Canada.

Now, CSIS got a pretty massive update to its authorizing legislation pretty recently in C-59. The agency is now asking for yet more powers

The updates CSIS received, just a few years ago, were controversial and frankly under explained by CSIS in formal and less formal situations. Seriously: ask someone about the real details of what datasets are or can be, and you can get a whole lot of different answers.

The updates CSIS is asking for, now, would significantly expand its foreign intelligence mandate.

But we should ask the question: is this a mandate that we think should be further expanded under CSIS? Or should Canada have a real foreign intel agency?

As a country, this debate comes up every decade or so since CSIS was created, and for one reason or another the same answer is given: no, we don't want to develop a foreign intel agency for a range of reasons.

So the worry is that there could be a somewhat quiet expansion of CSIS' foreign intelligence mandate and--by way of backdoor--Canada creates an ever broadening agency that adopts a lot of the functions of a foreign intelligence agency without going through the necessary debates.

Does this mean Canada should necessarily refuse to expand foreign intelligence work? No. But gauging whether to expand CSIS' mandate should be done deliberately and assess what CSIS and the CSE are expected to do, as well as whether CSIS should be THE foreign intel agency

Now, maybe I'm wrong: maybe none of this has to do with issues CSIS has had with the federal court. But...I doubt it.

Finally: If we're going to have a 'serious' discussion about national security, as the CSIS Director has suggested, it'd be lovely to see explicit references to the laws that are a problem. And not require non-government analysts to divine meaning from his speeches. #JustSaying