CSIS has a morale issue. It has a red tape problem. It's strained from years of under-resourcing. And above all, it has a serious leadership trust issues

Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Daniel Rogers attends a committee meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 5, 2026. (HYUNGCHEOL PARK / Postmedia)

By
Christopher Nardi
National Post

October 28, 2026

OTTAWA — When CSIS director Dan Rogers meets staff at one of the spy agency’s offices across the country, there comes a time when he asks the bosses to leave the room.

Then, he asks spy agency staff how things are really going.

There’s good reason for the head of the spy agency — who marked two years on the job earlier this month — to want to put his ear directly to the ground.

CSIS has a morale issue. It has a red tape problem. It’s strained from years of under-resourcing. And above all, it has a serious leadership trust issue.

In an interview alongside CSIS’s deputy director Vanessa Lloyd and human resources head Jesse Schwartz, Rogers candidly acknowledges those problems. In fact, he’s brutally honest in his assessment of the service.

The agency is full of passionate people who are extremely dedicated to their mission of keeping Canada safe. But it’s also struggling.

“CSIS is strained,” he told National Post.

“We have an organization that is extremely overtaxed in an extraordinarily complex environment, and people do hard work in stressful environments every day.”

Rogers may lead one of the most mysterious and shadowy agencies in the country, but he spends a lot of his time thinking not about spy stuff… but about culture change.

That’s because the same year he was appointed, the government released the 2024 edition of the Public Service Employment Survey (PSES) that showed deeply concerning results for CSIS workers.

The poll suggested only half (51 per cent) of CSIS respondents believed senior managers “lead by example in ethical behaviour.” Far fewer (40 per cent) said they had confidence in top management, whereas barely 29 per cent believed senior management makes “effective and timely decisions.”

Just over half (56 per cent) said they had the tools, technology and equipment to do their job.

Nearly one in five (17 per cent) of respondents said they’d been harassed in the previous 12 months.

In all those cases, CSIS’s results were consistent or worse than previous surveys and below the average across the federal public service.

That’s on top of repeat allegations of racism, sexism, a “macho” environment and even sexual assault over the last decade within the secretive service. Notably, in 2017, then-Director David Vigneault issued a statement acknowledging “serious concerns surrounding retribution, favouritism, bullying and other inappropriate behaviour” in the service’s Toronto office.

Issues with trust and ethics are of particular concern at CSIS because the spy agency has tremendous and invasive investigative power. With the proper ministerial authorization, agents can even break the law to advance an investigation.

The agency is also required to act quickly to detect and respond to imminent national security threats. Red tape and overly complex internal processes are likely to complicate that mission.

Last year, National Post revealed that Rogers sent a memo to staff in June 2025 acknowledging the “disappointing and unacceptable” PSES results. Culture change would become his and management’s “overriding priority,” he wrote, because the current environment was hampering CSIS’s ability to deliver on its critical national security role.

The director and his colleagues are well aware that changing a culture — particularly one that has been allowed to fester slowly for so long — is not an overnight experience.

“Habits are hard to change,” said Schwartz in the recent interview in which she, Rogers and Lloyd listed a number of changes they were implementing following his memo.

CSIS director Daniel Rogers (left) and Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree chat before a committee meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 5, 2026. HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia
One is improving communication by having senior executives speak more directly to their staff and vice-versa. Executives need to speak more directly to their reports, and employees are encouraged to write directly to a senior leader, and even the director himself.

“You can make all the right decisions as a senior manager, but if people never know who you are, they don’t know your values, and they don’t hear the context about why you made the decision that you made, and they don’t feel like you’re being earnest with them, and you’re just this nameless, faceless thing that exists and communicates them through an email or a very corporate speak message, they might assume the worst,” Rogers said.

A second is making it clear to executives that their priority over the next year was to focus on “key elements of our workforce”, such as creating a better team environment. It’s now part of their performance reviews and directly impacts their bonus.

Another is hiring more, faster and addressing critical staffing gaps.

For Schwartz, the head of HR, much time has been spent speeding up recruitment and the infamously slow enhanced top secret security clearance process. There is no lack of applicants to the spy agency, she said, but getting them through the door has not always been easy.

She said she’s worked to cut down on hiring “bottlenecks”, speed up the clearance process such as by hiring more polygraph operators, and avoiding redundancies in the process.

“So this year we have (hiring) targets. Next year, we have more ambitious targets because we know that this year we’re going to take a bit of time to build the capacity because we hadn’t been doing it for a while. I expect that that trajectory gets better,” Rogers explained.

He also said the service has “really fundamentally adjusted the way that we do training, the way that we classify people in positions” in the name of efficiency.

There’s also recognition. Because of CSIS’s secret mandate, much of the work done to protect Canada’s national security like foiling a terrorist plot or preventing sabotage on Canadian infrastructure goes unrecognized. It’s a longstanding frustration for employees at the service.

So if a team has a “great operational success,” instead of sending them an email, why not bring them a box of donuts, say thank you and ask them how they did it, Rogers said. Simple stuff that simply wasn’t being done consistently.

We have an organization that is extremely overtaxed in an extraordinarily complex environment, and people do hard work in stressful environments every day

But in an organization where so many employees are spies who are trained to lie, deceive and conceal their true identity professionally, how does Rogers ensure executives are actually making the changes he demands?

On the same day National Post sat down with Rogers, former intelligence officer Diana Bayko published an account of her time at CSIS in which she explained how her then-boss had advised her to handle conflict with her colleagues.

“Handle my co-workers like sources. Meaning: assess their reliability, spot vulnerabilities and exploit them if need be, and trust sparingly,” wrote Bayko.

So, how does Rogers make sure he isn’t being lied to?

“That’s a great question,” Rogers said. “There are ways we can try and figure that out and try and mitigate against the risk of inaction where we expect action.”

For example, he ordered multi-rater assessments (also known as 360-degree review tests) for every single executive in the organization. The comprehensive (and generally expensive) test gathers feedback from not only the executive’s subordinates, but their colleagues and their bosses through a questionnaire of hundreds of questions. It’s a lot of work.

The point, he said, is to get a holistic assessment of an executive’s work seen by a coterie of other people. Then, you can compare it to what they should be doing.

Another example is his meetings with staff both at headquarters and regional offices without the bosses around.

“When I’ll go to visit a region, I’ll have a meeting with management. I’ll also have a meeting without management in the room, and I’ll ask questions, and I’ll say, ‘You can email me directly’,” Rogers said.

“And people will email me directly, and they will say, ‘I do not want you to share this with my management, but here’s something I think you should know’,” he continued.

“It’s not an irregular occurrence that people will email. Now, to be candid, sometimes I wish they didn’t have to. They’re emailing because they feel like they don’t have another resort.”

Rogers wouldn’t say if any executives had been fired, demoted or sanctioned for not living up to expectations, citing privacy rules. But he noted that it was crucial for him to set expectations for culture change before holding people to account.

“We are going to have to get there,” he said of identifying executives and staff who aren’t performing as expected.

Asked how the situation got so bad, CSIS leadership demurs, unwilling to blame any particular previous leader or policy.

“I’m not going to cast blame. Having come in, I saw a lot of people trying to resolve these issues,” Rogers said.

“I know this is hard, and I’m pretty forgiving about the fact that some people may not have been able to create exactly the culture that we would want.”

But now, Canada’s spy chief spends much of his time cleaning up the mess.

National Post

The Globe and Mail With files from Marie Woolf

Lawful access’ bill draws growing corporate backlash

The news: Swiss tech-privacy company Proton says it has stopped eyeing Canada for a North American headquarters, and if Ottawa’s lawful-access bill passes in its current form, expansion here would be impossible.

Bart Butler, the company’s chief technology officer, told The Globe’s Marie Woolf that Bill C-22 could compromise privacy safeguards for Canadian users.

The background

The fight is drawing attention to how Canada reconciles digital law enforcement with an urgent push to attract and retain talent – as well as corporate investment.

The Liberal government’s lawful-access bill would require telecoms, internet companies and other digital service providers to make changes to their systems to give surveillance and monitoring capabilities to police services and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

CSIS and law enforcement have long argued that Canada is lagging behind its Five Eyes intelligence partners in not having such a lawful-access regime to help investigations. Tech companies say the bill’s requirements go further than those regimes, and could weaken or break encryption and threaten users’ privacy.

Growing company

Proton, which has more than 100 million customers worldwide and uses end-to-end and zero-access encryption, joins a growing list of companies who have warned the bill, if passed, would restrict their ability to expand in Canada or even continue to provide their services.

Earlier this month, Toronto-based Psiphon said it has started drawing up plans to move its operations out of Canada. The service has millions of users globally, including in Iran, Russia and China.

In May, secure messaging service Signal said the company would rather pull out of the country entirely than “be compelled to compromise on the privacy promises we have made to our users.”

Windscribe, a Canadian online-privacy company with more than 100 million registered users, has warned it would also consider leaving the country. Windscribe’s CEO said the bill would make Canada an “untenable place for most companies to operate in, foreign and domestic.

Global risks

Windscribe isn’t blowing smoke. Companies already doing business in Canada are threatening to pull up stakes, and the legislation is running up against a wave of global opposition.

European civil rights organizations used Prime Minister Mark Carney’s high-profile visit last month to warn Canada’s bill could force EU companies operating in Canada to weaken encryption and retain the metadata of European users. “A partner cannot credibly seek deeper digital trade integration while legislating the power to compel European providers to weaken their products in secret,” they said in a letter.

What’s next?

Canada’s efforts to manage its digital space have been the source of trade and corporate friction for years. The country drew the ire of the U.S. government in 2023 when it moved ahead with its Online Streaming Act, and its Online News Act triggered an outright war with Silicon Valley that led to Meta blocking news across Canada.

Ottawa then defied the consensus of the OECD by breaking an international moratorium to push its own unilateral digital services tax in 2024 – a move that became such a major trade irritant with U.S. President Donald Trump that the government completely rescinded the tax in June, 2025, to salvage trade talks. (To the sole benefit of Trump, former cabinet minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in her recently published memoir.)

After passing through the House of Commons in June, Bill C-22 is now getting a sober second thought in the Senate, where changes could be insisted upon before being sent back to the House of Commons, where more changes could be made before another vote, and so on. If it makes it back to Senate, its existence depends entirely upon the Liberal government’s ability to keep a voting coalition together long enough to pass it.

In short, Ottawa’s push for Bill C-22 could stretch on indefinitely – intensifying a battle with domestic and foreign digital companies just as the government aims to paint the country as a more attractive and reliable place to invest.

Intelligence agencies have reportedly warned that Moscow is upping preparations to assassinate leaders of companies supplying drones to Ukraine

Author of the article:
By John Ivison 
Published Oct 15, 2026

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-russias-deadly-crosshairs-could-be-aiming-at-the-heads-of-canadas-defence-contractors

A Sentinel R&D fixed-wing aerial drone in flight. Photo by Sentinel R&D

When Sentinel R&D, a Hamilton, Ont.-based defence firm, signed a deal with a Ukrainian drone firm, Airlogix, in May, the response from the Kremlin was unusual.

The deal to build ReKam fixed-wing drones in this country drew the ire of Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who called Canada a “war monger” and said Russia reserves the right to “an appropriate response.”

Russia’s ambassador in Ottawa, Oleg Stepanov, said the deal is proof that Canada is seeking to profit from the conflict. Moscow is factoring the deal into its military and political planning, he said ominously.
Sentinel’s CEO Kath Intson maintained that the project would proceed as planned, but quietly took precautions by hiring two private security firms: Atlas Security, which provides national intelligence information and advice, and CyberAGroup, which offers dark web and open-source intelligence collection. The two companies are headed by former senior operatives from Canada’s spy agency CSIS.

Intson’s decision looks prescient in light of a recent story in the Financial Times, which said five European intelligence agencies have warned defence company bosses that Russia is stepping up preparations to assassinate senior executives whose companies supply weapons to Ukraine. In particular, the article said the heads of smaller companies making drones and drone components would be targeted. Earlier reporting highlighted the plight of Stefan Thumann, the CEO of German drone company, Donaustahl Offence Technology, which supplies drones to Ukraine. He is already in hiding, under 24-hour protection, after an assassination plot was unearthed.

A federal indictment in the U.S. revealed another murder plot, this time against a Russian dissident in Washington. The authorities accused five people of being part of a “global assassination network” linked to Moscow.
The two former CSIS operatives hired by Sentinel agreed to talk on the record to National Post about the threats Canada is facing.

Marc Lacroix, the CEO of Atlas Security, is a former director of covert operations at CSIS. Ryan Zorn, CEO of CyberAGroup, was an intelligence operator at CSIS for 28 years and created the agency’s OSINT Cyber Investigations unit (OSINT stands for open-source intelligence).

Zorn said the threat environment in Canada is escalating. “What is particularly significant here is that the Russian Foreign Ministry chose to make its warning publicly, calling Canada a ‘warmonger’ and threatening to identify the Canadian company involved, (not to mention) stating that a drone arrangement would factor into Russia’s military and political planning.

“I wouldn’t claim that this public statement was a direct instruction to Russian intelligence services, because we do not have evidence of that. But it is reasonable to view it as an escalation in Moscow’s posture towards Canada, and a warning that Canadian companies and institutions connected to support for Ukraine may face increased attention and pressure,” he said.

Lacroix said Canada’s defence sector is not immune to what we are seeing in Europe. “What Sentinel faced was a threat to make their address public. That’s a form of intimidation that sits squarely in the information-operations tool kit. It’s a different instrument from the sabotage and assassination cases, but it comes from the same place,” he said.

I asked whether Russia has the capability to assassinate people in Canada. Zorn said Russia has the capability but it’s not yet clear that it has the intent.

“Canada is considered a legitimate target by the Kremlin and has been the subject of operational planning for potential sabotage,” he said.

Lacroix said that, from a security standpoint, the prudent course is to plan against capability and not wait for a clear signal of intent.

One of Sentinel’s concerns surrounded a guest opinion column that appeared in the Hamilton Spectator at the end of September by activist Ken Stone under the original title: “Hamilton shouldn’t be home to lethal drones.” The author called for an urgent political discussion about a production facility, supported by taxpayers’ money, that he said is putting the lives of the city’s citizens at risk.

The article didn’t mention Russian aggression but did criticize Canada’s support for the “undemocratic and corrupt Ukrainian regime” and NATO’s “provocative” eastward expansion.

Sentinel was concerned that the messaging was aligned with Kremlin propaganda.

Zorn said CSIS has been explicit that Russia uses networks of proxies to influence and amplify Kremlin messaging, and that Canadians can be “wittingly or unwittingly” used to enable those narratives. The goal is to make the activity resemble organic domestic advocacy, he said.

Lacroix did not make any allegations against the author but said foreign states often work through surrogates.

“We’re always mindful of people’s legal right to lawful advocacy and protest … It’s difficult to say with any certainty whether this is an isolated incident or whether it represents something more,” he said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called Canada a “war monger.” Photo by Russian Foreign Ministry/AFP via Getty Images/File

Beyond assassination and disinformation, the third leg of Russian disruption is sabotage.

Zorn, who led CSIS’ cyber unit, said that Russia is capable of disruptive activity that would yield real-world consequences.

Lacroix referred to the annual report produced by the Communications Security Establishment that described a Russian hacktivist group accessing a Quebec water treatment plant, including its chlorine dosage.
“Water, energy and other systems people rely on every day have become targets in their own right,” he said.

“What we are seeing in Europe isn’t staying in Europe. And it isn’t limited to defence firms.”

With news this week that Ottawa-based Dominion Dynamics has struck a deal with Ukrainian robotics company, Tencore, to build a ground-based drone vehicle in Canada next year, the prospect of more dirty deeds being done dirt cheap by proxies is only likely to grow.

National Post

Inside Russia’s Plague-Hunting Network

Soldier of Fortune Magazine

A scientist is dead, workers were confined inside a Siberian anti-plague institute, and Washington is pressing Moscow for answers.

by Stephen Caldwell

Officials swept through the building, locking doors and placing workers in isolation. Inside the Siberian facility, lives froze in place. “They’re sleeping there, on the floor and on chairs,” said Roman, whose relative works at the Anti-Plague Research Institute. “They knew something bad must have happened,” said another. They were right. Two employees had fallen ill, and one was dead.

The cases opened a rare window into Russia’s anti-plague network, a system built to hunt lethal disease across some of the most remote territory on earth. For more than a century, Russian scientists have gone into plague country, trapping rodents, collecting fleas, and carrying potentially lethal specimens back to the laboratory. 

Plague is infamous for the Black Death that swept through medieval Europe. The disease never disappeared. The bacterium that causes it, Yersinia pestis, survives in nature, circulating among wild rodents and the fleas that feed on them. These natural reservoirs can persist for decades without producing a major human outbreak, allowing a disease associated with medieval cities to survive quietly in remote landscapes.

Russia has vast areas where those reservoirs exist. Across Siberia, the Caucasus and the steppe stretching toward Central Asia, plague has long circulated among wild animals, sometimes hundreds of miles from major cities and sophisticated medical facilities. Russian authorities faced a problem created as much by geography as by disease: if plague appeared in an isolated settlement, specialists needed to find it before it began moving through the human population.

READ MORE: Mysterious ‘Red Mercury’ Was the Shadow World’s Answer to a Mad Scientist’s Dream

Russia began building specialized anti-plague organizations before the Bolshevik Revolution. The system expanded dramatically under Soviet rule, growing from roughly a dozen facilities into a network of more than 100 institutes, stations and other installations. Its scientists ventured into plague country. Field teams trapped rodents, collected fleas, examined animal colonies, and returned with samples for testing. Epidemiologists mapped areas where plague was active and watched nearby communities for signs that the disease had crossed into humans.

The Soviet Union eventually possessed a scientific corps with extensive experience finding, handling and studying pathogens that most physicians would never encounter.

During the Cold War, parts of that same scientific system were drawn into the Soviet Union’s secret biological-warfare programs, when expertise acquired another purpose. The anti-plague system became the lead agency for a Soviet biological-defense program known as Project 5. By the mid-1970s, parts of the system also performed work for the offensive biological-warfare program known as Ferment.

Ken Alibek knew that world from the inside. Born Kanatjan Alibekov in Soviet Kazakhstan, he rose to become first deputy director of Biopreparat, the organization at the center of the Soviet biological-weapons program. From 1983 to 1987 he commanded the biological-weapons production facility at Stepnogorsk, where plans called for wartime production of anthrax, plague and tularemia weapons.

Alibek left the country in 1992 and later described a system capable of turning diseases found in nature into weapons produced on an industrial scale. 

When the U.S. military began vaccinating troops against anthrax in the 1990s, Alibek met with journalist Susan Katz Keating as she investigated the vaccine program and the biological threat facing American troops. The conversations took place long before Keating became publisher of Soldier of Fortune.

“He made it very clear to me that biological weapons are devastating,” Keating said. “And that sometimes the people who work in these programs can be exposed.

“They die horrible deaths.”

READ MORE: Havana Syndrome and the ‘Moscow Signal’: A Sobering Red Flag

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but the conditions that created the anti-plague system remained. Russia retained its anti-plague institutes and much of the expertise accumulated during the Soviet period.

The current illnesses brought that hidden world abruptly back into view.

At the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, the barriers between ordinary work and dangerous pathogens were physical. Valentina, a scientist who trained at the institute, remembered strict controls even for people who never entered the most sensitive laboratories.

The scientists working with Pathogenicity Group I organisms operated beyond a tight boundary, one classmate said. 

“They even had a completely separate entrance, so they didn’t cross paths with us,” the classmate said. “Beyond the safe zone, everyone wears full protective gear, a special suit and a mask. Personal belongings and phones aren’t allowed.”

The lab equipment was designed both for safety and for human error, one former colleague said. 

“We didn’t even have glass test tubes in our area, only plastic,” Valentina told Siberia.Realities.

“It’s an excellent institute, and the rules are strictly enforced. I only did practical training there myself, and I had a different clearance level, in the safe zone. But even we trainees in the ‘safe zone’ had to be vaccinated against plague.”

An example of laboratory research at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Maryland. (USAMRIID photo)

Beyond the safe zone, one of the scientists working inside that system was Daria Shipilova. The 28-year-old researcher was last at the institute on September 25, according to colleagues. Four days later, she was admitted to Shelekhov District Hospital with severe pneumonia.

“Her relatives say the medical staff kept treating her symptoms as severe COVID until the very end,” said Miroslava, a former colleague of Shipilova. “She was put on a ventilator, and antibiotics were administered too late.”

Shipilova died October 2. Restrictions at Shelekhov District Hospital had already been reported the previous evening, before her condition became publicly known. Regional authorities confirmed the quarantine the following day, while restrictions spread to other medical facilities in Irkutsk and nearby Shelekhov. Miroslava said all 114 patients in the inpatient facility were confined inside.

Reports of restrictions at Shelekhov District Hospital appeared on the evening of October 1, before Shipilova’s condition became publicly known. Regional authorities confirmed the quarantine the following day, while restrictions spread to other medical facilities in Irkutsk and nearby Shelekhov. 

The response soon moved beyond Siberia. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a health alert October 6, warning Americans about reports of suspected pneumonic plague and quarantine measures in Irkutsk. The embassy told Americans in the affected area to avoid facilities under quarantine, follow local health guidance, and seek immediate medical attention if they developed fever or respiratory symptoms.

The alert reiterated the longstanding U.S. warning that American citizens should leave Russia, noting that the government’s ability to assist them is limited, particularly outside Moscow. Washington, meanwhile, began pressing Moscow directly for information about what had happened inside the anti-plague institute.

The State Department sent the Russian government a formal diplomatic démarche requesting clarification, according to reports citing a source familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump said he planned to discuss the incident with Russian President Vladimir Putin and offered U.S. assistance.

Moscow pushed back. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had provided the World Health Organization with information under established procedures and criticized reports suggesting otherwise. Russian health authorities maintain that no plague cases have been detected among Shipilova’s contacts.

For scientists familiar with the institute’s controls, however, the circumstances surrounding Shipilova’s illness remain difficult to explain. 

“I don’t know what would have to happen for infection to be possible at all,” one former classmate said. “A tiny crack in a glove and a breach of the rules, bringing a hand close to the face? I don’t know. It seems unlikely.”

Alibek, the former Soviet biological-weapons official who spent years inside the system, raised his own concerns about Irkutsk.

“It’s highly suspicious,” he said in an interview published on Internewscast after Shipilova’s death. Alibek said the lack of information surrounding the case was familiar. If Shipilova’s death ultimately proved connected to a laboratory accident, he said, he did not expect Russian authorities to disclose readily what had happened.

One development would particularly concern him.

“If amongst people who are quarantining, you’ll see more people dying, it can be antibiotic resistant.”

Inside the institute, the immediate consequences are less theoretical. Workers remained confined after Shipilova’s death, sleeping wherever they could while relatives brought food to the checkpoint.

“There are no beds, of course,” Roman said. “They allowed food parcels from relatives through the checkpoint.”

Officials in Moscow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The anti-plague network survived the Soviet Union and continues its work today, watching vast stretches of territory for pathogens its scientists have hunted for generations. Now one of its own institutes is under watch.

Stephen Caldwell reports on intelligence, covert operations, and security threats.

Article from The Soufan Center

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Bottom Line Up Front

On the third anniversary of the heinous Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, that killed 1,200, it now seems that the architect of the attacks — Yahya Sinwar — achieved at least some of his goals.   Several years of conflict have degraded Hamas but the devastation wrought by the regional war that followed led Israel’s reputation to plummet globally, a dynamic supported by myriad public opinion polls. The terrorist attack of October 7 had a domino effect, as conflict spilled across borders and spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, engulfing the region in war, further destabilizing large swaths of the Middle East.   Like Osama bin Laden, Sinwar had no issue with sacrificing the lives of civilians on all sides of the conflict, who he knew would inevitably be impacted by the attacks he engineered.

There is a longstanding debate in the field of terrorism studies about whether terrorism “works.” In other words, does the use of terrorism and political violence help violent extremists achieve their goals and objectives, or does it merely serve to wreak havoc? On the third anniversary of the heinous Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, it now seems that the architect of the attacks — Yahya Sinwar — advanced at least some of his goals to reshape public perception of Israel. Looking at the longer-term trends and trajectories set in motion by the October 7 attack, one could argue that some of the resulting developments have aligned with Sinwar’s objectives. Terrorist attacks often evoke an overreaction from their target, even if that response is not the one that terrorists anticipate or even hope for. For example, by attacking the United States in such a jarring, visceral, and lethal manner on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda evoked a full-throated U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan that toppled its benefactor, the Taliban, and sent militants scattering along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where many high-value targets were captured and killed. Myopic political decisions soon led the United States to invade Iraq, bogging down the U.S. military and leading to overreach, controversy with partners, and a host of self-inflicted errors that negatively impacted the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. Bin Laden did not want to lure the United States into Afghanistan and the Middle East, he wanted to drive its military forces from the region permanently and reshape global perceptions of American power. Inadvertently, the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq produced prolonged and costly wars that steadily eroded the international goodwill the U.S. enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 while weakening domestic support and national cohesion at home. Sinwar’s plan for October 7 was not the same as bin Laden’s; his goal was not to chase away an occupying army, but rather to inflict maximum damage on Israel and spoil any prospects of normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors, especially normalization plans that would move ahead without the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Hamas attacks of October 7 were devastating, with acts of terrorism beyond the pale. Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed, and hundreds of hostages were taken back to Gaza. Israel responded with a scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaign that leveled Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom were civilians, while destroying much of the infrastructure in the territory and imposing a blockade of the Strip that caused a widespread humanitarian disaster. Just as the September 11 attacks did, the attacks of October 7 set off a domino effect, precipitating a region-wide chain of events that are still playing out today. The conflict, rather predictably, spilled across borders and spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, engulfing the region in conflict and further destabilizing large swaths of the Middle East. Like Osama bin Laden, Sinwar had no issue with sacrificing the lives of civilians on all sides of the conflict who he knew would inevitably be impacted by the attack he engineered. Terrorist attacks often lure their targets into overreaching, and it seems that Israel failed to learn the lesson of the American costly strategic missteps following the 9/11 attacks. Israel’s military campaign across the Middle East has succeeded in weakening Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, and other members of Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance.’ Of course, Israel was well within its rights to respond to the attacks of October 7. Many of Israel’s staunchest supporters believe that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have fought a moral war. Many observers of the conflict disagree. The fallout and ensuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza have led to accusations of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — labels that many dispute, even as tensions rise and the conflict in Gaza continues and reverberates in countries across the globe. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, which in turn saw the United States impose sanctions against the ICC. Several years of conflict and the devastation wrought by conflict have led Israel’s standing in the world to plummet, a dynamic supported by myriad public opinion polls that reveal the increasing polarization under the leadership of Netanyahu. A Pew Research Center poll from June showed that “most people across 36 countries have negative views of Israel and little confidence in Netanyahu.” More specifically, across three dozen countries, a median of two-thirds of adults has an unfavorable view of Israel, while one-quarter hold a favorable view. In Muslim-majority countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Türkiye (in addition to the West Bank and East Jerusalem), views are particularly negative. In Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, around half of adults or more say they hold a very unfavorable view of Israel. Even in the U.S., where Israel has historically enjoyed a foundational level of public support and military assistance from the government, perceptions of Israel have changed in the aftermath of the response to October 7. Another Pew Research Center poll, this one from July and focused on Americans’ views of Israel, showed that “the American public’s attitudes toward both the Israeli people and the Israeli government have turned more negative in the past few years.” Views by demographics are even more jarring, especially when broken down by age and political affiliation, with younger Democrats the most opposed to Israel, but an emergent ‘anti-Israel’ camp is present among young Republicans too. According to Pew, “the youngest Democrats are slightly more likely to view Hamas than the Israeli government favorably.” While that may come as a shock to many, it still has significant political implications within the United States. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has also become a lightning rod of controversy in American domestic politics, now under scrutiny for its outsized role in funding American political candidates and their campaigns. So not only has Israel’s image suffered globally and in the United States, but the attacks of October 7 and the aftermath have also negatively impacted the legacy of Netanyahu and caused significant political upheaval within Israel ahead of elections being held at the end of the month. The same leader who adopted the attitude that while he may not be loved, his job is to keep Israelis safe, no longer has that same claim to fame. After the attacks of October 7, and reportedly warnings issued by both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Netanyahu has become something of an international pariah. These responses have collectively clouded Netanyahu’s prospects for reelection later this month, with speculation over whether Netanyahu and his Likud party will be able to secure a majority bloc in Israel’s Knesset. Another byproduct of the attack has been a global uptick in anti-Semitism. Some of this has been homegrown, and some, especially more recently, externally directed. Iran has ramped up its use of so-called ‘disposable agents,’ organized through a shadowy new front group known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin Islamiya (HAYI), active throughout Europe. The war in Gaza has been cited as a grievance by numerous individuals accused of conducting terrorist attacks in the West, so the threat emanates from both the bottom up, in some societies, and from the top down, with Iranian-orchestrated attacks using the gig economy to destabilize Western societies. There have even been several Hamas-related terror plots disrupted in Europe over the past several years, while Hamas supporters in the U.S. have been arrested for material support offenses and on terrorism financing charges. Part of the objective of terrorism is to inflict psychological pain and undermine faith in governments’ ability to protect their citizens and catalyze fissures in society. Sinwar spent years in an Israeli jail, learned Hebrew, and studied Israel’s domestic and foreign policies. He clearly understood the importance of the timing of the attack and the various pressure points within the U.S.-Israel relationship, which is now at somewhat of a historic nadir. This is an outcome Sinwar could have only dreamed about, even as it may do little to help usher in the prospects of a Palestinian state. There is a lot that Sinwar got wrong. He miscalculated the level of support from Iran and its proxies in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Some have argued that the Iranians were caught by surprise, even as Tehran supported Hamas with training, equipment, and strategic guidance. Initially, the Iranians blinked and seemed unprepared to support Hamas, before eventually joining the fray. Three years after October 7, the Axis of Resistance has been severely degraded and is far from the victor that Sinwar perhaps imagined, as the Al-Aqsa flood has dried up and the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank is now more dire than it was three years ago. Sinwar also miscalculated on using the hostages as leverage, a tactic he believed would bring a quick end to the fighting before entering a period of negotiations. Terrorism is not a tool used to create, but rather to destroy. In that sense, it can be an effective asymmetric approach to achieving certain destructive objectives. The Hamas terror attacks of October 7 caused turmoil within Israeli politics and placed additional strain on the country’s relationships with the international community. It also led to a decline in Israel’s image among Americans. While these may have been second-order effects, they shape the current reality. There is one more thing Sinwar may have undermined — the opportunity for a Palestinian state, the prospect of which lies in tatters, alongside everything else destroyed by the attacks and the subsequent reprisals.

Friederike Heine - Berlin - Reuters - 2026-10-06

August Hanning, the former president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), in 2015. Prosecutors have accused Hanning of paying for secret documents and using them in an analysis for a foreign spy service.

Former German spy chief August Hanning was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of attempted treason in a case that ranks among Germany’s biggest intelligence scandals since the Cold War.

Prosecutors accused him of paying for secret documents and using them in an analysis for a foreign spy service. They did not identify the intelligence service and it was not immediately clear whether the analysis reached its intended recipient.

The arrest of a former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence is unprecedented and could damage the country’s intelligence relationships with allied nations, according to a senior security lawmaker.

“Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason and espionage,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Hanning did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. The chancellery declined to comment.

Five years after his seven-year tenure as head of the BND Foreign Intelligence Service ended in 2005, Hanning agreed with a former BND office manager to receive confidential intelligence information in exchange for payment, according to prosecutors.

The office manager, identified as Manfred D. in line with privacy rules, was also arrested on Tuesday, and both were due to appear before a judge at the Federal Court of Justice.

Manfred D. served as office manager to successive BND presidents until March 2026, potentially giving him access to some of Germany’s most current intelligence at the time that prosecutors say documents were being siphoned from the service.

Prosecutors said D. is suspected of having supplied around 2,000 documents over the years, including classified material intended solely for internal use within the BND and senior-level intelligence briefings at the chancellery.

Those included documents relating to the Iranian nuclear program and the Russian military, as well as highly sensitive material classified as secret by allied intelligence agencies in other countries, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported.

Prosecutors said Hanning had used classified information supplied by D. to prepare an analysis for an officer of a Foreign Intelligence Service and for years shared political information with a representative of the spy agency.

The case does not involve Russia, according to information obtained by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Conservative security expert Roderich Kiesewetter told the Handelsblatt newspaper on Tuesday that the case could strain relations with Germany’s intelligence allies, saying espionage cases of this kind were “particularly burdensome for trust and particularly damaging for Germany.”

BND President Martin Jaeger said the agency had launched extensive internal investigations as soon as suspicions emerged, adding, “There can be no compromises on internal security.”

Hanning’s arrest is the latest in a series of notorious espionage scandals in Germany.

West German Chancellor Willy Brandt was forced to resign in 1974 after it was revealed that an East German spy had worked as his close aide for nearly two years. In 1990, senior West German counter-intelligence official Klaus Kuron was exposed as a Stasi spy and later convicted of treason.

More recently, former domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen said in 2024 he was now being monitored by the security agency he once ran over alleged right-wing political extremism, which he denied.

Sara Mojtehedzadeh - Investigative Reporter - The Globe and Mail - October 6, 2026

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police will not renew their contract with a software company accused of concealing its Russian ownership, and have ordered a probe of any security risks posed by the firm’s digital forensics tools, a spokesperson for the federal law enforcement agency says.

Earlier this year, the RCMP signed a licensing agreement with Oxygen Forensics, which is now at the centre of a criminal complaint in the United States alleging its owners falsely presented the firm as American to land government contracts.

In fact, the company was controlled by Russian nationals who were concerned about the effect on their business of increasingly strict economic sanctions against Russia, according to the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department in late September.

Oxygen Forensics is tied to a Russian software developer that counts Russian security services amongst its clients, the criminal complaint alleges. The company’s software allows investigators to collect and extract data from digital devices.

In January, the RCMP spent around $34,000 on a licence for Oxygen Forensics’ software, publicly available procurement data show. In a statement to The Globe and Mail, a spokesperson for the agency, Ian Lordon, said there is “no plan” to renew the agreement, which expires in December.

The RCMP have also asked the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) to launch a “supply chain integrity assessment” of Oxygen Forensics’ software, a process that looks at potential risks involved with technology products used by government agencies.

Oxygen Forensics’ digital forensics tools were deployed only in “limited circumstances when no other technical options were available,” Mr. Lordon told The Globe.

Any computers using the software have been isolated from the broader RCMP network, he added.

U.S. authorities have not alleged that Oxygen Forensics’ software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to clients’ computer systems or data.

Communications Security Establishment Canada, which houses CCCS, did not respond to questions from The Globe about the supply chain assessment being conducted for Oxygen Forensics.

Several European law enforcement agencies, including London’s Metropolitan Police, have suspended their use of Oxygen Forensics’ software in the wake of the allegations.

Mr. Lordon said the RCMP’s licence with the firm was procured by Shared Services Canada, a federal department that manages information technology procurement and conducts due diligence on vendors to the government.

U.S. authorities arrested Oxygen Forensics’ chief executive officer, Lee Reiber of Boise, Idaho, in September and charged him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

A Russian national, Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, was also arrested last month at London Heathrow Airport while in transit to Istanbul. The United States is expected to seek Mr. Davydov’s extradition, according to the Justice Department.

Oxygen Forensics was incorporated in Virginia in 2013, publicly available corporate records show. An annual report from the following year lists Mr. Davydov as a vice-president and provides a Moscow address. Another Moscow-based individual was listed as the company’s CEO.

In the summer of 2022, the Moscow-based individuals were removed from the company’s corporate filings and Mr. Reiber was appointed CEO, the records show.

These changes were part of a conspiracy to conceal Oxygen Forensics’ true ownership in light of expanded U.S. sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, according to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint.

Oxygen Forensics’ leadership falsely claimed that no one in Russia was involved with developing its software, when its code was actually written, reviewed and managed by a team in Russia, an affidavit from a U.S. special agent specializing in cyber investigations says.

The RCMP previously secured two contracts worth a total of around $90,000 with Oxygen Forensics, according to procurement data provided to The Globe by the law enforcement agency. Those contracts have been closed and completed, agency spokesperson Mr. Lordon said.

Mr. Lordon did not say when the law enforcement agency learned of the allegations made by the U.S. Justice Department against Oxygen Forensics.

“The RCMP is constantly sharing and receiving information related to commercial products with partner agencies,” he said.

Oxygen Forensics did not respond to The Globe’s requests for comment.

Catharine Tunney · CBC News · Posted: Oct 04, 2026 4:00 AM EDT

Canada's spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is working to remove 'structural bottlenecks' in its hiring process, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is shaking up its hiring process to meet operational needs, internal emails show — a signal the service continues to face recruitment issues.

CSIS brought in a suite of changes earlier this year to "meet operational needs and emerging demands," according to documents obtained by CBC News through an access to information request. 

"These changes represent a shift in how we recruit, classify, deploy and empower our people," reads one of a series of emails sent to managers at CSIS.

"These developments and initiatives will enable us to be more efficient and effective … and better positioned to meet the demands of our changing, more challenging environment."

Most of the changes are aimed at addressing "structural bottlenecks," increasing external hires and making changes to shorten the time between recruitment and operational deployment, according to the documents.

That includes setting up a new team dedicated to external recruitment to bring in people "efficiently and responsibly," the documents say. 

As of March 2026, CSIS's hiring ratio is 85 per cent internal appointments to 15 per cent external hires, the documents show. The emails tell managers to strongly consider external talent for certain skilled positions.

Unlike other government positions, most jobs at CSIS require enhanced top secret clearance — a rigorous process diving deep into a candidate's personal background, character, family history and financial history that can take 12 to 18 months.

CSIS looking to outsource more tasks

While sections of the documents were heavily redacted, they also show a push to accelerate deployment.

Changes would see candidates apply directly to their region of choice which CSIS says would enable targeted hiring for regional vacancies. It's also bringing in adjusted official language requirements "where appropriate," and shortening training classes," according to the documents. 

"It will empower us to recruit individuals who can fill critical vacancies in regions that will augment our operational capacity," reads one of the emails.

The documents show the secretive and often insular agency is looking to outsource recruitment steps including some screening, targeted recruiting and psychological assessment services.

The service has already increased its use of outsourced, standardized written testing tools to streamline the testing process. It's also restructuring how it bridges co-op students into full-time positions, it said. 

CSIS is looking at acquiring new technology that "enables recruitment," but there are few details about what that could look like.

The service didn't answer questions about how many employees it needs to hire but said it's  seeking to fill vacant positions for intelligence officers, engineers, analysts, IT and communications professionals "and more."

"CSIS faces growing demands due to evolving security threats, including espionage, foreign interference and terrorism," said spokesperson Magali Hébert.

"To date, CSIS has continued to have high levels of qualified applicants for its work, and recruitment efforts have garnered positive results."

Staff shortages pose risk: former analyst

Stephanie Carvin, a former CSIS analyst and now an assistant professor at Carleton University, said recruitment and retention "has for a long time been a priority concern" at the service. 

"Its unique value is that it has human intelligence officers going out, speaking in the community, getting information, developing relationships, developing sources. It can't do that without people," she said.

"When you have staff shortages, you have people working overtime, they burn out, they get tired and that is a risk for the organization."

CSIS Director Dan Rogers has made culture change one of his top priorities at the spy agency. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

As an intelligence agency and Five Eyes partner, onboarding at CSIS is always going to be a long and "demanding" process, said Carvin, but "attempts to find efficiency are welcome."

"Someone can quit with two weeks' notice, but at the same time, it can take somewhere between a year and two years to replace them given the security requirements," she said.

"The demands on the service have probably never been greater, but at the same time, the ability to bring people in largely the same as they were in the 1980s."  

A further sign the agency is worried about its staffing is its initial move to bar employees from taking the government's early retirement incentive. As CBC News reported in April, CSIS and other security agencies like the Communications Security Establishment, signalled to employees that it wouldn't accept applications citing "continued operational pressures and growth requirements."   

The National Post reported that Privy Council Clerk Michael Sabia then stepped in, leading to both agencies walking back their approach. According to a source who spoke to the Post, Sabia sees the early retirement offers as "a golden opportunity to breathe fresh air into the mid- to senior-levels of the public service and promote younger bureaucrats." 

CSIS Director Dan Rogers, who took the reins in late 2024, has made culture change one of his top priorities.

As part of changes to the service, he brought in a new executive lead in recruitment and staffing in February, the emails shared with CBC News show. 

"Welcome to the new role, I hope I didn't scare you off earlier today :)," Rogers wrote in an email.

"Given that context, you've got a very important job for the service — so glad you decided to take it on."

Sam Cooper

30 SEP 2026

LONDON — Britain’s domestic intelligence service has taken the extraordinary step of publicly identifying a Chinese research organization it says is being used to strengthen Beijing’s espionage capabilities, warning more than 100 UK-linked academics have already contributed to projects ultimately funded by China’s Ministry of State Security.

The public alert also puts academics on notice that from now on, continuing to work with the organization could expose them to criminal prosecution under Britain's National Security Act.

The September 30 warning marks a significant escalation in MI5’s increasingly public campaign against Chinese intelligence and influence operations—and recalls its unprecedented 2022 intervention exposing alleged Chinese Communist Party political interference inside Westminster.

But this time the warning goes considerably further.

MI5 says the China General Technology Research Institute, or CGTRI, has “very strong ties” to China’s Ministry of State Security—the civilian intelligence service responsible for foreign espionage and counterintelligence—and that its fundamental purpose is to acquire research that enhances Chinese spying capabilities.

“MI5 has identified that the primary purpose of CGTRI is to fund academic research that directly improves MSS technical capability for espionage,” the Security Service said in its new alert.

According to MI5, more than 100 academics linked to Britain have contributed to CGTRI-funded research, including work involving artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, covert communications and steganography—the concealment of information within apparently innocuous digital material.

MI5 stressed that some researchers may have had no knowledge that the ultimate source of funding was connected to Chinese intelligence.

But the agency has now formally put British universities and researchers on notice.

Academic institutions have been advised to “immediately review” ongoing or planned collaboration involving CGTRI, while individual researchers are being told to determine the ultimate funding source behind collaborations with Chinese institutions.

The significance of that warning extends beyond reputational risk.

Institutions or researchers considering continued work ultimately funded by CGTRI were advised to obtain independent legal advice.

Security Minister Dan Jarvis has meanwhile written to British university leaders asking them to end relationships with the organization, according to Reuters.

The Chinese Embassy in London said the warning was “entirely fabricated and constitutes malicious slander,” according to Reuters.

What makes Wednesday’s intervention particularly striking is its place in an evolving series of increasingly explicit British intelligence warnings about Beijing.

In January 2022, MI5 took the then-unprecedented step of issuing an “interference alert” concerning Christine Ching Kui Lee, a London solicitor who had developed extensive relationships across Britain’s political establishment.

MI5 alleged Lee had “knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department” of the Chinese Communist Party.

The alert said Lee had facilitated political donations on behalf of foreign nationals in China and Hong Kong while concealing their origins. Her law firm had provided hundreds of thousands of pounds in support to political figures and organizations, with the largest amount going to the office of Labour MP Barry Gardiner. Gardiner said the donations were properly declared and that security services had been kept informed of Lee’s relationship with his office. Lee disputed the alert and sued MI5, but the Investigatory Powers Tribunal dismissed her claim in December 2024, ruling the alert lawful and proportionate.

MI5 was also publicly identifying the United Front Work Department—the Communist Party organ responsible for cultivating and influencing groups and individuals outside the Party—as a vehicle for clandestine political interference inside Britain.

Months later, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray appeared together at Thames House in an unprecedented joint address devoted to the Chinese threat.

McCallum said Chinese intelligence services and CCP bodies including the United Front were conducting “patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence,” while Wray and McCallum warned business and academic leaders that Chinese acquisition of Western technology and intellectual property presented a strategic security challenge.

Where the Lee case concerned political interference and covert influence around Parliament, MI5 is now publicly identifying what it describes as an institutional mechanism through which the MSS can draw technical knowledge from Britain’s research sector.

The development is also significant because of the controversy surrounding Britain’s failed attempt to prosecute an alleged Chinese espionage operation connected to Westminster.

In September 2025, prosecutors abruptly abandoned charges against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, who had been accused under the Official Secrets Act of collecting or communicating information that could be useful to China.

Both men denied the allegations.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the case no longer met the evidential threshold required to proceed to trial.

The collapse became a major political controversy because the antiquated Official Secrets Act required prosecutors to establish elements of the alleged relationship with China under legislation dating from 1911.

The government later published witness statements from Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins relating to the abandoned prosecution.

MI5 Director General Sir Ken McCallum subsequently acknowledged his frustration.

British media reports raised questions about whether the decision to drop the prosecution had been influenced by concerns over Britain's trading relationship with China. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government denied that, and Security Minister Dan Jarvis said suggestions it had concealed evidence or withdrawn witnesses were "all untrue."

Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) branded coasters are pictured in Ottawa in a 2011 handout photo

Canada’s spy agency needs more oversight into operations that include illegal activities in order to gain intelligence, a new watchdog report suggests.

The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) is authorized in certain circumstances to take actions that would ordinarily break Canadian law in its pursuit of information about national security threats.

But while the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (CSIRA) found that CSIS stayed within the bounds of the illegal activities they’re permitted to use, the spy agency lacked documented justifications and rationale for taking those actions.

“CSIS has a duty to ensure that all of its operations respect the rule of law, even more so when those operations require activity that would otherwise be considered illegal,” the review body wrote in a report released publicly Tuesday.

The review body examined operations from 2022 and 2023 where CSIS operations involved actions or omissions that would normally break Canadian laws. The powers were granted to the agency by the Liberals’ 2017 national security reforms, which also placed limitations on what illegal actions the spy agency can engage in.

According to CSIS 2025 report, the powers were authorized 173 times in 2022-23 and 178 times in 2023-24.

CSIS is still prohibited from certain activities, such as causing bodily harm, obstructing justice, violating someone’s sexual integrity and torture. Instead, eight “classes” of illegal activities have been approved by both the minister of public safety and the independent intelligence commissioner — although each instance requires authorization and written justification and explanation after the fact.

It’s the documentation that NSIRA found issue with.

In some cases, the review agency said, CSIS operatives failed to document the nature of the threat that led them to believe illegal activities were justified. In others, CSIS employees did not document the nature of the illegal activities or their negative consequences.

In some cases, the review agency said, CSIS operatives failed to document the nature of the threat that led them to believe illegal activities were justified. In others, CSIS employees did not document the nature of the illegal activities or their negative consequences.

In other operations, the agency didn’t detail what alternatives were considered before engaging in illegal activity.

NSIRA noted that the team within CSIS tasked with oversight for these activities is under-resourced, and said increased internal guidance and review is needed to make sure CSIS is following the rules.

“Many of the deficiencies … noted above can be attributed to confusion or lack of understanding of the requirements and the consequences of not meeting them,” the review agency wrote.

In a statement to Global News Tuesday afternoon, CSIS welcomed the NSIRA review — but suggested the agency may disagree with some of the review body’s findings. The agency said a full response to NSIRA’s recommendations will be posted publicly in the future.

“While CSIS may not agree with all NSIRA’s findings, CSIS holds the same strong commitment to transparency and accountability, and takes all potential non-compliance seriously,” the agency said in a statement.

“As such, CSIS will take appropriate steps proposed by NSIRA’s assessment, and will continue to collaborate effectively with NSIRA, which includes notifying the review body as per its requirements in the CSIS Act.”

While CSIS may not agree with all of NSIRA’s findings, CSIS holds the same strong commitment to transparency and accountability, and takes all potential non-compliance seriously. As such, CSIS will take appropriate steps proposed by NSIRA’s assessment, and will continue to collaborate effectively with NSIRA, which includes notifying the review body as per its requirements in the CSIS Act.