WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. intelligence agencies have unique capabilities that can help protect American companies from cyber espionage and attack, but it will probably take a crisis to change laws to allow that type of cooperation, a former spy chief said on Monday.
Intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency are authorized to operate abroad but generally are restricted from working within the United States,
“Until we have a banking collapse or electric power goes off in the middle of a snowstorm for eight weeks, or something of that magnitude, we’re likely just to talk about it and not do much,” Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate have separate efforts under way on legislation aimed at improving cybersecurity.
The House intelligence committee in December approved a bill that would allow U.S. spy agencies to share cyber-threat intelligence with private companies. Some critics worry that could lead to government surveillance of private data.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the Senate will take up “comprehensive” cybersecurity legislation this year.
“There are unique things that the government can do. For example code-breaking. The private sector out there does not do code-breaking,” McConnell, a former National Security Agency director, told Reuters in an interview.
“How would you harness that capability and then make it available to the private sector in a way that their infrastructure could be better protected?”
A U.S. intelligence report last year pointed the finger at China and Russia as using cyber espionage to steal U.S. trade and technology secrets.
McConnell gives an example that if NSA, which conducts electronic eavesdropping to detect foreign threats, observed a cyberthreat against the U.S. private sector, “NSA is powerless to do a thing other than issue a report.”
He said in the area of cyber exploitation, such as reading an adversary’s mail without leaving fingerprints, the United States, Britain and Russia are probably the best.
The United States also has the ability to conduct cyber attacks, which would be to degrade or destroy an adversary’s computerized system, and has used it.
Has the United States used its cyber attack capability? “Yes,” McConnell said. Did it work? “Yes.”
McConnell, now vice chairman at the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm in charge of cyber activities, did not elaborate on the use of a cyber attack capability.
“Do we have the ability to attack, degrade or destroy? Sure. If you do that, what are the consequences? That is the question,” he said.
McConnell said the priority is to protect the country’s critical infrastructure such as the financial sector, the electric power grid and transportation from cyber attack and stop the theft of intellectual property through cyber espionage.
“There will be a thousand voices on what is the right thing to do,” and it will probably require a crisis to reach consensus, he said.
“All I’m arguing is the government has unique capability, figure out a way to harness the capability in the defense of the nation.”
The Canadian military has evacuated staff from the Halifax naval intelligence facility where a sailor accused of espionage was working before his arrest.
The Department of National Defence said authorities are conducting a security sweep of HMCS Trinity to see whether this confidential communication centre has been compromised.
Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle was charged Jan. 16 under Canada’s Security of Information Act and faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Experts are scanning Trinity, a naval communications and surveillance centre, for evidence of espionage or mechanisms designed to leak information to outsiders.
“The place is being investigated …. [for] software, hardware, bugs, the works,” a military official said.
Trinity staff have been temporarily moved a few kilometres away.
“As part of a normal and prudent business contingency plan, personnel belonging to elements of HMCS Trinity have been relocated to 12 Wing Shearwater for an undetermined period of time as a security precaution,” said Captain Karina Holder, spokeswoman for the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, who commands the military police.
The military declined to say how many people work at Trinity, a unit that gathers and analyzes confidential and secret information for the Royal Canadian Navy. Perhaps most critically in the eyes of Canada’s international partners, it receives confidential defence information from allies.
Separately, Monday, the naval officer at the centre of sensational espionage charges lost his lawyer in a hastily scheduled courtroom appearance. Cameron MacKeen, who would not explain why he was quitting, pledged to assist his former client in finding new counsel.
In the meantime, SLt. Delisle will be represented by legal aid.
The case fell to Mr. MacKeen by chance. He was on duty at the courthouse when the matter arose and he was assigned.
A former reporter, Mr. MacKeen is active in the federal Conservative Party and, according to a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay, on personal terms with the powerful Nova Scotia politician.
He would not comment when asked whether these ties were behind his decision to quit.
SLt. Delisle, an intelligence officer, was arrested and charged earlier this month. He stands accused of passing information to a “foreign entity” and is being held in custody locally.
The sailor did not appear in court Monday and was patched in from prison by telephone. He barely spoke, saying little more than “Yes Ma’am” in response to a series of procedural questions.
SLt Delisle’s next appearance, originally set for Jan. 25, has been postponed until Feb. 28. On that day a date for a bail hearing will be set. He will remain in custody until then.
The RCMP alleges that the sailor leaked confidential government information to a foreign entity over a four and a half year period – and as recently as January tried to do so again.
As the charges reverberate across the country, SLt. Delisle’s family and ex-wife are coping with the fallout.
Reached at her home in suburban Ottawa, the sailor’s former spouse said she was “overwhelmed” by the reports.
“Of course, I didn’t know. It was shocking and my head is just reeling with all this news,” Jennifer Lee Delisle said. “We’re just coping. The family … we’re just managing.”
The couple, married in 1997, had four children before separating in April of 2008, according to court documents that cite unspecified “certain differences.” As part of the agreement, the Canadian Forces member assumed the couple’s debts on three credit cards and a consolidated loan.
They divorced in 2010.
The charges surprised many who knew him.
In a brief message to The Globe and Mail, Angelica, the couple’s oldest child, wrote simply: “my father is an amazing dad.”
Two Russian Embassy staff in Ottawa have left Canada in the wake of spying allegations against a Canadian naval officer in Halifax, but there’s little else that’s clear about the murky espionage case.
Intelligence experts and those in close contact with the embassy disagree on whether any Russian diplomats engage in spying, leaving Canadians to try to piece together what bits are public.
Initial media reports said up to four Russian Embassy staff had been removed from a list of embassy and diplomatic staff recognized by Canada. CBC News has confirmed that two have had their credentials revoked since news broke of the naval officer’s arrest, while two diplomats left the country a month or more before the arrest this week of Canadian Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle.
Another report pointed to two other staff who are no longer accredited to be in Canada. It’s not clear which of the staff have been expelled over the spying allegations.
Konstantin Kolpakov, a former aide to the ambassador, was scheduled to leave Canada on Dec. 25 because his posting was over, and had a send-off attended by diplomats in Ottawa mid-month.
LONDON – In a rare acknowledgment of espionage reminiscent of the Cold War, a former British government official admitted that a fake rock discovered in 2006 by the Russian FSB secret service in a Moscow park concealed a listening device planted by British spies.
Speaking on a three-part BBC documentary starting Thursday – “Putin, Russia and the West” – Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at the time to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said, “The spy rock was embarrassing, they had us bang to rights. Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose.”
Hidden Russian TV cameras recorded video of the rock and of men handling it. The video was widely broadcast at the time along with footage showing the rock being taken apart to reveal the delicate listening mechanism inside.
The Russian regime waited for some time before claiming publicly that it was a British device. Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a crackdown on several foreign-funded organizations, claiming they were a front for Western intervention in Russia’s internal affairs. A Russian-British diplomatic row followed.
Tony Brenton, British ambassador to Moscow at the time, said in a BBC radio interview Thursday that the rock episode was “a considerable headache.”
“The Russians chose their time carefully and it was politically very damaging,” Brenton said. “It was unfortunate that one of the people involved was also dealing with our relations with
Russian nongovernmental organizations and therefore the Russians were able to use the rock incident to launch accusations against the support we were giving to Russian nongovernmental organizations.”
Brenton added that British-Russian relations were deteriorating at the time and the incident “led us down the route which led us to the Litvinenko murder…to attacks on me personally, to attacks on BP and Shell.”
In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian security service officer turned investigative journalist, died in a London hospital of radiation poisoning. His reporting targeted corruption inside the Russian government. In a deathbed statement he accused Putin of being involved in his poisoning.
Two Russian Embassy staff in Ottawa have left Canada in the wake of spying allegations against a Canadian naval officer in Halifax, but there’s little else that’s clear about the murky espionage case.
Intelligence experts and those in close contact with the embassy disagree on whether any Russian diplomats engage in spying, leaving Canadians to try to piece together what bits are public.
Initial media reports said up to four Russian Embassy staff had been removed from a list of embassy and diplomatic staff recognized by Canada. CBC News has confirmed that two have had their credentials revoked since news broke of the naval officer’s arrest, while two diplomats left the country a month or more before the arrest this week of Canadian Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle.
Another report pointed to two other staff who are no longer accredited to be in Canada. It’s not clear which of the staff have been expelled over the spying allegations.
Konstantin Kolpakov, a former aide to the ambassador, was scheduled to leave Canada on Dec. 25 because his posting was over, and had a send-off attended by diplomats in Ottawa mid-month.
Kolpakov and Fedorchatenko were known to circulate around the diplomatic scene in the capital, attending functions with other foreign representatives, Canadian diplomats and journalists.
Two others, Mikhail Nikiforov and Tatiana Steklova, were listed as administrative and technical staff until Jan. 19 but are no longer on a list of accredited diplomats on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
A report in the Russian media Friday quoted the country’s foreign ministry as saying it was surprised to see Canadian media reports about the expulsions. The report says the embassy staff left at the end of 2011 because their rotations were ending.
A woman who answered the phone at the Russian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on the departures.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews refused to comment on a national security matter, but did say: “I’m not aware of why those individuals left Canada.”
Russian diplomatic staff usually do two- or three-year postings at the embassy before returning home or going on to a posting in another country.
Delisle, 40, was arrested in the Halifax area last weekend. He faces two charges under the Security of Information Act that deal with communicating information that could harm Canada’s interests, according to court documents.
Doug Thomas, a former defence official who now represents a Russian military equipment exporter in Canada, said the vast majority of diplomats collect information, while a small number may pick it up “through alternative means.” Thomas doesn’t believe anyone at the Russian Embassy, with whom he’s worked since 2006, is involved in spying.
“If you were going to run one of these operations, the last thing, personally, I’d think you’d want to do is run it out of the Russian Embassy on Charlotte Street in downtown Ottawa. You’d want to run it remotely,” he said.
But the Russians “are among the world’s biggest spies,” said Wesley Wark, an expert on security and intelligence at the University of Ottawa. “Spying is just in the DNA of the Russian state.”
Wark said the Russians are known to be aggressive, flooding their diplomatic missions with intelligence personnel posing as diplomatic personnel. He said the country, if it uses spying effectively, could close research and development gaps. They may also want access to Canadian communications with the U.S. and the U.K. or other allies.
“We [Canadians] tend to underrate ourselves as an intelligence target. We’ve long been an intelligence target, partly because of who we are. We’re a NATO country, we’re a Western country, we’re a high-tech country, we engage in a lot of military operations and we’re close to the United States and close allies,” Wark said.
Geoffrey O’Brian, a former director general of counter-intelligence at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said there’s so little information available that it’s hard to assess the situation.
“Because the government has chosen not to talk about this, it’s frankly in some ways a recipe for speculation,” O’Brian said.
Many questions remain, particularly from a counter-espionage angle, O’Brian said.
“Are there more [people gathering information]? How was he recruited, if indeed he was? How was it run? Who else was involved in quote-unquote handling him? All of those questions.”
Two of the charges against Delisle are for breach of trust and communicating to a foreign entity information the government wants to safeguard, and cover July 7, 2007, to Jan. 13, 2012. A third charge is for trying to communicate to a foreign entity information the government wants to safeguard, and covers Jan. 10 to 13, 2012, after at least one of the Russian diplomats left Canada.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay described the case Tuesday as a matter of national security because of the charges involved, but would not discuss specifics at that time, including whether the foreign entity in question was Russia.
“Given the early stages of the proceedings, there is really nothing more that can be said,” he told a news conference in Ottawa.
The minister sought to reassure Canadians that allegations of espionage revolving around the Halifax naval intelligence officer would not affect the country’s reputation among other NATO members.
“Our allies have full confidence in Canada, full confidence in our information,” MacKay said.
