Spyworld

For twenty years Canada has been spying on other nations. Outside public scrutiny or Parliamentary review and frequently acting at the behest of U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies. Canada has been spying electronically from its embassies in capitals as far-flung as Moscow, New Delhi, Bucharest, Rabat and Caracas. It has then shared the results with its allies. There is every reason to believe Canada is still doing "embassy collection" today. Techniques developed during the "Cold War" have been honed for political and economic espionage in the nineties. The agency responsible is the top-secret Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of whose existence most Canadians are unaware. CSE has also used sophisticated equipment, much of it provided by the U.S., to listen in on Canadian and on American citizens, raising vital questions about civil liberties and the invasion of privacy. It has intercepted communications from the Soviet embassy in Ottawa; from British cabinet ministers; from the governments of France and Quebec; from suspected Sikh terrorists in India; and from the Kremlin. Its record is impressive: if it wants to, it can intercept almost any phone, fax or radiowave transmission. How do we know all this? Because one man, Mike Frost, a communications officer at CSE for nineteen years, has decided that in the post-"Cold War" era it is time for the Canadian public to be told what its government has been doing and for a public debate to ensue. As he tells the story of his career, he paints a remarkable picture of the Security Establishments of Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. The Americans in particular are revealed as possessing high-tech wizardry that they use for political and economic spying - including, according to Frost, highly controversial spying on the Canadian government. Much of Canada's spying from 1972 to 1990 was undertaken for the Americans. Frost and his immediate boss were at the centre of the "embassy-collection" scheme, which was code-named "Project Pilgrim". The story of how "Pilgrim" grew by trial and error into a highly successful operation is full of drama, comedy, triumphs and frustrations. Frost is proud of the achievements, but the questionable aspects of CSE's activities have led him to go public on both CSE's successes and its excesses. While scrupulously careful about not jeopardizing national security or endangering the lives of agents in the field, he nonetheless reveals an institution whose powers are potentially so great that they need to be subject to Parliamentary control and public scrutiny. Spyworld will undoubtedly spur debate and controversy.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.