The Canadian Security Intelligence Service reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Canadian Security Intelligence Service

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was founded by an act of the Canadian Parliament, Bill C-157, "an Act to Establish the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)" to be a replacement for the floundering Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service. The RCMP, which is Canada's federal police service, was at one time also responsible for intelligence duties.

CSIS's mission statement is as follows: "The people of CSIS are dedicated to the protection of Canada's national security interests and the safety of Canadians". As per this statement CSIS does not have an active foreign intelligence department, but solely acts as a kind of "internal security" to protect Canada from internal and external threats. This means CSIS officers and surveillance personnel do not officially work outside of Canada's borders.

Some of the tasks included in this mission, known as Operational Programs include:

• Counter-terrorism
• Counter-proliferation (eg. preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction)
• Counter-intelligence
• Security-screening
• Research, Analysis and Production (eg. creating strategy for the implemention the Operational Programs)
• Environmental scanning (eg. monitering the global flow of information, see also: Echelon)
• Facing Technological Challenges

CSIS works closely with the intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, and Australia. Under the post-WWII Quadpartite Pact all intelligence information is shared between the intelligence agencies of these four countries. While largelly relying on information gathered by other countries, CSIS is committed to doing its own analyses, and has good record compared to its allies.

CSIS has come under repeated criticism for some highly publicized failures, such as the seeming fumbling of the investigation into the 1985 Air India bombing and the theft of classified documents from the car of a CSIS agent at a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game.

Canada's decision not to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq is viewed as a great success however. Of the four nations that share intelligince CSIS was the only agency to report that the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was lacking, and that there was no evidence of ties between Iraq and al-Queda.

Sources

• Official site of CSIS

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