How Canadian military members violated intelligence gathering rules during COVID-19

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces used their private social media accounts, computers and networks at home during the COVID-19 pandemic to gather information about Canadians in violation of intelligence gathering rules, according to a newly released report.

An internal military report obtained by CBC News provides a new look behind the scenes at how a controversial military operation went so wrong.

National security expert Wesley Wark said, “Everything you could imagine in a military operation went wrong in this case.”

“It’s really an amateur effort. It was a badly conceived, badly managed operation that should never have come into existence.”

The report stated that military members gathered intelligence without training and adequate monitoring, without knowing that it was intelligence.

Several units were tasked with gathering information about public opinion, including to help make decisions during Operation Laser – the military’s domestic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That data-mining effort, First reported by the Ottawa Citizenwas part of a series of problematic activities related to an influence operation that then-Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance verbally shut down in April 2020, but Some activities continued for the next six months – Unless Vance issued a written order.

The newspaper’s extensive reporting found that senior military leaders saw the pandemic as an opportunity to test propaganda techniques on Canadians and prevent civil disobedience by the public.

Senior defense leadership launched a series of internal investigations into various practices and acknowledged that forces went too far public trust broken.

The Defense Department recently released an investigative report to CBC News, more than four years after a request for access to the information was filed.

The report includes new details about what actually unfolded.

A directorate of Canadian Forces Intelligence Command compliance assessment report found that three military units were not complying with instructions when gathering intelligence during Operation Ledger between March and July 2020.

Wark said that at the time the Army was excited about trying to influence people’s thinking. The purpose of this impact campaign, he said, was to ensure that Canadians understand the threat posed by COVID-19 and to increase support for the military. He said it was also a way of trying to create a new doctrine of soft power to counter Russian information activities.

But when details about the efforts were publicly revealed, it left the Army “foolish,” Wark said.

One of the units involved was called the “Precision Information Team”, consisting of the 4th Canadian Division in the Greater Toronto Area, which had no background in intelligence.

The assessment found that there were not enough government-issued laptops, Office 365 licenses and virtual private networks (VPNs) available, so they had to use their own from home.

The team was tasked with examining Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook and other websites to gauge public opinion about the military’s work in Canada to help with planning and decision-making, the report said.

The report found that without adequate oversight or training, the team collected information about Canadians that the government and the military’s top commander had not explicitly asked it to collect. The report said that the team did not immediately remove the information as required.

The report also states that the team has gone beyond its mission requirements by monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement.

The report said the team was keeping commanders informed about potential disruptions, including protests in southern Ontario near Canadian Armed Forces facilities, that could pose a threat to military personnel or operations, but went too far.

“The purpose of these products was to provide commanders with information about potential protests, disruptions, and other activities that could impact the conduct of the CAF’s Op Laser mission, or that could pose a force protection risk to nearby CAF facilities or personnel,” the report said.

“Yet, in some cases, the scope of the analysis exceeded what was necessary to answer these questions and it was difficult to understand the clear relationship between products and mission requirements.”

Another team under the Canadian Joint Operations Command wrote more than 50 reports, including political discussions around COVID-19, misinformation about the pandemic online and non-government statements, the assessment report said.

The report said the team was asked to create social media accounts to “monitor key regional actors”, but “deliberately disregarded” an order and instead used their own personal accounts.

The report said the unit failed to log information it inadvertently collected about Canadians when capturing Twitter screenshots of official statements from Canadian political leaders.

The report said all three intelligence-gathering units failed to use de-identification tools, putting the military’s work and trade secrets at risk of being exposed. The investigation found that the units also did not conduct risk assessments as they should have done.

“It was a futile operation from start to finish,” said Wark, a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Wark said that while he can’t imagine something so “disgusting” could happen again, there is a risk because the federal government has still not acted on a recommendation made by lawmakers’ national security and intelligence committee in 2020.

The committee urged Ottawa to introduce legislation governing the military’s defense intelligence activities, including the information it is authorized to collect about Canadians.

“This operation took place in a kind of legal vacuum,” Wark said. “And whatever lessons have been learned, the legal void still fundamentally exists.”

Retired Colonel Brett Boudreau, a former senior military public affairs officer, said he believes the non-compliance was unintentional due to outdated policies, poor organization and the challenges of working from home during the early days of the pandemic.

But the largely unsuccessful effort, linked to other activities at the time, to change the military’s strategic communications plan “showed deliberate negligence,” he said.

“Defence cannot afford a negative balance in its public trust account,” said Boudreau, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, in an email to CBC News.

“An institution like defence, which has big budgets and big expensive equipment and large numbers of recruits, needs to be much more open and transparent about its intentions, activities and operations, otherwise it risks its reputation and credibility.”

CBC News sought response from the Defense Department on whether there was any breach of Canadians’ privacy on March 25. Despite repeated requests, the department has still not provided any comment.