Public Safety Minister Peter van Loan says it was information from "security partners" that enabled the navy, Border Service Agency officers and the RCMP to ambush the Ocean Lady off Port Renfrew on Saturday and detain the 76 men on board suspected of being would-be migrants and refugees.
The most likely explanation is that American surveillance operations spotted the rusty old Ocean Lady behaving oddly as it approached across the Pacific and alerted Canadian authorities.
But Sri Lankans from among 255 men, women and children on a boat detained by the Indonesian navy on Oct. 11 on its way to Australia say they were offered passage to Canada on the Ocean Lady. They say the Ocean Lady, like the boat in which they travelled, is operated by convicted human-trafficker Abraham Lauhenapessy, known as Captain Bram. That may bring into play the long-standing network of intelligence-sharing between Canada and Australia as part of a security alliance that includes Britain, the United States and New Zealand.
This alliance grew out of cooperative work during the Second World War. It has flowered into a global partnership which sees intelligence-gathering tasks assigned on the basis of geography and expertise, and the product freely distributed among the five security establishments.
Even the official Canadian government description of relations with Australia notes they are so mutually supportive that there are regular temporary secondments of security and intelligence officials to each other's agencies.
Indeed, when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was being created in the early 1980s, one of the models that influenced its design was the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, which was established in 1949.
These organizations are essentially counter-espionage bodies designed to protect the homelands against threats, including terrorists and criminal operations such as human traffickers.
But unlike Canada, Australia, which lives in a far more unpredictable neighbourhood, also has an overseas spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
This group is especially active in South and Southeast Asia, from where most of the threats to Australia are likely to come.
Through overseas intelligence-gathering, Australia has got very good at gaining advanced knowledge of human-trafficking ships coming its way. This year, 32 have been intercepted and 1,700 would-be refugees detained.
It is quite possible that in the course of this trawling for information, Australian spies got wind of the Ocean Lady and passed on the information to CSIS.
Another possibility is the network that first established confidence in intelligence-sharing among the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand and which until surprisingly recently was the most secret network of all.
This flows from what used to be called the UK-USA Security Agreement, which dates back to the sharing of code-breaking and intercepted Axis power radio messages in the Second World War.
This evolved during the Cold War, and with Canada, Australia and New Zealand joining the partnership, into a huge capacity for electronic surveillance of the Soviet Union and its allies that became known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT for short.
Ottawa's part of this network is the Communication Security Establishment Canada, which is part of the defence department and whose existence was not admitted until 1980, 34 years after its creation.The most likely explanation is that American surveillance operations spotted the rusty old Ocean Lady behaving oddly as it approached across the Pacific and alerted Canadian authorities.
But Sri Lankans from among 255 men, women and children on a boat detained by the Indonesian navy on Oct. 11 on its way to Australia say they were offered passage to Canada on the Ocean Lady. They say the Ocean Lady, like the boat in which they travelled, is operated by convicted human-trafficker Abraham Lauhenapessy, known as Captain Bram. That may bring into play the long-standing network of intelligence-sharing between Canada and Australia as part of a security alliance that includes Britain, the United States and New Zealand.
This alliance grew out of cooperative work during the Second World War. It has flowered into a global partnership which sees intelligence-gathering tasks assigned on the basis of geography and expertise, and the product freely distributed among the five security establishments.
Even the official Canadian government description of relations with Australia notes they are so mutually supportive that there are regular temporary secondments of security and intelligence officials to each other's agencies.
Indeed, when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was being created in the early 1980s, one of the models that influenced its design was the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, which was established in 1949.
These organizations are essentially counter-espionage bodies designed to protect the homelands against threats, including terrorists and criminal operations such as human traffickers.
But unlike Canada, Australia, which lives in a far more unpredictable neighbourhood, also has an overseas spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
This group is especially active in South and Southeast Asia, from where most of the threats to Australia are likely to come.
Through overseas intelligence-gathering, Australia has got very good at gaining advanced knowledge of human-trafficking ships coming its way. This year, 32 have been intercepted and 1,700 would-be refugees detained.
It is quite possible that in the course of this trawling for information, Australian spies got wind of the Ocean Lady and passed on the information to CSIS.
Another possibility is the network that first established confidence in intelligence-sharing among the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand and which until surprisingly recently was the most secret network of all.
This flows from what used to be called the UK-USA Security Agreement, which dates back to the sharing of code-breaking and intercepted Axis power radio messages in the Second World War.
This evolved during the Cold War, and with Canada, Australia and New Zealand joining the partnership, into a huge capacity for electronic surveillance of the Soviet Union and its allies that became known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT for short.
The Australian counterpart is the Defence Signals Directorate, New Zealand has the Government Communications Security Bureau, Britain has the Government Communications Headquarters and America the National Security Agency.
This alliance runs at least two dozen listening posts around the world with a formidable capacity to intercept all manner of radio, microwave, telephone, computer and other communications, as well as the ability to automatically extract and decode messages of interest.
Australia's assigned territory in the alliance is Southeast Asia and southwestern China. Any electronic communications by "Captain Bram" and his gang, or, for example, phone calls from the would-be migrants to friends or relatives in Canada are likely to have been gathered in this net.
jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
as posted here
