Canada Say, “Oops.”

By jen

Canadian Sensitive Military Plans Found in Trash Can: My first thought was: Canada has a military? No fucking way?

Reports that these 26 Department of National Defense blueprints “show everything from the location of the security fence at CFB Trenton to the floor plan of the new home for the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit,” an elite group that would respond to terrorist attacks or WMD-related incidents.

“The plans also show the electrical grid scheme for the unit’s computers and details about sewer systems, areas for workshops, sea container loading docks, and offices for the unit’s various troops,” The Ottawa Citizen reports. “There is also a blueprint for the storage bay for the unit’s robots, which are designed to detect chemical and biological agents.”

Stockwell Day, the public safety minister, tells reporters that the discovery of these documents is a “huge concern to me.”

Stockwelll expressed his concerns and informed reporters that as soon as he was finished with his Poutine he would get right on trying to figure this all out.

The blueprints were found on March 13 by the spouse of Anthony Salloum, a defence analyst with the Rideau Institute on International Affairs, a left-wing Ottawa think tank, while the couple was on their way to dinner.

Salloum said the blueprints were either schematics of a rejected proposal to construct the building, in which case a private contractor appears to have carelessly disposed of the documents, or there has been a major security breach at defence headquarters.

“Clearly, they were of some import at some point to DND,” Salloum said.

The Rideau Institute, where Salloum works, is an independent group that provides research, analysis and commentary on public policy issues, and has been critical of military spending.

Salloum said finding the blueprints was “surreal.” He wondered aloud about the chances that a defence analyst often critical of military policy would be the one to stumble across the documents.

Yeah, pretty surreal, but then Canada has always been sort of surreal to me. I work for the DOD and there are real specific things you can and cannot do with information we handle etc and I do not deal with anything “secret.” I know that folks in IT who work on classified development projects they have to do this on closed classified networks to avoid this sort of thing happening. I would think this has to be some sort of big time subversive act, but I would be assuming they do things similarly and we are talking about Canada here. These are the folks who will let you come to their country without a passport from anywhere, go to a hearing and say, “I have no passport. I need asylum.” Then they make you an appointment for another hearing in say six months to see if you can stay or not after which they wave goodbye and fully believe these folks are gonna come back.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a security expert with the Northgate Group, said whatever happened in this case, it was the height of “stupidity” at a time when security of information is so crucial. Juneau-Katsuya, who was with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for 21 years, said in an interview there is always the fear that a breach like this is the “tip of the iceberg” of a systemic problem.

He said there are only two scenarios – that the information was carelessly thrown out or it was purposely put there for someone to find.

“It is an interesting coincidence that it happens to be a group, which would be highly critical of DND, that happens to find it.

Not since 1999 has there been such a breach of security, Juneau-Katsuya said, when top-secret CSIS documents were stolen after being left in a briefcase on the back seat of a parked car in Toronto. The agent was at the Air Canada Centre watching a hockey game when the theft occurred. The briefcase, stolen by drug addicts looking for money, was never recovered.

I am sure this has some tie in with the War in Iraq and possibly global warming. Either way, I am sure it is Bush’s fault. Bastard.