Communications Security Establishment

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Canada's Communications Security Establishment has, like the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a dual mission of signals intelligence and communications security. Canada does not conduct a wide range of intelligence collection operations such clandestine human-source intelligence (HUMINT) or national-level imagery intelligence (IMINT), so SIGINT is its major collection discipline. Like NSA, CSE is also responsible for government-wide communications security. Canada, however, does have a world-class intelligence analysis capability in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Under the still-classified "UKUSA agreement", Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. agreed to collect SIGINT in different parts of the world, and share the material, with overall analysis remaining a national responsibility. Even with analysis, there is significant cooperation among these countries.

CSE, headquartered in the Leonard Tilley Building in Ottawa. is responsible for Canada's SIGINT.various forms of signals intelligence, including traffic analysis and cryptanalysis. It has SIGINT collection stations scattered throughout Canada, in positions to receive signals from various parts of the world, positions dictated by the technical characteristics of radio signals to be intercepted.

The establishment acquired its first Cray supercomputer in the early 1980s. Staff were trained through an exchange program with the American National Security Agency.