John Ivison: Clement's sexting scandal ‘an early warning’ on national security risks
There is no confirmation Clement was the victim of a honey-pot sting, but luring politicians into compromising positions has happened in Canada
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Clement, who issued a statement late Tuesday that he was being extorted by someone to whom he had sent sexually explicit images and a video of himself, was one of two Conservative members on the new 11-member panel of parliamentarians appointed to oversee the secret activities of Canada’s national security and intelligence agencies. The committee will scrutinize the activities of CSIS, the RCMP and every other agency involved in intelligence-gathering. Extorting those secrets from a member of the committee would be a major coup for a foreign intelligence service.
There is no confirmation that Clement was the victim of a honey-pot sting arranged by Russia or China...
Andy Ellis, a former assistant director of operations at CSIS who now works at intelligence event detection firm EVNTL, said sexual entrapment is an age-old tool in espionage. While foreign entities have been more prone to influence-peddling than blackmail, luring politicians into compromising positions has been used in the past in Canada and elsewhere, he said...
Rennie Marcoux, executive director of the secretariat established to support the new National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians [more here http://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/press-releases/pr-cp-2018-10-12/pr-cp-2018-10-12-en.html ], said each member was given a “comprehensive” security briefing by the Privy Council Office and other security agencies. Perhaps the imprudence of sending penis pictures by email to someone you don’t know was so obvious it was overlooked in the briefing.
But it is concerning that someone who appears to have been an accident waiting to happen was not flagged by the security services.
Marcoux said all committee members and staff at the secretariat were subject to the same “stringent” security and confidentiality requirements as the security and intelligence community [committee members, really?].
Yet Ellis said in his experience security checks for politicians are “superficial,” lacking the depth and breadth of top-secret security checks applied to others. He said regular security-clearance checks include a full search of social media and interviews with friends and colleagues going back at least 10 years.
Stephanie Carvin, a former national security analyst with CSIS who now teaches at Carleton University, said MPs and senators were vetted for committee membership but there would have to be serious some red flags flying before the security agencies would intervene to block a parliamentarian.
The news comes at a bad time for a committee that is trying to build public confidence. Carvin said she welcomes parliamentary oversight but it will be a real problem if the national security agencies view the committee with caution.
“If the agencies feel they can’t trust the committee, it will damage its credibility,” she said...
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-clements-sexting-scandal-an-early-warning-on-national-security-risks