Canadian Forces monitoring personnel’s social-media accounts in operation codenamed Fence Post

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Canadian Forces intelligence teams are keeping an eye on the personal social-media accounts of military members to see if they are posting classified information on-line.

The monitoring initiative, codenamed Operation Fence Post, was launched in 2023 after a major leak of secret information from a United States military member on social media.

Operation Fence Post remains ongoing despite acknowledgement by military intelligence officers that the risk of such a leak happening from the Canadian Forces personnel is low, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

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The Canadian Forces declined to discuss the operation.

“For reasons of national security and to protect operational integrity, DND/CAF cannot provide further details on Operation FENCE POST,” National Defence spokesperson Cheryl Forrest wrote in an email.

The documents noted that Operation Fence Post was “not intended to aid law enforcement, but to serve as an early warning of threats arising from unauthorized disclosures.”

“This operation is enduring,” the Fence Post plan added. The heavily censored records were included with documents released under the Access to Information law.

Military lawyers determined that the monitoring of personal social-media accounts of Canadian Forces members was legal and “within the mandate of the CFNCIU (Canadian Forces National Counter Intelligence Unit).”

The records did not have details on how many accounts were being monitored or if the operation had been extended to family members of Canadian Forces personnel.

Operation Fence Post launched after a major leak of U.S. intelligence records concerning the Ukraine-Russian war as well as conflicts in the Middle East.

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Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard plead guilty in March 2024 to releasing the classified information to a group of gamers on the Discord messaging app. He is expected to be sentenced in September.

On April 19, 2023, the Washington Post reported that among the leaked records were details of a private meeting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held with NATO officials in which he stated Canada would never meet the alliance’s spending target of two per cent of gross domestic product.

The assessment of Trudeau’s meeting had the seal of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and included other sensitive information about Canadian defence issues.

The leaked U.S. records kicked off a series of emails between senior Canadian military leaders, then Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre and deputy minister Bill Matthews. Eyre also had a “short-notice phone call” with the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the leaks.

The Discord leaks of U.S. intelligence records painted a grim picture of the Ukraine war despite the rosy predictions from U.S. and Canadian politicians and senior defence staff.

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A Canadian military analysis of the Discord leaks focused on concerns that the records contained details about the arrival of Canadian Army Leopard tanks in Ukraine and the donation to Ukraine of an air defence system.

But the analysis also pointed out that, while the Discord leak documents contained information about NATO special forces operating in Ukraine, there was no mention of Canadian commandos.

Details that members of Canadian special forces were operating in Ukraine had already been cited in a June 2022 New York Times article that relied on information from American military officials.

When asked by the CBC about the New York Times report, Eyre claimed the news media was helping Russian disinformation efforts. Canadian special forces, however, did not deny the Times reporting.

Eyre was asked by the Ottawa Citizen to produce evidence the journalists involved were working with the Russians, but he did not respond.

The intelligence officers involved in Operation Fence Post were told not to directly interact with the Canadian Forces members whose social-media accounts they monitored. The official launch date for the operation was May 31, 2023.

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It is not the first time that such intelligence teams have combed through social-media accounts. The Ottawa Citizen reported in 2020 that a team assigned to a military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people’s social-media accounts in Ontario. The intelligence officials claimed such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That initiative also involved collecting negative comments Ontarians made about Premier Doug Ford and the failure of his government to take care of the elderly and then forwarding those to the Ontario government.

In addition, data was compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders, again supposedly to aid military commanders helping co-ordinate work in long-term care homes.

Military officers saw nothing wrong with such data collection as it was already in the public domain on social-media accounts. “This is really a learning opportunity for all of us and a chance to start getting information operations into our (CAF-DND) routine,” Rear Admiral Brian Santarpia later told military investigators.

Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test new propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a 2021 internal Canadian Forces investigation into the initiatives concluded.

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