The Cameron Ortis spy trial
Day One, secrets already revealed
Its Day One for the high-profile trial of Cameron Ortis, a civilian member of the RCMP who rose to the rank of Director General of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Co-Ordination Centre. His career dated back to 2007 when he was recruited into the RCMP as an expert on cyber crime.
Ortis was arrested in September 2019 and charged with four counts of unauthorized disclosure of protected information (“special operational information”) under the Security of Information Act, as well as two related criminal code charges.
The investigative trail leading to Ortis dates back to 2015 and an FBI investigation into a man named Vincent Ramos, who presided over a company called Phantom Secure, that sold encrypted mobile devices (modified I-Phones) to organized crime. The RCMP was also running an investigation into Ramos and his Vancouver-based company, called “Project Saturation” but it was not, apparently, making much headway. Ramos was arrested by the FBI in March 2018 and subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison.
In the course of the investigation and arrest of Ramos, the RCMP was given access by the FBI to Ramos’ laptop and email. This led the RCMP to suspect that there was an RCMP official involved in communications with Ramos. An 18 month investigation led to the charges against Cameron Ortis.
All of the above was publicly known prior to the first day of Ortis’ trial. In opening statements made in this ground-breaking Security of Information Act trial, the crown prosecutor added some significant allegations. These included details about emails sent, allegedly by Ortis, to Vincent Ramos, which included a demand for a payment of $20,000 to have access to more documentary material from RCMP files. That’s revelation #1. The Crown prosecutor also revealed in court that a search of Ortis’s home and office led to the discovery of an encrypted USB key with, it is alleged, the documents that Ortis sent to Ramos as well as “scripts” for communications. Revelation #2. But the Crown’s opening case did not end there. Revelation #3 involves the discovery of documents and communications sent to other organized crime figures with links to an international money-laundering network.
Day One is early days in this trial, of course. There will be prosecution witnesses to hear from, Including senior RCMP officials, past and present. There may be evidence admitted from the FBI, possibly also from the Australian federal police.
And the defence will get its turn. They are already previewing their approach in public statements and media interviews. That has generated another surprise. Ortis’s defence lawyers are going to claim that he had authority to release the special operational information over which he is charged. This would seem to amount to a claim that Ortis was running some kind of legitimate, one-man intelligence operation when he contacted organized crime figures and provided them with information.
Stay tuned on that. It should make for a fascinating story.
Ortis has chosen to be tried by jury, not by judge alone. So the tale his defence lawyers will weave will be for the ears of the jury of 12.
What’s a stake here? For Ortis, his liberty and a chance to clear his name. For the Crown, an important test of the government’s ability to catch and prosecute leakers, with the full severity allowed by the law. For Canadians, important insights into the role played by the RCMP in investigating cyber-based crime, alongside its allies.
The only previous SOIA charges of this magnitude involved the provision of classified signals intelligence and other information to the Russian GRU by a junior naval officer, Jeffrey Delisle. Delisle pleaded guilty in 2012 and so no trial was held (just a sentencing hearing—he got 20 years; he also got very early parole).
The Canadian media is watching. The first day of the trial was covered by all the major mainstream news organizations (CBC, Globe and Mail, National Post, CTV, Global). Judy Trinh had a good contextual piece for CTV.
I hope they can all stick with it in the weeks ahead.
Our allies will be watching as well.
Maybe also the leaker(s) of the classified documents relating to Chinese state foreign interference.
May I make two observations.
First of all, it is important not to draw any inferences at all from the fact of charges being laid, or how the media report on it.
For example, many readers will recall the media narrative [and the rather overt presumptions of guilt] that preceded the Ghomeshi trial, or the trial of Senator Duffy, or the trial of the Admiral (which led to an interesting denoument, and Crown climb-down part way through).
Likewise some will recall the trial of the alleged murderers in the Air India bombing case, where the accused were aquitted.
In each of those instances a reader whose only source was the "news" would persume that guilt was obvious; but that is not what the evidence established.
My second observation is that (unlike the cases mentioned above) this is a jury trial, where much will turn on the capacity of ordinary citizens to grapple with a potentially complex factual narrative and with unfamiliar supporting documentation, so there is ample opportunity for a "misunderstanding" to morph into "reasonable doubt".
And, regetably: a jury -- unlike a Judge -- need give no reasons for their findings of fact or credibility, when there are competing versions of events or alternative interpretations of documents or conduct.
So while the win/lost outcome will be clear, it will not involve the kind of logical and illuminating factual narrative that a "Judge-alone" trial would be required to produce.
Finally, I had precisely the same question as Reg Whitaker, whose comments (below) were not there when I began typing my own. Moreover, there may also be some interesting questions about the extent to which defence counsel will be allowed full pre-hearing "discovery" (a bugaboo in the Admiral trial) or will be permitted to cross-examine, in order to test the credibility or completeness of the evidence presented by witnesses. And of course we may see issues about the "open court principle" which typically envisages public trials, not hearings in camera.
A puzzling element: this case is being heard by a jury. Yet there must almost certainly be information disclosed to the court by the Crown that is secret. Is the jury security-cleared? Otherwise, some of the relevant evidence would not be disclosed to the jury. How exactly does that work?