Trudeau reassures Canada's allies for theft of classified data

Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, tried to reassure his allies on the issue of security on Tuesday, after a senior police intelligence officer was accused of stealing highly sensitive classified material, which if revealed, would be "potentially devastating."

Trudeau, who is in full campaign for re-election, told reporters at a small train station in St. John's, in the province of Newfoundland (east) that Canadian officials had contacted their allies to assess this security breach.

"We are working with them to reassure them, but we want to make sure everyone understands that we are taking this situation very seriously," he said.

Cameron Ortis was general director of the National Intelligence Coordination Center of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (GRC) before being arrested Thursday.

The next day he was formally accused of accessing secret and unauthorized communications of special operational information.

Ortis was discovered when US authorities found an internal police document in criminal hands, Canadian media reported.

According to the Globe and Mail newspaper, US authorities discovered in 2018 the GRC document in the portable of a Vancouver businessman who had links to organized crime, which resulted in an investigation that led to the arrest of Ortis.

The detainee had access to "information that was in the hands of the Canadian intelligence community" and that also accessed data that came from his allies, "both domestically and internationally," said GRC commissioner Brenda Lucki

Lucki did not specify which foreign organizations may have been exposed to the subtraction of secret information.

The CBC public chain said Ortis sent emails to the founder and administrator of a communications company -Phantom Secure Communications- to offer him "valuable" information. That company was responsible for providing secure communications to criminal organizations, according to US authorities.

Canada is a member of "Five Eyes", an intelligence alliance formed with Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Saturday that Ortis's arrest was linked to a major corruption investigation through a $ 230 million fraud scheme allegedly led by senior Russian officials.

Ortis, who had worked for the Royal Canadian Police since 2007, faces five criminal charges under the Canadian criminal code and its Information Security Law.