Nerd farm no more: Speech offers rare glimpse into eavesdropping agency

OTTAWA – According to lore, Canada’s top-secret eavesdropping agency was once staffed by such a crew of oddball science nerds that one intelligence analyst cut her own hair at her desk.

Another built a chicken-wire enclosure around his work area to keep other people away.

The 2,000 staffers of Communications Security Establishment Canada are generally forbidden from discussing their highly sensitive pursuit of foreign intelligence.

But one of CSEC’s senior members provides a rare glimpse of the modern intelligence analyst at the shadowy agency in unpublicized speech that has come to light.

The Canadian Press obtained a copy of Shelly Bruce’s candid address under the Access to Information Act.

Bruce told her audience the modern intelligence analyst must be good at everything — a brilliant speaker, a master of social media, a social psychologist, a political scientist, a statistician, a geospatial expert and an expert navigator of the bureaucracy.