Access request 117-2020-201 · Institution: CSIS
OIC file 5820-01949 · Final report April 15, 2026
Related: Court File No. CV-20-00645492-0000, Equibit Group Ltd. v. Attorney General of Canada et al.
The CSIS cryptocurrency briefings Equibit asked for in August 2020 began to surface in two stages. The first came in October 2020. The second came in a supplementary release dated March 3, 2026, after the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) investigated. This post describes what the access request sought, what CSIS released at each stage, and what the OIC’s final report holds.
What Did Equibit Ask CSIS For?
On August 25, 2020, thirteen days after Equibit filed its Statement of Claim against the Attorney General of Canada, Chris Horlacher made an Access to Information Act request to CSIS for “All reports from the Integrated Terrorist Assessment Centre (ITAC) or the Intelligence Assessment Branch (IAB) as well as all Briefing Notes to the Executive concerning ‘blockchain’ or ‘cryptocurrency’ records created or obtained during the period of September 1, 2015 to August 24, 2020.” CSIS assigned file number 117-2020-201 (CSIS letters of September 22, 2020, October 2, 2020 and March 3, 2026).
That window covers Equibit’s whole operating life: incorporation in 2015, the token sale and press coverage of 2016 to 2018, and the end of operations in 2019.
What Did CSIS Release in October 2020?
On September 22, 2020, CSIS extended its deadline by 30 days under section 9 of the Act, stating that the statutory time limit “would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the Service.” On October 2, 2020, it released material with portions exempted under sections 13(1), 15(1), 16(1)(a), 16(1)(b), 16(1)(c) and 19(1).
The pages released included an ITAC “Daily Radar” summary dated June 27, 2019, marked TOP SECRET//CANADIAN EYES ONLY. One item concerned open-source reporting that a Canada-based cryptocurrency payments company had been used to finance the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings. Another concerned a DAESH video.
Equibit complained to the OIC about the time extension and about an incomplete search. Its complaint noted that CSIS had not produced a briefing that had already been released to The Canadian Press and reported in January 2018 (OIC complaint ACC-2020-11-00058). That briefing was the subject of a Canadian Press report published January 14, 2018. It described a top-secret CSIS discussion paper, prepared for then-director Michel Coulombe before a November 2016 deputy ministers’ meeting on national security, that examined blockchain and cryptocurrencies among the “mega trends” on the service’s radar.
What Does the OIC Final Report on CSIS Cryptocurrency Briefings Hold?
The OIC’s final report in file 5820-01949, dated April 15, 2026, found the complaint well founded on the improper withholding of page 1. CSIS issued a supplementary release on March 3, 2026. The OIC upheld the remaining exemptions under subsection 13(1), subsection 15(1), paragraph 16(1)(b) and paragraph 16(1)(c).
The report records CSIS’s representation that disclosure of the remaining withheld records “could irreparably damage ongoing investigations as well as relations with foreign governments and agencies.” That is the language of the exemption CSIS claimed. It is not a finding that CSIS ran an operation against Equibit. What the report does hold is analyzed in Five Things the OIC Final Report Established.
What Is in the March 3, 2026 Release?
The supplementary release is a three-page CSIS assessment numbered 2017-18/28, dated February 12, 2018, and marked SECRET//CSIS EYES ONLY. Its title is “Alternative Means of Funding: The Extreme Right and Cryptocurrency.” The released text:
- defines cryptocurrency as “the more than 1,400 digital currencies available worldwide” and explains that bitcoin transactions are logged publicly on a blockchain that “does not reveal the identities of either side of the transaction”;
- cites estimates that between 2.9 and 5.8 million unique users used cryptocurrency in 2017, and that the combined market value of all cryptocurrencies was US$27 billion as of April 2017;
- notes that service providers had blocked or banned extreme right-wing groups from using their services and that, as a result, “affected groups have increasingly moved to cryptocurrencies out of necessity”;
- states that “In Canada, most groups which promote extreme right-wing views continue to use traditional fundraising methods.”
The assessment’s final page, headed “Assessments,” remains fully redacted. The covering letter cites section 15 and paragraphs 16(1)(a) and 16(1)(c) for the portions still withheld.
Who Are the Sources Behind the March 3, 2026 Release?
The assessment opens by saying that “recent open source articles” identified extreme right-wing use of bitcoin, then names the first of them: “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimates that over 200 bitcoin accounts (‘wallets’) are tied to these groups.” The page carries three footnotes. Footnote 1 identifies the SPLC as “an American non-profit legal advocacy organization” noted for “its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations.” Footnotes 2 and 3 are redacted in full. Of the three sources CSIS footnoted, the SPLC is the only one CSIS let Equibit see.
The SPLC also frames the assessment’s analysis. Its one quotation is from Andrew Anglin, founder of The Daily Stormer, saying “there is no way we would have gotten into bitcoin if it were not for the persecution by the SPLC and other lobbying organizations.”
On April 21, 2026, seven weeks after CSIS released this assessment, a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The US Department of Justice says that between 2014 and 2023 the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals associated with violent extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and the National Socialist Party of America, while denouncing those same groups on its website. The indictment says that from the 1980s the SPLC ran a covert network of people associated with, or placed inside, those groups at its direction. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said: “The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
The SPLC’s model has a Canadian branch. In its brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) describes itself as “modeled after, and supported by, the esteemed Southern Poverty Law Center.” CAHN says it received a $25,000 start-up grant from the SPLC and has exchanged information with it “about threats, hate groups, and aspiring terrorists.” CBC reported at its 2018 launch that the network “takes its inspiration from the Southern Poverty Law Center.” In November 2022, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Ottawa Small Claims Court) dismissed a CAHN director’s defamation claim against journalists Jonathan and Barbara Kay, who had written that CAHN assisted Antifa. Deputy Judge Dwoskin held: “The evidence disclosed that CAHN did in fact assist Antifa and that the movement has been violent” (Warman v. Kay, SC-20-156136, reasons released November 10, 2022, para. 97).
The 2018 assessment that CSIS built partly on SPLC figures covers the years the indictment describes. Equibit Group’s position is that the pairing is exact. The one source CSIS chose to show is an organization the US government now charges with funding the extremism it reported on. CSIS stands accused, in Equibit’s pleadings and in the Canadian court record on informants and entrapment, of manufacturing the threats that justify its own existence. Both bodies drew their authority from the same claim: that the danger they described was real and independent of them.
Why Do These Records Matter to Equibit?
Equibit Group’s position is that these releases confirm that, in the years Equibit was building and selling a blockchain securities network in Canada, CSIS was producing classified assessments on cryptocurrency and treating it as a national security subject. They also show that the service’s own analysts recorded Canadian use of cryptocurrency by such groups as limited.
Place in the Equibit Lawsuit
In Court File No. CV-20-00645492-0000, Equibit alleges that CSIS personnel induced breaches of its employees’ contracts and conspired to deprive it of its core code. The Attorney General denies the allegations. The 117-2020-201 records are government documents released under statute and reviewed by the OIC. They are part of the record Equibit has built outside the courtroom, alongside the ATIP and OIC history and the Statement of Claim.
