Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Employees: Moral Harm and the Challenges of Secrecy

Through semi-structured interviews conducted with 38 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) employees, the present study analyses how intelligence workers navigate confidentiality keeping and the consequences of secrecy at work and beyond. Through a lens of moral harm, we identify how engaging in secrecy can be morally harmful and how these harms intertwine with psychological, social, and interpersonal harms, with lasting effects on CSIS employees and their relationships with families, friends, colleagues, and the public. We put forth considerations for CSIS in response to their employees’ work experiences, which can prompt moral frustration, distress, harm, and injury. These considerations are situated within the unique circumstances of CSIS employment and its ensuing implications, alongside suggestions for an integration of secrecy in moral injury knowledge, to shape future theorization and new empirical directions.