According to Ortis, briefed him about a “storefront” that was being created to attract criminal targets to an online encryption service. A storefront, said Ortis, is a fake business or entity, either online or bricks-and-mortar, set up by police or intelligence agencies.

The plan was to have criminals use the storefront — an online end-to-end encryption service called Tutanota — to allow authorities to collect intelligence about them.

“So if targets begin to use that service, the agency that’s collecting that information would be able to feed it back, that information, into the Five Eyes system, and then back into the RCMP,” Ortis said.