Nuclear operator found not criminally responsible for leaking power plant vulnerabilities on YouTube

A 38-year-old Ontario adult male who faced a rarified bill below Canada's say secrets law of leaking sensitive information to a foreign entity or terrorist group has been found not criminally responsible after he posted a YouTube video that disclosed nuclear power plant vulnerabilities and provided instructions on how to cause damage. 

James Alexander Mousaly, who worked for provincial electricity producer Ontario Power Generation, was suffering from bipolar disorder and psychosis when he livestreamed the offending information for 22 minutes on Jan. 30, 2024, a judge in Oshawa, Ont., ruled Thursday. 

"His delusions included beliefs of being a prophet and a whistleblower regarding workplace safety," Ontario Superior Court Justice Jill Cameron said. 

The video was only up for less than a day before family members took it down, and there was no evidence that it was seen by more than a handful of people, court heard. 

Redacted partial transcripts of the audio portion of the livestream, filed in court, depict someone ranting against the nuclear industry and offering to help "any terrorist or any non-terrorist organization … if you want to destroy any nuclear power station in the world."

"F--k the whole nuclear industry," the person said, according to the transcript. "You can’t use this energy source. It is f--king hopeless."

An expert from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission confirmed that the YouTube video "included at least one vulnerability of a Canadian nuclear power plant" that was classified as secret, according to an agreed statement of facts presented in court. Ontario Power Generation says it believed information in the video "would allow an adversary to optimize an attack on a nuclear power plant in Canada or abroad," the agreed statement said. 

It's not known what the vulnerability was because any sensitive or classified information is under a court-ordered seal. 

Mousaly had worked as a nuclear operator since 2015 at one of Ontario Power Generation's two nuclear plants east of Toronto, but his site credentials were revoked a month before the livestream incident, court heard. A federal government website specifies that he worked at the nuclear plant in Pickering, Ont.  

According to Ontario's public sector salary disclosure, Mousaly made $127,600 in 2023.

Mousaly's lawyer, Thomas Balka, told the court that his client did not intend to cause damage to the nuclear plant, but was aiming to "keep people safe by causing governments to shut down this source of power." 

"He recognizes this was not lawful and that his mental health issues fuelled this disordered thinking," Balka said, emphasizing that Mousaly's family has known him as a "hardworking, loving, caring partner, a son and a stepfather." 

The judge ordered him held in custody until a spot opens up at a specialized provincial mental-health facility for him. A mental-health review board will now take responsibility for his case and decide whether and how long he should remain detained in the facility. 

The charge against him falls under Section 16(1) of Canada's Security of Information Act, which has since been renamed the Foreign Interference and Security of Information Act. That section makes it a crime to communicate "to a foreign entity or to a terrorist group information that the government of Canada or of a province is taking measures to safeguard," if the person believes or is reckless about whether the information is being safeguarded and they intend to increase the "capacity of a foreign entity or a terrorist group to harm Canadian interests."

It is only the third time charges brought under the act have reached a conclusion in court.

Previously, senior RCMP intelligence official Cameron Ortis was convicted in 2023 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for leaking intelligence information to police targets, while former navy lieutenant Jeffrey Delisle pleaded guilty in 2012 for selling top-secret info to Russia and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Senior Writer

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