What’s the Justification for Warrantless Access to Customer Information?
November 7, 2011
Share this post
2 Comments

Law Bytes
Episode 260: What the Government Didn’t Want You To Hear About Bill C-4 And Its Weak Political Party Privacy Rules
byMichael Geist

March 2, 2026
Michael Geist
February 23, 2026
Michael Geist
February 9, 2026
Michael Geist
Episode 256: Jennifer Quaid on Taking On Big Tech With the Competition Act's Private Right of Access
February 2, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Recent Posts
Words Are Not Enough: Countering Relentless Antisemitic Violence in Canada With Action
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 260: What the Government Didn’t Want You To Hear About Bill C-4 And Its Weak Political Party Privacy Rules
Why the Online Harms Act is the Wrong Way to Regulate AI Chatbots
More Transparency Not Police Reporting: Navigating the Safety-Privacy Balance for AI ChatBots
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 259: The Privacy and Surveillance Risks of AI Chatbot Reporting to Police

That’s because their justification is misleading.
This has been going around for a long time now. This isn’t going to add anything more to stopping any physical crimes or stopping these terrorist attacks that don’t exist which we’ve apparently been getting hit by. The thing I don’t like the most is that they just don’t come out and say it – they want to closely monitor everyone to put into force the new copyright bills.
It looks pretty obvious. The information stored is personal information about the internet account holder. Any criminals would most likely take note of these laws and do what they can to avoid them or shield themselves, if they really wanted it enough.
They spot someone doing something they don’t like, demand the personal information, slap a fine down. (Un)Lawful Access in a nutshell.
@Robert E.
I couldn’t agreed more. They NEED this in order to give C-11 teeth since anyone can see by itself C-11 in unenforceable. Together they form some of the best IP enforcement legislation American big media money can buy. Will it do them any good? I wager it’ll be even less effective than the DMCA.
Offshore servers, VPN connections and IP obfuscation networks such as TOR and i2p will become very popular. These days, I do very little which might be considered illegal, but hell will freeze over before I’ll make it easy for them to spy on me.