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20th Century Laws Meet 21st Century Surveillance: Why Metadata Surveillance is a Serious Concern

The concerns about telephone and Internet surveillance moved north yesterday as the Globe revealed  that Canada has its own metadata surveillance program. The program was discontinued in 2008 after concerns that it could involve illegal surveillance of Canadians, but was secretly restarted in 2011. It is not clear what change sparked the policy reversal (if there was a reversal – some believe the program was never stopped).  The issue was raised in the House of Commons, but the response from the government focuses on two claims: (1) that the surveillance does not target Canadians; and (2) that the data captured is metadata rather than content and therefore does not raise significant privacy issues.

Neither response should provide Canadians concerned for their privacy with much comfort as it increasingly apparent that Canada has 20th century protections in a world of 21st century surveillance.

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June 11, 2013 — 6 comments — News

University of Toronto, Western Provide Notice to Access Copyright That They Will Not Extend Licence

Ariel Katz reports that the University of Toronto has notified Access Copyright that it will not extend the current licence agreement. It points to a range of factors – the SCC decisions, copyright reform, and open access among them – to argue that there should be substantial reductions in the […]

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June 11, 2013 — Comments are Disabled — News

Report Confirms Canada Has Its Own Phone Meta-Data and Internet Surveillance Program

Over the weekend, I posted a lengthy piece on why Canadians should be demanding answers about secret surveillance programs in the wake of the U.S. revelations about Verizon meta-data on all phone calls and the PRISM program that involves access to leading Internet company data. The focus of the piece […]

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June 10, 2013 — 7 comments — News

Why Canadians Should Be Demanding Answers About Secret Surveillance Programs

Privacy and surveillance have taken centre stage this week with the revelations that U.S. agencies have been engaged in massive, secret surveillance programs that include years of capturing the meta-data from every cellphone call on the Verizon network (the meta-data includes the number called and the length of the call) as well as gathering information from the largest Internet companies in the world including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple in a program called PRISM. This lengthy post provides some background on the U.S. programs, but focuses primarily on the Canadian perspective, arguing that many of the same powers exist under Canadian law and that it is likely that Canadians have been caught up by these surveillance activities.

The first revelation came from a story by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, in which he reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting phone records from millions of Verizon customers each day. U.S. authorities have sought to downplay the significance of the “meta data” from the phone calls, but many experts note that meta data can be more revealing than the content of the call itself. The cell phone meta data collection appears to be authorized through provisions from the USA Patriot Act, which permits a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to order a business to produce certain documents. As Margot Kaminski explains, there are few safeguards over these programs.

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June 8, 2013 — 22 comments — News

The Canadian Wireless Debate is Over: How the Incumbent Carriers Lost the Support of the Government

For the past few years, there has been a lively debate on the state of the Canadian wireless marketplace. Consumer advocates and others have argued that Canadian market is not sufficiently competitive and that aggressive policy action is needed to foster greater competition and to adequately protect consumers until market forces can be fully relied upon. The incumbent telecom companies and the CWTA present a far different story, contesting multiple international studies and painting Canada as a market leader.

The events of this week – the introduction of a CRTC consumer wireless code and the Industry Canada decision to uphold its set-aside spectrum policy by killing the Telus – Mobilicity deal – point to the fact that this debate is now over in the minds of the government. Government telecom policy in 2006 was focused on deregulation and a hands-off, industry-led approach. Those days are long gone as the government has now adopted a consumer-focused, populist approach premised on the view that a public fight with the telecom companies is a political winner.  Moreover, the government may have shifted, but the incumbent providers clearly have not, failing to adapt to the new policy terrain.

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June 5, 2013 — 5 comments — News
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