Post Tagged with: "privacy"

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lawful Access, But Were (Understandably) Afraid To Ask

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is expected to introduce lawful access legislation tomorrow in the House of Commons. An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and others Acts, likely to be Bill C-30, will mark the return of lawful access in a single legislative package. While it is certainly possible for a surprise, the bill is expected to largely mirror the last lawful access bills (C-50, 51, and 52) that died on the order paper with the election last spring.

This long post tries to address many of the most common questions and misconceptions about lawful access in Canada. The questions and answers are:

What is lawful access?
What is Bill C-30 likely to contain?
Isn’t ISP customer name and address information similar to phone book data that is readily available to the public without privacy concerns? (first prong)
Isn’t the mandatory disclosure of ISP customer information necessary for police investigations? (first prong)
Didn’t former Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day pledge not to introduce mandatory disclosure of ISP customer information without court oversight? (first prong)
Who pays for the surveillance infrastructure required by lawful access? (second prong)
Does lawful access create a new regulatory framework for the Internet? (second prong)
Does lawful access create new police powers? (third prong)
Does opposing lawful access mean questioning the integrity of law enforcement?
Don’t other countries have the same lawful access rules as those found in Canada?
What do Canada’s privacy commissioners think about lawful access?
Are these lawful access proposal constitutional?
Does the government seem somewhat inconsistent on its crime and privacy policies?
Where can I learn more about lawful access and what can I do?

Update: Bill C-30 was introduced on February 14, 2012. One important change from the last bill to the current bill is that the list of data points subject to mandatory disclosure without court oversight has shrunk from 11 to six. The IMEI numbers, discussed further below, are no longer on the list.

February 13, 2012 — 53 comments — News

Police Documents Show Scramble To Justify Lawful Access

Late last year, I wrote a column on lawful access arguing that “neither the government nor law enforcement has provided credible evidence demonstrating how the current law has impeded active investigations.” Open Media has now obtained an internal police document that shows the policy recognize this problem. The email asks […]

January 19, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — News

Ontario Court of Appeal Issues Landmark Ruling on Privacy Tort

The Ontario Court of Appear issued a major new privacy decision, creating a new legal tort called “intrusion upon seclusion.” The decision, Jones v. Tsige, opens the door to lawsuits for breach of privacy based on circumstances involving an intentional intrusion on private affairs or concerns that is made in […]

January 19, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — News

Are Canada’s Digital Laws Unconstitutional?

One of the first Canadian digital-era laws was the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act, a model law created by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in the late 1990s. The ULCC brings together officials from federal, provincial, and territorial governments to work on model laws that can be implemented in a similar manner across all Canadian jurisdictions.
While a federal e-commerce law may have been preferable, the constitutional division of powers meant that it fell to the provinces to enact those laws.

The provinces took the lead on e-commerce legislation in the late 1990s, but over the past decade it has been the federal government that has led on most other digital rules, including privacy legislation, the anti-spam statute, and proposed digital copyright reform. Those efforts are now in constitutional limbo following the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent ruling that plans to create a single securities regulator are unconstitutional.

The December securities regulator decision concluded that the national approach to securities regulation stretches the federal trade and commerce clause too far into provincial jurisdiction. The court ruled that most of the securities regulatory activities deal with day-to-day contractual regulation within the provinces and that “these matters remain essentially provincial concerns falling within property and civil rights in the provinces and are not related to trade as a whole.”

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the repercussions of that decision may be felt far beyond just securities regulation. For example, federal privacy law may now be particularly vulnerable to challenge since it relies on the same trade and commerce provision.

January 11, 2012 — 7 comments — Columns

Are Canada’s Digital Laws Unconstitutional?

Appeared in the Toronto Star on January 8, 2012 as Are Canada’s Digital Laws Unconstitutional? One of the first Canadian digital-era laws was the Uniform Electronic Commerce Act, a model law created by the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in the late 1990s. The ULCC brings together officials from federal, […]

January 11, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — Columns Archive