Come back with a warrant by Rosalyn Davis (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/aoPzWb

Lawful Access

Why Canada’s Telecom Companies Should Come Clean About Customer Information

Appeared in the Toronto Star on January 25, 2014 as Why Canada’s Telecoms Should Come Clean About Customer Information Last week I joined leading civil liberties groups and academics in a public letter sent to Canada’s leading telecom companies asking them to shed new light into their data retention and […]

January 28, 2014 — 1 comment — Columns Archive

Why the Justice Ministers’ Report Fails To Make the Case for Bill C-13’s Lawful Access Provisions

Earlier this week, I posted on how Canadian law already features extensive rules that can be used to target cyberbullying, which raises questions about the prime justification for Bill C-13 (the cyber-bullying/lawful access bill). That post attracted a response from the Department of Justice, which (consistent with politicians and other officials) points to a June 2013 report on cyberbullying from federal and provincial justice ministers as the basis for Bill C-13.

While the government seems to think the report provides a solid foundation for its bill, the reality is that the justification in the report for the lawful access provisions stands on very shaky ground.

January 16, 2014 — 1 comment — News

Is C-13 Needed?: How Canadian Law Already Features Extensive Rules to Combat Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying was in the news last week with Justice Minister Peter MacKay indicating that Bill C-13 could pass by the spring. The reaction to the bill – the government’s lawful access/cyberbullying legislation – has generally included criticism over the inclusion of lawful access provisions from Bill C-30 along with assurances that the cyberbullying provisions are important and worthy of support (though experts in the field doubt whether it will stop online taunting). I discuss the dangers associated with Bill C-13 in this interview on TVO’s The Agenda.

Comments from Conservative MPs unsurprisingly point to the need to protect children from cyberbullying. For example, Conservative MP John Carmichael told the House of Commons:

January 13, 2014 — 5 comments — News

The Trouble With Bill C-13: Why the “Cyberbullying Bill” is About Much More than Cyberbullying

Earlier this week I appeared on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss Bill C-13. While Justice Minister Peter MacKay indicated yesterday that he hopes to pass the legislation this spring, the discussion on the show points to the concerns with the bill including how it creates immunity for voluntary disclosure of personal information without court oversight (thereby increasing the likelihood of such disclosures) and establishes a low threshold for warrants involving metadata, while only marginally addressing the legal framework to combat cyberbullying, which is already well developed. The interview is embedded below.

January 10, 2014 — 16 comments — News, News Interviews, Tv / Radio

The Privacy Threats in Bill C-13, Part Two: The Low Threshold for Metadata

My first post on the privacy threats in Bill C-13 focused on the voluntary disclosure of personal information and the complete civil and criminal immunity granted to intermediaries such as ISPs and telecom companies that provide such disclosures. This post focuses on the low threshold the bill establishes for a new “transmission data” warrant and explains why this represents a serious privacy risk.

The bill defines transmission data as data that:

(a) relates to the telecommunication functions of dialling, routing, addressing or signalling;
(b) is transmitted to identify, activate or configure a device, including a computer program as defined in subsection 342.1(2), in order to establish or maintain access to a telecommunication service for the purpose of enabling a communication, or is generated during the creation, transmission or reception of a communication and identifies or purports â€¨to identify the type, direction, date, time, duration, size, origin, destination or termination of the communication;
(c) does not reveal the substance, meaning or purpose of the communication.

The bill creates a new warrant that allows a judge to order the disclosure of transmission data where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been or will be committed, the identification of a device or person involved in the transmission will assist in an investigation, or will help identify a person. The government relies on the fact that this is a warrant with court oversight to support the claim that Canadians should not be concerned by this provision. Yet the reality is that there is reason for concern as the implications of treating metadata as having a low privacy value is enormously troubling.

December 11, 2013 — 4 comments — News