Earlier this week, I posted on the Liberals first reaction to Bill C-46, part one of the lawful access package. Rather than focusing on substantive issues, the immediate response was "what took you so long," an obvious effort to appear even tougher on crime. C-46 was sent to committee for further study on Tuesday. Immediately afterward, C-47, the other half of lawful access came up for second reading. This part of the bill is particularly problematic is it raises the prospect of mandatory disclosure of personal information without a warrant and requires ISPs to install new surveillance capabilities on their networks.
The warrantless access to information is incredibly troubling as it runs counter to a pledge from the previous Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, has only been supported a mischaracterized incident from earlier this year, and raises fundamental problems with the privacy vs. security balance. In fact, the bill goes even further than the Liberal version of the bill from years ago, by adopting an exceptionally broad definition of customer name and address information.
Once again, the reaction to the bill was telling.
