“I think it will spend a long time in purgatory,” said one lobbyist who did not want to be named. “More work needs to be done and if not right, it will unnecessarily antagonize people.”
Another political insider said that the government is still wrestling with how to change the bill and will not bring it forward in the legislative process until it figures it out. “I don’t think there are any answers as yet,” the lobbyist said. “I think the government is still trying to answer these questions themselves.”
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (Provencher, Man.) said three weeks ago that the government would be sending Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, directly to committee before second reading in order to widen the scope of acceptable amendments. During the House’s break week, the government indicated it would also be sending the bill to the House Public Safety Committee quickly when MPs returned last week but it did not move it.
NDP House Leader Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) told The Hill Times last week that Government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York-Simcoe, Ont.) was “dodging the issue” in terms of when the Conservatives would send it to committee.
“My own guess is they’re hoping the vehemence of the public opposition will die down somewhat,” he said. “I think right now, they’re just skating. The implication during the break week was that they were going to do it fairly quickly but in various conversations including [last Thursday] Mr. Van Loan was not prepared to give any commitment as to when they would bring it back and send it to committee.”
Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) said that while Bill C-30 was not on the agenda for the next two weeks before the House recesses for the week of March 19, he said he believes it will come back and be sent to committee before second reading as the government intends.
Mr. Van Loan’s office did not return an email last week, but Mr. Toews’ office said the bill would be sent to committee “in due course.”
“Canada’s laws do not adequately protect against online child exploitation and other criminal activity. We want to fix our laws while striking the right balance when it comes to protecting privacy. We will send this legislation directly to committee for a full examination of potential amendments to achieve the best protection for our children. It will be done in due course,” said Mike Patton, communications director to the Public Safety Minister.
Mr. Toews introduced the bill on Feb. 14 and quickly came under criticism for his comments that those who were against the bill were in support of “child pornographers.” There was a public outcry on the breach of Canadians’ privacy rights, including from the Ontario Privacy Commissioner, and people who thought the government and police and national security agencies would now be able to spy on Canadians’ online activities. This also led to a Twitter account, @vikileaks30, which tweeted about Mr. Toews’ personal life. Liberal staffer Adam Carroll was subsequently found to be responsible for the account, which Conservatives called “sleazy.”
The international group Anonymous, which has hacked the U.S. Justice Department and FBI websites and has been involved in protests from the Arab spring to internet censorship, targeted Mr. Toews and threatened to “release what [they] have unless [he scraps] this bill.” Mr. Toews raised a point of privilege on the matter last week, which House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) still has to rule on. Mr. Toews also referred “threatening communications” to the RCMP to investigate “serious threats” against him as a result of backlash from Bill C-30.
The 110-page bill is intended to give police and national security agencies the powers they need to combat online, organized crime. According to its legislative summary, the bill “requires telecommunications service providers to put in place and maintain certain capabilities that facilitate the lawful interception of information transmitted by telecommunications and to provide basic information about their subscribers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Commissioner of Competition and any police service constituted under the laws of a province.”
That means that telecommunications companies must change their networks and install the technology to comply with this bill, including being able to intercept multiple communications simultaneously and isolate it in real time. Bill C-30 will allow the minister to order telecom companies to go beyond the requirements of the bill and will compensate them for doing so.
The bill will also create new categories of warrants that police can use to compel telecommunications service providers to produce information.
This will force companies to provide “subscriber information” such as “name, address, telephone number and electronic mail address of any subscriber to any of the service provider’s telecommunications services and the internet protocol address and local service provider identifier that are associated with the subscriber’s service and equipment” if needed in an investigation.
Previously this information was obtained on a voluntary basis if no warrant was issued, but under Bill C-30, it will make it compulsory, and police will be able to access this information without a judicial warrant.
A “transmission warrant” will also be created, meaning information “related to the transmission of information such as routing or addressing, along with all the additional header-type information created by messages” will be available to police, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
In addition, the bill outlines “preservation orders” which allows police or national security agencies to require telecommunications companies to keep data about their customers for 90 days, without a warrant. The police cannot access this information, however, unless a warrant or a “production order” is granted by a judge within 21 days in domestic investigations and 90 days in international investigations.
A “production order”—forcing companies to produce the information—can contain information such as financial data, specified communications, and disclosure of transmission data.
In terms of transmission data, the government says Bill C-30 will allow police to use devices to record data about how a communication was transmitted, but not the contents of the communication, without a warrant.
Prof. Geist noted on his website, however, that despite the need for a warrant in most cases, Bill C-30 also extends a provision to telecommunications companies that make them not liable for handing over private information (including contents of emails, or specifics about online activity) to police and national security agencies which ask for them without a warrant.
Companies can refuse to give this information, but this “voluntary warrantless disclosure” provision means that companies who do give the information do “not incur any criminal or civil liability for doing so,” according to Sec. 487.0195 of the bill.
Prof. Geist noted on his website on Feb. 15 that the RCMP made 28,000 requests for basic subscriber information from telecom companies in 2010 and currently there is no accountability structure or oversight on how this information is used and, more importantly Canadians don’t know that their information is being asked for. Bill C-30 adds new reporting requirements for oversight to address this.
Specifically, the bill requires the Public Safety minister to report on the interceptions of private communications obtained without authorization and ensures that a person whose information has been intercepted without authorization is notified about it.
David Fraser, a privacy lawyer, wrote on his blog, however, that there is a “gag order” in the bill, which prevents telecom companies from telling Canadians if and how their personal information is used unless it is approved by the police or national security agencies that originally asked for the information.
“And they can refuse to give their okay on a number of relatively flexible bases,” he wrote.
According to the bill’s legislative summary, Bill C-30 will “permit a peace officer or a public officer, in certain circumstances, to install and make use of a number recorder without a warrant” and “extends to one-year the maximum period of validity of a warrant for a tracking device and a number recorder if the warrant is issued in respect of a terrorism offence or an offence relating to a criminal organization.”
On this topic, Mr. Toews said during debate last Tuesday, “law enforcement officials today can already intercept private communications in very exceptional circumstances without first obtaining court authorization. It simply recognizes that there are situations and some cases where action needs to be taken quickly, in such cases as kidnappings or bomb threats, where an immediate interception could help save lives.”
The bill also requires a mandatory five-year review.
Privately, political insiders say the bill could simply sit on the Order Paper without being moved because the government is worried not only about its base, but also because it is unsure how to proceed with the bill. Publicly, the government has said it will send the bill to committee, although it won’t say when.
“It is true many Conservatives have significant hesitations about the bill,” said one lobbyist about caucus support. An Angus Reid released a poll recently showing that Canadians in provinces most opposed to the bill are Alberta, Ontario, and the Atlantic region.
It’s been a bill almost 10 years in the making. The former Liberal government introduced a similar bill in 2005, and the Conservatives have introduced four bills in two Parliamentary sessions on the same issues, but all these bills died on the Order Paper.
Because of the massive backlash, and opposition within the Conservative caucus to the bill, Mr. Comartin said there is speculation that the federal government will “drop it completely,” however, he said he doesn’t believe it will come to that.
It’s also actually something the police need to modernize their fight against organized crime, Mr. Comartin said.
“There are parts of that bill that we do in fact need,” he said. “All parties accept that, that’s the reality and we need to do it. I think they will bring it back, but what I hope they would do is that they would pull it completely, send it back to the drafters, take the sections out that are most offensive with regard to the warrantless searches, convert them to warrant searches by a judicial figure and then bring it back in that form.”
Mr. Garneau agreed, saying “the world has changed dramatically” with respect to technology that allows Canadians to communicate, but the bill has to be done properly with privacy and Charter Rights in mind. The Liberals used their opposition day motion last Tuesday to debate the subject, and the motion passed unanimously in the House. Mr. Garneau said that means the government knew the bill “was not ready to come forward” and needs to be revised.
“I think they realized that, ‘I think we need to step back a moment here.’ If it had not been in my opinion and this is a very significant point, for the public outcry, I think they would’ve just steamrolled over it like they do everything else, and said, ‘We’ll use time allocation, we’ll just push it through,’” he said. “But they realized … that because there was such a massive outcry from the public, they said, ‘Oh, we don’t think it’s wise for us to proceed at this time, maybe we do need to reconsider it.’”
Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, Ont.) said that the government still intends to move it to committee before second reading and will accept amendments, and denied the bill is in purgatory.
“We’re going to hear experts on the bill on all sides of the bill and we’ll work with Parliamentarians to make sure a bill comes forward that in fact provides adequate protections for Canadians while at the same time ensures that those that would target children and others that would use the internet for predatory purposes are in fact apprehended by police,” he said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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