In recent weeks, Canada’s police chiefs have launched an aggressive campaign – using online videos, Twitter blasts and letters to the editor – to jumpstart discussion about controversial Bill C-30.
Privacy advocates, however, say they’re still concerned police are over-reaching with their push for warrantless access to certain information held by service providers.
Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst in London, Ont., said in an interview Wednesday that it is easy for critics to stoke fear and uncertainty. He also acknowledged that Canada lags behind other countries in modernizing law enforcement powers.
But the bill in its current form invites “Big Brother speculation,” he said.
Levy said the government needs to clarify exactly what types of information police will be permitted to obtain without a warrant and what safeguards will be in place to make sure that information doesn’t get in the wrong hands.
“(Public Safety Minister) Vic Toews needs to go back to Parliament, go back to the Canadian people and address precisely where those gaps are and how he intends to fill them,” he said.
A spokesman for Toews would only say this week that the legislation is undergoing a “thorough review.”
There have been multiple attempts over the years to update lawful access legislation.
The most recent proposal – Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act – was introduced in February but didn’t go beyond first reading.
Toews came under fire when he suggested that opposition critics can either “stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
Tim Smith, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said this week the association decided to resurrect discussion on Bill C-30 after becoming concerned over the summer that the government was going to let the bill “die on the order paper” or that the government might introduce a watered-down version of the bill.
“We were given no indication that they were moving forward with C-30. We then made the decision to re-launch our effort. Out of courtesy we made them aware of the launch a few days before,” Smith said.
“Since the launch of the campaign, there has been some discussion (with the government), but nothing towards firmly establishing the direction the government will take on this.”
He said one of the key aims of the campaign is to clear up “misinformation” about the bill’s intent.
According to the association, all police are looking for is more consistent and timely access to “basic” cell phone and Internet subscriber information , such as a person’s name, address and phone number – stuff found in a phone book.
Currently, getting access to such information varies depending on the service provider, the association says. Some providers require a warrant, others don’t.
Delays can impede investigators’ ability to go after cyber bullies, child predators, terrorists and money launderers, the association says.
The notion that police are looking to acquire new powers to spy on people’s online activities without a warrant is false, the association says. Getting access to the contents of people’s emails or the web pages they’ve visited still requires a warrant under the proposed legislation.
“Do police in Canada support ‘unwarranted Internet surveillance’ or ‘snooping’? Absolutely not!” the association’s president, Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu, wrote in one recently published letter.
While acknowledging that police powers are not keeping up with changes in technology, privacy advocates say they still have concerns.
In a letter published last week, Jennifer Stoddart, the privacy commissioner of Canada, said the suggestion that information attached to an IP address is equivalent to information found in a phone book, “vastly underestimates” what actually might be there.
“Unlike a phone book, information behind an IP address is not generally publicly available and can unlock doors to much more information about people,” she wrote.
The privacy commissioners of Ontario, B.C. and Alberta issued a similar statement this week about subscriber data, saying that “new analytic tools and algorithms now make it possible, not only to link those pieces of information with an identifiable individual, but also to combine information from multiple sources, ultimately creating a detailed personal profile.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Douglas Quan
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