Tech-savvy criminals make law update necessary, government says, but privacy advocates are opposed
Janice Tibbetts
Sun
Police will be given new powers to eavesdrop on Internet-based communications as part of a contentious government bill, to be announced Thursday, which Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said is needed to modernize surveillance laws crafted during “the era of the rotary phone.”
The proposed legislation would force Internet service providers to allow law enforcement to tap into their systems to obtain information about users and their digital conversations.
Police have lobbied for a new law for almost 10 years, saying that they need to access “Internet safe havens” for gangsters, sexual predators and terrorists.
“This is really not about the warrantless tracking of Canadians’ Internet use,” said Clayton Pecknold, of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Privacy advocates and civil libertarians, however, have vocally opposed the prospect of giving police “lawful access” to the digital conversations of Canadians by being able to access such things as their text messages, e-mails, web surfing habits and Internet phone lines.
“It is an issue that has proven to be very, very controversial,” said Michael Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa and public commentator on Internet legal issues.
“The consistent criticism and concern that has been expressed is that there has to be some evidence that there is a real problem here and in the past we haven’t seen that,” he said.
“Why is the status quo not good enough? What investigations have been impeded?”
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard recently warned that forcing ISPs to surrender information “is a serious step forward toward mass surveillance” that violates the rights of Canadians.
Van Loan’s bill has been posted on a notice paper of pending government legislation and it is expected to be tabled in the House of Commons before MPs break for their summer recess on Friday. He has scheduled a news conference for Thursday with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.
Earlier this year, Van Loan publicly stated his intentions to pursue legislation, which had been promised for years but relegated to a back burner by his predecessor, Stockwell Day.
When he was public safety minister, Day also promised that any federal initiative would require police to obtain a warrant to access personal information of users, such as names and addresses.
Pecknold said it is “an ongoing frequent occurrence” that police want to act to stop a crime, but they are blocked at the technological door at a time when criminals have shifted increasingly to online communications.
“Terrorist groups, pornographers and pedophile networks, illegal traffickers in weapons, drugs and human beings, money launderers and cyber criminals, Internet and telemarketing fraudsters all use technology to develop activities, perpetrate crimes and avoid detection,” the police chiefs said in a November 2008 position paper supporting a new law.
Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service already have the power to wiretap private communications, provided they have judicial authorization, but the law does not require ISPs to grant them access.
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