Police Chiefs spend tax dollars to lobby for warrantless online surveillance

Although the push for this unprecedented expansion of electronic surveillance powers began nearly 13 years ago, no examples of its need have been presented publicly so far.

Leading legal and privacy experts (see http://openmedia.ca/screening) are calling the bill an unprecedented and unjustified expansion of policing powers. The CACP itself admits that lack of justification; their email states that they could not find a “sufficient quantity” of credible examples for a version of the legislation that was tabled two years ago.

One of the only attempts at providing evidence came in 2009 from former Conservative Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan. That year, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist filed Access to Information requests that revealed that the minister’s example—a kidnapping case in which police waited 36 hours to get the information they needed to obtain a warrant—did not involve requests to Internet service providers for any of the information that the online spying bills would guarantee.

“The online spying bills are a solution in search of a problem,” says OpenMedia.ca Executive Director Steve Anderson. “I’m sure Canadians don’t appreciate their tax dollars going toward the CACP’s lobbying efforts, especially when the result could be legislation that would create invasive, costly, and poorly thought-out online spying.”

The Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, has vehemently defended the online spying bills, claiming that they are necessary to ensure that law enforcement has the tools it needs to combat online crime. However without credible evidence demonstrating how the current law has impeded investigations, Canadians have little reason to believe that the online spying bills are necessary to keep the law up-to-date with emerging technologies.

Current legislation already grants ISPs the options to disclose customer name and address information, and gives police permission to bypass warrants in emergency situations. The new legislation would provide access to the private data of any Canadian, at any time, without a warrant.

About OpenMedia.ca

OpenMedia.ca is a non-profit organization that safeguards the open and affordable Internet. The group works towards informed & participatory digital policy.

About the Stop Online Spying Coalition

The Stop Online Spying campaign is supported by a group of public interest organizations, civil liberties groups, businesses, and concerned academics that have come together to encourage the government to reconsider "Lawful Access" legislation. The group points out that this type of legislation enables warrantless surveillance that is invasive, excessive and costly. Over 75,000 Canadians have signed the Stop Online Spying petition at http://StopSpying.ca.

Contact

Lindsey Pinto
Communications Manager, OpenMedia.ca
778-238-7710
[email protected]

More Information

For links to supporting articles, please visit http://openmedia.ca/stopspying/resources#links

The Email From CACP

As you know, the Government of Canada will likely be introducing lawful access bills early in 2012.

The Law Amendments Committee (LAC) and the Lawfully Authorized Electronic Surveillance (LAES) sub/committee have held the lead for the CACP over the past 12 years as we urged successive governments to enact this type of legislation. There is much support across parliament for these Bills however, there are some significant critics of the Bills and the LAC and LAES are busy advocating on your behalf to both inform the public and answer criticism.

One criticism directed from civil liberties and privacy advocates is that the burden by the police to demonstrate the need this legislation has not been met. While we are confident we have made our case to government, it remains important that we make our case to Canadians as a whole. This is especially important in the area of access to subscriber information or what is commonly referred to as "Customer Name and Address" (CNA). The Bill will contain a provision which permits certain designated police officers to compel Internet Service Providers and Telecommunications Service Providers to produce this type of information upon demand and without a warrant. There is also an audit requirement in place with regard to reporting back to government when such requests for information are made. Although the present state of the law is that such information does not require a warrant and can be provided to police voluntarily, the experience by your investigators is that compliance with requests is inconsistent and at times obstructionist.

This Bill is a key tool needed to rectify this problem but has attracted criticisms based primarily on misinformation. The CACP is working hard to counter this misinformation with key examples of the importance of timely and consistent access to CNA by the police. To that end, the LAC has asked the Planning, Research and Audit Section of the Vancouver Police Department to coordinate the collection of actual examples where access to CNA has either provided an effective and important aspect to an investigation or, in the alternative, where refusal by a company to provide the information has hindered an investigation or threatened public safety.

We are aware that a similar request was made approximately 2 years ago, but the report written at that time lacked a sufficient quantity of good examples. We recognize that some of these examples provide confidential operational information and your investigators are therefore reluctant to share the details. However, this type of information is key to countering ill-informed criticism. It is imperative that we gather examples that can support the need for this legislation in the eyes of government, privacy groups, media, police and especially the public. The seriousness of this cannot be understated. We are therefore seeking your support in gathering this information by instructing your members on the vital importance of providing the information to help bring these Bills into law. This, while also finding a way to protect operational information and at the same time allowing us to inform the public and other stakeholders.

We would respectfully ask that you direct the appropriate persons in your organization to assist on a priority basis by January 20, 2012. All that is required is written response, either in the form of an e-mail message or a document attached to an e-mail.

The contacts at the Planning, Research and Audit Section of the Vancouver Police Department to reply to are:

Sincerely,

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Deputy Chief Constable
Investigation Division
Vancouver Police Department
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