Touted as a way to prevent terrorists and other criminals from communicating anonymously, the bill would force phone and Internet providers in the country to remove certain security restrictions that keep law enforcement at bay unless they obtain a warrant.
“Canada is well behind other nations,” Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said, referring to tools Canadian law-enforcement currently has to access private communication. “[For example,] Police must be able to stop the child pornographer [from] sending his disgusting images around this country and around the world.”
As it stands now, phone and Internet companies in Canada are allowed to choose whether communication over their channels can be given to law enforcement without a court order. The new bill would essentially allow officials to demand information without going through Canada’s court system, a move that has civil liberties groups concerned.
“The point here is, if the police can't be troubled with getting a warrant, it’s because they haven’t met the standard of reasonable and probable grounds to access the warrant,” Micheal Vonn, policy director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, said. “On some level, it is what we would call a fishing expedition.”
But McLellan and other government officials counter that the bill, known as the Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act, would allow only specific CSIS and other police officials to request such information. All requests, McLellan added, would require documentation that would be publicly available if motives were called into question.
That’s not good enough for University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist, however, who blasted the Act in a recent written commentary to local press.
“Unfortunately, the bill does precisely what privacy advocates warned against by increasing surveillance and decreasing oversight,” Geist wrote.
The Act also would require communication service providers install message intercept technology into their systems, so that accessing communication would be easier for law enforcement.
Who would pay for such technology has yet to be determined.