Federal privacy law faces constitutional challenge:
In 2011, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association said its members received a total of 1.2 million requests in one year, and disclosed information about 780,000 customers.
The civil liberties group acknowledges that law enforcement may need access to some personal information in specific circumstances, but says the current law is “too broad.”
Cara Zwibel, a lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the sheer scale of the disclosures concerns her group and makes it question the legitimacy of the requests.
“We know that there are implications for people when this kind of information gets shared, there’s also a lack of transparency,” she told CBC News in an interview.
Zwibel noted that people have trouble finding out from their telecom provider if government agencies have asked about them, and the government isn’t clear about what it does with the information, including sharing with foreign governments. Meanwhile, some people find themselves on no-fly lists without knowing how or why.
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