Tag: Canada

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Rogers to require warrants for police requests

Rogers to require warrants for police requests:

In the wake of a landmark court ruling last month that upheld Canadians’ right to online privacy, telecommunications companies are tightening their policies on when they will share customer information with police and government authorities.

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The move by one of Canada’s biggest cellphone, Internet and home-phone companies comes as the federal government works to pass legislation that academics and privacy advocates warn will erode protections around Canadians’ personal information. The Conservatives’ anti-cyberbullying bill is still before the House of Commons, but if passed in its current form, Bill C–13 would give legal immunity to telecommunications companies that voluntarily hand subscriber information to police and other public officials.

However, if telecom providers refuse to voluntarily disclose information without a warrant or court order, that could weaken the effect of the legislation, said Christopher Parsons, a research fellow with Citizen Lab, part of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

“Rogers’s decision shows even though that liability shield is being offered, some telecoms may decline to take advantage of it,” he said Wednesday. “Rogers is not the entire industry, of course. But if we see [others] start to take a similar position, maybe that would defray the impact of C–13, although it wouldn’t mean that C–13 was a better law.”

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The Citizen Lab’s Mr. Parsons said Rogers’s policy shift is a positive step. “This is just making it really clear to their subscribers that no matter what interpretation [of the ruling] the authorities take, Rogers’s interpretation is going to be: You need to come with a warrant.”

Rogers, TELUS, and TekSavvy have all now changed their policies: no court order, no data. It’s good to see these companies taking seriously their duties to protect subscriber data from government overreach. Now, if only they can improve on how they respond to subscribers’ requests for their personal information…

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Police and bylaw enforcement may be tracking your licence plate for parking data

Police and bylaw enforcement may be tracking your licence plate for parking data:

Calgary resident Linda McKay-Panos doesn’t venture downtown often, but a city database knows where and when she parked her car during 10 visits over the past four years.

Each day, parking enforcement officers drive the city’s streets in cars equipped with cameras designed to scan licence plates and identify parking scofflaws. Even if no violation has been committed, the city still holds on to data showing the time and location the vehicle was spotted, as well as a photo of the vehicle.

As use of licence-plate scanning technology grows in Canada among bylaw enforcement agencies and police departments there is no consistency as to how long such data is retained or who it’s shared with.

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The technology is becoming a “mass surveillance” tool and demands better oversight, said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab specializing in technology and privacy issues.

“It doesn’t matter that there are positive intentions behind this. It’s a surveillance system,” he said.

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Even if police have a reason to sift through the stored data, the fact that the data consists of plate information belonging to people who are innocent of wrongdoing is troublesome, Parsons said.

“I don’t think people go around their daily lives with the expectation that my movements are going to be monitored because at some point in the future I may be of interest to the police.”

The whole article is important, and worth the read, and discloses the massive variance in how vehicular surveillance is happening across Canada.

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Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia

Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia:

VICE Exclusive: Canadian political staffers are using their work time to delete large sections of Wikipedia articles in order to remove controversies, misinformation, and unpleasant truths.

Surprising? No. Sad? Kinda. Reason to ban House of Commons IP addresses from editing Wikipedia? Almost certainly.

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Privacy and surveillance: Eight things every Canadian should know

Last night CJFE hosted a panel discussion, “Should Surveillance Scare You?” at the NOW Lounge in Toronto.

The event, moderated by Toronto Star National Security Reporter Michelle Shephard, featured Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the Munk School’s Citizen Lab, in conversation with Wesley Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. The panelists lent their voices and views to the emerging debate over issues of surveillance, intelligence, and national security in a Canadian context.

Below are eight key takeaways from the conversation, which addressed everything from why Canadians should care about surveillance to what you can do to protect yourself online.

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This App Helps Reveal What Personal Data Is Stored by Canadian ISPs

This App Helps Reveal What Personal Data Is Stored by Canadian ISPs:

To find out what people could expect to learn by using the Access My Info tool, I spoke to one of the main people behind it: Chris Parsons, a post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

“The privacy tool should let individuals know what information is being collected, and what’s being stored,” he said. “Additionally, telecoms’ responses should be informative if somebody wants to ask ‘have you exposed my information to government or another entity.”

Parsons and the team plan to crowdsource the replies that telecoms provide to users to gain a much better understanding of just what’s being held onto by service providers. Presently, it’s not exactly clear if ISPs track the sites we visit, or how long our mobile phone texts are stored.

Will the tool let users know if their data has been handed over to the police without a warrant? “Maybe,” said Parsons. “Companies would have to ask police before letting us know, so as not to jeopardize any ongoing investigations.” The same goes for finding out which agencies have had access to our information.

In any case, Parsons said, finding out what information could potentially be shared with authorities is the first giant step towards an informed discussion about privacy in Canada.

“This is our information, and we have a right to understand how it’s being managed. It’s not clear from the companies how they’re doing it. They don’t tell us,” he told me.

Parsons made it clear that the way the Access My Info tool works is very simple. It’s really just using existing legal powers available to citizens and bringing them into the digital world. The Citizen Lab had already released a template letter for doing the same thing, but the tool makes it even easier auto-fill request forms.

Moreover, Access My Info is based on an open platform. As a result, it can be reconfigured to send the same kinds of legal requests for information to all kinds of companies: credit card companies, banks, stores, or even car companies.

Parsons pointed to the example of OnStar, General Motors’ in-car service. Because it tracks the car’s location and other data, OnStar has proved a valuable resource for law enforcement. Thanks to this new tool, Canadians could soon be petitioning GM to find out how long their location data is stored.

 

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Canadians Don’t Trust the Harper Government’s New Cyberbullying Bill

Canadians Don’t Trust the Harper Government’s New Cyberbullying Bill:

Canadians were largely unmoved by the Edward Snowden leaks and the disclosure of mass surveillance programs like PRISM, with few showing any serious worries about domestic government surveillance in a poll by Abacus Data in June 2013. But now a new poll by Forum Research suggests Canadians are growing suspicious of the latest Conservative cyberbullying bill C–13, with most rejecting a piece of legislation many think is more about beefing up government surveillance powers than protecting teens from bullies.

The poll asked over 1400 Canadian adults if they agreed with the central provisions of the bill, with three quarters disagreeing with the Harper government, and just one in seven approving. Disapproval went across gender and social status.

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“I think that the survey demonstrates, once again, that Canadians are very interested in privacy issues,” said Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab, a group that monitors surveillance issues.

“The fact that there is such low support for C–13, even amongst Conservative voters, speaks to the partisanship that the current government has demonstrated in trying to advance the legislation,“ he said.

To Parsons, the poll is reflective of Canadians growing interest with privacy issues. He thinks Canadians expect there to be legitimate checks and balances on government intelligence-gathering powers, with C–13 sorely lacking even the most basic oversight mechanisms.

 

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Want to put a snooping government back in its place? Click here

Want to put a snooping government back in its place?:

A new app helps people create compelling and legally solid requests to ISPs for the personal information the company has about them. I suggest that anyone who cares about their privacy use it to learn to familiarize themselves with what data is being held by the telecoms they’re patronizing and when that data is being shared. (You’ll find the tool at Openmedia.ca/myinfo.)

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The new way Canadians can discover the data ISPs are collecting

The new way Canadians can discover the data ISPs are collecting:

Canadians concerned about their online privacy have a new way to find out whether their telecom provider is collecting information about them – and sharing it with third parties like government entities.

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“What we’re trying to do as researchers is identify what kind of data telecommunications companies in Canada collect, obtain, and process, and disclose to third parties,” said Dr. Christopher Parsons, a fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs’ Citizen Lab.

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The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last Friday that police need a search warrant to get information from Internet service providers about their subscribers’ identities during investigations.

Privacy experts believe the ruling will force Internet service providers to change their practices on voluntary warrantless disclosure.

“The government will no longer be able to use the voluntary disclosure regime,” Parsons said.

“I think it’s a real demonstration that the need to keep people safe in Canada doesn’t mean we need to set aside their privacy rights.”

For now, though, Parsons is hoping Canadians use the tool to help gain a better understanding of the scale of information collected about them. He said it will also demonstrate which third parties are potentially accessing telecom companies’ data stores.

Potential third parties range from law enforcement like the RCMP, provincial, and municipal police, to government agencies like CSIS, CSEC and the CRA, Parsons said.

Check out and use the Access My Info tool to learn what information your telecom provider collects, retains, processes, and discloses about you.

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Supreme Court decision cheered by online privacy proponents

Supreme Court decision cheered by online privacy proponents:

Supreme Court ruled on Friday that police must seek judicial approval before they can request data about individuals’ internet identities, even in the case of serious crimes.

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“This is an amazing ruling for Canadians who are concerned about privacy,” said Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and a frequent critic of government policy on electronic privacy.

Recent revelations of widespread internet surveillance by police, not just in Canada but across much of the world, have caused alarm among academics and others concerned about lack of information around the extent to which governments snoop on citizens.

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In response to rising public concern, Canada’s telecom sector has for the first time begun disclosing details about the number and type of requests they’ve received. Rogers Communications Inc. and TekSavvy Solutions Inc. recently came forward and others are expected to follow.

The disclosures suggest a close relationship among police and at least some telecoms, where authorities routinely ask for and are given information about individual customers, typically IP addresses and phone numbers, though sometimes also the contents of email conversations.

The Supreme Court ruling means that at the very least, getting access to customer data is going to become a lot more time consuming for the police and as a result “the enormous volume of requests would have to go down,” said Mr. Parsons.

 

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Police investigations show even BlackBerry messages can be intercepted

Police investigations show even BlackBerry messages can be intercepted:

Touted as one of the most secure ways to communicate, BlackBerry smartphones have been put in the spotlight after several police investigations said they were able to track criminals who used the device’s encrypted technology.

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“It’s a problem in the way that BlackBerry has marketed some of its services to the consumer market,” said Christopher Parsons, a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which specializes on how privacy is affected by digital surveillance.

“It’s a very difficult security posture and probably one that most users … don’t fully understand.”

Parsons said many BlackBerry owners assume incorrectly that their smartphones meet the same standards as BlackBerrys used by major corporations and the U.S. government, even though they’re not operating on the same high-level security servers that have come to define the company’s advantage over its competitors.