Tag: Canada

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Police could see tax info without warrant under proposed law

Police could see tax info without warrant under proposed law:

Police would be able to see Canadians’ private tax information without the use of a warrant under a proposed government law. If it’s passed, the Canada Revenue Agency could voluntarily hand over a taxpayer’s data to police and the citizen would never be notified. The change is proposed in the Conservatives’ 375-page omnibus budget bill through a clause that amends the Income Tax Act.

Omnibus legislation: the most efficient way of pushing through massive changes to the structure of Canada’s laws without most people (including experts) fully appreciating the extent to which things are about to change.

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For Canada’s Spies, Your Data Is Just a Phone Call Away

For Canada’s Spies, Your Data Is Just a Phone Call Away:

“I have recently had to deal with a client who had a request from CSIS for information,” said a Canadian lawyer who asked to remain anonymous. The lawyer and client asked CSIS to put the request in writing so it could properly consider the request. “CSIS said ‘it is against our policy to put those requests in writing.’”

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Penney says he tried to log onto his client’s account, only to find that the password wasn’t working. He recovered the account to discover someone changed it. Penney brought that fact to the judge and discovered the culprit was an officer in the Saskatchewan Internet Child Exploitation Unit. The officer sent a PIPEDA request to Gigatribe requesting the password.

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Sean Carter, a Toronto lawyer who has experience with warrantless disclosure, said off-the-books requests are not exactly uncommon. “They hate putting it in writing,” he said. “It’s so hard to follow the trail back to the actual request.” Carter pointed out that if they obtain data from a company, and use that to put together evidence for a production order or warrant, nobody would ever be the wiser that they obtained the data in the first place.

Warrantless access to information isn’t just used to extract data from telcos, but from a litany of other ‘telecommunications service providers.’

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Cyber-bullying, privacy measures should be dealt with separately

Cyber-bullying, privacy measures should be dealt with separately:

“I am concerned about some of the other unrelated provisions that have been added to the bill in the name of Amanda … and all of the children lost to cyberbullying attacks,” she told the committee. “I don’t want to see our children victimized again by losing privacy rights.

“We should not have to choose between our privacy and our safety. We should not have to sacrifice our children’s privacy rights to make them safe from cyberbullying, sextortion and revenge pornography.”

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Carol Todd showed a tremendous amount of courage Tuesday. The government should honour her request to split out the cyber-bullying provisions, accept the NDP’s offer to fast-track them, and then turn its attention to finding a more reasonable solution to fighting online threats.

Based on comments during that hearing, I and highly doubtful the government of Canada will split the legislation in two. Still, we can always hope…

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Op-Ed: The circular, peculiar state of CSEC oversight (Includes interview)

Op-Ed: The circular, peculiar state of CSEC oversight (Includes interview):

Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) is insulated from meaningful oversight. This article explains how the agency avoids scrutiny, and what you can do to encourage change.

One of the better articles in recent past on CSEC. Highly recommended.

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Privacy watchdog calls for reforms but ministers stay silent

Privacy watchdog calls for reforms but ministers stay silent:

The federal privacy watchdog’s concerns appear to be falling on deaf ears in the government, with three cabinet ministers yet to respond to her calls for reform.

(…)

While Clement has agreed to work with the commissioner, it’s not clear if her other recommendations will be entertained by the government. Chris Parsons, a privacy scholar with the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto, said the government has little incentive to change the current system or increase oversight.

“As revelations come out, that could be hurtful to government,” Parsons said. “There’s an understandable political value in not (enhancing) these audit powers. You can just imagine the first audit is performed and it reveals very high amounts of personal information being collected from various sources … . It could be politically unhelpful.”

My money is on the government quietly hoping the public and media just forget about this issues through the summer, given that they’ll be breaking from Parliament soon for BBQ season.

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Is social media info reliable?

Is social media info reliable?:

Christopher Parsons of Citizen Lab says the government’s use of social media to obtain information is filled with pitfalls.

I much preferred this interview over the one with CBC; in particular, the final discussion is helpful: Canadians want a responsible and transparent government, not one that is opaque and operates counter to Canadian values.

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Government snooping on social media may breach Privacy Act

Government snooping on social media may breach Privacy Act:

Those are questions the government hasn’t answered, said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which focuses on human rights, IT and global security research.

“This is information that’s been collected without Canadians knowing, and as the privacy commissioner noted, without clear reason,” said Parsons, an expert on state surveillance tools.

“This government is saying they should be able to access public information just like anybody else, but that confuses how Canadian law works.”

Parsons said, once information is made public, Canadians maintain a “privacy interest” in the material.

Without a doubt, this is the most comprehensive piece to date on the federal government snooping on Canadians’ social media accounts.

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The Canadian Government Is Creeping on Your Facebook

The Canadian Government Is Creeping on Your Facebook:

Christopher Parsons, a cybersurveillance researcher at the Canadian nonprofit Citizen Lab, said the kind of social media surveillance used varied depending on the government agency. Law enforcement might use specialized and automated tools developed to monitor and react to events on social media, while political officials might be checking to see if citizens like new policies.

Parsons agreed that “some federal agencies are likely breaking the Privacy Act, because data is being collected without clear purpose,” he told me in an email. “Canadians don’t lose all their privacy rights just because data is made public and, unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to realize this nuance of Canadian law. Hopefully they’ll come to their senses soon.“

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U.S. tech firms routinely denying Canada’s requests for personal data

U.S. tech firms routinely denying Canada’s requests for personal data:

Transparency reports from Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google suggest that the U.S. companies are being far more careful with Canadian data than even Canadian telecoms.

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“The volume of (Canadian) requests, in the absence of the need for judicial warrants or other court oversight, illustrates the routine nature with which government and law enforcement can easily get (Canadian) telecoms to hand over personal information,” said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

The transparency report numbers remain suspicious, and we need to investigate how accurate they actually are in recording Canadian requests for data when our requests are being served by US law enforcement agencies.

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Expert on Ottawa’s social media snooping

Expert on Ottawa’s social media snooping:

State surveillance expert Christopher Parsons shares his concerns over the way Ottawa collects information from social media

I look like junk (it was a long day and other variables before the taping) but I think I made some pertinent points, at least.