Tag: Surveillance

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A Three Front Legal Campaign: CSEC, Metadata and Civil Liberties – National Security Law Blog –

A Three Front Legal Campaign: CSEC, Metadata and Civil Liberties:

There are now three lawsuits in Canadian courts related to the Communications Security Establishment Canada’s intercept of metadata.  These are:

  • BC Civil Liberties Association’s action for a declaration in BC Superior Courtalleging that CSEC’s intercept activities violate sections 8 and 2 of the Charter.
  • BCCLA’s class action in Federal Court, brought “in order for those persons whose private communications and/or metadata have been intercepted to have access to remedies under s.24 of the Charter once the issues of the unconstitutionality of the impugned provisions, Authorizations and Directives are resolved in the [BC Supreme Court] Declaratory Action”.
  • Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA)’s application for a declaration in Ontario Superior Courtthat sections 7 and 8 of the Charter are violated by those provisions in the FederalPersonal Information and Protection of Electronic Documents Act(PIPEDA) that permit government agencies (including, it is alleged, CSEC) to obtain personal information from Canadian telecommunications companies with prior judicial authorization.

These cases overlap.  The BCCLA class action is intended to be derivative of its BC Superior Court declaratory action.  The CCLA case seems likely to engage the question of a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy of metadata in the possession of third party telecommunications providers.  That question must inevitably also arise in the BCCLA declaratory action.

If you track surveillance and national security issues in North America you know that litigation of these issues has been ongoing and active in the United States. An oft-heard critique of Canada has been ‘where is the litigation?’ As Craig Forcese notes, there are a series of important actions ongoing in Canada that may significantly affect how our signal intelligence agency conducts its business on behalf of Canadians.

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Declaration on mass surveillance calls for new privacy measures

Declaration on mass surveillance calls for new privacy measures:

One of the voices behind a new declaration on mass surveillance says Canada needs a commission of inquiry to ensure governments and corporations respect privacy in an era of big data.

While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment behind the Ottawa Statement, I remain unclear about how useful it is – when presenting the Statement to the media – to state that the current government of the day is unlikely to listen to anything the signatories have signed off on. If that’s the case, then what is the aim of the Statement itself?

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RCMP use of data may spark probe

RCMP use of data may spark probe:

Canada’s privacy watchdog is considering a formal review into the RCMP’s use of Canadians’ personal data gleaned from telecom and Internet companies without a warrant. The potential review comes after the Mounties admitted to Parliament in April that they do not track how often requests are made for “basic subscriber information” from telecom and Internet service providers.

At this point, there is a Supreme Court of Canada case concerning warrantless disclosure of data, a constitutional challenge being mounted against the section of Canadian commercial privacy law authorizing such disclosures, newspaper editorials calling for a Royal Commission on Spying (based, in part, on these warrantless disclosures), along with additional (related) legal, policy, and advocacy efforts to reform contemporary surveillance in Canada. Something in the current regime has to give.

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Federal privacy law faces constitutional challenge

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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Civil liberties group seeks to have parts of online surveillance law struck down

Civil liberties group seeks to have parts of online surveillance law struck down:

A national civil liberties group is challenging the constitutionality of a federal privacy law that allows Internet providers and other firms to disclose personal information to the government without a warrant.

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The association is joined in the court action by researcher Christopher Parsons, who has helped lead an effort to ask Canadian telecommunication companies when and how they hand customer information to police and security agencies.

The association says the consequences of allowing government to have and share personal information without the person’s knowledge or consent can be very serious and violate fundamental constitutional rights.

 

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Canada’s New Cyberbullying Law Is All About Surveillance

Canada’s New Cyberbullying Law Is All About Surveillance:

The Conservatives promised that transmission data would not include anything relating to the content of what Canadians are doing online. Fraser disagreed. He told the committee that it included everything from a user’s IP address, details on what computers and browsers are being used, the URL of the website, and ultimately, some level of content from what users are browsing.

Then he moved on to immunity—the complete legal protection for any company that voluntarily forks over Canadians’personal information to police, even without a warrant: “This provision, I believe, should be removed. It can’t be fixed, and will only encourage overreaching by law enforcement,” Fraser said.

Chu says that police have the onus to always take the least intrusive route to an investigation. He, however, incorrectly believed that companies would not have immunity if the requesting officer was acting in bad faith, like if a cop called up Bell to request his ex-wife’s call logs. The language in the bill is clear though: if a peace or public officer requests the information, and the company is legally allowed to disclose it, the company “does not incur any criminal or civil liability for doing so.”

The Tories admitted that, yes, companies can volunteer our personal data without a warrant, but, they maintained, those companies already have that ability. C-13, they argued, just codifies and clarifies it in the law.

However, re-wording the provision will make it a whole lot easier.

I think that the author is bullish in thinking that the legislation might be stopped, but then I was equally depressed at the prospect of C-30 being halted.

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CJFE Annual General Meeting 2014 and Public Debate: Should Surveillance Scare You?

On June 17, 2014 I’ll be debating John Adams, the former Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC). It should be a lively back and forth!

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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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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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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.