Tag: Telecommunications

Poor record of fed requests to telecom companies for Canadians’ data:

Many law-enforcement agencies do not track requests for private information, making the system vulnerable to abuse

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“Many departments say they don’t have the information and say they don’t keep track of these things,” said NDP MP Charmaine Borg, whose questions led to the release of response documents. “… And if that is the case, that brings up to me a huge problem. How are we supposed to ensure there are no abuses, and that government agencies are making these requests within very extreme circumstances, when they don’t even keep track of when they’re making them?”

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Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, said non-federal agencies, such as police forces, are also seeking data. “Even if we got good numbers from all the federal government, there is a huge, huge part of the surveillance iceberg that’s yet to be seen,” he said.

It’s important to keep in mind that much of the attention concerning government surveillance has been about how federal agencies access telecommunications data, and how proposed lawful access legislation would extend and expand such access. While this attention is deserved there is an entirely different set of actors that have yet to be examined in any sustained way: provincial agencies and municipal organizations.

Canadian ISPs Won’t Tell You Much About Your Own Data:

Ever wondered how long your telecom provider retains your user data? Or if law enforcement has requested your records?

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This “Access My Info” tool was launched in June, and now, responses have started to trickle back in.

“We’re starting to be able to compare and contrast some of the larger company’s responses,” Parsons said.

Using either Parsons’ form letter, or the AMI tool, subscribers can request that their telecom providers clarify the types of data they collect, tell them how long they retain such data, provide copies of relevant records, and whether their information has been disclosed to law enforcement or government agencies. But perhaps unsurprisingly, policies and practices tend to differ from one provider to the next.

“I think that the letters from TekSavvy are comprehensive. They’re not trying to play games,” Parsons said, referring to the responses sent out by one of Canada’s smaller  internet service providers. “They’re actually taking seriously the questions that individuals are making and not trying to blow them off. That stands in variance with, I would say, almost every other member of the industry.”

Parsons said that in other responses, “the detail that is present, or is more often the case, absent, is really quite breathtaking. The only thing I have from Bell is a one page sheet that’s almost worse than useless. It almost doesn’t respond to the customer’s question.”

Parsons told me that discerning how long certain types of data are retained has proven particularly hard, for example.

“Retention schedules matter. How long you store data should not be a top secret corporate secret, because it’s about citizens,” said Parsons. ”Here we’re talking about basic, basic, basic privacy information. How long do you store information about me? None of these companies aside from TekSavvy have tried to comprehensively respond to that question.“

This is a detailed piece by Matt Braga, and one that I’d highly recommend if you’re interested what the Telecom Transparency Project has (and hasn’t) learned about Canadian telecommunications companies’ data retention schedules.

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.

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.