A new bill is being proposed that would require telecommunications providers to give police subscriber information without a warrant. Currently they have a bill designed to allow the police and government access to specific information upon request. This allows them to view digital communications on email, phone, text, etc. The new bill has requested that the types of information available without a warrant from be moved to 11 from six. These six would be something like Name, Address, Email, Postal code, etc. The proposed new bill changes the amount and type of information that police need to justify searches. This violates Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects against unlawful search and seizure.
I understand the bill and can see the positives from this invasion in privacy but it is still an invasion of privacy. The police have claimed it is to find people who are suicidal or luring children over the internet. Currently they can request information from telecommunications service providers, but it is up to the company to decide if they will provide info without a warrant. Some service providers stated that they will only hand over the information in cases of child exploitation. A warrant will be required for extortion or robbery cases.
Right now there is a very small chance that the providers withhold information so this bill will not change very much in my opinion. "Law enforcement statistics show telecommunications providers comply with police requests voluntarily in 95 per cent of cases".
I believe there is a great opportunity for abuse of this system because any police officer can request customer data from telecommunications providers. Stephen Tanner, chief of Ontario's Kingston police wants to change this and that is a main focus of the new bill. The new bill says only trained, designated staff can make requests. There is still a chance for human error and some mischief but they will have to record the requests for audit purposes.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/02/15/technology-surveillance-bill-privacy.html
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