Good news for the Canadian internet today. The Conservative government is pulling the plug on Bill C-30, the infamous online surveillance bill that would have allowed law enforcement access to the telephone and internet records of citizens without any warrants.
Specifically, Section 17 of the bill gave “any police officer,” including RCMP and CSIS agents, the ability to request Canadians’ online records for any vague suspicions they may have had.
Originally known as the Lawful Access Act, it saw huge pushback from privacy advocates and pretty much any law-abiding citizen who didn’t want the government in their grill with no accountability. Naturally, the next step was to rename it the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews challenging people to “either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
Tens of thousands of Canadians, evidently, stood with the child pornographers.
Today Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the bill is finally dead.
“We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 and any attempts that we will continue to have to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures in C-30, including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability in their systems,” he told reporters.
Instead of the sweeping (and secret) privacy invasions of Bill C-30, the government will instead try to limit wiretapping to police officers and notify people whose communications have been intercepted within 90 days. There will also be annual reports on the use of the wiretaps.
Warrantless wiretaps will still be allowed but only for emergencies or cases of imminent harm.
Although this is all good news, another piece of legislation working through Parliament still raises privacy concerns. Bill C-12 will allow online services to share users’ personal information with law enforcement without notifying anyone. How readily ISPs, email providers and social networks will share this information remains to be seen, but the bill lists four instances when this might happen:
- identifying an injured, ill or deceased individual and communicating with their next of kin
- performing police services
- preventing, detecting or suppressing fraud
- protecting victims of financial abuse
The point is, the government really wants access to your online behaviour, and while C-30 is finally dead, C-12 could still be a backdoor for Vic Toews to creep on your Facebook profile.
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