Surveillance disclosures: worried feds, memo says

A move by telecommunications firms to be more forthcoming with the public about their role in police and spy surveillance could divulge “sensitive operational details,” a senior Public Safety official warned in a classified memo.

Company efforts to reveal more about police and intelligence requests — even broad numbers — would require “extensive consultations with all relevant stakeholders,” wrote Lynda Clairmont, senior assistant deputy minister for national and cybersecurity.

Clairmont’s note, released under the Access to Information Act, provided advice to deputy minister François Guimont on the eve of his one-hour April 17 meeting with representatives of Telus Corp. to discuss specifically what information the company was allowed to tell the public about electronic surveillance activities.

Telus released a so-called “transparency report” five months later, revealing it had received more than 103,000 official requests for information about subscribers in 2013.

Rogers Communications published a similar report in June — three months before Telus — becoming the first of the major Canadian telecom firms to issue one. Bell Canada, the other major company, has yet to release a report.

The internal Public Safety memo sheds new light on behind-thescenes tensions between government officials and industry amid pressure from privacy advocates and civil libertarians for details of law enforcement access to Canadians’ subscriber information, phone calls and email messages.

The demand for more transparency was fuelled by leaks from former American intelligence contractor Edward Snowden