Police and passwords

Handing over the electronic password to your computer or cellphone to police could give them more access to your personal information than turning over the key to your house.

That’s why Canadians must carefully guard their privacy rights when considering any proposal to make it easier for law-enforcement officials to rummage through their digital data.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is calling for a public discussion on how to strike the right balance between the need for privacy and the need to give police adequate tools to fight all sorts of Internet- and computerrelated crime.

It’s a debate that’s long overdue. And it’s one that cannot be delayed much longer in light of a high-profile call from the country’s police chiefs for a new law that would force people to hand over electronic passwords, albeit with the permission of a judge.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police argues quite rightly that electronic devices are being used in the commission of all sorts of crime — from fraud to child abuse — and law enforcement is struggling to keep up. It notes that Canada has no law to compel someone to provide a password or encryption key during an investigation.

The trick is to find a way to give police the powers they really need while safeguarding the right to privacy, as well as constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure. Reasonable and probable grounds of a potential crime must be shown in a warrant. It can’t be a fishing expedition. The warrant would have to describe exactly what police are looking for.

Police should look at all the other leads available to them before requesting a warrant for a password. They are right to want the tools they need to protect citizens from online criminal threats. But Canadians should not have to toss away personal freedoms to achieve that goal.

Toronto Star