Brother gets bigger
This week, we learned the federal government wants telecommunications companies to modify their networks to allow for far more extensive government wiretapping of private e-mail, Internet and telephone conversations. The move would represent an unprecedented invasion of Canadians’ privacy, and should be opposed on that basis.
At present, the courts issue approximately 2,000 warrants for wiretapping a year, but the government proposal would give law enforcement the ability to do upwards of 8,000 taps — a day. These sweeping extra powers for government snoops would open the door for all sorts of abuses, despite the government’s assurance that police will still have to get a warrant before tracking a cellphone call or computer exchange.
Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan says the changes are necessary for dealing with organized crime syndicates and terrorist organizations that communicate over the Internet. But these sorts of groups are the most likely to use cryptography to shield their conversations from police. Meanwhile ordinary Canadians, who do not have the time or inclination to apply such secretive measures, will be vulnerable to Big Brother-style 24 hour surveillance.
Before the federal government allows such a significant expansion of monitoring capability, it should spell out exactly how such powers would have prevented any of the violent crimes or acts of terror that have been committed in Canada.
We suspect that the government would have a difficult time finding even a few examples. In the United States, reports from the Administrative Office of United States Courts have shown that the majority of calls police intercept through wiretaps are innocent, and the majority of the wiretaps they place are used to investigate “moral” crimes, such as drug trafficking and gambling. Assuming the Canadian statistics are similar, we wonder, is it really worth sacrificing Canadians’ privacy so that the government may play thought police and crack down on essentially victimless crimes?
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Canadian government has ample reason to focus on preventing terrorism. But it should be doing so without resort to excessive intrusion into our private lives. At some point people may well start to ask who constitutes the real threat to Canadians’ cherished way of life.