Vancouver police pledge support for Internet surveillance
Deputy chief says ‘ misinformation’ is fuelling opposition to bill
It’s more insidious than a wiretap. It allows police to massively monitor the net and build associations with the subscriber information they have on you and from there determine whether they have a case against you or not.
CHRISTOPHER PARSONS DOCTORAL CANDIDATE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
The Vancouver police department announced Monday its support for federal cybercrime legislation that critics say would give police extensive access to information about your activities on the Internet.
Vancouver police Deputy Chief Warren Lemcke, who is also co- chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Law Amendments Committee, blamed “misinformation” for a growing wave of protest against Bill C- 30, which was introduced in Ottawa last week.
“We believe the new legislation will assist the police with the necessary tools to investigate crimes while balancing, if not strengthening the privacy rights for Canadians through the addition of oversight not currently in place,” Lemcke told a news conference. “It will help law enforcement investigate and apprehend those who are involved in criminal activity while using new technologies to avoid apprehension due to outdated laws and technology.”
“It will allow for timely and consistent access to basic information to assist in investigations of criminal activity and other police duties in serving the public.”
Bill C- 30 stipulates that telecommunications service providers ( TSPS) must have monitoring and surveillance technology that will allow communications to be intercepted and recorded so the police can access them with a warrant.
“One of the most important things to remember is this bill does not allow the police to monitor phone calls, emails or Internet surfing without a warrant,” said Lemcke.
However, Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and ecommerce Law, points to a provision in Bill C- 30 that allows police to ask Internet service providers to voluntarily turn over subscriber emails and web surfing records.
In a blog post Monday, Geist said a provision in C- 30 “creates a voluntary warrantless system that would allow police to ask for the content of emails or web surfing habits and allow ISPS to comply with the request without fear of liability.”
Also under the new legislation police won’t need a warrant to compel ISP’S to turn over basic subscriber information including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Internet Protocol ( IP) addresses and the name of the service provider.
The legislation has drawn criticism from Internet users and privacy advocates, including Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and privacy commissioners across the country.
Privacy experts say basic subscriber information provides enough fodder for police to build extensive dossiers on Internet subscribers.
“It’s more insidious than a wiretap,” said Christopher Parsons, a doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria studying digital surveillance. “It allows police to massively monitor the net and build associations with the subscriber information they have on you and from there determine whether they have a case against you or not.”
While Public Safety Minister Vic Toews sought to play down privacy concerns over subscriber information by suggesting it gives police little more than they can get in a phone book, it’s information that can be used to build an extensive profile of an Internet user, according to privacy and security experts.
“The police are being misleading — they can do an awful lot with subscriber data,” said Parsons. “There are automated tools that cost from $ 10,000 to $ 100,000 that the police can use to start building a dossier, not just on one individual but on the people around that individual.
“This is all done without needing judicial warrants.”
Parsons used as an example of someone posting a comment on a blog using a pseudonym. If the quote was inflammatory or came to the attention of the police for some reason — for example the comments on Vancouver Sun crime writer Kim Bolan’s Real Scoop blog — the police could go to the website and ask for all the information the website has about the person who made the comment. That information would include an IP address, a numerical label that identifies the Internet account and would allow the police to get the full subscriber details of that account from the user’s Internet service provider.
“This isn’t just like picking up the phone book,” said Parsons. “It gives police the ability if you’ve been posting online to see where you’ve been posting, with what people and with what frequency. To suggest this is just “phone book information does a disservice to the public and is incredibly misleading.”
Opposition to the legislation is growing, with more than 105,000 people signing an online petition called Stop Online Spying, launched by the Vancouver Internet advocacy group Openmedia. ca.