Border Bill Powers Would Allow Warrantless Police Requests to ‘Public Services’ of All Types ⇥ theglobeandmail.com
Marie Woolf, of the Globe and Mail, reporting on the extraordinarily broad provisions of Bill C-2:
New powers in the government’s border bill would allow the police and CSIS to request information on whether people have accessed services from abortion clinics, doctors, hotels and other entities without a warrant from a judge, experts warn.
There is no definition or obvious limitation on the services in question or the person who provides them – it could be a telecom provider, physician, hospital, library, educational institution, or financial institution. But why stop there? The provision is so broad that your dry cleaner or barber are captured by it. If served with the appropriate form, anyone who provides services is required to confirm whether they have provided services to any subscriber, client, account, or identifier. They must also disclose whether they have any information about the subscriber, client, account or identifier as well as advise where and when they provided the service. On top of that, they must advise when they started providing the service and list the names of any other person that may have provided other services.
Kate Robertson, of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab:
While Bill C-2 does not explicitly state that it is paving the way for new and expanded data-sharing with the United States or other countries, the legislation contains references to the potential for “agreement[s] or arrangement[s]” with a foreign state, and references elsewhere the potential that persons in Canada may become compelled by the laws of a foreign state to disclose information. Other data and surveillance powers in Bill C-2 read like they could have been drafted by U.S. officials.
Robertson and the Citizen Lab explain how this seems to be driven by compliance with the Second Additional Protocol to the Cybercrime Convention, but it could have far-reaching implications as currently drafted.