New Bill Could Allow Police Access To Internet Service Providers
2009 Jun. 17th
by Evan Kelly
On Thursday Canada's Public Safety Minister, Peter Van Loan, will put forward a bill that could force Internet service providers to allow police access to digital conversations without a warrant.
Richard Rosenberg is a Professor Emeritus at UBC and a civil libertarian. He says he has many concerns about the bill and doesn't want to see it get through the House of Commons. He says the reach of police into cyberspace can have effects people aren't prepared for. "This is now a formal way in which the government will determine who you're in contact with, how often and for what purpose. If identified that someone or some area you’re in contact with as being a danger, you're then connected to that."
He says Internet service providers could in effect become pawns of the police which leads to technical problems as well. Rosenberg says a law in Finland made ISP's hold onto information for two years which became a storage issue for the company.
Staff Sergeant Janis Gray with the RCMP's Integrated Child Exploitation Unit, says the bill will provide the police an essential tool in their fight against child porn on the Internet. "Without access to subscriber information, a lot of times our investigations cannot go any further, or we have to result in more expensive long-term investigative techniques." Gray says the public doesn't need to worry about invasion of privacy because getting information from an ISP is only one small step in an investigation. She also says it's not like police knock down doors as soon as they have a name connected to an Internet address.
