Recent reports indicate that the federal government is pursuing legislation that would allow it to obtain the data of Canadians without a warrant — a program that was previously deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The documents that suggest this were obtained by Vice through access to information laws, which reveal the existence of a federal-provincial working group on cybercrime that recommended restarting the program.
This program allowed spy agencies to obtain Canadians’ information without a warrant from telecommunications companies and other organizations. While the government claimed that such legislation was only used to obtain basic subscriber information, information entered into the Supreme Court case indicated that the law was often used to obtain information that should require a warrant.
Canadian police chiefs and the RCMP have pushed for this legislation to be reinstated since 2014. However, lawyers and academics have countered that while it may seem reasonable to allow police to connect a phone number or IP address to a person or address, there needs to be some government oversight to prevent abuse.
View the documents obtained by Vice here.
Source: Vice News
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