OTTAWA — Canada’s privacy watchdog is raising some concerns about a new cyberbullying bill introduced last week that she nonetheless calls a marked improvement over an earlier incarnation that the government ultimately scrapped in the wake of widespread criticism.
Jennifer Stoddart said she has concerns with some of the new investigative powers Bill C-13 gives police to freeze information so telecommunications service providers can’t delete it before police have had a chance to obtain a warrant. She’s also concerned about the “potentially large number of ‘public officers’ who would be able to use these significant new powers” and the “lack of accountability and reporting mechanisms to shed light on the use of (the) new investigative powers.”
While Stoddart spoke with Justice Department officials regarding recommendations contained in a report by federal, provincial and territorial justice and public safety ministers that ultimately gave rise to the bill, she said she was not consulted on the content of the bill itself before it was introduced.
“As for our preliminary observations on Bill C-13, we note that many troubling aspects of the former Bill C-30 have not been repeated, for example, warrantless access to personal information,” she said in a statement Thursday.
“We commend the government for recognizing the gravity of privacy intrusions online and for proposing action to address the issue of cyberbullying.”
Stoddart said she recognizes police need “up-to-date tools to fight online crime at a time of when technologies are changing rapidly,” but cautioned “this must be done in a way that respects Canadians’ fundamental right to privacy.”
Stoddart was a fierce critic of the government’s earlier Internet surveillance bill, which sought to give police access to subscriber information without a warrant and require telecommunication service providers to ensure they have the technical ability to allow police and spies to intercept messages and conversations.
The backlash against the bill only grew when then public safety minister Vic Toews told critics who were concerned about privacy that they could “either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”
The new bill, dubbed the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, does not include those two controversial provisions. The bill will make the distribution of sexually explicit images without a person’s consent a criminal offence and give police new tools to investigate Internet crimes so long as they obtain a warrant.
Critics have raised a number of concerns, particularly over clauses that address the theft of telecommunications services and possession of a device to obtain a telecommunication service, as well as another that appears to grant immunity from prosecution to telecom providers that voluntarily give up information to police.
Justice Department lawyers, however, clarified Thursday that those clauses existed previously and have merely been updated to reflect new technology and to ensure consistency.
They also addressed Stoddart’s concerns about the threshold under which police could use their new investigative powers. According to the bill, police could ask telecom providers to freeze information, including emails and text messages, if they have “reasonable grounds to suspect” a crime has or will be committed. Government lawyers indicated the higher threshold of “reasonable grounds to believe” a crime has been or will be committed will still come into play when the courts are asked to grant a warrant so police could actually obtain that frozen personal information.
Justice Minister Peter MacKay seemed to take exception to Stoddart’s contention that she was never consulted on the bill. A Conservative backbencher raised the issue during question period Thursday. MacKay appeared to suggest the meeting between Stoddart and Justice officials on the cyberbullying report was adequate consultation and that she was supportive of the proposed changes at that time.
“We have done our homework,” he argued. “This is a good bill that will help improve public safety online, especially for Canadian children.”
Meanwhile, the NDP has called for the bill to be split up so Parliament could deal with the new distribution of intimate images law separately from all the modernization and housekeeping provisions.
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