Vancouver's deputy police chief says the controversial Bill C-30 does not infringe on the privacy of Canadians, and if anything, will serve to enhance it.
The bill was introduced in the House of Commons last week, prompting a nationwide wave of outrage. Critics fear the legislation would give police too much power to tap into their online activities.
The controversy grew even stronger after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews suggested that people who are against the bill are siding with child pornographers.
Today, VPD Deputy Chief Warren Lemcke, who co-chairs the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) Law Amendments Committee admitted the proposed bill has taken quite a beating in recent days, but blamed "misinformation" about the bill for the frustration running rampant among Canadians.
“People need to read the bill. People need to understand it,” says Lemcke. “They think it gives the police ability to pry into their personal communications. It does not. We still need warrants."
"The new legislation will give police the necessary tools to investigate crimes while balancing, if not strengthening, the privacy rights of Canadians with an addition of an oversight not currently in place.”
Some of the safeguards provisioned in the bill, Lemcke says, will ensure better police accountability, and include strict limits on the number of law enforcement officials permitted to request information, their training and strict procedures for recording, reporting and auditing of such requests. The requests will also be put before public safety ministers, privacy commissioners and federal and provincial authorities.
But the bottom line, according to Lemcke, is the bill does not allow police to monitor emails, phone calls or Internet surfing without a warrant.
“A judge decides who gets to tap into a phone call. The only time that police can put a wiretap up is in exigent circumstances.”
Tom Stamatakis, the president of the Canadian Police Association, says the legislation requires that only certain people within the police organization are designated to make the decisions on when the circumstances dictate such action.
“The new bill does require that upon request of a police officer, a TSP must freeze data for 21 days while police get a warrant to examine that data.”
He says that can be of paramount importance in cases involving kidnappings and murder investigations, as it does take time to get a warrant for investigation reasons and the preservation of data keeps it from being erased.
“There is nothing in the bill that requires the provider to specifically monitor the traffic of an individual back to the law enforcement agency. It is not the collection of; it is the freezing of existing data.”
Lemcke says an important aspect of the bill concerns telecommunication service providers, some of whom don’t have the technological capability to provide information to police.
“This bill would require all telecommunications service providers to have the necessary infrastructure to allow police to get the data when they are lawfully allowed to do so.”
He says there is currently no audited process for law enforcement to gain access to basic subscriber information. In some cases, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide the information to police voluntarily. In others, a lengthy delay is involved, or the ISP won’t provide the information at all.
The average national response time in 2010 for these requests was 13 days, according to an RCMP report.
“During this time, victims could continue to be victimized,” says Lemcke.
Asked what happens if the person being monitored by police is innocent, Lemcke says the evidence collected just does not become part of the court case.
“The law requires that we notify the people that we listened to. Any evidence that we obtain is not useful in court. Information will be sealed.”
Tracking a cellphone signal without a warrant is also possible under the bill. But Lemcke says if it is not an emergency situation, police have to have reasonable grounds to believe the action is absolutely necessary.
“We have to be able to justify it. We have to report back on it. Government will look at that and say whether there was a lawful execution of [our] duty when [we] did that. If it is not appropriate, we are going to be held to account.”
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