ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill

CBC NEWS: Thursday, June 18, 2009

Internet service providers would have to make it possible for police and intelligence officers to intercept online communications and get personal information about subscribers under bills tabled Thursday. "We must ensure that law enforcement has the necessary tools to catch up to the bad guys and ultimately bring them to justice. Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools," said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson as he announced the new bills with Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan at a news conference in Ottawa. The bills are intended to modernize the Criminal Code and help law enforcement officials chase those suspected of using the internet and other new technologies to communicate and commit crimes, as well as maximize the ability to conduct international investigations, Nicholson said.

Targets 'safe havens'

One bill, announced by Van Loan, would require telecommunications and internet service providers to:

• Install and maintain "intercept-capable" equipment on their networks.
• Provide police with "timely access" to personal information about subscribers, including names, address and internet addresses, without the need for a warrant.

Van Loan said the bill won't provide new interception powers to police, but simply update the legal framework designed "in the era of the rotary telephone."He noted that police can already get the authority to intercept communications, but the network is often incapable of allowing such interception. "Criminals, child pornographers, organized crime members and terrorists are aware of these interception safe havens. They identify them and gravitate towards them to exploit them and continue their criminal activities undetected, out of the reach of the investigative powers of law enforcement." Van Loan added that internet service providers are currently not required to provide subscriber information to police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS), and may be unwilling to provide such data without a police warrant, slowing down the investigation of crimes such as child sexual exploitation or online theft.

ISPs must preserve data

The other bill, introduced by Nicholson, would:

• Allow law enforcement officials to obtain transmission data that is sent or received via telephone or internet if authorized by a production order.
• Require telecommunications companies to keep data related to specific communications or subscribers if that information is needed in an investigation and requested via a preservation order.
• Make it a criminal offence for two or more people to agree to or arrange child sexual exploitation by means of telecommunications.
• Modernize the system for tracking warrants.

Nicholson said the government believes the proposed legislation strikes an "appropriate balance" between law enforcement's investigative powers to protect public safety and the privacy and rights and freedoms of Canadians. However, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist wrote in his blog Thursday that the bills are "pretty much exactly what law enforcement has been demanding and privacy groups have been fearing. It represents a reneging of a commitment from the previous Public Safety Minister on court oversight and will embed broad new surveillance capabilities in the Canadian internet."

Cost to ISPs

The bill is unlikely to be popular with internet service providers, who will have to shoulder much of the cost of making their equipment tappable by police. Van Loan said the companies themselves will have to pay for new equipment to meet the requirements of the new legislation, although the government will provide "reasonable compensation" when retrofits to existing hardware are needed. The companies will have 18 months to make the changes, although there will be a three-year exemption for those with less than 100,000 subscribers.