Jesse Brown rounds up the arguments in favour of giving Canadian police the “lawful access” they’ve been clamouring for:
For the past 12 years, Canada’s cops have been pushing for new laws that would allow them to skip the pesky formality of having to get a warrant before spying on us on the Internet. [. . .]
Critics of Lawful Access, such as our federal Privacy Commissioner and every provincial Privacy Commissioner, argue that police have yet to provide sufficient evidence that court oversight has actually slowed them down or stopped them from fighting crime. And now, Canadian police themselves are saying the same thing.
The online rights group OpenMedia.ca has obtained and released a message it says was recently sent by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) to law enforcement colleagues urgently requesting that they provide “actual examples” of cases where the need to get warrants before accessing private information from Internet Service Providers ‘hindered an investigation or threatened public safety.’ The message goes on to admit that though a similar request had been made two years ago, it failed to produce “a sufficient quantity of good examples.”
In other words, even the Chiefs of Police don’t know why they want this new intrusive power.
