Those changes include allowing Canada Post to open any mail, including letters, based on vague criteria as well as allowing law enforcement agencies to get your IP address without a warrant, changes the government is making following court decisions that found Canadians’ Charter rights — the right to privacy, to determine when, how and to what extent you wish to release private information — had been breached by authorities. Now, they’ll have a right to get that information.
But that’s not all, police will be able to ask digital service providers — who are heavily regulated by the federal government — to hand over your personal data voluntarily and it will protect them from being sued, if they do so.
Not only does the new legislation lower the bar for information sharing with the United States on particular cases, the bill also gives the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), two outfits that do not currently have civilian oversight bodies, new powers. It also creates a new law that tells electronic service providers that they “must not disclose … information related to a systemic vulnerability or potential systemic vulnerability in electronic protections employed by that electronic service provider,” raising all sorts of privacy red flags and concerns about a slide towards secrecy demanded by the state.
“I am very alarmed,” Aislin Jackson, policy staff counsel at the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), told the Star on Tuesday. “It’s making sweeping changes that risk undermining privacy protection across the country.”
Certainly concerning