A Surcharge for Surveillance?

The police want you to pay for them to read your e-mail. Recently, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police called on the federal government to require that telecommunications service providers charge their subscribers a fee to offset the cost of intercepting private communications. The proposal was the latest development in the ongoing debate over how law enforcement should address the issue of crime in cyberspace. In 1997, Canada was one of only four non-European nations to sign the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber-crime, a treaty (Convention) which seeks to establish global standards and cooperation in fighting fraud, hate speech, child pornography and other crimes in cyberspace and to establish procedural powers to make it easier to gain access to computer data as part of criminal investigations. In 2002, the federal government published a consultation document which considered some of the legislative amendments Canada would need to enact in order to ratify the Convention. Among other changes, the government proposed adopting a new "production order" authority to compel third parties, such as ISPs, to produce computer data relevant to an alleged offence. The proposal was criticized by both public interest groups and the telecommunications industry as being both overbroad and invasive, and the government initially backed down. However, last spring, as the country was gearing up for the general election, Parliament passed Bill C-13, adding both general and specific production orders to the Criminal Code and moving Canada closer to ratification. Under sections 487.012 and 487.013 of the Criminal Code, investigators may now compel persons to produce computer data relevant to the commission of an alleged offence under any federal law - not just in relation to serious criminal offences. In this respect and despite the earlier criticisms of overly broad scope, Bill C-13 goes further than the Convention requires. Still, many service providers do not yet have the technical ability to comply with these new orders and this has predictably led to a debate over who should pay to upgrade the networks. Recently, European officials met in a high-level attempt to persuade more countries to subscribe to the Convention, but there is no indication if or when Canada will move ahead to ratify the Convention. The US Administration indicated in 2002 that it could not ratify the protocol, because it would be unconstitutional to do so. A backgrounder on Canadian Lawful Access Initiative can be found at: http://www.lexinformatica.org/cybercrime. For a recent news story re the Cybercrime summit, visit: http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-5372664.html. Summary by: Jason Young