A new bill that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to “spy” on their customers for the police would be so expensive, it could kill some smaller businesses, warns OpenMedia and the BC Broadband Association (BCBA).
Both groups say Ottawa’s lawful access laws will result in warrantless searches by police and add huge costs to the operations of ISPs.
“To implement the type of monitoring that the government [would require] in some of the versions of this bill would be extremely expensive,” said Chris Allen, who is president of ABC Communications, a Quesnel-based ISP, and a BCBA director.
“We’re talking about lots of new equipment that would have to be purchased to monitor the types of data that they want monitored. On top of that, we’d be looking at the labour time to implement those, and the ongoing monitoring.”
The new laws were contained in crime bills that died prior to the last election. But Business in Vancouver has confirmed that the Ministry of Public Safety plans to reintroduce the bills, although the timing is up to the House leader.
According to OpenMedia founder and executive director Steve Anderson, the new law would force ISPs to keep logs of private data about their customers and hand it over to police without a search warrant. But the Ministry of Public Safety insists the new legislation would not allow for warrantless searches.
“No legislation proposed by our Conservative government will allow police to unlawfully read emails without a warrant,” ministry spokesman Mike Patton wrote in an email to BIV. “Claims to the contrary are baseless.”
However, in an October 26, 2011, letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, said the legislation would constitute a warrantless search.
“In the case of access to subscriber data, there is not even a requirement for the commission of a crime to justify access to personal information – real names, home address, unlisted numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and much more – without a warrant,” Stoddart wrote.
“By expanding the legal tools of the state to conduct surveillance and access private information, and by reducing the depth of judicial scrutiny, the previous bills would have allowed government to subject more individuals to surveillance and scrutiny.”
ISPs do not currently track and archive the kind of data the government wants them to start keeping. Building that new capacity would be expensive. The Canadian Network Operators Consortium has estimated the new laws could add $1 million to a small or medium-sized ISP’s costs.
Allen said smaller ISPs wouldn’t survive those added costs. He added that ISP owners also worry about the legal implications of handling vast amounts of personal data and the potential for unintended privacy breaches.
There’s also the Big Brother factor: no ISP wants to be watching its customers’ private activities on the Internet.
“From a moral point of view, I wouldn’t want to do it,” Allen said.
The NDP has called on the Stephen Harper government to back off on lawful access legislation – something the public safety communications department takes issue with.
In an email to BIV, Patton stated that “rather than making things easier for child pornographers and organized criminals, I call on the NDP to support these balanced measures that protect law-abiding Canadians.” •
