Canada Unveils Internet Surveillance Legislation

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting on his blog that the Canadian government today introduced new legislation that would require ISPs to establish new surveillance controls to monitor Internet activity. The bill will also require ISPs to disclose subscriber information without a warrant. The bill may not survive given the state of the government, but this is a sad indicator of things to come."

Comments

Comparison with wiretap

[5, Troll]

The press releases are spinning this as an update of the wiretap law.

For those of us who are not legal experts, can someone clarify the procedure to obtain a wiretap?

With respect to this bill, the CBC report at
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/15 /surveillance051114.html?ref=rss
says:

"However, McLellan said that just like in the old wiretap days, police investigators will have to get the approval of a judge before they can have access."

This sounds different from the article.

Re:Comparison with wiretap

[linuxbert]

In Canada, Wiretap requires a warrent. You have to convince a judge that one is needed, and theri has to be a high level of confidence that one is required, and will provide needed information.

CSIS - essentally the Canadian version of the CIA can listen to what it wants - no warents or oversight needed. the catch is that information CSIS collects through its methods is not admisable in court, though they have in the past provieded information to the RCMP.

Your employer however can monitor your communications on their network at their pleasure, provided you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If you are presented with a logon banner, stating that you are subject to monitoring, and have a signed usage agreement, then you can be monitored. These logs can be turned over to law enforcement without a warrent - they a the companies propery and they can concent to search.

IANAL - i just had a lecture on this.