Canada: Police Do Not Have Power To Wiretap Without Warrant

omega6 sends this excerpt from The Star: "The Supreme Court of Canada struck down Friday warrantless wiretap powers that police have in cases of emergency. ... Ruling in a 2006 British Columbia kidnapping case, the country’s top court said a 1993 provision of the Criminal Code is unconstitutional because there is no accountability or oversight for the warrantless searches, either to the person wiretapped or in reports to Parliament. The unanimous ruling was written by rookie judges Michael Moldaver and Andromache Karakatsanis. The case revolves around police intercepting the calls of the family of Peter Li, the kidnap victim."

Comments

Don't get your hopes up just yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the U.S. Supreme Court will just overrule them.

Yay Canada

[drwho]

Yes, I am ready to move there, if they'll take me. NS or PEI I'd like. Now, le tme in! I am smart and have a degree from a good college!

Re:Yay Canada

[Beerdood]

Nah, trust me, move as soon as you can, it's not nearly as bad as it seems here. We certainly don't like Harper & the conservative government - but the level of crazy in the conservatives here doesn't even come close to a Bachman / Santorum level.

There have been numerous conservative scandals in the news in the last year or so, but I've still yet to hear a fellow Canuck say "That's it! I'm sick of this country - I'm moving to America!"

Re:Yay Canada

[Walking The Walk]

[offtopic_shameless_plug]My company in also needs some senior developers for our PEI office, mostly for Java client/server work. Don't email me, just click the Careers link on our website.[/offtopic_shameless_plug]

On topic, I'm glad to see at least some of our justices are taking their jobs seriously. Appointed by Stephen Harper, yet curtailing government invasion into private lives. A nice breath of fresh air in a recent gale of anti-privacy legislation. (Thanks Michael Geist, for keeping us abreast of all the government's IT shenanigans!

Re:Yay Canada

[realityimpaired]

Obviously you haven't lived in a province where then NDP has ran the show before. They have knack for running things into the ground and getting shown the curb rather unceremoniously. The PCs in Alberta going to find out how that feels in a few weeks.

Ontario was the only province where they fucked things up, and that NDP leader was Bob Rae.... guess who he's running with now.

Spending money on education and health care end up costing the economy much less in the long term than cutting them... the cons would rather mortgage the future for a short term gain than actually fix anything.

more and more

[v1]

Canada is looking like a good alternative to the USA. At least when "bad laws" do manage to get passed, they bother to get rid of them from time to time. Here anyway, anything that makes the police's job easier is apparently considered an OK exception to the constitution. :(

Re:more and more

[flyingfsck]

Well, the underground railroad has always run *from* the USA *to* Canada. The US may have a big statue of Libertas in the New York harbour, but the US has never really been the land of the free. That title belongs to Canada.

Re:more and more

[w_dragon]

That's only a problem in the winter. The other 3 months of the year are great!

Re:more and more

[Synesthes]

You cannot own a gun in Canada? Seriously?

No, you certainly can.

There are three classes of firearms licenses:
- Non-Restricted - things like rifles and shotguns
- Restricted - Handguns, short rifles/shotguns, and some other random restrictions (scary looking guns, for example)
- Prohibited - Short barrel handguns, fully automatic rifles, etc

To get your firearms license, you have to (optionally) take a firearms safety course and then write (or challenge) the exam, where you demonstrate safe handling and use of the firearms, as well as knowledge of the firearms regulations.

To get a permit for a restricted license, there's an additional course and exam. Also, restricted firearms are limited to government approved firing ranges - no taking them out into the bush to shoot cans.

Prohibited licenses are not issued, only given to people 'grandfathered' in to the licensing system. Once they die off, there will be no more prohibited class.

For any of these, you submit ID, proof of exam, personal questionnaire, and $$$ to the government, where they perform a criminal record check and reference check. Fired from your job recently? They'll look into that. On anti-depressants? They'll look into that. And yes, they do check your references - they checked mine.

So yes, you can. But it's a lengthy process.

A step in the right direction

[bobwrit]

Hopefully, Canada will begin to take a slightly more critical look to the whole concept of 'Emergency Powers'. I mean, here in the US(as an example), we've entertained the concept that if we're in a war, or the president has been given war powers, that he has the right to suspend the population's rights. Albeit, this isn't new(we suspended a lot of rights during WWII, at least. see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment ), but we just need to get rid of this idea. Just because we're in war, doesn't mean that we're not human.

Maybe it is time to move back ...

[Impish]

I've been in the U.S.A. for seven years now and it seems to have gone more and more downhill.

- I was sitting in a room with a bunch of Americans during Thanksgiving and mentioned how much I disliked the TSA and the new scanners (back when they were new) and to a man they all said "We need the better security."
- I then tried to steer the conversation towards their rights to travel between states (in regards to if you refuse the pat down/scan they won't let you travel) and they said inter-state travel was a privilege. I was gobsmacked.

The socialist leaning, big government Canadian was more worried about his personal rights then the freedom loving Americans! Now if only the housing prices would recover ....

Written by "rookie" judges?

[Walking The Walk]

They may be new to the supreme court, but they're hardly rookie judges! Michael Moldaver was a judge on the Supreme Court of Ontario 20 years ago, and Andromache Karakatsanis was a judge on the same court 10 years ago, after being Deputy Attorney General of Ontario.

Re:Conflicted

[DM9290]

you don't understand the law or what happened here.

in this case the evidence obtained by the warrantless tap was PERMITTED at trial. The police were following the law, and acting in good faith, and their actions were in the public good, and it would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute to allow the evidence.

The court found that the provisions allowing warrantless tapping in those limited emergency situations were CONSTITUTIONALLY VALID. i.e. Warrantless wiretapping is OK in limited emergency circumstances where it would be impossible to get a warrant fast enough.

However the court found the law to be defective because the government made no provision for any kind of supervision of these wiretaps. No reporting to anybody. No oversight by anybody. The wiretaps just take place and then nobody knows.

The court said the law should have provisions for reporting and oversight on such wiretaps, so that the subject of the wiretap can challenge them and the public can be confident they are not being abused. The court voided the law but suspended the ruling for 12 MONTHS, so that the government could fix the law.

the current law essentially allows SECRET warrantless wiretaps. that is unconstitutional.

The court never ruled that warrantless wiretaps themselves are never justified, merely that the government can't go around doing it without oversight and reporting.