Secret Memo Slams Canadian Police On Inaccurate ISP Request Records

An anonymous reader writes Last fall, Daniel Therrien, the government's newly appointed Privacy Commissioner of Canada, released the annual report on the Privacy Act, the legislation that governs how government collects, uses, and discloses personal information. The lead story from the report was the result of an audit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police practices regarding warrantless requests for telecom subscriber information. Michael Geist now reports that a secret internal memo reveals the situation was far worse, with auditors finding the records from Canada's lead law enforcement agency were unusable since they were "inaccurate and incomplete."

Comments

Short answer ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazy, incompetent, and don't want actual oversight.

So they have sloppy record keeping, because they don't give a crap, and because they have been getting what they want so why bother.

The solution: take away the ability to get this crap without oversight, and let these clowns fall on their face.

If they won't abide by the law and the rules, they get nothing.

This is a classic case of law enforcement not giving a fuck about the law and their legal obligations. Which means you have to distrust them and treat them like children, otherwise they'll just keep abusing us and our rights.

This is precisely what happens when police have sweeping powers and nobody is keeping tabs on them.

It's time to stop giving these idiots the benefit of the doubt, and assume they're lying to us and crapping on our rights -- because, apparently they are.

Unfortunately, the clowns who make up government are keen to give them even more powers with even less oversight

Re:Short answer ...

[Mashiki]

The RCMP have a lot of problems, this, the officers lying over the tasering in BC. High River(illegal gun seizures), and so on. Some of the major problems stem from the fact that there are no career officers in positions of power and they're all political appointees. Yeah, figure that one out. How does someone become chief of a service without ever having served on it. It's better in a lot of the smaller services here in Canada, where services acts require someone from the service before they can be a chief.

The RCMP can be fixed, if they start pulling out all the political bullshit. The vast majority of police services in Canada work as a bottom to top organization. Meaning the guy at the bottom, gets a problem and decides how to fix it on their own without someone over his shoulder to figure it out or telling him to "bend the rules to make it happen." Services like the RCMP(federal police), OPP(Ontario Provincial), SQ(Quebec Provincial) operate as "top down" meaning there's someone staring over you shoulder, and breathing down your neck while telling you to "do this or else." Now I'm sure you're thinking, but why don't they stand up...some do. And they're quickly drummed out for not following the procedures which is a offence you can be canned for in many cases.

The vast majority here in Canada do follow the rules. Said rules are enforced and have oversight by independent investigation boards made up of ex-police and civilians. And then there's a local police oversight board that anyone can apply to become a member of in many cases. In Ontario for instance, anyone can become a member of the oversight board it doesn't matter who you are--you can apply. The RCMP though doesn't have either, it has, as said that lovely top-down approach.

Now as for the laws here in Canada, the police generally don't line up and say "we need law xyz" because...reasons...usually in Canada laws such as that are based on something happening in society that requires it. And should that be an overstep, then it'll end up before the Supreme Court and will or won't be struck down. A few examples: RIDE programs are a violation in Canada of unlawful search. It was however ruled that it's a reasonable exception under S.1 of the charter because of the needs weighted against society. On the other hand, we have exigent circumstances(allowing entry/taps/etc w/o warrant). Which was struck down by the Supreme Court as being "a extreme violation of individual rights." That was in reaction to another bill, but said ruling stripped it out of the criminal code itself. Exigent circumstances had been on the books for ~100 years at that point.