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Local Canadian Police Station Admits To Owning Stingray Surveillance Device (vice.com)
The Edmonton Police Service has admitted to Motherboard that it owns a Stingray and that it used the [surveillance] device in the past during investigations. After Vancouver cops admitted to using the phone tracker to investigate an abduction in 2007, Motherboard called up other local police stations in Canada to ask if they had also previously used one. As you can imagine, the other stations kept mum. In the US, Stingrays are a regular part of government and law enforcement agencies' surveillance arsenal. But Vancouver's and Edmonton's police services are the first law enforcement offices in Canada to confirm that they've used the device. Motherboard adds: According an emailed statement from police spokesperson Anna Batchelor, Edmonton's cops have "used the device in the past during investigations," but would not release any additional details in order to "to protect [Edmonton Police Service] operations." Until now, the only law enforcement in the country known to use the devices was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country's analogue to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. These suitcase-sized surveillance tools have been used in the past by the Vancouver and Toronto police, but the Vancouver police have said they borrowed the Stingray from the RCMP, and in Toronto an RCMP technician was on hand, at least in that incident. The Edmonton police's comment to Motherboard is the first time a local police department in Canada has publicly admitted to owning a Stingray device.
RCMP act as local police in most of Canada; basically any city that doesn't run their own police force and isn't in Ontario or Quebec (which have their own provincial police). So the RCMP could have been using stingray devices all the way to the local level for quite some time now.
The article is wrong in its implication that this is the first time local police have had access to stingrays.
(Also, Canada does not have an FBI equivalent. The Government of Canada doesn't have enforcement agencies, the crown does. We like our policy makers separate from enforcement that you very much)
The police in Edmonton have been doing this to the press since the 90s when they wiretapped newspaper and TV reporters working on a story of police corruption with ties to organized crime. But that was just the old fashioned wire taps, and there have been many corruption scandals since. There is no press freedom in Edmonton and all communication should be considered compromised by the police there unless there is a cryptographically secure way with a Certificate Authority not controlled within Canadian or US borders.
Unlike the USA, Canada has a fairly recent Constitution which explicitly includes the Right of Privacy.
Which includes not having your info slurped up by police without a specific warrant on you as a person.
There are no exceptions.
It has been ruled so by the Canadian Supreme Court.
(caveat: I only wrote Canadian Army regs based on it, so IANAL just someone who had to implement it's provisions)
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May I pet the stingrays?
...what have you done?
This wasn't the first and certainly not the last time they have used Stingray. The most worrying aspect is that they don't even keep records of its use! Nobody could ever tell when, where and how often it has been used.
-SR
There are no exceptions.
Well, if your security clearance is high enough, you will find that there is concept of "Double Secret Probation."
This is the exception to "there are no exceptions."
Personal note: my father grew up near Calgary (Rosebud) and studied at Edmonton. Later he built radar stations for RCA in northern Canada. I didn't learn of this until after he died. The American spooks required him to get a USA citizenship. When my father asked why that was necessary, the spooks said that if he spied for the Russians, they couldn't hang him, as a Canadian national.
From what my mom told me, when he was at the radar construction sites, they were under constant surveillance from Canadian spooks. All telephone calls were recorded. Hey, but that was during the Cold War.
So with these Stingrays, are we returning to old Cold War practices . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
are we returning to old Cold War practices?
Implying it ever stopped...
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Google - Government of Canada - Constitution - Bill of Rights
Have fun!
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Technicallly you are correct. We have been spying on our own citizens for a long long time.
But that doesn't mean it's legal. Or Constitutional.
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So I would not trust that rag to protect me with a 40 foot barge pole.
12 meter barge pole.
Canada is metric.
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During the Cold War, their aim was to assess, contain, and otherwise mitigate the signals capability of our Russian counterparts.
Now the aim is to assess, contain, and otherwise mitigate the signals capability of our own citizenry.
We never left.
I'm sick and tired of hearing about all the crimes our police, judges and politicians are committing and getting off with no repercussions.
As a police officer you are held to a higher standard and these criminals are acting worse than many of the people currently in jail.
Even our premier has admitted to criminal negligence on public record. She is still in office.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Or until Dudley Doright decides he doesn't want to use a stingray anymore.
Unlike the USA, Canada has a fairly recent Constitution which explicitly includes the Right of Privacy.
Which includes not having your info slurped up by police without a specific warrant on you as a person.
There are no exceptions.
It has been ruled so by the Canadian Supreme Court.
(caveat: I only wrote Canadian Army regs based on it, so IANAL just someone who had to implement it's provisions)
I don't give 2 shits about privacy and civil rights if the stingray device allows the police to find a kidnap victim. You have no rights once you violate another's humans rights.
The Bill of Rights has nothing about privacy: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-12.3/FullText.html
The privacy commissioner herself had her cellphone records sold to a reporter because there were no such protections in law.
https://www.priv.gc.ca/cf-dc/2007/372_20070709_e.asp
It's my understanding that postal services and landlines have protections in law, but there is no such thing for "new" mediums. I.e., you need a warrant to open mail or wiretap a landline, but before the privacy act, you could sell somebody's cellphone records to whomever you wanted without telling them.
You're probably also talking about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, not the Bill of Rights. But neither contain anything about privacy other than protections against search and seizure.
Details on the current state of privacy law in Canada can be found on the Privacy Commissioner's website... https://www.priv.gc.ca/resource/fs-fi/02_05_d_15_e.asp
Please., please correct me if I'm wrong. I would love to see this Supreme Court decision.
We're gonna totally spy on everyone but just THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
It seems to me an admission comes after an allegation. It sounds here like the police responded to an inquiry.
RE: ... Until now, the only law enforcement in the country known to use the devices was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country's analogue to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. ..."
"
The RCMP are far more than a simple "analogue" to the US FBI. They are, first of all, a Military Police. The can and have organized into military units and participated in combat both within and outside Canada. They are a national cross-provincial police force, like the FBI, but they are also a Provincial Police like State Troopers, and a local police like any municipal police force (a city or rural municipality can either create their own police force, or contract with the RCMP to provide local policing). Up until the 1980's, they were also the International and Domestic Spy Agency; the creation of CSIS removed some, but not all, of those powers. If you must, the RCMP are an analogue of the FBI, CIA, all 50 State Police combined, Local Police, Crime Labs, and a few other US Law Enforcement agencies, rolled into one. There is no "jurisdictional ego" such as what is often cited when, say, the FBI is called into a local investigation. They are one and the same.