And what have they done with our Supreme Court justices?
Internet service providers can’t give customer names, addresses and phone numbers to police without a search warrant, Canada’s top court says in a decision released this morning.
Canadians have a right to anonymity on the Internet, and as a general rule police are not permitted to disrupt that anonymity by asking Internet companies for information on their customers without a judge’s authorization, the Supreme Court said in a ruling Friday.
“Anonymity is an important safeguard for privacy interests online,” Justice Thomas Cromwell wrote for a unanimous court.
[…]
“This is a watershed moment for the right to privacy,” the Criminal Lawyers Association said in a brief to the court.
Indeed it is. Judgement here.
Meh
Adding a hoop for cops to jump through in order to access our data is not a bad thing but it’s not like they have to get permission from a coalition of reasonable citizens. They have to get permission from a group of ivory tower, gated community, chardonnay sippers. They can usually just bring it up at the next dinner party.
In the end, it’s just the courts solidifying their perceived authority.
How often do the police make similar requests?? Like a million times a year. This simply cuts down on fishing expeditions. No judge will refuse a request if someone is viewing or downloading kiddie porn.
When you mention the topic of this thread it gets caught in the filter from hell and never reappears.
Canada will soon be the Thailand of child porn on the internets. A warrant to get contact information of a customer information? How exactly would you get a warrant without that information to begin with?
How about a “watershed moment” for the right to property?
It’s a start……now an audit to locate and destroy/delete the long gun registry lists the cops still maintain.
Chardonnay sippers the judges may be, however, the beer swilling cops need civilian oversight and a judge’s signature is the best place for that at the moment. This business of every piece of enforcement legislation including power for the enforcers to (sometimes) simply kick down your door has to stop.
I read the judgement; the hilarious and typical misunderstanding of how the Internet actually works aside, the thrust of the judgement seems to be that the police simply asking for the information was a “search”, and therefore required a warrant whether the ISP voluntarily complied or not. I can’t be arsed to read PIPEDA to see whether that’s consistent.
This is the inevitable result of the government manufacturing positive rights for people and enshrining them in increasingly complex legislation. The correct result, precedent be damned, is that the police can ask and the ISP can either fork over the info *or* tell them to go pound sand if they don’t have a warrant.
If anyone believes this ruling protects their anonymity on the internet they’re delusional. The supreme court of Canada has no real power over those who wish access to online information. It is only the police that won’t be able to use it in a formal way. Always act as if…..
They’re Watching!
I agree with the ruling, but never forget the biggest users of child abuse are liberals.
Besides do those judges want the police tracking them online or asking companies what they are doing while spying on them.
That the police even asked this shows how out of touch they are. I figure being protected themselves they would think the Judges would make a law that only would have been used Citizans, not the elite like them.
The judges are just saving their own butts from no warrant intrusions.
I smell a rat. Or nine.
This is the legal elite creating a loophole to get currently convicted or those currently facing charges of child porn off.
The Ontario Premiers former righthand man and Just-In’s pal cannot be allowed to go to jail.
See those nasty policemen violated his rights, Eh.
tough topic …..straight to moderation.
Our Supreme Court ? Coming up with a common sense decision ? Wow, just so hard to believe.
I will support anything the Supremes do to protect our privacy and weaken government power.
The government has ever more tools to track us, ever more power to threaten us, and gives us ever less reason to trust them.
The Harper government’s continued attempt, under different guises, to erode our privacy and give the police whatever power they desire is a discredit to conservatives in Canada. It’s one of the reasons Harper will lose in 2015, though by no means the only one. And then we will get stuck with something even worse, the hair that walks like a man but thinks like a child.
I think this is a rare good ruling by the SCOC but contrast it to this one: http://lighthouselaw.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/norightbeararmscanada/#comments
Politically correctness rules.
Now that’s the kind of Change I was Hopin’ to see.
Change You Can Believe In. One Thousand Years of Rights, Traditions, and Law thrown under the Bus and we uphold the myth of privacy in posting a large sign in your front picture Window.
Delusional Elites? I would never say that!
Yeah well I went to that link…..it read like it’s author was a recent grad of Paul Robeson High.
Thank goodness for the (erratic) wisdom of the SCC. This more than makes up for Ontario’s Derpocolypse Now moment but we still can’t trust the government. Tor, Maidsafe, encryption, we need to use it all.
I see my comment is stuck in moderation still.
Oh well same comment in one word “Ben Levin”
“author was a recent grad of Paul Robeson High” Who else would write such goofey diatribe?
Where else could such a decision be considered reality?