Canada’s privacy commissioner is recommending that the Senate make changes to Canada’s controversial proposed lawful access legislation, Bill C-22.
The news: Speaking before the Senate’s standing committee on national security on Monday, privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne told senators that his office had drafted several proposed changes to Canada’s proposed Bill C-22, also known as the Lawful Access Act.
If passed into law, Bill C-22 would give law enforcement, as well as national security agencies like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), more power to monitor and collect personal communications and data.
From the source: “The current bill incorporates significant improvements over previous versions,” Dufresne told the committee. “These are positive measures, but in spite of these improvements, extra amendments are still necessary to better protect the privacy of Canadians.”
The context: Recommendations from the privacy commissioner included narrowing the definition of which information can be collected and the range of people it could be obtained from, as well as more clearly defining what constitutes publicly available information. Dufresne also recommended a carve out for healthcare-related data or privileged information, and asked that electronic service providers be able to “trigger a preemptive, arm’s length assessment” on how a particular access order would impact their operations.
Notably, Dufresne advocated for legal principles around proportionality and necessity to be integrated into the bill. In the legal field, those terms refer to core legal principles that limit state power and evaluate the legality of rights-restrictive actions. Dufresne told senators that right now “there is no overarching requirement that all obligations imposed under the Act be both necessary and proportionate.”
Final thought: Bill C-22 has earned the ire of both civil liberties organizations and much of Canada’s tech ecosystem, prompting companies like Signal to say they would halt operations in Canada were it to become law. The Munk School’s Citizen Lab and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that the bill infringes on privacy rights and creates a de facto surveillance state.
Bill C-22 passed the House of Commons earlier this year and is currently before the Senate. Some senators, such as Senator Yuen Pau Woo, have expressed doubts about passing the bill in its current form.
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Feature image courtesy Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada via LinkedIn.