Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner of Ontario
Letter to the Editor – The National Post
The amount of misinformation on Bill C-30 is staggering — on that we agree. But it ends there. If Chief Constable Jim Chu is saying the police would never “monitor citizens’ surfing habits without a warrant,” then I will be the first to thank him. But if subscriber data will be accessible without a warrant, then I don’t know how he can make such a claim.
Once the police have IP and email addresses, the ease with which they can connect the dots relating to online activity is indisputable. Analytic tools make it possible to link this information to identifiable individuals and combine information from multiple sources, to create detailed personal profiles.
I am not alone in this view. Professor Michael Geist has stated, “the ability to link [subscriber data] with other data will often open the door to a detailed profile about an identifiable person.”
Tragic cases of child exploitation are being used to try to scare Canadians into giving law enforcement unfettered access to subscriber data. It is indeed unfair to continue misrepresenting our concerns as hindering investigations of “criminals and predators.” On the contrary — we are trying to preserve the privacy and freedom of law-abiding citizens.