Monday, February 11, 2013

Lawful access dead, says Justice Minister

According to the CBC, Bill C-30 is officially dead and any replacement measure will not have a provision for warrantless access to customer information:

Government killing online surveillance bill - Politics - CBC News

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson says the controversial Bill C-30, known as the online surveillance or warrantless wiretapping bill, won't go ahead due to opposition from the public.

Canadians rallied against the bill after the public safety minister told an opposition MP that he could "either stand with us or with the child pornographers."

"We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 and any attempts that we will continue to have to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures contained in C-30, including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability within their systems," Nicholson said.

"We've listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this and responding to that."

Nicholson made the announcement after introducing a bill to update provisions that would allow for warrantless phone tapping in emergencies.

Canadian law allows police to wiretap without authorization from a court when there is the risk of imminent harm, such as a kidnapping or bomb threat, but the Supreme Court last year struck down the law and gave Parliament 12 months to rewrite another one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great news - regardless of whether Canadians have something to hide or not, our personal information should be protected by the need for a warrant.

Greg Lafontaine said...

I agree with anonymous. Our privacy is important regardless of if we have done anything wrong.