A week ago Infosecurity suggested that Canada’s internet surveillance bill, C-30, may not be as ‘dead’ as some newspapers were reporting. Now Michael Geist, writing for the Toronto Star, discloses “How Canada’s telecoms quietly backed Internet surveillance bill.” He discovered that the silence of the telecommunications and cable companies during the C-30 debate was not, as some commentators had suggested, due to a desire not to take sides. “Documents obtained under the Access to Information Act and reported here for the first time offer a different, more troubling explanation.” Those documents show how the Canadian government and the telcos worked together “to develop a secret industry-government collaborative forum on lawful access.”
Virtually all of the major telcos are included in these discussions. Their representative have signed non-disclosure agreements, and have been granted secret-level security clearance. The group, says Geist, “is led by Bell Canada on the industry side and Public Safety for the government.”
One surprising element is that it does not appear to government initiated. “Bell reached out to government to indicate that ‘it was working its way through C-30 with great interest, and expressed desire for a meeting to discuss disclosure of subscriber information,” writes Geist. A few weeks later it asked for details on equipment costings.
At one meeting between government and telcos, a 17-page document released to Geist under the Access to Information Act shows the detail of these meetings. Attended by Bell Canada, Cogeco, RIM, Telus, Rogers, Microsoft, and the Information Technology Association of Canada, the document spells out ‘regulation policies relating to interception.’ It “indicates that providers will be required to disclose certain subscriber information without a warrant within 48 hours and within 30 minutes in exceptional circumstances,” writes Geist. “Interceptions of communications may also need to be established within 30 minutes of a request with capabilities that include simultaneous interceptions for five law enforcement agencies.”
It is the close co-operation and secrecy between government and telcos, and the length of time this has been happening, that makes it unlikely that government will simply drop the provisions of C-30. “The public has already indicated its opposition to the bill. The secrecy and backroom industry talks associated with Bill C-30 provides yet another reason to hit the reset button,” concludes Geist.