On January 14, 2016, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that “tower dumps” – the mass release of data collected by cellphone towers at the request of law enforcement agencies – violate privacy rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In response, Justice Sproat outlined a series of guidelines for authorities to adhere to when requesting tower dump warrants in the future.

I wrote about this case for PEN Canada. I began by summarizing the issue of the case and then proceeded to outline some of the highlights of Justice Sproat’s decision. The conclusion of the article focuses on the limits of that decision: it does not promote statutory reporting of tower dumps and thus Canadians will not learn how often such requests are made; it does not require notifying those affected by tower dumps; it does not mean Canadians will know if data collected in a tower dump is used in a subsequent process against them. Finally, the guidelines are not precedent-setting and so do not represent binding obligations on authorities requesting the relevant production orders.

Read the Article