rights

BCCLA Releases Electronic Devices at the Border Handbook

/ Christopher Parsons

U.S.-Canada Border Crossing Crossing international borders can be worrying, especially for those carrying confidential or privileged information on their electronic devices. While I’ve seen a variety of documents and advisories explaining how to deal (or not deal) with American border authorities, there hasn’t been what I consider a decent guide for dealing with the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA). As of today, this deficit has been significantly remedied.

For the past several months, Greg McMullen has been working on a handbook to help Canadians (and non-Canadians) navigate officials’ demands for electronic devices at Canada’s national borders. The BCCLA has funded his work, and the handbook is intended for educational and discussion purposes; it isn’t intended to replace legal counsel or constitute firm legal advice. The handbook is written for a general audience and does a nice job of walking readers through what rights they enjoy at the border, CBSA policies, best practices, and what to do if you have been subject to a search.

I’d highly recommend the handbook, which is available through the BCCLA and also available for download through my website.

Announcement: Lawful Access Report Now Available

/ Christopher Parsons

SpiesLast year the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) approached me to prepare a report around forthcoming lawful access legislation. Specifically, I was to look outside of Canada to understand how lawful access powers had been developed and used in foreign jurisdictions. An early version of that research report was provided to the BCCLA mid-last year and was used to support their recent, formal, report on lawful access legislation. The BCCLA’s formal report, “Moving Towards a Surveillance Society: Proposals to Expand “Lawful Access” in Canada” (.pdf) provides an excellent, in-depth, analysis of lawful access that accounts for some of the technical, social, and legal problems associated with the legislation.

Today I am releasing my report for the BCCLA, titled “Lawful Access and Data Preservation/Retention: Present Practices, Ongoing Harm, and Future Canadian Policies” (.pdf link). I would hasten to note that all research and proposals in my report should be attributed to me, and do not necessarily reflect the BCCLA’s own positions. Nothing in my report has been changed at the suggestion or insistence of the BCCLA; it is presented to you as it was to the BCCLA, though with slight updates to reflect the status of the current majority government.

In the report, I look to the United Kingdom and United States to understand how they have instantiated lawful access-style powers, the regularity of the powers’ usage, and how the powers have been abused. I ultimately conclude by providing a series of proposals to rein in the worst of lawful access legislation, which includes process-based suggestions (e.g. Parliamentary hearings on the legislation) and more gritty auditing requirements (e.g. a specific series of data points that should be collected and made public on a yearly basis).  It’s my hope that this document will elucidate some of the harms that are often bandied about when speaking of lawful access-powers. To this end, there are specific examples of harms throughout the document, all of which are referenced, with the conclusion being that citizens are not necessarily safer as a result of expanded security and intelligence powers that come at the cost of basic charter, constitutional, and human rights.

Download .pdf version of “Lawful Access and Data Preservation/Retention: Present Practices, Ongoing Harm, and Future Canadian Policies“

On a Social Networking Bill of Rights

/ Christopher Parsons

I attended this year’s Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference and spent time in sessions on privacy in large data sets, deep packet inspection and network neutrality, the role of privacy in venture capital pitches, and what businesses are doing to secure privacy. In addition, a collection of us worked for some time to produce a rough draft of the Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights that was subsequently discussed and ratified by the conference participants. In this post, I want to speak to the motivations of the Bill of Rights, characteristics of social networking and Bill proper, a few hopeful outcomes resulting from the Bill’s instantiation and conclude by denoting a concerns around the Bill’s creation and consequent challenges for moving it forward.

First, let me speak to the motivation behind the Bill. Social networking environments are increasingly becoming the places where individuals store key information – contact information, photos, thoughts and reflections, video – and genuinely becoming integrated into the political. This integration was particularly poignantly demonstrated last year when the American State Department asked Twitter to delay upgrades that would disrupt service and stem the information flowing out of Iran following the illegitimate election of President Ahmadinejad. Social networks have already been tied into the economic and social landscapes in profound ways: we see infrastructure costs for maintaining core business functionality approaching zero and the labor that was historically required for initiating conversations and meetings, to say nothing of shared authorship, have been integrated into social networking platforms themselves. Social networking, under this rubric, extends beyond sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and encapsulate companies like Google and Yahoo!, WordPress, and Digg, and their associated product offerings. Social networking extends well beyond social media; we can turn to Mashable’s collection of twenty characteristics included in the term ‘social networking’ for guidance as to what the term captures:

Continue reading →