The Conservative government’s new anti-terrorism bill lacks sufficient protection for democratic values, including free speech and privacy, according to B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner.
B.C. privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham spoke on Wednesday, Feb. 4, at a campus conference organized by Thompson Rivers University law students.
The conference wraps up on Thursday.
In an interview with KTW, Denham said the expanded powers for police and spy agencies contained in the bill are not accompanied by equal measures to protect democratic values, including right to privacy from snooping government agencies.
The bill includes a law making it easier for the RCMP to obtain a peace bond under the Criminal Code, including reporting conditions and requiring surrender of passports; allowing CSIS to hack radical websites and have judicial orders to remove propaganda; giving CSIS more power to combat possible terror plots; making it illegal to promote terrorism; and making it a specific criminal offence to carry out a terrorist attack.
Denham backed a call by opposition parties for a parliamentary committee, with members of government and opposition parties, to oversee spying on citizens in the name of the war on terror. The system is used in many other democratic countries, including the United States and Australia.
“There needs to be a parliamentary committee with security clearance to be able to review situations when things go wrong,” she said. “There has to be robust, independent oversight of these agencies and Canada has fallen behind.”
It is not government alone that is watching Canadians, however.
Denham’s office, with its small staff of 35, is tasked in part with “watching the watchers” — that means looking at activities of Facebook, Google and other corporations to determine if they are crossing the boundaries of privacy infringement or breaking Canada’s laws.
“Our privacy laws are up to the challenges,” she said. “People need to be reminded of how the law applies.”
That means both corporations that are collecting data and Internet users, users who have some ability to control what information is collected on and distributed.
“Corporations have to be more transparent about what they’re collecting, who they’re sharing it with and giving individuals real, just-in-time controls,” Denham said.
She said privacy commissioner offices in Canada, United States and Europe can use their collective weight to pressure corporations, including in the relatively new “online behavioural advertising ecosystem.”
“You have chains of companies that are related to one another — advertisers and publishers in the background in an opaque and not-transparent way,” she said. “How does the user even understand this chain of relationships between companies and why an ad suddenly pops up because a website you visited three days ago?”
Under pressure, Denham said, the advertising industry is “starting to do a better job” with a code of practice and more transparency, in part with a visible symbol that tells users their information is being shared.
Denham said it’s not a hopeless situation for consumers.
But, she added, they have an obligation to understand their own power, in particular disabling or controlling location-based tools in apps.
“You need to make a choice about that,” Denham said, noting those choices should start with children who have their first devices as early as four or five years of age.
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