Telecoms don’t give out customer info ‘willy-nilly’: Bell ombudsman

OTTAWA — Telecommunications companies don’t voluntarily give out confidential customer information to the government, said William Abbott, senior counsel and privacy ombudsman at BCE Inc. “I do not know a single TSP that makes voluntary disclosures of confidential customer information to the government,” Abbott said, adding that the use of the word “warrantless” is misleading because companies provide that information to a lawful authority. “The idea that unfortunately has gotten out into the blogosphere, which I find intensely irritating, that warrantless means willy-nilly, voluntary disclosure, is actually wrong,” he said during a panel discussion Friday at the New Developments in Communications Law and Policy conference in Ottawa, put on by the Law Society of Upper Canada. “Warrantless does not mean that there’s no lawful authority. It could be the Fisheries Act, it could be StatsCan, it could be under the Income Tax Act, but there are a lot of statutes out there that say the minister or his delegate may, if certain criteria are met, require the production of a certain chunk of information.” Abbott added that “we don’t get to choose the laws we comply with.” Michael Vonn, policy director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, who was also on the panel, said more information was necessary about these disclosures. “If you would like to share with the Canadian public exactly what the protocol is for your TSP, to allow information to be disclosed to law enforcement, we would very much appreciate that,” she said in response to Abbott’s comments. “What we hear from many TSPs is ‘we have a very responsible internal policy; please trust us,’ ” she said. “That’s not what we’re asking for here from you or the government or anyone else.” “We need to know precisely, and not generally, what is being complied with. And ‘where there is lawful authority’ is way too fuzzy for us,” Vonn added. Disclosure of information by telecommunications companies is an issue that’s been in the headlines in recent days, following the revelation that the government has, in recent years, made nearly 1.2 million requests for subscribers’ personal information per year, on average. On Tuesday, interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier told a Senate committee that new legislation is needed to compel telecom companies to disclose when they hand over subscribers’ private information to other parties, including government agencies, without a warrant. Edward Antecol, vice-president of regulatory and carrier relations at Wind Mobile, who was not part of the conference panel Friday, waded into the discussion during the question-and-answer portion of the event, commenting that over the past few days, there has been “a lot of sensational reporting” about voluntary disclosure. He said the top request Wind receives is whether a specific phone number is on its network, and the answer consists of a yes or no. “And that’s a voluntary disclosure that’s routinely made to lawful authorities,” he said. “The next most common request we get is: ‘OK, here’s a phone number. … What is the customer’s name and address?’ ” He said that if the number is not unlisted, and the company has the information, Wind will provide it. “That’s not confidential information,” he said. “Beyond that, nothing goes out without a warrant.” Antecol added that there have been a lot of questions about the information that companies disclose, such as how many times they have responded to warrants, but that legally, they can’t answer them. “Our hands are tied. We’re not able to provide this information — we’re actually prohibited from providing statistics on lawful intercept through the solicitor general’s guidelines.” Lawyer Christopher Taylor, who moderated the session, closed the discussion by commenting that “what’s clear about this issue is that it’s not clear enough.” He said there’s not enough clarity about “what the process is, what the numbers are, and to the extent the sides who feel under attack here can improve the situation significantly by providing that additional clarity.” The Wire Report reported in 2012 that a voluntary system was in place, under which telecom providers release a subscriber’s name, phone number and home address to police without court orders when law enforcement request the information and explain why it’s needed. There are currently two pieces of legislation in Parliament that could affect disclosure of information by telecoms. The Digital Privacy Act, or S-4, which was tabled in the Senate in April, would allow companies to disclose personal information to any organization investigating a breach of an agreement or a law. Anti-cyberbullying legislation Bill C-13, which was introduced by the government in the House of Commons last fall, resurrects many of the lawful-access provisions previously included in its so-called Internet surveillance bill, Bill C-30, which the government killed in February 2013. Among other provisions, that legislation would ensure that telecommunication companies that provide information voluntarily to authorities would face no liability. In January, a group of academics wrote to Canada’s leading telecommunications-service providers to ask about their sharing of customer information with government agencies; while most of the companies responded, their responses offered few details about the disclosures they make to government. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. have promised to let U.S. users know when government agencies request their personal data. Yahoo Inc. announced a similar change in July 2013, the paper said. The U.S. Justice Department said in a statement to the Washington Post that such notifications will endanger investigations and notify criminals of when they are under surveillance. “These risks of endangering life, risking destruction of evidence or allowing suspects to flee or intimidate witnesses are not merely hypothetical, but unfortunately routine,” department spokesman Peter Carr told the paper. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Telecoms don’t give out customer info ‘willy-nilly’: Bell ombudsman

News | May 2, 2014

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Telecoms don’t give out customer info ‘willy-nilly’: Bell ombudsman

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