CRTC lacking in battle against cybercrime: Auditor General

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada released a report Tuesday that found various agencies including the CRTC are falling down on the job when it comes to fighting cybercrime. The 35-page report, entitled Combatting Cybercrime, found breakdowns in response, coordination, enforcement, tracking, and analysis between and across the organizations. “Overall the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Communications Security Establishment Canada, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) did not have the capacity and tools to effectively enforce laws intended to protect Canadians from cyberattacks and address the growing volume and sophistication of cybercrime,” the report states. The study says the commission does little to protect Canadians against online threats. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the regulator received 335,751 reports to its spam reporting centre. Around 22 per cent of these reports, or 75,000, were cybercrimes. Yet there remains a gap between the number of reports and the number of investigations by the commission. “We found that most of the cybercrime-linked reports were not investigated by the CRTC,” the Auditor General wrote. “We found that during the three years in our audit period, the CRTC conducted only six investigations into anti-spam violations with links to cybercrime-linked incidents.” Of the half dozen investigations, three resulted in fines, two were still ongoing during the audit and one was closed with no further action taken. In one instance in December 2021, the commission received a report of someone wanting to buy child sexual exploitation material. Instead of forwarding the message to law enforcement, the CRTC recommended the complainant contact police. It is not known if that happened. The Auditor General contacted the RCMP in April of this year. “We raised our concerns with the CRTC that it did not forward this report to a law enforcement agency, as required by its operating procedures,” the AG said. “The CRTC disagreed and took the position that its operating procedures do not require it to inform law enforcement because the person who made the report to the online Spam Reporting Centre was not the potential victim or at immediate risk of harm.” The report found another case where the commission provided incorrect information to police who were seeking a search warrant. The regulator deleted data on a seized device that law enforcement were trying to access. The Auditor General made two recommendations in the report directly affecting the CRTC. It said the agency should have clear policies and procedures when it comes to sharing information with police. The regulator agreed and said it will review its procedures to see when it should override privacy protections and disclose data to law enforcement. The AG further recommended that only designated persons under Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) make key decisions. The commission agreed to this recommendation and said it has hired an external expert to provide training to its employees during the 2024-25 fiscal year. Finally, the auditor said all the agencies it had been looking at should work together to ensure that cybercrimes are reported to the organization with the mandate to investigate them. The CRTC replied that it does not have a mandate to investigate cybercrime but pledged to work with the other organizations to delineate who has authority to do so. At her news conference on Tuesday Auditor General Karen Hogan found fault with all the groups her team looked at. “We found breakdowns in response, coordination, tracking, and information sharing between and across federal organizations,” she said. “In addition, given the links between spam and cybercrime, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission's narrow view of its role has limited the extent to which it helps protect Canadians.” – Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

CRTC lacking in battle against cybercrime: Auditor General

News | June 4, 2024

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CRTC lacking in battle against cybercrime: Auditor General

News | June 4, 2024

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