{"id":801,"date":"2016-02-24T04:13:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T04:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/?p=801"},"modified":"2024-12-23T08:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T08:00:55","slug":"why-canada-isnt-having-a-policy-debate-over-encryption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/why-canada-isnt-having-a-policy-debate-over-encryption-801\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Canada isn\u2019t having a policy debate over encryption"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Why<\/a><\/p>\n

The legal saga between Apple and the FBI has thrust encryption into the government\u2019s policy spotlight again \u2013 but only if you live in the United States. In Canada, you could be excused for not knowing such a debate exists .<\/p>\n

Ever since FBI director James Comey characterized the rising tide of encrypted data as \u201cgoing dark\u201d in an October, 2014 speech, American civil liberties groups, cryptographers, private companies and politicians have argued ceaselessly about encryption\u2019s merits and the dangers of so-called backdoors.<\/p>\n

While most acknowledge that encryption keeps vast swaths of Internet communication and services secure, there have nonetheless been calls for legislation, \u201cgolden keys\u201d and the formation of encryption committees in response to increasingly vocal arguments that encryption is helping criminals and terrorists operate beyond the law\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

Things culminated last week with the FBI\u2019s order that Apple Inc. modify its software to make it easier for law enforcement to break the iPhone\u2019s security protections \u2013 modifications that have been characterized as a backdoor for law enforcement, or criminals, to use again and again.<\/p>\n

In Canada, however, policy discussions involving encryption and, more largely, police powers in the digital realm \u2013 such as cellphone tracking devices and the use of hacking tools \u2013 have been \u201cfunctionally non-existent,\u201d according to Citizen Lab researcher Christopher Parsons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t had the kind of debate and back and forth and public positions taken that you see in the United States, you see in the United Kingdom. We just don\u2019t do it here,\u201d Mr. Parsons said.<\/p>\n

Some of the reasons are familiar. There is, for example, a comparatively smaller policy community in Canada that focuses on these issues than there is in the U.S., and a smaller amount of case law \u2013 not to mention the fact that previous governments have shown more interest in expanding police powers, rather than curtailing or even detailing them.<\/p>\n

And if past U.S. cases are any indication, the government will just as easily benefit by staying out of the debate and piggybacking on the outcome of the FBI\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can dodge the debate and benefit from it without having to engage in it,\u201d said Tamir Israel, a staff lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. \u201cAnd then the other side to that is they often will find quieter ways to get comparable results where they can\u2019t directly piggyback.\u201d<\/p>\n

By way of example, Mr. Israel pointed to the Solicitor General\u2019s Enforcement Standards (SGES), which outline 23 technical surveillance standards that must be followed as a condition of obtaining a wireless spectrum licence in Canada. After the U.S. passed lawful surveillance legislation called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in the 1990s, Canada used the SGES to quietly introduce similar standards.<\/p>\n

Although the standards were introduced in the mid-1990s and updated again in 2008, details were not made public until The Globe and Mail obtained past and current versions of the documents in 2013.<\/p>\n

Mr. Israel pointed to a wider problem preventing a successful encryption debate in Canada: a lack of transparency surrounding the government\u2019s position and policies. He raised cellphone tracking technology called Stingrays, or IMSI catchers, as an example. \u201cI personally find it very hard to believe that no law enforcement agencies in Canada are using these. But we can\u2019t even get the debate going, because we can\u2019t get past that first step where any of them admit that they\u2019re using them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The RCMP would not comment on Apple\u2019s dispute with the FBI but said in a statement: \u201cInternational police agencies are all in agreement that some ability to access evidence when judicial authorization is granted is required, recognizing that secure data and communications enables commerce and social interactions in today\u2019s reality. These are complex challenges which the RCMP continues to study.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement continued: \u201cThe RCMP encourages public discourse with Canadians as public policy continues to take shape on the issue of encryption.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said in an e-mail that it was not aware of any government agencies that have proposed backdoors in Canadian companies or Internet service providers, and that it is following encryption discussions \u201cwith interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

When reached via e-mail, Liberal MP Robert Oliphant, who chairs the standing committee on public safety and national security, wrote that, \u201cwhile encryption and backdoors are of great concern to a number of people, they have not yet surfaced as issues for our committee in its early days.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he added, the committee is still \u201csifting through all the important issues of safety and security and will be setting our work plan shortly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public Safety Canada said in a statement that it is \u201cmonitoring the ongoing debate in the U.S. and other countries on the issue of government access to encrypted data\u201d and that \u201cno special events related to encryption\u201d are currently planned.<\/p>\n

NDP MP and committee vice-chair Brian Masse, echoing Mr. Oliphant\u2019s statement, added that any proposed legislative changes involving encryption or backdoors should be handled democratically and involve both the Privacy Commissioner and Parliament.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, neither the chair nor vice-chairs of the standing committee on industry, science and technology responded to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

A small comfort, Citizen Lab\u2019s Mr. Parsons argued, is that Canadian politicians have shown themselves to be more level-headed and avoided the sky-is-falling rhetoric of their counterparts in the U.S., where Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate select committee on intelligence, stated earlier this month that \u201can Internet connection and an encrypted message application\u201d is all Islamic State militants need to carry out an attack.<\/p>\n

If this issue is going to be given some weight, Mr. Parsons suggested, \u201ccommittee meetings that very seriously look into this while there isn\u2019t a terror moment, it\u2019s the ideal way of going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legal saga between Apple and the FBI has thrust encryption into the government\u2019s policy spotlight again \u2013 but only if you live in the United States. In Canada, you could be excused for not knowing such a debate exists . Ever since FBI director James Comey characterized the rising tide of encrypted data as … Continue reading Why Canada isn\u2019t having a policy debate over encryption<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[325,326,52],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-debate","tag-encryption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}