It is encouraging to see the provincial government undertake efforts to improve the state of privacy law in Ontario, given the increasingly ubiquitous data commodification and surveillance of our behaviours, bodies, online and offline activities, and lives. To that end, the Citizen Lab submitted a brief which included 21 recommendations for legal and policy reform in Ontario, with a view to strengthening the privacy and data protection rights of individuals in the province.

This report examines algorithmic technologies that are designed for use in criminal law enforcement systems, including a human rights and constitutional law analysis of the potential use of algorithmic policing technologies.

The proposed rationales for weakening encryption would exchange marginal gains in limited investigative situations for significant loses with regards to Canadians’ abilities to exercise their rights and freedoms while simultaneously undermining cybersecurity, economic development, and foreign affairs. Minister Goodale should stop calling persons with well-considered policy positions on the importance of enabling the availability of strong encryption as supporters of child abusers, and get on with his job of trying to keep Canadians safe instead of endangering them with his irresponsible and dangerous encryption policy.

In this post, we evaluate the Government’s explanation of some of the more problematic elements of Bill C-59 in its briefing notes. We ultimately conclude that while the government’s briefing material provides insight into some of the ways that the CSE might act following the passage of the CSE Act, the material itself does not resolve our concerns with the CSE Act.