On The Wire

Data Protection, Passcodes and Karma Police

It has been a hot week on the privacy front! So let's get caught up. On September 23, 2015, an opinion by Yves Bot, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice, was released in Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner, Case C-362-14, often referred to in the media as ...
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Privacy in Public Places

Is there a right to privacy in public places? And, if so, what language do we use to describe it and its boundaries? I have concluded that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public places that has emerged in the language of the leading cases in the Supreme ...
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New U.S. Justice Department Stingray Policy

On September 3, 2015, United States Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates announced a new policy that requires federal government agents to obtain a warrant before using controversial devices called an International Mobile Subscriber Identity catcher (IMSI) or a cell site simulator. In my post titled Stingray Cell Phone Surveillance ...
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Stingray Cell Phone Surveillance

The use of Stingray tracking technology by law enforcement agencies hit a public interest peak in the United States recently when an article by Brad Heath titled Police secretly track cellphones to solve routine crimes appeared in the USA TODAY edition of August 24, 2015. I have written about this technology ...
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Ethics and Electronic Communication

May a lawyer communicate privileged or confidential information by cellular telephone, email or text message? We read daily reports about email accounts being hacked. We've seen an op-ed in The New York Times by prosecutors seeking to justify limitations on rights of encryption. We have become almost immune to new ...
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Prosecutor Starts Another Crypto Skirmish

On August 11, 2015, The New York Times published an op-ed titled When Phone Encryption Blocks Justice by five prosecutors led by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The op-ed was co-authored by Francois Molins, Paris chief prosecutor; Adrian Leppard, commissioner of the City of London Police; and, Javier Zaragoza, ...
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In Defence of Justice Russell Brown

A lawyer in Victoria, British Columbia. An intern at the British Columbia Provincial Legislature. A member of the bars of Alberta and British Columbia. A doctorate in law from the University of Toronto. A law professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. A justice of the Court of Queen's ...
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Production Orders and Probable Cause

On September 14, 2014, the Alberta Court of Appeal released its split 2-1 opinion in R. v. Fedossenko, 2014 ABCA 314, 316 C.C.C. (3d) 223 holding that the standard of "reasonable grounds to believe that an offence...has been or is suspected to have been committed", contained in s. 487.012(3)(a) of the ...
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Privacy Heats Up: Major Cases in the Courts

Privacy litigation advanced on three fronts in the United States, Britain and Canada this month. In the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union headed back to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, in the case involving the bulk data collection program of the National Security Agency. In a ...
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Privacy Rights in Residential Buildings

A thorn in s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights, and in Fourth Amendment doctrine in the United States, has been this question: Do condominium owners and apartment lessees have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the common areas of their buildings? The question has received some answers in two ...
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