On The Wire

What is cyberlaw?

No one knows. Not that the question hasn't been asked. But, rather, because the domain of cyberlaw, or cybersecurity law, is one where the parameters have not been defined. Recent hacking attacks against Sony Pictures, Target and Anthem have heightened public interest and recently motivated the U.S. Congress to propose ...
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Prosecutors Can be Sued for Wrongful Convictions: Supreme Court Rules

On May 1, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark ruling in Henry v. British Columbia, 2015 SCC 24 that damages in a civil claim may be awarded against the Crown for prosecutorial misconduct, absent proof of malice, under s. 24(1) of the Charter of Rights. In the ...
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Minimum Sentences for Guns are Cruel and Unusual: Supreme Court of Canada

On April 14, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released its opinion in R. v. Nur, 2015 SCC 15 holding that the mandatory minimum sentences for possession of a loaded prohibited firearm are unconstitutional. Writing for the 5-2 majority, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin found that the minimum sentences of three ...
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NSA’s ‘Collect It All’ Program Ruled Illegal by Appeals Court

In my post titled Privacy and Telephony Metadata dated October 2, 2014, I concluded with reference to ACLU v. Clapper in which the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, reserved its decision on September 2, 2014. The three-judge panel released their ruling (Docket No. 14-42-cv) on May 7, 2014, concluding ...
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Police Traffic Stops Limited By Fourth Amendment: U.S. Supreme Court Rules

On April 21, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States released an important ruling in Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. _ (2015) holding that the Fourth Amendment does not allow the police to extend the duration of a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion for reasons unrelated to vehicle ...
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Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill in the Post-Snowden Era

Since my last post titled Canada's Bill C-51 and The Right To Privacy dated April 16, 2015, the proposed anti-terrorism legislation has been in review by the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. On April 30, 2015, Professor Craig Forcese of the University of Ottawa, in his National ...
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Canada’s Bill C-51 and The Right To Privacy

In my post titled Privacy and Personal Autonomy dated January 2, 2015, I agreed with Professor Stephen J. Schulhofer in More Essential Than Ever: The Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-first Century (2012) that the ability of the individual to flourish in a vibrant democracy cannot survive in the absence of ...
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Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill Is Destined for the Courts

In my last post titled Informal Coalition Opposes Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill dated March 22, 2015, I reviewed the criticism of the government's position on Bill C-51 and the attendant decline in public support. I will focus here on two aspects of the bill that have been denounced by the critics: ...
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Informal Coalition Opposes Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Bill

In my post dated March 16, 2015, titled Canada's Bill C-51: Therrien v. Harper, I concluded with the CBC News report dated March 12, 2015, by Kady O'Malley that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien, was blocked by the government from the witness list of the Standing Committee on ...
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Canada’s Bill C-51: Therrien v. Harper

On March 5, 2015, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Daniel Therrien, released his office's Submission to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of the House of Commons. The submission focused on the new Security of Canada Information Sharing Act (SCISA) that I described as a "bill within Bill ...
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