In an important privacy ruling Justice John R. Sproat of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently held that "tower dump" production orders requiring Rogers Communications and Telus Communications to hand over the personal information of about 43,000 customers to the police breached s. 8 of the Charter of Rights ...
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The right to trial within a reasonable time was found unconscious at the Law Courts Building in Edmonton, Alberta, on December 22, 2015. Neighbours on 97th Street were overheard speaking fondly of the maligned right that is a noisy member of the Charter of Rights community. One of the emergency medical ...
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May a sentencing judge deviate from the range of sentence established by the courts for a particular offence? Is it open to a sentencing judge to consider the frequency of a particular crime in the community where the offence was committed? These were the broad questions considered by the Supreme ...
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On December 29, 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amici curiae brief with the ACLU of Maryland and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the first known case where a motions judge suppressed evidence as a result of the warrantless use of a cell site simulator by the police. In ...
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On April 4, 2013, the tragedy of Rehtaeh Parsons' teenage life unfolded in her home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, when she attempted suicide by hanging. Three days later, while in a coma, the decision was made to terminate her life support. Her death was widely attributed to the online dissemination ...
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Is it unlawful to record the police during your own arrest? Can you lawfully record the police during a search of your residence? What about a bystander recording someone else's arrest? Does it make a difference if the recording takes place in a hotel lobby, a motor vehicle or on ...
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On December 18, 2013, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 68/167 that expressed "deep concern" about the negative impact that surveillance and interception of communications may have on human rights. The General Assembly affirmed that the rights held by people offline must also be protected online and it called ...
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In a split 2:1 ruling released on August 21, 2015, the British Columbia Court of Appeal held that a sender has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a text message that has been delivered to a recipient's cell phone. Although the sender assumes the risk that the recipient might disseminate ...
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On November 9, 2015, it was widely reported by the media that the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) had decided to review the conduct of Justice Robin Camp in acquitting a defendant of sexual assault on September 9, 2014, when he was a judge of the Provincial Court of Alberta. Justice ...
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In my last post titled Apple And The 'All Writs Act' dated November 2, 2015, I discussed an application before Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, in In Re Order Requiring Apple, Inc. To Assist In the Execution Of A Search ...
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