In a judgment released on June 13, 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously recognized that Canadians have a reasonable expectation of privacy in subscriber information held by their internet service providers. In R. v. Spencer, 2014 SCC 43 Justice Thomas A. Cromwell concluded, at para. 66, that the, "...disclosure ...
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A wiretap authorization may only be granted by a superior court judge. The application is made by an agent of the Attorney General of a province or the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. An agent is specially designated under the Criminal Code. The application is usually based on ...
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In two major developments in Canada the courts have enhanced the protection of information stored by citizens on their computers and smart phones. In R. v. Vu, [2013] 3 S.C.R. 657 the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously held that the privacy interests implicated by computer searches call for specific judicial ...
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In a landmark case reported as Riley v. California, 573 U.S. __ (2014) released on June 25, 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously held that a warrantless search and seizure of digital contents of a cell phone during an arrest violated the Fourth Amendment and was unconstitutional ...
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The Charter of Rights protects three privacy interests which we encounter in our daily lives. Mr. Justice Ian Binnie of the Supreme Court of Canada identified them as: personal privacy (bodily integrity), territorial privacy (privacy in the home) and informational privacy (information about ourselves and our activities). Informational privacy has ...
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The police wiretap a landline in a lounge because they suspect that a drug dealer uses it for business. A waitress uses the lounge phone to call an abortion clinic to make an appointment. The police wiretap a pay phone at a local gym because they believe a murder suspect ...
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On September 30, 2013, the Prime Minister announced the nomination of Mr. Justice Marc Nadon, a supernumerary judge of the Federal Court of Appeal, to the Supreme Court of Canada. On October 3, 2013, by Order in Council, Justice Nadon was named a judge of the court, replacing Justice Morris ...
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In the second part of this series of posts on trends in wiretap law I concluded by saying there were judicial limitations on the ability of defendants to challenge the admissibility of wiretap evidence in court. I will pick up that discussion here. First, if you are following this series ...
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In the first part of this series of posts on trends in wiretap law I said that over the last thirty years there has been an expansion of state intrusion into the personal sphere of the individual that is vivid in the context of electronic surveillance. I will talk about ...
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Canadians value their privacy both individually and collectively. We may not protect our privacy like my parents did in a social sense and we have surrendered much to the surveillance camera but in 1982 the nation found the political will to patriate its constitution and entrench our rights in it ...
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