[Privsec] Re: Lawful Access - Canadian Consultation

[Robert Guerra]

Gus:

got back last night from the Lawful access meeting in Ottawa. 
Technically the meeting wasn't a consultation, but an update with the 
key CS stakeholders that were involved in the earlier consultations.

The day was a long one with presentations, well - more so a dialogue 
- with officials from Department of Justice, Emergency preparedness, 
industry canada, rcmp ,  the competition bureau and I think a few 
more.

In terms of highlights:

* There was an announcement that other consultations will also be 
taking place in - Montreal (this friday) and Victoria (i think next 
week).

* Written comments were encouraged for those who a. couldn't come, 
and b. those who were present but didn't feel they had enough time to 
prepare specific comment. The mentioned deadline is end of march 
(with the possibility of a slight extension to sometime in April)

Note:  I raised the point that key CS organizations and individuals 
(such as you gus) had been involved in the earlier consultations and 
were keen to participate as well.  They were keen to find ways to 
engage you as well, to get your comments, and hopefully written 
submissions by the end of march deadline.

* The later part of the afternoon focused how the department of 
justice is formulating  key concepts and how they are trying to fit 
them into law.

* It was encouraging to hear that the concept of "content data" is 
problematic for them as well - and as such they will be moving away 
from using that term all together.

- Using printed material that they will be sending us soon (via 
courier) they made case that email indeed is a private communication 
and should be afforded the same legal protections that exist under 
Canadian law for other private communications such as postal mail .

If i'm not mistaken,  compared to what's happened elsewhere - the 
Canadian proposals seem quite progressive.


So all in all, an interesting meeting where the CS groups were able 
to get a briefing on the current state of the lawful access 
proposals. There seems to be a genuine interest to  hear from and 
incorporate specific comments from Civil Society.

* In terms of legislative agenda - it seems that there is a desire to 
have the proposal be considered by parliament sometime this spring, 
or early summer. As we are in a minority government situation - it's 
hard to tell for sure, but it seem like there's an urgency to get the 
consultation process concluded and moved to the parliamentary stage 
for sometime this year.

If that ends up to be the case, and parliament adopts the law by the 
fall (which is not something that can be predicted) - then Canada 
will be in a situation of having the required legislation to 
implement the Council of europe convention on cybercrime....

So what next  ?

Given the relatively short deadline (that of end of march), i would 
be great to find a way to get those on this list able to learn more 
of the developments and have some  comments submitted in an official 
way.

I would be keen to facilitate this - what do you think?

regards

Robert





At 5:51 PM +0000 3/7/05, Gus Hosein wrote:
>I'm afraid that I can't get comments in by Wednesday; I am on my way 
>to Brussels for a meeting and not back until Tuesday evening; and am 
>teaching on Wednesday, so comments won't arrive until too late.
>
>It's too bad too -- I've been waiting for this for quite some time. 
>Four years, in fact!
>
>Keep well...
>
>gus.


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Robert Guerra <rguerra at privaterra.org>
Privaterra - <http://www.privaterra.org>