Month: April 2015

April 15, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

In the 2014 Transparency Report, the Canadian telecom Rogers Communication has reported fewer customer information requests since the Supreme Court ruled that Internet Service Providers could not voluntarily disclose customer information to law enforcement officials than in previous years. In 2013, Rogers had 174,917 requests for customer information, including addresses, billing records and names, but in 2014 there were only 113,655. This is partly due to the Canadian Supreme Court ruling that barred ISP's, including Rogers, from disclosing names, addresses and phone numbers of their clients at the request of law enforcement officials without a warrant from a judge. This landmark decision has seen the number of requests drop significantly, but requests that had a judge warrant only dropped by roughly 3000, from 74,415 to 71, 501. As well, Rogers confirmed that they denied access to information, or were unable to return a customers information in 2,278 cases in 2014. Whether this was due to the changes, or simply due to not keeping long term records is unknown, but this also signifies a raise in denials. As per the ruling, the other major carriers such as Bell Communications and Telus Communications also have seen a similar drop in requests. We were unable to acquire concrete numbers from the other two of the big three, but have been told the requests for both non-warrant and warrant requests have dropped significantly. This trend in Canada has not been repeated in other parts of the world, and this is worrying to many within the data industry. Just south of the border, the United States has seen a sharp increase in requests to the major providers, and this has not only been limited to telecommunication companies. For instance, in 2013 Verizon and AT&T received more than 300,000 requests from law enforcement, both federal and state, which sees little to no change. With Verizon seeing 150,000 requests in the first six months of 2014 and 140,000 requests in the last half of the year, a drop of only 10,000 between the two years. On the other side AT&T received 115,925 requests in the first half in both civil and criminal proceedings, and 147,830, and these...

April 9, 2015

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Do you know if your hosting provider here in Canada is releasing your personal information to US and Canadian authorities without your knowledge? A new study released today by the policy researchers Andrew Clement of the Universtiy of Toronto, and Jonathon Obar of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, in coordination with the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy looks at this exact question. This study looked at the privacy practices of the top 43 Canadian internet service providers, and surprisingly finds that most of them will tell very little about what they do with your personal information. According to the study, many Canadian internet carriers are in violation of their legal responsibilities under Canadian Privacy Law. The researchers based the internet service providers on 10 criteria including Whether they inform customers when a third party requests their information Whether they inform customers the circumstances in which they agree to the requests and provide customers information to said third parties. Whether they tell customers the location that their personal information is stored and processed Whether they attempt to avoid routing customers personal information outside of Canada, where it is at risk at being intercepted by American authorities. The study reveals that a number of the top carriers in Canada in fact scored quite poorly on this scale. Our of the ten criteria, the average was two out of ten, which speaks to the issues around Canadian carriers. Of the top isp's in the country, the top scorer was the Ontario based Teksavvy with six stars. Telus received five stars for their services in Western Canada. While the other two members of the big three, Rogers and Bell, scored with scores of four and three stars respectively. Rounding out the major isp's Shaw and Videotron were within the average at two stars each. The researchers hope that this landmark study will lead to tougher Canadian privacy laws either through federal or provincial legislation. As well, they hope that carriers will become more transparent when it comes to providing customers information on how they handle their private data. The issue with the lack of ISP transparency here in Canada, is it...