Presents a point of view reflecting the company’s progressive values on an issue of public interest. Editorials are written by staff within the Star’s editorial board, which is independent of the newsroom.
Illegal spying shows need to update security laws: Editorial
A Federal Court ruling that CSIS illegally spied on people for a decade shows once again that the balance between privacy and security has become dangerously skewed toward the latter.
There is a right lesson and a wrong lesson to be drawn from a new Federal Court ruling that, for a decade, Canada’s intelligence agency illegally spied on people suspected of no wrongdoing. Which one will Ottawa glean?
In the course of its investigations, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service incidentally hoovers up huge amounts of information on third parties. The law forbids the agency from keeping such data. But, in a decision released last week, the court found that since 2006, not only had CSIS been storing the information, it had also been analyzing it to draw “specific, intimate insights into the lifestyle and personal choices” of the unsuspected individuals in question.
CSIS Director Michel Coulombe chalked up the transgression to a legal misinterpretation, claiming his agency wrongly believed it was allowed to retain the data. What he couldn’t explain, however, is why CSIS failed to tell the courts of its activities, as is required by law.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
The judge in the case, Justice Simon Noel, pointed out that this is the second time in three years the agency has been found in violation of its duty of candour to the judiciary. “I wonder what it will take to ensure that such findings are taken seriously,” he wrote. That’s a crucial question for the Liberal government to answer.
As important, Ottawa should take seriously the judge’s suggestion that it revise the CSIS Act, which was written more than 30 years ago for a pre-digital world. The ruling is yet another indication that as new technologies have made it possible for the state to dredge and analyze endless streams of personal information, our security laws have failed to keep pace by imposing needed constraints. On the contrary, in recent decades, and in particular with the passing of the overreaching Bill C-51, the trend has been to expand the powers of the security establishment without offering counterbalancing privacy protections.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale rightly said he would not appeal the court’s ruling. But he left open the possibility that he would change the CSIS Act to allow for just the sort of data storage and analysis the court condemned. That’s the wrong direction.
The current act reflects the principle that the state should not be allowed to spy on people suspected of no crime. That the government can now do that more easily than when the act was written does nothing to invalidate that principle. In fact, it makes it more important. The court’s findings show once again that the balance between privacy and security has become dangerously skewed toward the latter. The CSIS Act, like Canada’s other security laws, should be revised to redress that imbalance, not to exacerbate it.
