After having heard various experts paint a disturbing portrait of the use by Canada and other countries of spyware, federal elected officials expect that the work of the parliamentary committee on the issue will continue longer than expected.
“Me, I saw the culture of avoidance, sadly, and not the culture of privacy,” said Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure on Tuesday, at the end of a two-day meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI).
The elected official expects the committee’s report on how to more strictly regulate the use by law enforcement of software capable of accessing the content of smartphones to be submitted after the scheduled date of 19 september. “It is certain that we will need a legislative movement on this. »
“There seems to be an openness from the RCMP to give us the information we need, including the privacy impact analysis, behind closed doors. We will have the opportunity in the fall to continue the discussion,” added NDP MP Matthew Green, also a member of the parliamentary committee.
On Monday, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officials confirmed the investigative use of spyware capable of capturing telephone conversations and access to the camera of the device, among others. However, this software would not be Pegasus, the controversial cookie from the Israeli company NSO.
Under part VI of the criminal code, the RCMP can only use this kind of software after approval by a judge. This has happened 32 times since 2017, affecting 49 devices.
Experts alerted
“Just because we are told by the RCMP that there is a judicial review, it should not be a magic wand,” argued before the parliamentary committee Ronald Deibert, professor of political science and director of the Citizen Lab. from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
This institution of the University of Toronto has documented for several years the use of this spyware, in particular against people in Canada. Countries with little regard for respecting human rights would have used these tools to monitor political opponents, journalists or activists.
In Deibert’s view, senior government officials should never be allowed to work after their public careers for private surveillance companies, which are compared to arms dealers or mercenaries.
He cites as an example the former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, who moved on to selling surveillance technology abroad, Radio-Canada revealed last September. This industry would not be regulated at all, warns Ronald Deibert.
“If we spend millions of dollars on these technologies, and it’s very expensive by the way, we could use this leverage to impose conditions” like not exporting this technology to places that do not care about human rights, he suggests. -he.
The director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Brenda McPhail, added before the parliamentary committee on Tuesday that these surveillance tools are not simple evolutions of traditional investigative techniques, as implied by officials of the RCMP the day before.
“Was it possible in the past to film you with a camera following you in your room, in the toilets? No, ”she illustrated.
Other possible uses
In addition to the RCMP, various national security agencies have similar spyware to conduct their investigations, said national security and intelligence researcher Michel Juneau-Katsuya.
It does not exclude elected officials from being targeted by investigations, since certain holders of public office, from different levels of government, have already been the subject of investigations in the past, in particular for having cooperated with states hostile to the Canada, he suggested.
For his part, the former privacy commissioner of Canada between 2014 and 2022, Daniel Therrien, also said he was “surprised” to have learned this summer of the use by the RCMP of a spyware, an “extremely intrusive practice”.
This software has been in the possession of the federal police since 2012, but other tools for monitoring encrypted communications have been used since 2002. Mr. Therrien believes, however, that the various legal provisions governing their use by the RCMP “seem reasonable”, the calling it a “good starting point”.