Thank you for this question.
In my remarks I spoke to transparency, which is one issue, and to what extent companies and government should disclose to the public, in broad statistical terms, how often there is a sharing of information between companies and government for law enforcement purposes.
Now you're asking the substantive question of what ought to be shared by telecommunication providers, for the most part, and law enforcement. The first place to look at on this issue, of course, is what the Supreme Court said in 2014 in the case of Spencer. In that case, the court set out excellent guidelines. In terms of companies sharing information with law enforcement, it set out that the principle is the principle of warrants. These communications should as a rule be authorized by a court, on the principle that courts are well placed to balance the interests of the police in getting that information and the interests of individuals in having their privacy protected.
The court did outline three very narrow exceptions to the rule. One in particular has to do with emergency situations. If the police are investigating a crime that is about to be committed and they need personal information, that is one exception to the warrant rule. However, the rule is clearly warrants, with very narrow exceptions.