Thank you for inviting Rogers Communications to appear before this committee.
You have broadened the scope of your hearings to include an examination of the disclosures that telecommunications carriers make to law enforcement agencies, and it is that topic that I will address in my remarks.
There has been considerable interest in this topic among members of the public and the media, and we are grateful for your committee's work and its allowing us to come forward to explain our procedures on the record.
Rogers is a diversified Canadian media and communications company, and the needs of our customers come first. We want to provide them with the best communications services possible and make sure they know that their personal information is safe and secure. However, as good corporate citizens, we also have to comply with law enforcement agencies who request Rogers' assistance in their efforts to keep our country safe.
I am pleased to share Rogers' “2013 Transparency Report” with the committee. It was just released this morning. This report is designed to provide more details on the number and types of requests we received from government and law enforcement agencies in 2013. We are proud to be the first telecommunications company in Canada to share this information publicly.
As you'll read in the report, Rogers received 174,917 requests for customer information in 2013. These requests fall into six categories, which l will detail for you now.
First, police and similar agencies provide us with court orders or warrants requiring us to release customer information to them.
Second, some government agencies have statutory authority to request information. For example, Revenue Canada has such authority under the Income Tax Act.
Third, we receive emergency requests from 911, public safety answering points, or police in life-threatening situations. These could include missing persons cases or cases of individuals in distress. We help them to locate someone with a cellphone and provide contact details for people who have called 911 and who may be unable to communicate.
Fourth, police sometimes send us a letter stating that they are investigating child exploitation and may need information so quickly that they do not have time to get a court order or warrant.
Fifth, we sometimes get an order from the courts pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act. These are requests from foreign jurisdictions that have contacted our Department of Justice. Because we have a treaty or convention with these countries, our courts process their requests. Note that we do not answer all requests that we receive. If we consider an order to be too broad, we push back and if necessary go to court to oppose the request.
The final area is the one which I believe has attracted the most attention. These are customer name and address checks. Very often the police are not sure which carrier they need to seek a warrant for. For example, they will come to us to ask whether a person who lives at a certain address or who has a certain phone number is a Rogers customer. We say either yes or no. There are other similar types of requests made under this category.
We believe this information is useful for the police so that they do not seek a warrant against the wrong carrier or regarding the wrong person. There has been a great deal of interest in the press about these warrantless searches, but they are a means by which the police can identify whom they should be getting a warrant or order against.
There has also been a great interest in the acquisition by some American agencies of metadata without search warrants. I can assure this committee that Rogers has not released and does not and will not release metadata to any law enforcement agency in Canada without a search warrant.
Further, as I said earlier, we would not process a request that amounted to a fishing expedition. Our customers' privacy is important to us. We believe more transparency is helpful and we encourage the Government of Canada to issue its own report to shed more light on these requests.
I would be most pleased to answer your questions.