Evidence of meeting #82 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was casl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Baylis.
On these topics I'd love to drill down further, but I want to take advantage of having Mr. Lau on the phone from Singapore. Thank you for staying up so late to talk with these Canadians who are scratching their heads on this legislation.
We heard testimony from one of the officials from the Canadian government that 50% of global email traffic is spam, at least in this year. Does Interpol keep track of global spam? Do you know where the lawsuits are being prosecuted and which countries are the leading sources of spam? Do you keep records on that type of thing?
12:45 p.m.
Digital Crime Officer, Cybercrime Directorate, INTERPOL
We don't have any special units in Interpol for doing those kinds of things, but I can give you one example of how spam emails were involved in cybercrime. We did an operation in the ASEAN region early this year, and with the assistance of some private companies we were able to identify about 8,000 malicious servers.
Just to give you an idea, among those 8,000 servers, over 7,000 were sending spam emails. The remaining 1,000 were involved in ransomware, banking scams, and other things. It is very common in the cybercrime field for criminals to use compromised computers and servers to send out spam emails.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
I think the picture forming in my mind, based on the testimony we've heard, is that we have legislation but we also need technical solutions. We actually need both. We need to know what we're trying to trap, how we're trying to trap it, and how to find technical solutions for those multiple servers that are trying to attack our market.
12:50 p.m.
Digital Crime Officer, Cybercrime Directorate, INTERPOL
I totally agree.
In fact, the methodology and the techniques that were operating behind these 7,000 servers for sending spam mail were actually very complicated. They operate in an automatic way, so I agree with you that we need some sort of technical support.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you.
Sticking with Louis, I will just follow up.
The United States, New Zealand, Australia, the European Union, and the U.K. all have anti-spam legislation. Would you be able to indicate to us what country you think has the most effective anti-spam legislation and perhaps maybe another country that I didn't list there?
12:50 p.m.
Digital Crime Officer, Cybercrime Directorate, INTERPOL
I'm sorry, but I'm not in a very professional position to comment on this, because I haven't spent much time studying others. If we really need to, we can come back and talk to you at a later stage.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
On that note, Mr. Lau, we'll let you get some sleep, unless you're going to patrol the streets of Singapore.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. Clearly there's a lot to think about. I think we have a task ahead of us. Thank you very much for coming in.
I will just remind everybody on the committee that this Thursday we will have the CRTC in for the first hour. In the second hour, we will go to IP. I believe you've all received a copy of draft number 3. Expect to find the translated recommendations revised perhaps today or tomorrow and then hopefully we can wrap that up tout de suite. That would be great.
On that note, we get to leave a few minutes early.
Have a great day.
The meeting is adjourned.
