Justice Committee on May 15th, 2014

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So this is proposed section 164.1?

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

No, it would be proposed section 487.015, that is, the communication trace production order.

A communication trace production order implicates historical information in a situation where the originating service provider may not be known. So in some recent investigations when there's been an exfiltration of data—let's say someone stealing credentials—we're able to identify where that came from. But then we go to that service provider, and they say it actually originated somewhere else. So then we keep going to the service providers, hopping to the point that we actually identify the original—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So you're hopping from service provider to service provider, and not necessarily from computer to computer.

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

Precisely.

That is one tool now being offered under this new legislation. The other is production of transmission data, which is proposed section 487.016—again, historical. In this case the service provider is known. We can go back to a computer. Let's say there was an attack and we know the service provider. It was Rogers. We can obtain a production order in this case. Now, what we're saying is, “We believe one of your accounts here was involved in an attack.” And what we want to see is their historical data, to actually capture the evidence of....

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

What is Rogers' obligation at that point to tell you that the originator is X or Y?

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

The transmission data is very precise. It contains no content on transmissions. It does not reveal substance, the meaning, or the purpose of the communication. It more or less identifies a type direction data—the date, duration, and so forth. So it's actually similar to phone call data today. If I were to make a phone call I know that this number called that number. So it' the same thing with this computer calling that computer. So we're establishing the link.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Is there any involvement of a judge at that point?

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

All of these provisions in Bill C-13 require prior judicial authorization. There are no warrantless access provisions in this bill.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Chief Chu talked about section VI, and unlike Mr. Wilks, I've never prepared a 700-page document. What's involved in preparing that kind of material for a judge to warrant the police to go from server to server to server?

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

The threshold, as proposed in the legislation here, is reasonable grounds to suspect.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I assume the threshold to anything else, really....

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

The police would have to identify the leads on the investigation. We actually have to set out what we know about the complaint, about the potential criminal violation, as well as any information we have that convinces a judge that we have reason to suspect that this telecommunication service provider may have hosted a transmission that was involved in a criminal activity.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Let me just turn to Chief Blais for a second. I'm working on the assumption that because you're from Halifax that you were eminently involved in the Rehtaeh Parsons case. Where was the big gap in police authorities, criminal authorities in order to conduct an appropriate investigation in that file?

[Chief Jean-Michel Blais]

Well, you can well appreciate that presently the file is before the courts, number one, and number two that there will be a review that has been mandated by the province. I can't talk in specific terms with regards to that file, but I will try to answer your question by mentioning some of the problems that we have in general.

It's a question of getting the information in a timely matter. We've had several other cases whereby we've made requests to IP providers out of the states. Facebook, for example, we have to go through an MLAT process and that could take upwards of several months. That's one of the big challenges that we've had as well.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Will this bill actually address that?

[Chief Jean-Michel Blais]

It would to a certain measure, but I think what it would allow us to do is that once we identified specific information and were able to determine where that information was housed, for example, as indicated before, we'd have that 21-day period if it's a local provider to be able to get that information now. If at the end of that 21-day period we weren't able to get the necessary judicial authorization in place, then it would fall and we wouldn't be able to obtain that information. It would help us. I don't think it would go as far as we'd like it to in order to get that timely information, and timely, ideally, would be within the days that would follow. But as indicated before, we also realized that when we are doing these documents, something as simple as a search warrant is no longer simple today.

The last search warrant I wrote was back in 2002 and it was a 15-page document. It took me about three days to prepare and that was simply for a public mischief charge.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Is the 21 days an impediment that could be addressed at this stage?

[Chief Jean-Michel Blais]

It could be, but once again, if we don't have that information, especially with the thresholds being reasonable grounds to suspect, then we may never have that information. I think as legislators you have to make that decision as to what is the best threshold and timing in there. We have to be fair to the Canadian public that we must be able to have all of the information that is there. As Chief Chu alluded to regarding the economics of policing or public safety, we have to be able to [Inaudible--Editor] the necessary resources to get the work done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

Our next questioner, from the Conservative Party, is Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, I really appreciate your being here today and taking us through some of the very technical parts of this bill relating to the tools that the police need to investigate these crimes, which I think everyone agrees are serious and have, as one of you said, a devastating impact on people.

Chief Chu, I'd like to ask you a question regarding the current policing process for these types of offences and how you would see things change if this bill passes. If I could just give you a hypothetical case, a young person has a conversation over the Internet with another person but doesn't have any way of verifying the identity of that person, and in relation to that discussion over a period of time, the young person sends an image of themselves to that person and subsequently that person threatens to do something with it. The young person then realizes that person is not a friend and is worried. If they come forward to their parents or a teacher and either the victim or one of those other people contacts the police today, what do you do? What can you do to find the identity of the person who has the image and is threatening to do something with it?

[Chief Jim Chu]

The question you ask is a common scenario. Our school liaison officers dread Monday morning when the kids march into their offices and talk about what happened over the weekend.

In the example you provide of text messages and threats conveyed that way, sometimes we don't have a name. The person is anonymous, but we may have that IP address, which as mentioned earlier, may come from one provider. Then we can use the provisions under the new Bill C-13 to quickly and nimbly get a production order for tracking where that originated and eventually we come back to a suspect. Once we have that suspect—it could be a predator based in California—we would then engage in an international investigation using multilateral assistance.

However, It may be just a classmate, and the victim had no idea who it was. For us to quickly identify that person allows us to intervene to stop it from happening. Quite often a warning is sufficient. If it is more serious and involves intimate images, again, we now have the ability to lay not as serious a charge as child pornography distribution, but the new provisions in Bill C-13.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay, today do you contact telecommunications service providers when conducting that kind of an investigation?

[Chief Jim Chu]

Yes, our organization has one central point of contact. Every investigation in the front lines goes through one coordinator, and she talks to the telcos.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Do you have the right to compel that ISP to give you that information today?

[Chief Jim Chu]

The only way we can compel them is to appear before a judge and obtain a production order.