Mr. Chair, and hon. members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide an overview of the work being done by the RCMP to combat cybercrime, including cyberbullying.
I am Assistant Commissioner Joe Oliver and I am responsible for overseeing the RCMP's Technical Operations Directorate. Technical operations provides direct specialized investigative and operational services to front-line police officers, including the national coordination of investigations involving the online sexual exploitation of children and the provision of specialized investigative tools to address criminal conduct on the Internet.
Joining me today is Inspector Mercer Armstrong. Inspector Armstrong works in the policy and compliance unit of the RCMP's contract and aboriginal policing directorate. This directorate is responsible for investigative policy, including that governing enforcement of the Criminal Code. That includes incidents such as cyberbullying in RCMP contract jurisdictions across Canada. Contract and aboriginal policing also monitors RCMP educational and outreach initiatives with respect to the prevention of cyberbullying and other crimes.
I would like to start by discussing cybercrime more broadly. Following this, I will touch on some of the investigative challenges that police face in the digital era: challenges that relate to the anonymous, hard-to-detect, and often cross-border nature of cybercrimes. I will then address specific forms of cybercrime that have a devastating impact on youth, namely cyberbullying and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.
When it comes to cybercrime, it is important to note that cybercrime is, in many cases, a modern means to commit familiar crimes. For example, criminals create and deploy malicious software programs to steal passwords or to obtain personal and financial credentials. This information then allows them to commit a number of offences, such as fraud, identity theft, and other financially motivated crimes. Recently, the RCMP worked with its international partners to investigate the deployment of malware that infected thousands and potentially millions of computers for such criminal purposes. As part of Operation Clean Slate, the RCMP investigated offences involving the unauthorized use of computers and mischief in relation to data, sections 342.1 and 430 of the Criminal Code, respectively.
These provisions, however, do not fully address key elements of cybercrime, including the possession of a computer virus for the purposes of committing mischief, or importing or otherwise making computer viruses available. These criminal threats come from within Canada and abroad, are carried over Canadian telecommunications networks and, in many cases, are both a threat to Canadians and to our allies. As it stands, the Criminal Code's coverage of unauthorized computer use and data mischief does not fully reflect the magnitude of today' s cybercrime environment and the potential scope of related police investigations.
In the fight against cybercrime, timely securing digital evidence in a virtual world is critical. As we all know too well, computer data can be easily altered or deleted, whether inadvertently or intentionally. During the course of a cybercrime investigation, Internet service providers may delete computer data, and therefore potential evidence, as part of routine operations. Law enforcement, as part of common law policing duties, may request service providers to voluntarily preserve data. Notwithstanding this measure, police forces currently have no means of ensuring that service providers do not delete when there is a reason to suspect criminal activity, whether through short-term demands by a police officer, or longer-term orders by judicial authorization. The absence of such investigative tools puts potential evidence at risk as investigators develop their case in support of meeting judicial thresholds for data access.
Another digital evidence challenge relates to the issue of attribution. In other words, how do we start to identify a potential suspect in an online context, particularly when a suspect may have taken sophisticated steps to disguise his or her digital tracks through anonymous online networks, encryption technologies or other cyber-related measures, such as a botnet?
In that context, specific components of digital evidence, such as transmission data or tracking data are particularly important at the start of a police investigation into online criminal activity.
These very precise types of digital evidence allow police to potentially attribute online criminal activity to a source and further investigative leads. Currently specific types of data such as transmission or tracking data may be obtained through voluntary disclosure by a third party or through judicially authorized general production orders or search warrants.
In the case of general production orders or search warrants, police must meet the standard of reasonable grounds to believe that a crime has been committed. This standard can be challenging to meet in the early stages of an investigation where an officer may have reasonable grounds to suspect online criminal activity, but nothing else. In such cases specific forms of data, such as the ones I've mentioned, may contain critical early indications of criminal activity, indicators that are often necessary to commence effective police work in the cyber realm.
These investigative challenges are by no means limited to financially motivated crimes. They extend equally to other devastating online crimes that target our youth such as online child exploitation and cyberbullying. Youth are one of the RCMP's strategic priorities, and comprehensive strategies including education, awareness, and enforcement initiatives are employed to prevent youth victimization and to respond to the participation of youth in criminal activity.
For example, the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, one of the areas within my portfolio, works with law enforcement partners across Canada and internationally to combat the online sexual exploitation of children. The centre also works closely with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a charitable organization that operates Canada's national tip line, cybertip.ca, for reporting online child abuse and sexual exploitation incidents.
To address cyberbullying the RCMP's Youth Resource Centre provides officers working in over 5,000 schools across Canada with lesson plans and related educational tools to help youth recognize, respond to, and prevent both traditional bullying and cyberbullying behaviour. In addition the RCMP's National Crime Prevention Services has also partnered with PREVNet, a national network of researchers and organizations working to stop bullying and cyberbullying, and the University of Victoria to pilot WITS, an acronym for walk away, ignore it, talk it out, and seek help. The WITS program aims to prevent peer victimization and bullying, including cyberbullying, through youth engagement. The pilot is currently supported in 50 schools and has engaged over 8,800 students. These activities are fundamental preventive measures to address cyberbullying.
Unfortunately, cyberbullying cannot always be addressed through prevention. As identified by the cybercrime working group of the coordinating committee of senior officials, bullying and cyberbullying may be manifested in a range of criminal offences, such as criminal harassment, uttering threats, or intimidation. High-profile cyberbullying incidents have taught us that bullying may be facilitated and amplified by telecommunication. As it stands, the existing provisions in the Criminal Code regarding offences of false, indecent, or harassing communications do not currently reflect the increasingly ubiquitous role of telecommunication as a possible medium to bully individuals in a criminal capacity.
Recent incidents of cyberbullying, specifically those involving the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, come with other investigative challenges too. For example, for victims under the age of 18, the use of child pornography provisions to charge individuals may be challenging to align with the intent of these offences. As the previously mentioned cybercrime working group identified, it may be viewed as too blunt an instrument to address the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, especially in situations where the offender is also under the age of 18. These current parameters may have a limiting effect on the investigator's discretion and options in proceeding with appropriate criminal charges.
In closing, many cyber-crimes are essentially very sophisticated ways of committing recognizable offences: theft, fraud, bullying, extortion or child exploitation to name a few. But the criminal use of information technologies, however, creates significant challenges for police investigations.
These challenges include the preservation of evidence, the difficulty in identifying and attributing criminals online, or standards of proof more fitting to “real world” investigations in physical, “non-cyber” domains.
Steps to modernizing offences and investigative tools in the Criminal Code would permit Canadian law enforcement to better address criminal forms of bullying and other crimes in the digital age. I would also emphasize that steps to harmonize Canada's criminal laws and investigative tools with those of its allies would enable the RCMP to more effectively work with international law enforcement partners in addressing the many online crimes that are transnational in character. Bill C-13 would help to address investigative challenges that l've mentioned.
Inspector Armstrong and l look forward to answering your questions.