Public Safety committee  That was for informational purposes, but also to just inform the committee that if there's any scope for recording the answers to questions that are given on exit, this might be relevant to limiting the scope of questions that would be retained.

Public Safety committee  I want to clarify that as a representative of the ACLU, I'm not taking a position on Bill C-21 itself. I hope my testimony is helpful to the committee, but I don't feel qualified to opine on either the bill as a whole or particular amendments. The question goes to the risk of r

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much for having me. I am Esha Bhandari. I'm a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, and I'm based in New York. I previously testified before the Canadian House of Commons committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on June 15, 2017, w

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly not in the policy that's been publicly released, and I haven't seen anything making that distinction in either recommendations or a policy.

Information & Ethics committee  There are no guidelines or even any reference to that in the 2009 policy. We have heard—again, anecdotally—of individuals having their social media accounts searched, presumably with no regard to whether it is shared with other individuals.

Information & Ethics committee  Concerns have sometimes been raised to the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security. There was a civil liberties impact assessment conducted several years ago examining the practices and whether the policy guidelines were being complied with. Those

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not aware of any incidents that I can describe.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I think there is going to be a huge push-back and there already has been. The first battle over net neutrality was waged here. I think people are expecting round two. This is a huge issue. The same community and the same coalition that fought for net neutrality the first t

Information & Ethics committee  We don't know much beyond those numbers. There is currently a pending lawsuit seeking more information, seeking specifically the records that you mentioned: nationality of individuals searched along with the reasons.

Information & Ethics committee  We don't. The ACLU got some records in about 2008 to 2010, and about half of the searches conducted in that period, I would say, were of U.S. citizens, but we don't know about the other half.

Information & Ethics committee  We don't know systematically. Individuals who are U.S. citizens who have been aggrieved by a device search may sometimes file an administrative complaint seeking access to the records that were retained from their phone. That might give individuals an indication of what was taken

Information & Ethics committee  With respect to the Privacy Act, I think that the executive order was passed, quite frankly and unfortunately, to enable this office to be created for victims of crimes committed by immigrants. There is unfortunate rhetoric going on about publicizing crimes committed by immigrant

Information & Ethics committee  We're very concerned about that. We have commented publicly in the context of new so-called extreme vetting procedures that have been applied to certain visa applicants. The U.S. government has now begun seeking social media information on these applicants from particular countri

Information & Ethics committee  It's hard to predict. Litigation may deal with some of these issues. Court decisions may deal with the sort of baseline search requirements. I think there's going to have to be advocacy to change policies when we're talking about gathering social media information. I think that g

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. Thank you very much. I think a few things that underlie that assumption no longer hold when we're talking about searches of electronic devices. One is the idea that travellers have been able to control what they carry across the border with them, and therefore there may ha