Information & Ethics committee  Anecdotally, I'm led to understand that it was done to protect the use of the tool, not because correct warrants weren't acquired.

Information & Ethics committee  I do think it's a concern, but I also think Professor Deibert is best prepared to answer this question.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for inviting the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to appear before you today. I'm grateful to the committee for commencing this study of the RCMP's use of on-device investigative technology, because it's an issue of national concern that is also a symptom of a large

Information & Ethics committee  CCLA particularly supports a moratorium for police and national security uses of this technology, because those are situations where the consequences, if we get them wrong, are literally life-altering for individuals. That said, it would be beneficial to have a general moratori

Information & Ethics committee  It's a good question. One of the major gaps in our privacy regime is that our federal commissioner does not have enforcement powers and cannot issue binding orders. One purpose of a moratorium would be to give the government a chance to rectify that gap, should it choose to do so

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, yes, I believe so. In our current legislative regime, there are wide gaps that seem to have been exploited at this time to allow some uses of this technology in ways that have yet to be critiqued or examined in front of a judge. I think that's going to happen probably

Information & Ethics committee  In Canada, in part because police forces have been cautious and measured in adopting this technology and are using it in relatively limited ways, I do not know of such examples. In the United States, where the uptake has been faster and less cautious, our sister organization, th

Information & Ethics committee  I do not know, in the context of Vancouver, whether such a policy has been put forward. I do know that in Toronto what we believe to be the first such policy was recently put through, and the grapevine has suggested that many other police forces across Canada were waiting on th

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I believe that came from the extensive research conducted in the Citizen Lab report on algorithmic policing across Canada. There are a number of forces across Canada, including Vancouver's, that are currently engaged in using these kinds of tools. It's happening quietly, u

Information & Ethics committee  Either there is no policy in place or there's not a policy that's available for public view. I've done extensive access to information requests on similar topics, most specifically focused on facial recognition technology, and it's like pulling teeth to get access to this informa

Information & Ethics committee  Indeed, Clearview AI has filed legal applications, lawsuits, against the commissioners in B.C., Alberta, Quebec and federally disputing those orders and challenging them on a series of grounds that range from the difficulty or impossibility of complying with those orders to chall

Information & Ethics committee  I do. The CCLA has called for a moratorium, which is similar to a ban, until we sort this out, and until we have exactly this kind of conversation with our democratically elected representatives, and people across Canada, to think this through. Are there uses of this technology t

Information & Ethics committee  I think that virtually every private sector purveyor of facial recognition technology has a similar model. I would throw your attention towards the Cadillac Fairview mall investigation by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which involved a non-consensual private sector use of fa

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for that question. It's a really important one. You have to start from the right place. I respectfully disagree with Monsieur Labonté. Facial recognition systems use our face. That is some of the most sensitive personal information we have. Faces are recognized in Can

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you to the chair and the committee for inviting the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to appear before you today. Facial recognition—or, as we often think of it at CCLA, facial fingerprinting, to draw a parallel to another sensitive biometric—is a controversial technol