Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  But on a daily basis, I'll tell you that people give us information. You're right—we do seek more information from people on other issues, obviously, to get clarity and find out if in fact a certain activity is false or true before we move into the court-ordered stuff.

Information & Ethics committee  Under the present PIPEDA, the issue of lawful authority is the one that created confusion, by saying we needed search warrants or a court order in order to obtain information. It's one of our concerns. We're not saying it's obligatory for anybody to give us information. It's clear and concise.

Information & Ethics committee  I think if we cross the line and say that we've now moved into an active investigation, then we start moving towards search warrants.

Information & Ethics committee  I will say that we've used our technology on two occasions to identify and pinpoint where hostages were within Iraq. We have used our technology to deal with major industries here in Canada. As you know, one of the five priorities of the force—along with youth and aboriginal—is economic integrity.

Information & Ethics committee  At first, it's really difficult to determine whether there has been a crime.

Information & Ethics committee  We started by giving a course to certain investigators who have the power to obtain this information in order to determine whether a crime or terrorist act has been committed. I recently wrote a memo to officers in Ottawa to ensure that each one thoroughly knew his citizenship protection role.

Information & Ethics committee  The reality is that we are the public. The public entrusts us to gather that information on their behalf in the execution of our duties. I don't believe all information should be accessed, no, by the public in general. Obviously some tightening up needs to be done with respect to privacy, now that we are getting into identity thefts and other areas.

Information & Ethics committee  I've not really seen breaches. We're very cognizant of the fact that the justice system determines what evidence comes in and what evidence gets thrown out. If they feel that information we gleaned required a judicial order, they will dismiss that evidence. We have a watchdog called the justice system when we glean information or gather that open source information and informal information.

Information & Ethics committee  If you are talking about open source information on the ISPs, which is available to the public, yes, you are right. It's where our tech crime people use information and analyze it to determine whether there is any criminality, whether there's a financial institution at risk, to alert them that we have seen this open source information on the Internet.

Information & Ethics committee  Good morning. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here this morning to at least clarify what we feel is a correction that needs to be made in the PIPEDA legislation, which will allow the RCMP to collect informal information in a more congenial fashion and allow us to do our day-to-day job.