When privacy is inconvenient

The CBC is reporting [s]earch warrants for child porn too slow, say RCMP:

Const. Blair Ross, who works on child pornography cases on P.E.I., told CBC News Tuesday RCMP are short-staffed already, and getting a search warrant can take days or even weeks.

“As it stands here now in Atlantic Canada, the internet providers will not provide that unless we obtain judicial authorization, in other words, a warrant,” said Ross.

“So before we even begin to investigate we have that hurdle to jump over, which is time consuming.”

The RCMP should be ashamed of this stance: while privacy can never be absolute, it should be really hard to compromise our privacy. That’s why we have judges to mediate the process.

For the record, Eastlink has a Legal Information page with a link to their privacy policy, where they say, in part:

While our general policy is not to provide personal information to any party outside of EastLink without your consent, there are certain limited circumstances in which it is necessary to do so. When we provide personal information to third parties, we provide only that information that is required in the circumstances. In turn, information provided to third parties is used only for the purposes stipulated and is subject to strict terms of confidentiality.

They then go on to list those bodies that might qualify, and this includes “law enforcement agencies,” “investigative bodies and legal counsel,” and “emergency services.”

While kudos should go to Eastlink to resisting the RCMP’s request for warrantless access to private information, it’s foreboding to read their representative quoted as suggesting that they’re not 100% committed to this:

“We’re not necessarily opposed to seeing things move in that direction,” said Sibley.

“However, with the existing legislation that’s in place, and also privacy legislation that we have to operate under, we’ve chosen to continue to ask for a warrant.”