Recent revelations from Edward Snowden have made it clear that various government agencies and law enforcement ask for all sorts of information from Internet Service Providers on a frequent basis. What consumers want to know is how often does this happen and what data is handed over? Yesterday, Rogers and Teksavvy released information on the data requests each company receives from various government agencies and authorities, such as the RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, CRA, and police departments.
Rogers posted this info on RedBoard with this from Ken Engelhart who is Rogers Chief Privacy Officer:
We don’t provide direct access to our customer databases. We carefully review requests to ensure they’re legally valid and not overly broad, and then our staff provides the information securely so that only the government or law enforcement agency requesting it can access it.
Teksavvy with somewhat less fanfare released a similar report earlier in the day. Both documents detail the sorts of requests that they get from government and the customer data they do and do not give to the Government when they come knocking on the door.
My take? This is a good first step and I applaud both these companies. However I would like to see other ISP’s do the same and do so quickly. Not only that, I would like to see these disclosures done on a regular basis. Say once a year. That way, we know not only what ISPs do when the Government comes looking for info, but we know what the Government is looking for.
Teksavvy, Rogers Release Transparency Reports
Posted in Commentary with tags Canada, ISPs, Privacy on June 6, 2014 by itnerdRecent revelations from Edward Snowden have made it clear that various government agencies and law enforcement ask for all sorts of information from Internet Service Providers on a frequent basis. What consumers want to know is how often does this happen and what data is handed over? Yesterday, Rogers and Teksavvy released information on the data requests each company receives from various government agencies and authorities, such as the RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, CRA, and police departments.
Rogers posted this info on RedBoard with this from Ken Engelhart who is Rogers Chief Privacy Officer:
We don’t provide direct access to our customer databases. We carefully review requests to ensure they’re legally valid and not overly broad, and then our staff provides the information securely so that only the government or law enforcement agency requesting it can access it.
Teksavvy with somewhat less fanfare released a similar report earlier in the day. Both documents detail the sorts of requests that they get from government and the customer data they do and do not give to the Government when they come knocking on the door.
My take? This is a good first step and I applaud both these companies. However I would like to see other ISP’s do the same and do so quickly. Not only that, I would like to see these disclosures done on a regular basis. Say once a year. That way, we know not only what ISPs do when the Government comes looking for info, but we know what the Government is looking for.
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