OPC says it’s ‘at a loss’ over exclusion from CSE oversight

The privacy commissioner is calling for his office to be included in Bill C-59’s new review process for the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), according to a written submission. The commissioner, under current Privacy Act legislation, can’t share confidential info with the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), established by C-59, or a separate parliamentary review committee created late last year, it said. “This means that the comprehensive review process offered in Bill C-59 as a fundamental element to bring balance between security and respect for rights would stop short of the objective, by leaving privacy experts out of integrated review,” the report said. “I am at a loss to understand why.” The submission was released Wednesday as a follow-up to privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien’s appearance late last year in front a parliamentary committee that is studying the proposed legislation. It said the OPC has extensive expertise in privacy and that knowledge could benefit other review agencies and security bodies. The OPC should be able to “discuss files with other oversight bodies, including their classified information, so that review is fully integrated and grounded in relevant facts, as opposed to the theoretical discussions divorced from factual details that we currently have,” it said. Being able to share classified information would “also enhance efficiency by allowing us to determine up front who is best placed to review a given issue and how an efficient division of roles can be defined,” the document said. The OPC asked for parallel amendments to be made to the Privacy Act, C-59, and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, under which the review committee of parliamentarians was created. It also touched on provisions around publicly available information, which the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) previously said could have privacy implications, while privacy advocates at Citizen Lab have pointed to a lack of clarity around what constitutes publicly available information. The OPC said there is still some, though reduced, expectation of privacy around publicly available information and recommended that the measures around the collection of such information “be reasonable and proportional in the circumstances, having regard to the reasonable foreseeable effects on Canadians and people in Canada including on their right to privacy.” It also said the definition of publicly available information should be narrowed, “to specify that information is published or broadcast lawfully, and that information obtained through purchase or subscription was legally obtained or created by the vendor." — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

OPC says it’s ‘at a loss’ over exclusion from CSE oversight

News | March 8, 2018

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OPC says it’s ‘at a loss’ over exclusion from CSE oversight

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