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A member of the RCMP Gang Enforcement Team speaks to a vehicle occupant during a stop in Surrey, British Columbia, May 31, 2019. 57% of his deployments are for drug investigations.
Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press
The Lower Mainland’s RCMP continues to use tools that allow investigators to track suspects based on their cell phone location, but has updated its policy on how to address the significant privacy issues raised with the technology. A final decision could not be made.
According to documents obtained through a request for access to information that took more than 18 months, the RCMP used Stingray-type technology 112 times between July 2015 and March 2021, accounting for 57% of those deployments. was for drug research. The documents included copies of his 2017 Interim Policy and 2020 Draft Policy of his RCMP regarding the use of technology.
Civil liberties and digital privacy advocates have long been concerned about how often technology is used, why it is used, and who approves it.
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“This is the kind of information that should be made available to the public. We need to be aware of this,” Meghan McDermott, policy director at the BC Civil Liberties Association, said, adding that niche things such as submitting requests for access to information should be made public. It states that there is no need to catch up after the fact by having to use
The Federal Police have generally been tight-lipped about the Cell Site Simulator (CSS). This is also known as the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) Catcher. RCMP’s use of the technology was made public after it was covered in a report by the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner (OPC) in September 2017.
A cell site simulator mimics a regular mobile device tower to receive cell phone signals and retrieve metadata for all cell phones within a given area, not just those under investigation.
Some versions of the device are also capable of intercepting communications sent by mobile phones, but OPC revealed in 2017 that the CSS technology used in RCMP only captures a phone’s unique identifier and its current location. Confirmed to capture.
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This also applies to military-owned devices, RCMP spokesperson Corporal Kim Chamberland said in an email in January. Still, civil liberties and privacy rights groups are critical of the technology because of how invasive it is and the wide networks it casts.
“With the Cell Site Simulator’s permission, you are collecting a large amount of information about individuals who are not under investigation, who just happen to be in the geographic area where this device operates,” said the nonpartisan Brian Short, a digital rights activist for the advocacy group Open Media, said.
“We are talking about the potential collection of device IDs and location information for potentially thousands or tens of thousands of people as part of this research.”
The RCMP, in draft form published in 2020, states that the military can only use the device after obtaining a warrant or in “emergency situations,” defined as “circumstances necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or death.” said.
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Cpl. Chamberland said in an email that despite using the technology since July 2005, the draft policy for 2020 has yet to be finalized.
“The policy is expected to be finalized later this year, at which point we can share it,” she wrote on Jan. 24.
“Formalizing CSS policies is complex as it relates to specific technologies. As this technology continues to evolve, consultations are needed to address changes in functionality, operations, legal and privacy implications, health and safety. It will involve many stakeholders inside and outside the RCMP.”
OpenMedia’s Short said the lack of a final policy was “certainly shocking.”
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The 2020 draft policy is largely unchanged from the first policy introduced in 2017, shortly before the Privacy Commissioner’s report was released.
In an emailed statement on January 27, OPC did not comment on the final lack of policy when asked about RCMP’s use of CSS devices.
Cell tower simulators are part of a suite of technologies accessible to law enforcement, raising privacy concerns. Other new investigative techniques have similarly been questioned and criticized for guardrails against their use.
Late last year, The Globe and Mail reported that security measures set up using emerging technologies, including facial recognition, were underfunded and understaffed.
Last summer, the House Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics held hearings about law enforcement’s use of other controversial tools, such as spyware, to covertly obtain data from mobile phones. has been held. An RCMP official declined to provide some of the information he requested from the MP at the hearing.
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In November, the commission recommended the federal government strengthen privacy laws and establish standards for law enforcement’s use of spyware technology. The recommendation did not specifically mention CSS devices.
According to data obtained through access to information requests, use of CSS devices by RCMP from July 2015 to March 2021 was most common in Vancouver (45 times). Then Sally (31 times). Richmond (11); Burnaby (9); and Langley (6).
The data also show a significant decline in technology deployments in the Lower Mainland after the 2017 transitional policies were implemented.
In the second half of 2015, the technology was used eight times. In 2016, I used it 60 times. After one year, the CSS device has been used 32 times. It was used 4 times in 2018. Once in 2019. And 2020 is 2 times.
Cpl. In his January email, Chamberland said his privacy commissioner’s report and legal and technical issues temporarily restricted the use of the device since 2017.
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“As the use of this instrument was better understood by the courts, the OPC, and the public, and the technical challenges overcome, the use of CSS increased,” she wrote.
According to the data, between January 1, 2021 and March 18, 2021, the technology was used five times. That’s about as many as 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined.
Data show that during the period covered by the request for access to information, the technology was used 64 times (57% of all deployments) in investigations related to controlled substance and substance laws, compared with 40. ( 36%) in a murder investigation. Four times in investigations classified as “homicide/narcotics/organized crime.” Three times in kidnapping cases. and once trained.
McDermott of the BC Civil Liberties Association, which advocates drug decriminalization, said he was concerned about the technology’s heavy use in drug investigations.
“We expect judicial authorization to be used in most cases for these types of devices and that their use is strictly limited,” she said.
If CSS devices are used during drug investigations, Cpl. Chamberland wrote in an email, “there may be a serious organized criminal element involved.”
She added that the RCMP would not object to periodic reporting to the OPC on the military’s use of investigative tools, so long as it “protects the integrity” of ongoing investigations.
“The public should be aware that the use of these tools is for the narrow scope of serious criminal investigations that affect the safety and well-being of communities,” she wrote.
“These tools and the data obtained by them will not be used by the RCMP to complete large-scale surveillance or shared with other agencies. important and will be maintained during these investigations.”
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