Government Surveillance Accountability: The Failures of Contemporary Canadian Interception Reports

Real time electronic government surveillance is recognized as amongst the most intrusive types of government activity upon private citizens’ lives. There are usually stringent warranting practices that must be met prior to law enforcement or security agencies engaging in such domestic surveillance. In Canada, federal and provincial governments must report annually on these practices when they are conducted by law enforcement or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, disclosing how often such warrants are sought and granted, the types of crimes such surveillance is directed towards, and the efficacy of such surveillance in being used as evidence and securing convictions. This article draws on an empirical examination of federal and provincial electronic surveillance reports in Canada to examine the usefulness of Canadian governments’ annual electronic surveillance reports for legislators and external stakeholders alike to hold the government to account. It explores whether there are primary gaps in accountability, such as where there are no legislative requirements to produce records to legislators or external stakeholders. It also examines the extent to which secondary gaps exist, such as where there is a failure of legislative compliance or ambiguity related to that compliance. We find that extensive secondary gaps undermine legislators’ abilities to hold government to account and weaken capacities for external stakeholders to understand and demand justification for government surveillance activities. In particular, these gaps arise from the failure to annually table reports, in divergent formatting of reports between jurisdictions, and in the deficient narrative explanations accompanying the tabled electronic surveillance reports. The chronic nature of these gaps leads us to argue that there are policy failures emergent from the discretion granted to government Ministers and failures to deliberately establish conditions that would ensure governmental accountability. Unless these deficiencies are corrected, accountability reporting as a public policy instrument threatens to advance a veneer of political legitimacy at the expense of maintaining fulsome democratic safeguards to secure the freedoms associated with liberal democratic political systems. We ultimately make a series of policy proposals which, if adopted, should ensure that government accountability reporting is both substantial and effective as a policy instrument to monitor and review the efficacy of real-time electronic surveillance in Canada

Slouching Toward Regulation: Assessing Bill 88 as a Solution for Workplace Surveillance Harms

Employee monitoring applications (‘‘EMAs”) are proliferating in Canada and provide employers with sophisticated surveillance tools for the monitoring of workers (e.g., on-device video surveillance, browser activity, and email monitoring). In response to concerns about these increasingly invasive surveillance practices, the Government of Ontario passed Bill 88, the Working for Workers Act, 2022, which requires all employers with 25 or more workers to have a written policy stating whether and how they electronically monitor their employees. Bill 88 marks a more explict attempt to regulate workplace surveillance in a modern digital context in Canada; however; however, an analysis of the Bill’s capacity as a meaningful regulatory mechanism has yet to be conducted. This article engages in a critical analysis of Bill 88’s capacity to meaningfully protect employee privacy in a contemporary remote workplace, with particular emphasis on the emergence and use of EMAs. Specifically, we examine the multitude of harms generated by EMAs, situate Bill 88 within existing legislation and common law, identify remaining regulatory gaps within the Bill’s framework, and evaluate its capacity to mitigate surveillance harms. Despite Bill 88’s attempt to better inform Ontario workers about the electronic monitoring practices of their employers, in its current form, we argue that the bill is an incomplete and ineffective comprehensive regulatory solution for EMAs. The primary objective of Bill 88, to enhance transparency, and the Bill’s framing of workplace surveillance harms through the lens of ‘‘individual privacy,” limit more meaningful regulatory interventions that might otherwise address the harm-generating mechanisms of EMAs themselves. We recommend that Bill 88 be meaningfully amended to (a) consider the numerous impacts of workplace surveillance that extend beyond a narrow privacy framework (e.g., social, psychological), (b) place restrictions on employers on when, where, and how EMAs can be used, and (c) afford workers with the right to file complaints related to the necessity and proportionality of EMA use employers. -- Les applications de surveillance des employe´s (« EMA ») prolife`rent au Canada et fournissent aux employeurs des outils de surveillance sophistique´s pour la surveillance des travailleurs (par exemple, la surveillance vide´o sur l’appareil, l’activite´ du navigateur et la surveillance des courriels). En re´ponse aux pre´occupations concernant ces pratiques de surveillance de plus en plus envahissantes, le gouvernement de l’Ontario a adopte´ le projet de loi 88, la Loi de 2022 sur le travail pour les travailleurs, qui oblige tous les employeurs de 25 travailleurs ou plus a` avoir une politique e´crite indiquant s’ils surveillent e´lectroniquement leurs employe´s et comment ils le font. Le projet de loi 88 marque une tentative plus explicite de re´glementer la surveillance en milieu travail dans un contexte nume´rique moderne au Canada; cependant, une analyse de la capacite´ du projet de loi en tant que me´canisme de re´glementation significatif n’a pas encore e´te´ mene´e. Cet article s’engage dans une analyse critique de la capacite´ du projet de loi 88 a` prote´ger de manie`re significative la vie prive´e des employe´s dans un lieu de travail contemporain a` distance, avec un accent particulier sur l’e´mergence et l’utilisation des EMA. Plus pre´cise´ment, nous examinons la multitude de me´faits ge´ne´re´s par les EMA, situons le projet de loi 88 dans la le´gislation existante et la common law, identifions les lacunes re´glementaires restantes dans le cadre du projet de loi et e´valuons sa capacite´ a` atte´nuer les me´faits de la surveillance. Malgre´ la tentative du projet de loi 88 de mieux informer les travailleurs ontariens sur les pratiques de surveillance e´lectronique de leurs employeurs, dans sa forme actuelle, nous soutenons que le projet de loi est une solution re´glementaire comple`te incomple`te et inefficace pour les EMA. L’objectif principal du projet de loi 88, a` savoir ame´liorer la transparence, et le cadre du projet de loi sur les me´faits de la surveillance du lieu de travail a` travers le prisme de la «vie prive´e individuelle», limitent les interventions re´glementaires plus significatives qui pourraient autrement s’attaquer aux me´canismes ge´ne´rateurs de pre´judices des EMA elles-meˆmes Nous recommandons que le projet de loi 88 soit modifie´ de manie`re significative pour (a) tenir compte des nombreux impacts de la surveillance du lieu de travail qui vont au-dela` d’un cadre e´troit de confidentialite´ (par exemple, social, psychologique, etc.), (b) imposer des restrictions aux employeurs sur le moment, le lieu et comment les EMA peuvent eˆtre utilise´es, et (c) donner aux travailleurs le droit de de´poser des plaintes lie´es a` la ne´cessite´ et a` la proportionnalite´ de l’utilisation de l’EMA par les employeurs

Computer network operations and ‘rule-with-law’ in Australia

Computer Network Operations (CNOs) refers to government intrusion and/or interference with networked information communication infrastructures for the purposes of law enforcement and security intelligence. The following article explores how CNOs are lawfully authorised in Australia, and considers the extent to which the current use of CNOs are subject to ‘counter-law’ developments. More specifically, the article finds that the scope and application of CNOs in Australia are subject to weak legislative controls, that while such operations might be ‘lawful’, they undermine rule of law and disturb core democratic freedoms

How Attorneys Judge Collegiate Mock Trials

In collegiate mock trial competition, practicing attorneys who don’t coach or know the participating schools judge the students\u27 persuasive skill. Fifty-six attorneys were interviewed after they judged collegiate mock trials. They were asked which student behaviors they rewarded, which behaviors they punished, and overall which team presented more effectively. The attorneys\u27 responses were grouped into thematic categories and arranged by priorities. Attorneys were consistent in what they said they valued in student performances. Interviewees\u27 answers to the question about overall team performance were compared with the numeric ballots. If global assessment were included, it would change the outcome of a substantial number of trials, which raises the question if such an item would have the same effect on any graded competition

Technology, law, and the formation of (il)liberal democracy?

This article argues that the politics of surveillance and (il)liberalism in Australia is conditioned by the dynamic interplay between technological development and law. Applying criminologist Richard Ericson’s concept of ‘counter-law’, the article illustrates how rapidly advancing capacities for surveillance and Australia\u27s legal infrastructure collide. In this view, even regulatory safeguards can be instrumental in the broader drift toward (il)liberal democracy. Drawing on the Australian context to illustrate a broader global trend, this article conveys how such an apparatus of control reflective of (il)liberal democracy might be more accurately understood as a form of socio-technical rule-with-law

Privacy, surveillance, and the democratic potential of the social web

This chapter argues that theories about privacy would benefit from embracing deliberative democratic theory on the grounds that it addresses harms to democracy, and widens our understandings of privacy infringements in social networking environments. We fi rst explore how social networking services (SNS) have evolved through diff erent phases and how they enable political deliberation. Subsequently, we discuss more traditional individualistic and intersubjective theories of privacy in relation to social networking and point out their limitations in identifying and redressing social networking-related harms. We then critique emerging claims concerning the social value of privacy in the context of the social Web. Here we point out how these theories might identify non-individualized harms, yet, at the same time, suff er important challenges in application. We conclude by arguing that deliberative democratic theory can add some critical insights into the privacy harms encountered on the contemporary “social Web” that are only imperfectly understood by individualistic and social conceptions of privac