Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is calling on Ottawa to reform wire-tap legislation amid growing concern that modern technology is making it tougher to gather intelligence on criminals and terrorists.
Blair is urging lawmakers to ease the job of investigators by forcing cellphone and Internet companies to co-operate with the authorities.
The Toronto chief stressed that authorities are asking for "lawful access" to communication devices and records rather than warrant-less eavesdropping.
"It becomes very challenging for the law enforcement community dealing with organized crime and national security threats to gather the evidence we need within that regime of judicial authorization in order to conduct our investigations," Blair told Canada AM on Wednesday.
"What we're asking for is that people responsible for bringing these new technologies online would share some of that information to make it accessible to us with a judge's permission."
Blair raised the issue Monday while testifying before the Air India inquiry.
"Before the police community could intercept anybody's communication we have to get judicial authorization," Blair said.
"There is a very strict regime that requires us to present evidence and to be able to demonstrate that we have tried every investigative means that is not likely to succeed or has failed before we get the authorization to intercept anyone's communications."
The issue has pitted law enforcement against privacy advocates, who are fearful of Big Brother's powers, for years.
John Lawford of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre told Canada AM on Wednesday that the lawful access debate has been going on since 2002.
He said past consultations with law enforcement agencies have revealed a desire to lower the standards for obtaining a warrant to "something less than reasonable belief, something more like a suspicion."
"Then it's going to invite things like profiling large groups and just running a large wire tap on all of them or an Internet tap and just seeing if something shakes out," Lawford said.
The former Liberal government introduced legislation in 2005 that would have made it easier for law enforcement to eavesdrop on text messages and voice communications by removing technological impediments to the investigative process.
The bill, which died in the Commons when Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's government was toppled, also would have forced Internet service providers to disclose intelligence deemed useful in tracking network users.
The Harper government has been consulting industry groups about the issue, The Canadian Press reports.
Blair estimates that if a similar bill is passed it will allow police to compete technologically with organized criminals and terrorist groups utilizing cutting-edge communications equipment.
"Organized crime and terrorist groups quickly utilize these technologies and it takes months -- even years -- for us to catch up and keep up so we're asking for some help from the industry itself to make these new technologies more accessible to us so we can do the job that we're judicially authorized to do," he said.
With files from The Canadian Press
