Lawful access legislation back on the table

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings re-introduced lawful access legislation in the House of Commons last week, but the move could be less about getting the bill passed as is and more about getting the Conservatives to get the ball rolling on the legislation. Bill C-416 is, according to David Elder, VP of regulatory law at Bell Canada, the spitting image of Bill C-74, the lawful access legislation introduced by the former Liberal government in November 2005. "C-416, but for the odd comma, and changing an ‘and' for an ‘or' is exactly the same as C-74," he tells Network Letter. But the Bell Canada executive says this manoeuvre is more likely a ploy by the opposition Liberals to kick start the process to get the right lawful access legislation in the House. Elder notes that talks with both law enforcement agencies and government regarding solutions were proceeding well. "We've had a number of discussions with and we're hopeful that any lawful access legislation that the government would have introduced would have been done some way to address some of our concerns,' he says. Elder discounts suggestions that the government hasn't listened to industry concerns. "It's not transparent to me what's going on in government, but I would like to think that in part the delay in re-introducing the legislation...is because of the concerns raised not only by industry, but by the civil libertarian and privacy communities," he says. "And in part may be what this bill is about," he adds. "This may be about goading the government into moving the agenda forward." However, the real work on the bill doesn't begin until it gets to committee. "It's unclear whether this particular bill will go," he says, "but if it gets to second reading...we hope to be able to work with the members of the committee to introduce some amendments that will help with some of our concerns." When Bill C-74 was tabled in the House of Commons it was unanimously panned by telecom service providers. Elder criticizes C-416 for not adopting industry friendly measures, highlighting the infrastructure capability gap between providing services required under law and the ability of existing equipment to offer that capability, and much of this depends on the evolving compliance processes in the US. "I think we're on a page now that as things get developed particularly in the US and CALEA obligations become clarified with respect to...VoIP and interconnected broadband, manufacturers will start building to those standards," Elder explains. "As that happens, I think the industry is in a much better position going forward to meet the obligations under C-416." Without having access to standardized equipment, customized solutions would cost "several orders of magnitude more than it would be if that capability was built into everything the manufacturer made," Elder says. The other concern, he adds, would be that time to market would be severely affected because of the time it would take to develop these customized solutions. Rumours circulated last November that Public Safety Canada was going to re-table the legislation, but that didn't materialize.

Lawful access legislation back on the table

News | March 28, 2007

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