CWTA objects to request for non-tombstone data

With the new Parliamentary session underway and the governing Conservative Party of Canada recently introducing a new crime bill, it only seems appropriate to look at comments to Public Safety Canada's, once clandestine customer name and address consultation. In its comments made public last week, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) urges the government to reconsider its desire to capture information from wireless subscribers that goes well beyond the description of basic subscriber data, or basic identifiers. The association points to such things as mobile identification numbers, electronic serial numbers, international mobile subscriber identity, and others as being out of bounds. "For the sake of fairness, consistency, competitive equity, and technological neutrality, wireless carriers should not be compelled to provide greater levels of information than other TSPs," writes David Farnes, VP of industry and regulatory affairs at the association. The primary thrust of Public Safety Canada's consultation is to develop a standardized method of obtaining customer name and address information, referred to in the discussion paper as CNA. The consultation doesn't explicitly mention giving law enforcement agencies access to this information without first seeking a search warrant, but it is widely speculated that this is the main reason discussions were first being held behind closed doors with only a select group of stakeholders. The CWTA argues that the information being sought by law enforcement and under consideration in the present consultation is readily available from a number of sources. The wireless industry lobby group points to Telus Corp.'s Leads system and Bell Canada's LSPID system as two such sources. "A variety of third parties provide ‘reverse look-up' services for Canadian telephone numbers and many of these are provided free of charge on the public Internet," reads CWTA's submission. The association agrees with Public Safety Canada that there is a lack of clarity with respect to what constitutes customer name and address information, and how that data is supposed to be provisioned. Clarification regarding the scope of CNA and the conditions under which carriers would be compelled to provide this information would be welcomed. But the biggest sticking point for not only the wireless industry association, but also telecommunications service providers in general, has been the costs to provide this capability. The CWTA suggests that law enforcement should compensate the wireless carriers for providing CNA information upon request. "This will become even more important if the volume of CNA requests increases under the proposed ‘no warrant' regime suggested by this consultation," writes the association. "Costs for TSPs to comply will increase substantially along with the increase in requests."Comments to the consultation have yet to be published on the department's website, but a media relations staffer from Public Safety Canada said he was looking into the matter.

CWTA objects to request for non-tombstone data

News | 10/23/2007 5:28 pm EDT

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