I would like to comment on an interesting case that bisects the areas of civil law and criminal law.
Further, despite Canadian’s general loathing of their cell phone carrier costs, kudos have to go out to Rogers Communications and Telus Communications in a recent Superior Court case decided by Justice Sproat.
The police were trying to catch a bad guy- no surprise there, that is their job. There had been a string of jewellery store robberies in a certain area. The police thought that if they could get all the subscriber information from the above two companies for the cell towers near there, they may be able to catch the crooks. They served the two aforementioned companies with very broadly drafted “tower dump” production orders under the Criminal Code.
The two companies, Rogers and Telus, felt they had some duty to protect their clients’ privacy interests in the face of a very broad production order. They thus sought “standing” to assert their clients’ privacy rights before Justice Sproat and argued that they did not have to comply with the “tower dump” production order because it was so broad that it was a violation of their client’s Section 8 Charter right not to be subject to over broad “fishing type” search and seizures by the police.
The court agreed with Rogers and Telus that they had “standing” to argue their clients’ privacy/Section 8 Charter rights and overturned the production order.
Makes me feel better when I pay my monthly cell phone bill.