They Promise They Won't Be Evil . . . But Should Google Still Be Your Friend after R v Ward?
57 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2013
Date Written: December 3, 2013
Abstract
We have a love-hate relationship with online services. We are increasingly dependent on internet service providers (ISPs) and online service providers (OSPs) both at home and at work: their services connect us to essential aspects of modern social life, and they help us to find information, store data, and access businesses of all kinds. And yet ISPs and OSPs also pose a threat to our privacy: they possess private information about their subscribers, and in many cases, they will make this information available to police without a warrant. Using the recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in R v Ward as a launch pad, we examine weaknesses in existing law that facilitate state surveillance of our online activities and erode our privacy. As well, we introduce a new theoretical approach to identifying the meaning of internet privacy, which we develop and deploy in a concrete way to suggest how jurisprudence under s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be developed in order to bring it in line with social expectations about privacy and internet use. The phenomenological approach we describe involves a relational notion of rights that acts as a counterpoint to traditional individualistic approaches.
Keywords: warrantless searches, unreasonable search and seizure, privacy in internet subscriber information, privacy, cloud computing, s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
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