When Justice Minister Peter MacKay unveiled the federal government's proposed cyberbullying law on Wednesday, he touted it as a necessary tool to combat the often hurtful spread of intimate images. To emphasize the underlying point, he made the announcement during national Bullying Awareness Week.
But legal experts were left wondering why a piece of legislation that is meant to rein in online tormentors is also taking on terror suspects and people who steal cable TV signals.
"There is a much larger agenda at play here," says Rob Currie, director of the Law and Technology Institute at Dalhousie University.
Under the banner of anti-cyberbullying measures, the government is "trying to push through a number of things that have to do with law enforcement but nothing to do with cyberbullying."
Among other things, these new measures include giving police easier access to the metadata that internet service providers and phone companies keep on every call and email.
MacKay has acknowledged that law enforcement did not have the tools to prevent the deaths of Canadian teens such as Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd, who endured years of torment online. C-13 would give police a greater ability to investigate incidents of cyberbullying by giving courts the right to seize computers, phones and other devices used in an alleged offence.
5 years in prison
Under the proposed legislation, anyone who posts or transmits an "intimate image" of another individual without that person’s consent could face up to five years in prison.
Leah Parsons, mother of the late Rehtaeh Parsons, the Nova Scotia teen who died following a suicide attempt, is greeted by Justice Minister Peter MacKay as they attend a roundtable discussion on cybercrime in Halifax in October. (Andrew Vaughan / Canadian Press)
MacKay said C-13, also known as the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, reflected the government’s commitment "to ensuring that our children are safe from online predators and from online exploitation."
Since introducing the bill, MacKay has said that C-13 is also meant to update the Criminal Code to reflect modern communications such as email and social media.
Toronto internet lawyer Gil Zvulony says that it is a necessary step, given that some aspects of the Criminal Code pertaining to communications still refer to outmoded technologies such as telegrams.
"I don’t know what the [government’s] motivation is, but there is a logical theme to all of this, in the sense that it’s trying to modernize [the code] for the digital age," he says.
Currie, however, raises concerns about the breadth of C-13, which not only addresses cyberbullying, but also gives police heightened powers of surveillance to track terror suspects as well as individuals who use computer programs to gain unpaid access to WiFi or cable TV service.
Currie likens the omnibus nature of C-13 to Bill C-30, also known as the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, which was introduced in February 2012 by then-public safety minister Vic Toews.
"It was supposed to be all about [fighting] child porn, but it had all kinds of other stuff in it," Currie says.
Credits- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-cyberbullying-law-has-larger-agenda-expands-police-powers-1.2434797, By Andre Mayer, CBC News, files from Alison Crawford
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