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0xbadcafebee | on: Canada's bill C-22 mandates mass metadata surveillance
Are you familiar with parallel construction? That's what this is for. If they have a warrant and show it to you, it says what they can search and why. If they don't tell you what they're searching for and why, they can look for anything, and then construct a separate scenario which just happens to expose the thing they knew would be there from the first fishing expedition. They then use this (usually circumstantial) evidence to accuse you of a crime, and they can win, even if you didn't commit a crime, but it looks like you did. And now they can do it with digital information, automatically, behind the scenes, without your knowledge. (or they can take your laptop and phone and do it then)
mnw21cam | parent | next
I don't see the problem with this. It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it. You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.
0xbadcafebee | root | parent | next
> It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it.

The police regularly lie to and manipulate people about their rights in order to coerce them into consent. If you believe the officer is in the wrong, push back.

> You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.

Parallel construction means they are using the opportunity to go on a fishing expedition. Dealing with it later is too late, they've already gone fishing.

This is a much bigger issue regarding the metadata of a wireless carrier. They're not issuing the warrant to you, they're issuing it to the carrier, who has a duty to reject overly broad searches. If they don't even get to see the warrant, they can't reject the search based on the merits. So now the police get to collect everyone's metadata. Who cares if we look at the warrant after? They've already got the data. Even if they "delete it" after, they already got to go fishing.

basilgohar | root | parent | next
Nothing good is going to be solved by expanding law enforcement's power, reach, or lightening any existing restrictions. We are not suffering from crimes due to lack of law enforcement's legal scope. It's quite the opposite.
loading story #47402909
SecretDreams | parent | next
But the warrant still has to originally exist with, presumably, a timestamp that shows it existed prior to the search. And modification of the timestamp or lack of such a feature would be a good way to get the evidence thrown out?
freeone3000 | root | parent | next
That’s not how evidence works in Canada. Illegally obtained evidence is still evidence - you simply also have a tort against the officer for breaching your rights.
dataflow | root | parent
It would be inadmissible if the court deems it to impact the fairness of the trial, no? https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...
skeeter2020 | root | parent | next
my understanding: within the context of that specific action; the evidence still exists. If there is less clarity about how and when it was collected though, there is far more opportunity to use broad evidence obtained in the periphery of a undisclosed warrant in other contexts.
freeone3000 | root | parent | next
Yes, in some cases, but this is not automatic, nor even close. The more serious the trial (ex, murder, child pornography), the more likely it serves the court’s interest to use the illegally obtained evidence. See https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3711 for a longitudinal study. Illegally obtained evidence is routinely used.
godelski | root | parent | next
You used a conditional so I assume you also know how such a system can fail. It's not hard to figure out how that can be exploited, right? You can't rely on that conditional being executed perfectly every time, even without adversarial actors. But why ignore adversarial actors?
sunir | root | parent
Maybe. Courts aren’t magic machines that do the right thing.
mnkyprskbd | root | parent | next
The existence of a category of warrants that allows operation that is indistinguishable from warrantless searches creates a kind of legal hazard and personal risk that is hard to overlook. Police lie on the regular.
skeeter2020 | root | parent | next
...and are allowed to lie within narrow and specific contexts, which seems a "balance of rights" scenario. My fear in this case is that a lie of omission is far more dangerous (specifically for misuse) than a specific & explicitly lie.
SecretDreams | root | parent
This is a good perspective, thank you.
dataflow | root | parent
I don't get why people downvoted you, this is a very reasonable question.
godelski | root | parent | next
There were two commenters that responded 15 minutes prior to your comment. I'd suggest starting there if you want to understand. Then if you disagree with those, you can comment and actually contribute to the conversation ;)
linkregister | root | parent
I agree with you. However, talking about downvotes is not interesting and against guidelines.

Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.

8note | parent
i know this is an american thing, but does it actually happen in Caanda?
raydev | root | parent | next
Respectfully, whether it "actually happens" is irrelevant. We want to prevent it from happening.
kwar13 | root | parent
one of those 'does it happen' vs. 'can it happen'. the latter is all that matters.
| root | parent
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