CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Canada’ Category

CA – Ontario adds Internet safety to elementary curriculum (The Canadian Press)
Ontario is changing the school curriculum to include Internet safety lessons. The Liberal government has approved changes to the health and physical education curriculum for elementary schools to help children better protect themselves online. Next fall, there will be specific sections in the curriculum for grades 4 and 7 about Internet safety and the potential risks of online activities. There will also be ‘age appropriate’ discussions about online dangers in Grades 1 through 8.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

Canadian privacy watchdog launches investigation into Facebook’s response to its previous investigation: “Canada’s Privacy Commissioner has launched an investigation into changes Facebook made to its privacy policy. The changes were made in response to an investigation the Privacy Commissioner carried out last year.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

CA – Web Filters Cause Name Change for a Magazine: (New York Times)
In 1920 the Hudson’s Bay Company, which owed much of its early fortune to the trade in beaver pelts, began publishing a magazine for its 250th anniversary, The Beaver. This evolved into a respected magazine about Canadian history, and last week Canada’s National History Society, the nonprofit group that now publishes it, decided that the Internet required the magazine to undergo a name change. To be more precise, the title was doomed by a vulgar alternative meaning that causes Web filters at schools and junk mail filters in e-mail programs to block access to material containing the magazine’s name.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

CA – Government Introduces Mandatory Child Porn Reporting Law: “(Micheal geist)
The Justice Minister has tabled the Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation). Bill C-58 creates a mandatory disclosure requirement on Internet providers where they become aware of child pornography websites or have reason to believe a subscriber is using their service to violate child pornography laws. Where an Internet provider submits a report on a user, they must preserve the relevant computer data for 21 days and they are prohibited from disclosing the disclosure to the customer. Failure to report may result in fines or imprisonment and providers are granted immunity from liability for reporting the activity. The definition of Internet provider is broad, extending beyond just ISPs to include those providing Internet access, hosting, or email services. In other words, services like Google, Hotmail, and Facebook are all covered.

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(Via QuickLinks Update.)

isoHunt: Last Stand in Canada: “The Pirate Bay and Mininova are still around, but crippling legal pressure has gutted Mininova’s index. Similar legal pressure and technological necessity forced The Pirate Bay to shut their tracker network down. There’s a lot going on, and it may all come down to isoHunt to hold the line.”

(Via Slyck.com File-Sharing News And Information.)

Canada Fights Child Pornography: “New legislation is expected to be introduced in Canada this week that would force Internet service providers (ISPs) to notify federal authorities of any sites they host which may link to illegal child pornography (CP).”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

Report: U.S. Hosts Bulk of Child Porn: “The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has issued a new report which claims that most commercial child pornography is hosted in the U.S.”

(Via XBIZ.com | News & Articles.)

Federal government plans to toughen child porn fighting laws: The Conservative federal government plans to introduce new legislation Tuesday forcing Internet providers to alert police if they encounter any host sites linked to child pornography, Canwest News Service has learned.

By Kim Bolan, Canwest News ServiceNovember 23, 2009 1:43 AM

The Internet companies would also be forced to safeguard evidence if they believe a child-pornography offence has been committed using a server they provide, a senior government official confirmed Sunday.

The new bill would also make it mandatory that any tip received by Internet companies about potential child-porn sites be reported to a designated agency.

The legislation allows for fines to Internet providers who do not comply of up to $100,000 for corporations, and up to $10,000 and six months in jail for companies owned by a sole proprietor.

At present, Internet providers are not obligated by law to pass on information to law enforcement agencies, though many do so voluntarily.

Three provinces — Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia — have made it mandatory under child protection laws for Internet companies to call police if they suspect or have knowledge of online child porn.

The proposed law comes just days after the release of a study that found Canada is one of the leading countries in the world for hosting child-porn sites.

The report, released by Cybertip.ca, examined more than 15,000 child-porn websites worldwide and found Canada ranked second behind the U.S. in terms of the number of commercial porn sites featuring children.

Canada was found to host eight per cent of the sites — far behind the U.S., which hosts 65 per cent of the commercial child-porn sites worldwide.

‘As strong as our laws are within Canada, no country is really free from this type of material existing on websites,’ Cybertip director Signy Arnason said. ‘We have 60 countries . . . that were hosting child-sexual abuse content.’

The report also details how child-pornography websites cover their tracks.

In one 48-hour period, Cybertip.ca watched a website cycle through 212 unique IP addresses in 16 different countries — making the specific location of the information very difficult for law enforcement to track.

And a recent report by the federal ombudsman for victims titled Every Image, Every Child, said the number of Internet images of ’serious child abuse’ quadrupled between 2003 and 2007 and that the images are getting more violent and depicting younger and younger children.

The new bill — called ‘An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service’ — is considered to be complementary to two other bills. Those bills — C-46 and C-47 — were introduced last June and are still at the committee stage.

Bill C-46 — the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act — provides police with additional tools to obtain information from Internet providers related to any criminal investigation. The tools include preservation orders to freeze data for up to 21 days, production orders compelling a company to provide a customer’s e-mail or IP address, and tracking orders to require a cellphone company to use its network to assist police in finding a particular cellphone or BlackBerry user.

Bill C-47 — the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act — allows police to obtain information about clients from Internet providers and forces those companies to have the technical ability to allow police to intercept information.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Websites selling child porn based in Canada: WINNIPEG — Dozens of websites selling child pornography are being hosted by computer servers in this country, according to a study by a Canadian organization dedicated to fighting online child exploitation.

By Gabrielle Giroday , Winnipeg Free PressNovember 19, 2009

The report, released this week by Cybertip.ca, examined more than 15,000 websites worldwide containing child pornography. It found Canada ranked a distant second among nations in terms of the number of commercial websites it hosts involving pornographic content featuring children.

‘As strong as our laws are within Canada, no country is really free from this type of material existing on websites,’ said Signy Arnason, director of Cybertip.ca. ‘We have 60 countries . . . that were hosting child-sexual abuse content.’

The national tip line takes telephone and Internet tips on child abuse images and online luring. Arnason said two people prepared the report over the past eight months, based on information collected by the organization between 2002 and March 2009.

The report included a more detailed analysis of 800 commercial websites where pornographic pictures of children were sold. Servers in the United States hosted 65 per cent of those websites, followed by Canada, where servers hosted just eight per cent of the websites — although the photos may have been taken somewhere outside the country.

Other countries hosting the websites included Russia (5.6 per cent), Netherlands (2.9 per cent) and Germany (1.8 per cent), says the report. More than 50 per cent of these websites take credit cards from people wanting to purchase the photos, said the report.

Const. Rosiane Racine of the B.C. RCMP’s Internet Child Exploitation or ICE team suggested one reason Canada may have been the second-ranked country in the study.

‘Research shows that Canada is a very connected country. Everybody has access to the Internet here in this country, and maybe that’s why there’s so much (child pornography) on Canadian soil.’

The report also details how child pornography websites cover their tracks. In one 48-hour period, Cybertip.ca watched a website cycle through 212 unique IP addresses in 16 different countries — making the specific location of the information very difficult for law enforcement to track.

The report also analyzed 4,000 pictures on those websites. Researchers found the vast majority of these images — about 82 per cent — featured children younger than 12 and some images involved the abuse of toddlers and infants. More than 35 per cent of the images showed serious sexual assaults — some involving bondage, torture and bestiality.

Arnason said one of the report’s recommendations is to create international standards requiring people making websites to provide more personal information to register their domains.

‘The goal is to get that information to be valid so that when you’re trying to track down who is the originating owner of the site, you have a better chance of finding who that person is,’ she said. ‘There’s no international standard for that.’

The report also calls for more research on specific search terms and words used on child pornography websites to attract customers. The full report can be accessed at protectchildren.ca.

‘A lot of people seem to believe that . . . child pornography only happens somewhere else. I think that this report goes to show that it’s not just somewhere else, it happens right here in our back yards as well,’ said Racine.

‘Every picture of child sexual abuse out there is of a child being abused. When you think about these websites hosting millions of pictures of child sexual abuse, it means there’s a lot of kids out there that need help.’

© Copyright (c) Winnipeg Free Press

CA – Social Network Site Privacy: A Comparative Analysis of Six Sites: “(Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
This report was prepared for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner by Jennifer Barrigar, a consultant and researcher with experience in both privacy law and developments in internet technology. It was originally commissioned in late 2008, and a final report was delivered to the Office in February 2009. Some of the observations made in this report may appear outdated or even incorrect. This is certainly the case with Facebook, one social network that has undertaken successive rounds of privacy amendments in 2009. This is not the case with many of the other social networking sites identified by Ms. Barrigar.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)