Recent ATIP (Access to Information Act) requests for Canadian TSP (telecom sevice provider) privacy data have revealed that, on average, TSPs receive a request from law enforcement for subscriber data every 27 seconds, or about 1 out of every 35 Canadian citizens per year. Given the shear volume of requests, it is likely that most have no judicial oversight and it also seems that TSPs rarely, if ever, exercise their legal right to deny a request without a warrant.
Even worse, there is legislation currently pending to permit TSP's to secretly disclose the same information to 3rd parties if they are investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law. So basically it would be a complete free for all. In true political fashion, the name of the bill proposing this change is the Digital Privacy Act.
