Government makes over a million requests a year for data from telecoms

Legal expert: ‘Staggering’

Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier says she has repeatedly asked Internet and cellphone providers how often they share customer data with the government. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / File)

Government agencies seek personal customer information from telecoms and social media websites more than one million times each year.
The agencies had long refused to say how often they get private data from phone and Internet companies. But a partial figure was revealed for the first time Tuesday.
A disclosure to the privacy commissioner of Canada from late 2011 shows this practice happens, on average, thousands of times every day — and Canadians are never told when their data is shared.
Nine telecoms and web companies told the privacy office that government agencies asked them for data a combined total of 1,194,000 times annually.
It seems the agencies got what they wanted the vast majority of the time.