Search Results for: casl

Stikeman Elliott’s Communications Law Blog has a new post (“CRTC tweaks anti-spam regulations“) that describes the recently filed final regulations made by the CRTC under Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL). David Elder from Stikeman’s indicates 5 points where the regulations have seen some changes and clarification.

As indicated, we are still waiting for Industry Canada to finalize its regulations and for a vendor to be selected to operate a Spam Reporting Centre.

I continue to have doubts that any of us will see a decrease in the volume of real spam – offers for anatomical enhancement, debt relief, etc. This bill, as it was passed, will serve to dramatically increase the cost of electronic business and act as a deterrent for e-commerce adoption by legitimate businesses in Canada. The government should sit on this one until its impact can be assessed and integrated into an overall national digital strategy.

Like most of you, I’m tired of spam.

When my phone rings, most of the time my device shows it is “Likely Spam”. In such cases, if the call actually connects, I end up talking to an overseas call centre telling me their air-duct cleaning crews are in my neighbourhood and can offer me a special rate. Or, people claiming to be calling from the “promotions department” of [insert name of phone company], offering deals too good to be true. Or, it is a recording from scammers claiming they are my credit card company (or Amazon) flagging potential fraudulent transactions – ironic, right?

And then there are the emails that get past my spam filters. Somehow, I got added to a US-based medical professional mailing list and I have been receiving all kinds of messages targeting a doctor in the Phoenix area. (As an aside, I wonder if the doctor in Phoenix is receiving telecom newsletters.) That medical mailing list is being sold to pharmaceutical companies, training companies, real estate firms, auto dealers, and anyone else who wants to reach doctors in Arizona. Most of the time, I click unsubscribe and that ends it – but just for one company.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation to a webinar about some new treatments for drug-resistant bacteria. As fascinating as new antibiotics might be, my evenings are tied up. (I just don’t want to miss watching the Stanley Cup playoffs.) Most significantly, there was no ‘unsubscribe’ button. The sender was from a company with a market capitalization measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, this was not your classic spam.

In Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) lingo, this was an unsolicited commercial electronic message sent by a company with pretty deep pockets. They should know better. Even in the US, there are rules known as CAN-SPAM that cover these kinds of things.

And like I said, I’ve gotten kind of tired of spam. So, I decided to stop ignoring it. I dealt with the source directly. This is a real company, with revenues that are approximately double the entire Canadian telecom sector. I figure they have an army of lawyers who would not want some renegade salesperson to be harming the company brand.

I called their Canadian customer service line and reached a supervisor who was actually quite sympathetic. From her, I learned the name of the Canadian head of legal, and from the corporate website, I found the name of the global chief legal officer. The company uses a standardized email address scheme which enabled me to send my official complaint in writing.

I had an immediate automated response from the customer service email address with a case number. I heard back from the Canadian legal office within a couple of hours, letting me know that the team appreciated the importance and was investigating. Within a week, I heard from the US-based corporate chief privacy officer, who identified the steps taken to remove my address from various company distribution lists. The company was still working to identify the third-party source that originally provided my information. A few days later, I was updated with the name of the list provider and provided with assurances that my information was removed from their databases.

A review of my past posts about CASL will show you that I was never a fan of the legislation. I continue to think that it has done more harm to legitimate business communications while doing little to reduce harmful and fraudulent spam. Twenty years ago, I wrote how people can take matters into their own hands.

So I did.

No regulatory submission. No fines were issued. I was fed up with the medical / pharma spam, so I dealt with it. At least those annoying health care related emails will slow down, even if not fully come to a stop.

Now, I wonder if I say “yes” to getting my ducts cleaned, could I get those calls to stop for a couple years?

Last Thursday, I saw the CRTC mark the 7th anniversary of Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) coming into force with a tweet:

I replied, noting that 7 years ago, I wrote: “CASL is indefensible”, in which I observed that the root of CASL’s problems were that “we strayed too far from trying to target fraud. In doing so, Canada is going to cause harm to the adoption of digital technologies and electronic commerce.”

The main problem with unwanted electronic messages (emails and texts) and calls is fraud: calls and messages that purport to be from someone or some company other than the real caller; or, misrepresenting the goods or services or purpose of the call; or, those continuing to call after being asked to stop.

Those are the communications that we should have been focusing on trying to stop. But those seem to be precisely the ones that are still getting through.

Instead, as predicted, we made life more difficult for legitimate businesses, and that translates into higher costs for Canadians. In December 2017, a Parliamentary Committee report repeatedly recognized the “unintended cost of compliance” in making recommendations for changes to the legislation. Those are unintended costs for Canadian businesses, which ultimately are borne by consumers.

For seven years, the legislative over-reach of CASL has impaired the efficient use of electronic commerce by Canadian businesses and failed to protect Canadians from malicious online threats.

It’s an anniversary that I’m not celebrating.

Today, Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Minister Navdeep Bains is launching a Digital Charter for Canada, including an initial set of measures to “build trust in the digital economy, and boost competitiveness in the data-driven knowledge economy.” The Digital Charter appears to be a followup to the National Digital and Data consultation from June, 2018.

The 10 principles set out in the Digital Charter are aimed at restoring and building “public trust in the data and digital environment”:

1. Universal Access: All Canadians will have equal opportunity to participate in the digital world, and the necessary tools to do so – including access, connectivity, literacy, and skills.
2. Safety and Security: Canadians will be able to rely on the integrity, authenticity and security of the services they use and should feel safe online.
3. Control and Consent: Canadians will have control over what data they are sharing, who is using their personal data and for what purposes, and know that their privacy is protected.
4. Transparency, Portability and Interoperability: Canadians will have clear and manageable access to their personal data and should be free to share or transfer it without undue burden.
5. Open and Modern Digital Government: Canadians will be able to access modern digital services from the Government of Canada, which are secure and simple to use.
6. A Level Playing Field: The Government of Canada will ensure fair competition in the online marketplace to facilitate the growth of Canadian businesses and affirm Canada’s leadership on digital and data innovation, while protecting Canadian consumers from market abuses.
7. Data and Digital for Good: The Government of Canada will ensure the ethical use of data to create value, promote openness, and improve the lives of people – at home and around the world.
8. Strong Democracy: The Government of Canada will defend freedom of expression and protect against online threats and disinformation designed to undermine the integrity of elections and democratic institutions.
9. Free from Hate and Violent Extremism: Canadians can expect that digital platforms will not foster or disseminate hate, violent extremism or criminal content.
10. Strong Enforcement and Real Accountability: There will be clear, meaningful penalties for violations of the laws and regulations that support these principles.

ISED intends for the Digital Charter to set a standard against which the government will measure the modernization of Canada’s privacy laws, competition rules and government programs. The Charter also contains principles intended to address Government digital services, disinformation, as well as hate speech and violent extremism online. These latter elements may prove to be the most controversial elements, as the government wrestles with limits on Canadian speech freedoms.

Among the planned reforms are a modernization of Canada’s privacy law, PIPEDA – The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, with measures intended to address issues around privacy, security, algorithmic transparency, consent, control of data, and enforcement. The Government is understood to be considering how to modernize its 20-year old policy and regulatory framework to protect privacy while supporting innovation. At the same time, the Minister appears to have recognized the administrative burden for small and medium sized companies (SMEs) compared to large corporations who have more resources to dedicate to compliance. ISED is proposing to simplify personal information protection requirements, so that SMEs are not disadvantaged while ensuring individuals’ personal information is still protected.

An initiative being led by the Department of Justice and the Treasury Board Secretariat is studying potential reforms to the Privacy Act, which governs the handling of personal information by federal institutions.

The Minister may want to look at whether Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) warrants a fresh look, in view of its administrative burden and whether its restrictions are contributing to or detracting from competitiveness in a digital economy.

Nine years ago, the Harper government launched a consultation for a national digital strategy, with Industry Minister Tony Clement, and Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley, joining Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages James Moore for a process that dragged on for 4 years, culminating in the release of what I have called a pamphlet, not a national strategy.

The Digital Charter will raise concerns from a variety of quarters as Canada navigates the issues associated with government intervention on speech freedoms, whether it is the role of government in moderating content it considers to be ‘disinformation’ or applies hard restrictions on hate speech and extremism. These are important matters to be discussed and debated meaningfully. As such, it is encouraging to see the Digital Charter raise the level of dialog on such substantive issues.

Minister Bains will be delivering the closing keynote address at The 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, taking place June 3-5 in Toronto. Have you registered yet?

For years, I have found the issue of technological neutrality in legislation to be a fascinating area.

Eleven years ago, I wrote about “Illegal content on the internet,” looking at how the industry needed to find ways to tackle child abuse images on the internet.

Carriers are not being asked to be censors. Canada already has laws that forbid certain types of content. If the illegal content is in printed form, our customs agents confiscate it at the border. If these existing laws are to have meaning, we should be taking steps to close the digital loophole.

There are numerous cases where we treat digital content differently from the same material in print form. Generally, those differences result in more lenient regulation of digital content than the print equivalent. The most significant exception to this rule is commercial marketing messages, which are subjected to extremely harsh legislative restriction in electronic form (For a discussion of CASL, see “Snacking on digital policy,” from 3 years ago), but are freely distributed in paper form.

European states, such as Germany, have been closing its digital loopholes for more than a decade. In 2006, I wrote about an EU directive requiring that service providers retain “data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication” in order to provide law enforcement officials with access to the same information they would have in a paper environment. In 2008, I noted that France ordered ISPs to block hate content. In 2009, I wrote that Germany took steps to protect copyright for content on the internet. At that time, I asked “Are Europeans going to lead in treating digital and conventional content within a technology neutral legal framework?”

Earlier today, Reuters reported “German cabinet agrees to fine social networks over hate speech.” The report attributes to Justice Minister Heiko Maas the statement: “There should be just as little tolerance for criminal rabble rousing on social networks as on the street”.

Why do we still treat the digital world differently?

A few months ago, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains said “The digital economy is the economy.” He is right.

Perhaps in recognition of the transition of the economy, Canada’s recent Budget promised a review of the legislation that governs the internet:

To ensure that Canadians continue to benefit from an open and innovative Internet, the Government proposes to review and modernize the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act.

In this review, the Government will look to examine issues such as telecommunications and content creation in the digital age, net neutrality and cultural diversity, and how to strengthen the future of Canadian media and Canadian content creation.

As part of that review, Canada might consider exploring those areas in which the digital economy receives different treatment from legacy and determine whether each of the distinctions are appropriate.