Paul McLeod reports:
Telecommunications companies gave individual customer data to the Canada Border Services Agency over 18,000 times in one year.
This information includes the content of voice mails and text messages, websites visited and the rough location of where a cellphone call was made, according to government data.
For cases involving those types of requests, Canada Border Services sought a warrant for the information. But in the vast majority of releases, the agency asked for and received basic subscriber information without obtaining a warrant.
From April 2012 through March 2013, the agency asked telecoms for information 18,849 times. Of those, 99 per cent were for subscriber information that did not involve a warrant.
Telecoms handed over the data in all but 25 cases.
Read more on the Chronicle Herald.