A cabinet bill detailing legal grounds to search travelers’ cellphones and laptops may lead to political witch hunts, according to a Liberal-appointed senator..“Travelers could be targeted for phone and computer searches based on their political views,” Senator Paula Simons (Alta.) warned yesterday. “It will put the privacy rights of thousands of Canadian travelers in real jeopardy.".According to Blacklock's Reporter, the Senator was referring to Bill S-7 An Act To Amend The Customs Act introduced March 31 to “clarify the circumstances” of permissible electronic searches by the Canada Border Services Agency..Customs agents previously had unlimited powers to randomly demand cross-border travelers surrender passwords under threat of having electronic devices confiscated. The Alberta Court of Appeal in 2020 struck down the provision of the Customs Act, claiming it was so broad it was unconstitutional..Bill S-7 states border agents must first demonstrate “a reasonable general concern” of criminal wrongdoing to justify searching “emails, text messages, receipts, photographs or videos that are stored on a personal digital device.” Senator Simons yesterday said the “reasonable general concern” was too vague..“It’s a brand new legal test to authorize an invasive search of your most private personal records and correspondence,” wrote Simons, a former Edmonton Journal columnist. “A reasonable concern, one might intuit, is a lower standard than a reasonable suspicion.”.“That sounds even more vague, more subjective than a good old-fashioned hunch or inkling,” wrote Simons. “It seems counter-intuitive, to put it mildly, to create a lower, broader standard to search our private data on our private devices than to search our conventional mail or our suitcases or our car trunks, yet that is exactly what Bill S-7 does.”.The Canada Post Corporation Act forbids police from intercepting mail in transit. The Canada Border Services Agency cannot inspect ordinary mail under 30 grams..Simons said permitting electronic searches under Bill S-7 was “opening the door to emotionally intrusive and potentially embarrassing searches of our banking records, our health data, our dating histories, our photographs, our professional confidential documents,” she said..The Alberta court decision striking random searches came in two separate cases involving the 2014 arrest of travelers at Edmonton’s airport for electronic possession of child pornography. Judges called the offence a “serious issue of great public importance” but objected to blanket invasions of travelers’ privacy rights..“Devices now contain vast amounts of data touching on financial and medical details, the personal likes and propensities of users and their geographic movements over time,” wrote the Court.
