Police (in Canada) need a warrant for IP addresses
CBC reports Police now need a warrant to get a person’s IP address, Supreme Court rules:
The Supreme Court of Canada made a key privacy ruling Friday that means police must now first have a warrant or court order to obtain the numbers making up a person or organization’s IP address.
This is an important ruling for privacy in Canada, even more with the dominance of surveillance industrial complex, where companies just give out the data to the police as they don’t care about protecting their customers. The 5 to 4 ruling was brought up from a 2017 case where the disclosing of the IP address led to a conviction for fraud, which mean the basis doesn’t appear to be a case of abuse, but whether the right of unreasonable search and seizure was consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedom.
Good job on the judiciary as the legislative branch is at a stand still on the matter.