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Finally, in the context of this national security consultation, unfettered access to digital identifiers is presented as a national security measure intended to address critical counter-terrorism matters that are currently at the forefront of national attention and concern. However, as in past attempts to introduce this legislation, the power proposed is one of general application, meaning it will be used predominantly in other investigative contexts. Further, no specific explanation is provided for why this exceptional power is necessary even in the national security context. Indeed, upon the 2013 defeat of this proposal as embodied in Bill C-30, then Director of CSIS indicated that unfettered access to subscriber identification information is “not absolutely critical for us to do our work.” While on the one hand these identification powers may not be ‘absolutely critical’ to national security, their indiscriminate availability to agencies such as CSIS and CSE can have even more serious and far-reaching privacy implications.
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