Government agencies, citizen awareness groups and international spy agencies have been assessing Canada’s Internet Service Providers – and not necessarily for pricing, monthly minutes or bandwidth caps.

The companies that connect most Canadians to the digital world are letting us down, reports indicate.

Yes, we are still among the highest ranked users of Internet and cell services, but companies that deliver the goods to us have more work to do in terms of being open and respectful about service contracts, consumer privacy and, yes, monthly fees.

Even as more and more of us sign up for wireless phone packages, billing errors continue to be the most commonly raised issue (13 per cent of all issues), followed by complaints about non-disclosure of contract terms (almost 12 per cent of all issues), according to the most recent report from the country’s Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS).

Its Mid-Year Report (for August 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015) does cite a reduction (8.5 per cent) in overall complaints, but also a concerning increase in specific types of complaints, as well as an uptick in the number of violations of The Wireless Code, that set of rules and regulations designed to protect Canadian consumers.

CCTS Commissioner Howard Maker explained in a recently published op-ed that the Code applies to an ever expanding body of consumers as they enter into new contracts, and that an adjustment period was understandable (although the Code came into effect back in December 2013 after much discussion and consultation).

Another recent report says Canadian Internet providers are not up to speed when it comes to protecting their customers’ privacy.

It seems that government agencies made well over one million requests for customer data from Canadian telecom companies in just one year, and that the companies apparently voluntarily complied with these requests most of the time.

Those requests seek information about cell phone geolocation, call records; text message contents, transmission data (or metadata) as well as information from cellular phone towers that connect one caller to another.

Such requests are not only intrusions on our privacy, they may be illegal.

The Internet report, called Keeping Internet Users in the Know or in the Dark?, examines the data privacy transparency policies of 43 large and small ISPs in Canada.

It features an at-a-glance ‘Star Chart’, which rates ISPs here according to 10 privacy and transparency criteria. Some are well-known Canadian Internet retailers, while others, some operating from the U.S. and elsewhere, work behind the scenes to route Canadian Internet traffic.

Independent ISP Teksavvy ranked highly with more stars (6) across more categories than any other major retailer. Telus (5 stars) and Rogers (4 stars) were in the middle of the pack; Bell (3 stars), Shaw (2 stars) and Videotron (2 stars) fell behind.

The off-brands (Fido, Koodo, and Virgin) of the major telcos also performed poorly, noted project leaders Prof. Andrew Clement from the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto and Dr. Jonathan Obar, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (they worked with the assistance of a group of nine law students from the University of Toronto’s Center for Innovation Law and Policy to prepare the report).

“Every day millions of Canadians entrust their ISP or mobile carrier with enormous quantities of sensitive, personal information,” Clement said in releasing the report’s findings. “Against a backdrop of worrying revelations of mass surveillance, it’s more important than ever that ISPs be forthcoming about how they safeguard our personal information.”

The report provides an took an in-depth look at the transparency of wireless service providers operating in Canada (just the top three control some 90 per cent of our market) with an expanded evaluation of the carriers’ advocacy for privacy rights, reflected in statements made in the press and positions taken in court.

The university professors, technology researchers and public policy advocates spreading the word about the report are all active in the cyber-space arena with existing projects such as IXmaps.ca, New Transparency Projects, and OpenMedia.ca.

The report calls on various agencies and entities to be more transparent and proactive in promoting the privacy of their subscribers, from the telco and cableco service providers to the arms’ length telecom regulator to actual elected legislators. Not only should transparency reports be published by all concerned more frequently, the report’s authors recommend, but third party requests for mobile data or online information should have to be proactively communicated to the consumer.

Even more, it points out some clear strategic and operational advantages in having Canadian jurisdictional control over our domestic data traffic. Such traffic should be limited to those Canadian carriers that keep the data content and context exclusively within Canadian jurisdiction (foreign carriers generally don’t even acknowledge their compliance with Canadian privacy law, the report notes).

IXmaps.ca has long noted the extensive amount of Canadian “boomerang traffic” – digital data-based communications that start and end in Canada, but nevertheless passes through other jurisdictions where it is exposed to added surveillance and much less Canadian control.

 

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submitted by Lee Rickwood