Ontario Court Finds Cellphone Tower "Metadata" Is Private

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Court) recently ruled in R. v. Rogers Communications that broad cellphone "tower dump" production orders are unconstitutional as unreasonable seizures under section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter). A "tower dump" order requests information about communications transmitted through a cellphone tower during a particular time period, such as the telephone numbers of the sender and recipient and the precise timing and duration of the communication. The Court concluded that privacy rights exist in information about calls, emails and texts, even when the actual content of those communications is not being disclosed. The Court set out guidelines that police forces should follow to obtain production orders that are minimally intrusive of subscribers' privacy rights in information about their cellphone activity.