The Supreme Court of Canada has clarified Canadians' rights
to privacy on the Internet. On June 13, 2014, the Supreme Court
ruled that police cannot obtain the identity of an Internet user
from the user's Internet service provider (ISP) without a
warrant or court order. Recent reports suggest that police request
information from ISPs without warrants or court orders, hundreds of
thousands of times per year.
R. v. Spencer addressed this issue in an investigation,
prosecution and conviction involving child pornography. The police
obtained the IP address used by the accused by monitoring his
Internet file sharing activities. The police asked his ISP to
identify the subscriber associated with the IP address. With the
subscriber information, police identified the accused and seized
his computer. In seeking the subscriber information, the police
relied on Canada's federal private-sector privacy legislation,
known as PIPEDA. Police maintained that it permitted disclosure
