In a newly proposed bill, dubbed S-7, the Canadien government is requesting the permission to access the contents of your cellphone, laptop or other digital device, any time you enter the country, under the threshold of “reasonable general concern”.

The bill has strangely been introduced into the Senate rather than the commons, which has left many with questions about this legislation. Also, the standard of “reasonable general concern” is a new term created just for this legislation that has never been seen before under any other bill.

This is the first introduction of such a term on the legal scene, as it is not the same as “reasonable suspicion” or “reasonable grounds to believe,” which are well established legal standards police abide by when conducting searches or arrests.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says “reasonable general concern” is more of a “sniff test” than a standard, and as such won’t protect the digital privacy of the millions of people who cross a Canadian border each year. A lawyer quoted in the Canadian Bar Association’s magazine said that “reasonable general concern” reads like “some sort of gut feeling.”

Even more troubling, “reasonable general concern” ignores a 2017 recommendation from the House of Commons’ standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics that the threshold be “reasonable grounds to suspect.”

The Trudeau government contends that Bill S-7 will “safeguard traveller privacy and rights in the examination of personal digital devices” – a duty that was imposed on it by a landmark 2020 Alberta Court of Appeal ruling. The court said border agents can’t search a person’s cellphone or laptop in the same routine fashion they do a suitcase or a purse, as was the practice up till then.

Digital devices can hold every e-mail a person has ever sent or received, as well as text messages, medical and financial information, intimate photographs and sensitive browser histories. The court ruled that inspecting this “biographical core of personal information” in a “suspicion-less and unlimited” way was a violation of the constitutional right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

It said Ottawa needed to establish a higher threshold for digital-device searches, but suspended its judgment to give Parliament time to update the Customs Act.

The proposed reform is finally here. It says a border officer “can examine documents, including emails, text messages, receipts, photographs or videos, that are stored on a personal digital device,” if the officer has a “reasonable general concern” that the device’s owner is importing prohibited goods on it, including child pornography, or isn’t being honest about the value of the goods they are declaring.

www.theglobeandmail.com

Such a vague term as “reasonable general concern” makes it easy to assume if passed this bill will introduce a way for Canadien border control to search one’s private digital devices with little to no suspicion of any illegal activity.

Canada seems to be reaching farther and farther over the line of it’s citizens personal rights and freedoms. Earlier this year we saw a police-state like shutdown of the Canadian trucker convoy, in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which allowed Canadian police officers to impose fines, arrest protestors, and freeze the bank accounts of any supporters of the protest.

And just last month the Canadien government proposed a new bill that would require media companies to pass through a government check to decide whether or not they will be censored.

We are seeing more and more overreach from governments around the world infringing on our personal freedoms. If this trend continues, the future is not looking too bright as we see governments around the world inch closer to authoritarianism every day.