Big Mother Watching You?

In May Ma Bell’s Sympatico brought in a new customer service agreement (a contrat d’adhésion [eng], of course), one feature of which has concerned lawyers:

[Y]ou agree that Your Service Provider reserves the right from time to time to monitor the Service electronically, monitor or investigate content or your use of Your Service Provider’s networks, including without limitation bandwidth consumption, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request from any applicable jurisdiction, or as necessary to operate the Service or to protect itself or others.

The Canadian Bar Association has written a letter [pdf] to ministers Toews, Day and Bernier expressing their fear that “This seems to be introducing a corporate or industry content monitoring scheme, without the necessity of prior authorization or oversight. This initiative appears significantly more intrusive than the previous legislative proposal.” (Bill C-74 in the previous Parliament died on the order paper.) Particularly, the CBA is worried about what this might do to solicitor-client privilege, which they remind the ministers belongs to the client and not the lawyer (whose use of the service and communications are at issue here).

The agreement quoted from above is styled a “residential service agreement” and may not be the same as the one your firm has entered with Bell. It would be interesting to know whether law firms have in fact paid attention to this feature of their internet connectivity.

[via Deeth Williams Wall LLP E-TIPS]