CIPPIC has filed its factum in Haaretz v Goldhar, an online defamation matter before the Supreme Court of Canada addressing the question of jurisdiction for online expression accessible over the internet in Canada.  CIPPIC's factum focuses on the role access to justice and forum shopping considerations play in judicial decisions on jurisdiction.  Professor Jeremy de Beer and Marina Pavlovic crafted our argument.

CIPPIC joined a number of civil society groups in a submission outlining concerns regarding a proposition by the Council of Europe to adopt a second protocol to its Cybercrime Convention with the objective of lowering current safeguards in place when law enforcement agencies seek access to data stored in foreign countries. The submission, which was spearheaded by our friends at EDRi, draws establishes a number of preliminary baseline requirements for any international instrument aiming to facilitate cross-border law enforcement access to data. While only a starting point, some of the minimum requirements in the submission will surely need to be addressed if the proposed second protocol is to have the legitimacy and global adoption its authors hope. These include:

• Limiting the second protocol to addressing gaps left by a reformed MLAT regime
• The need for competent and independent judicial authorization as a centre-piece to any cross-border data access regime
• The data hosting state must be notified when a foreign law enforcement agency accesses data hosted within its territory
• A right to challenge foreign data requests in the country of the affected data subject, and by that country's standards.

In addition, as pointed out by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation in a comment on the second protocol, the second protocol should not operate to lower existing protections such as Canada's prohibition on sharing digital identifiers without judicial authorization or the United States' requirement for probable cause-based production orders.