OTTAWA—Canadian taxpayers are footing the bill for government agencies to buy their private data from telecom companies without their knowledge.

According to parliamentary documents, government agencies pay between $1 and $3 for access to user data from telecom, Internet and social media companies.

Figures released Tuesday by Canada’s privacy watchdog indicate authorities requested that access from nine companies more than 1.19 million times a year, meaning authorities spend in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars to quietly access Canadians’ personal data.

The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) alone paid $24,211 for data requests between April 2012 and March 31 2013.

The fees are paid to companies that voluntarily co-operate with authorities’ access requests, not for judicially authorized requests for information.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper downplayed concerns about warrantless disclosure in the House of Commons on Wednesday, suggesting both law enforcement agencies and telecom companies are operating within their legal requirements.

“Privacy laws are respected by the government. Law enforcement and other investigative agencies always seek warrants when they are required to do so,” Harper said under opposition questioning. “There is independent surveillance, independent oversight to make sure that these laws are respected.”

But privacy experts argue that there is little to no oversight over most voluntary disclosures from companies, and the vast majority of information sought does not require warrants.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair called the number of requests from government agencies an “abomination.”

“These numbers are incredible. The very fact they put up a wall around the privacy commissioner shows that they were trying to hide this, trying to mask what they were up to,” Mulcair told reporters.

“Since they’ve arrived, the Conservatives have shown a scornful lack of respect for rules regarding the rights of the public to have access to information on the government, and they’ve shown the same scornful disrespect for people’s privacy, their personal lives, their confidential information.”

It’s not certain what information is routinely sought, but documents tabled in Parliament earlier this month suggest authorities are mostly interested in “basic subscriber information” — names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, Internet protocol addresses and local service providers.

According to a report from the privacy commissioner, “basic subscriber information” can be used to paint a picture of online activities, including browsing history, membership with organizations, physical locations visited, online services used by the subscriber.

“This information can be sensitive in nature in that it can be used to determine a person’s leanings, with whom they associate, and where they travel, among other things,” the report reads. “What’s more, each of these pieces of information can be used to uncover further information about an individual.”

According to parliamentary documents, the CBSA requested data from telecom companies nearly 19,000 times between April 2012 and March 31, 2013. The vast majority of those requests — 18,729 — were for basic subscriber information.

Government agencies can also request more detailed information, such as the content of emails or text messages, geolocation data, and call detail requests.

Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, told reporters Wednesday evening that companies are unsure how to comply with the federal privacy commissioner’s request that telecoms publicly report how often they co-operate with law enforcement and government agencies.

But Bibic refused to say how common that co-operation is, or how often information is handed over to authorities without judicial oversight.

“What we need as an industry and as a company is guidance,” said Bibic. “Guidance on what kind of specific information we can provide in response to requests like the one you’re asking.”

Speaking after a Senate committee meeting in Ottawa, Bibic confirmed that Bell was one of nine companies that data about the scope of government requests in 2011. Four more companies were asked, but did not respond in the aggregate report.

“As an industry we complied by providing the information in aggregate form, again in the absence of this guidance as to how far and how specific we can get,” Bibic said.

The office of the federal privacy commissioner was made aware of the scope of government access requests for private user data in December 2011.

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Interim privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier said her office did not disclose the information when they received it, as it was part of background research into the issue.

“What this was gathered for was for our internal research to better understand the issues relating to tracking and cloud computing and lawful access,” Bernier told the Star Wednesday.

“This was part of our fact-finding.”

When asked why her office did not disclose the information when the government was planning on greatly expanding police powers for online snooping, Bernier said she would have had the Conservatives not decided to abandon their lawful access legislation. .

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