OTTAWA—The federal government has known since 2010 about the massive scope of warrantless disclosures of Canadians’ personal data, but searched for the details only after news stories broke this year, internal documents show.

Despite the Conservatives’ repeated attempts to expand warrantless access powers, emails show Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office did not have the full picture of how often these requests were made by federal authorities.

The office sent out a bulletin to all departments and agencies the day after the Toronto Star and Halifax Chronicle Herald reported in April that authorities asked nine companies to turn over customer data more than one million times in 2011.

“We are following up on an urgent request from PMO following the federal privacy commissioner’s statement of yesterday,” wrote a Competition Bureau staffer.

Staff was told to compile stats on these requests. In at least one case, departmental staff had to go to the telecoms themselves to find out the number of requests, according to documents obtained through access to information law

The scramble for details came despite Public Safety emails showing telecom giant Bell Canada told departmental officials in November 2010 that over a million requests were being made annually.

But Bell’s numbers didn’t match the government’s. According to the internal Public Safety emails, the RCMP estimated it asked for user data 27,785 times in one year. Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, estimated an additional 14,270 requests in a year.

The total estimate for government requests is censored, but it was nowhere near the private sector’s figures of over a million per year.

“This is an order of magnitude larger than our estimates,” one email reads.

“The discrepancy is difficult to explain, but we will need to be aware that this is likely the key figure that the industry will use before committee.

The Herald and Star sent a list of detailed questions to the Prime Minister’s Office, which were not answered. Instead, Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney’s office issued a statement saying it takes privacy seriously and has improved the process for recording data requests.

“It was through extensive consultation with the privacy commissioner that the requirement for law-enforcement agencies to maintain written logs of their requested information came into place,” says the statement.

Local law enforcement requests are often not reported to Ottawa, creating a discrepancy in the federal data, a spokesperson added.

The majority of data requested is what is known as “basic subscriber information” — such as the name, address and telephone number of a cellphone or Internet user. In June, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the practice of asking telecoms to voluntarily hand over data, saying it was an invasion of privacy.

Part of the reason the government’s estimate was so much lower than the telecoms’ seems to be that many requests are not recorded. While requests involving a warrant are tracked, voluntary disclosures are much more informal.

The process was outlined in a March 2012 email from Michele Kingsley, then the director of investigative technologies and telecommunications policy at Public Safety.

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“To illustrate, a (police) officer can ask for the information — if he/she doesn’t get it, the negative response doesn’t get recorded. The voluntary process is verbal,” she wrote.

“In some areas of the country, police officers don’t bother asking for (basic subscriber information) anymore because of years of refusals from (telecoms) — that doesn’t get recorded. In other areas, police obtain it voluntarily due to a co-operative relationship with the (telecom) — that doesn’t get recorded either.”

There is currently no one body that oversees all the various police, security and spy agencies’ intelligence-gathering practices. A bill currently before the Senate would change that.

Bill S-220 would establish the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, a civilian oversight body modeled after a similar committee in the United Kingdom. Canada’s privacy commissioner has called for such an oversight body.

Under the bill, the committee of nine MPs and three senators would have the power to compel information from groups like CSIS, the military and the RCMP.

“Every one of our NATO partners has statutory oversight of their national security service,” said former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who proposed the bill before retiring. “There is no reason for Canada to be an outlier on this front.”

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