OTTAWA—The RCMP has provided unprecedented access to the Toronto Star and the CBC in an effort to make its case that antiquated laws and diminished police powers in the digital age are allowing suspected terrorists, drug gangs and child abusers to operate beyond the law.

Journalists from the two media outlets have reviewed the details of 10 high-priority cases after clearing RCMP security checks for access to “top-secret” information. In each case, investigators were stonewalled by legal and technical obstacles in accessing digital evidence, the Mounties say. Most of the suspects remain at large.

These cases stand at the centre of an emerging national debate.

Police argue they are on the losing side of a digital divide, while on the other side are tech-savvy criminals who are shielded by impenetrable encryption, telecommunication companies and technology manufacturers.

Privacy advocates argue that police have never before had such powers of surveillance and that they have failed to provide evidence that the public’s safety is in jeopardy.

The audience is Canadians who are alarmed to learn that some criminals are increasingly beyond the reach of the law. They are equally alarmed by the recent Federal Court ruling that denounced the national spy agency, CSIS, for illegally gathering the private information of Canadians, and by news that Quebec police forces intercepted and tracked the cellphones of as many as 10 journalists to discover their sources.

“We need a public debate,” said RCMP Chief Supt. Harold O’Connell, the force’s director general of national security investigations. “We can influence, we can tell you what we think the lay of the land is, and then you, as Canadians and legislators, decide where you want us to be.”

Among the cases reviewed by the Star and the CBC:

An investigation into a group suspected of plotting terrorist acts in Canada. After obtaining a warrant, the RCMP spent two months and $250,000 attempting to intercept electronic communications. This produced no evidence because they were cut short by encryption that police experts were unable to break.

“These are individuals that are … developing plans in order to commit offences in Canada,” said O’Connell. “What we wanted to do was to listen to, read, see the data that the individuals are communicating.”

That never happened. The suspects remain under investigation.

The RCMP attempted to intercept and decode the communications of an alleged drug and human trafficking ring, but still don’t have enough evidence to charge the group’s leaders. The RCMP seized kilos of cocaine and arrested low-level members. While they successfully intercepted some communications with a warrant, they failed to decrypt the messages.

“When we can’t see (data), then we can’t analyze it. And if you can’t analyze it, then you can’t actually put together what the transactions are,” said O’Connell. “You can’t put together what the planning is. You can’t put together any of the organizational hierarchy.”

The organized crime leaders are still operating.

In a western Canadian national security case involving “high-risk travellers” who police believe were involved in “terrorist activity” abroad, investigators collected evidence from only two of more than 30 digital devices.

Those two devices provided 4.4 million “digital footprints,” including websites, images, videos and electronic messages. But little hard evidence emerged. After thousands of investigative hours, costly surveillance teams and $1 million spent on failed technical solutions, the suspects remain under investigation. It is unclear whether they have left Canada or if they pose a public safety risk.

“Criminals, to some extent, are walking away from crimes in Canada,” said former OPP deputy commissioner Scott Tod, now deputy chief in North Bay and co-chair of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance’s cybercrime advisory committee.

“Encryption has really changed the game on how we are able to access information that we require for court purposes. Being unable to access information makes it extremely difficult for us to form the prospect of conviction.”

RELATED:How terrorism suspect Aaron Driver hid behind digital encryption

Public consultations in the review of Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act — currently taking place across Canada — include proposals that, if adopted, would empower police with vastly greater digital investigative powers.

Among those proposals: legislation to compel suspects to unlock — or “decrypt” — digital devices at the request of police who have a judge’s warrant; giving police access to basic digital subscriber information — such as a person’s name and address — without having to obtain a warrant; and compelling telecommunications companies to retain data and help police intercept communications.

Privacy advocates call such measures an indefensible power grab that would undermine civil liberties.

“Police have access to more information about us than they have ever had in the history of the world,” said former Ontario information and privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian, now executive director of the Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University.

Even without breaking into encrypted communications, police can access volumes of metadata — high-level records that won’t show the content of messages, for example, but provide such details as author, creation date and file size.

“There is so much available to you if you actually connect the dots — put all the pieces together,” Cavoukian said.

Police are beneficiaries of the “golden age of surveillance,” said Micheal Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

“It’s very fair to make statements, but you have to back them up with evidence … You can’t simply make the claim and expect us to rebalance the entire configuration of how we protect our rights.”

Many police officials who were interviewed acknowledge that the privacy argument has dominated the debate.

“Law enforcement has not been as open or as communicative as they should have been,” said RCMP Chief Supt. Jeff Adam.

But police filing cabinets contain growing evidence that digital investigative limitations pose a risk to public safety, he said.

“I believe that the (public’s) expectations and our ability to deliver on those are far apart and getting farther away every day,” he said. “Canadians should ask themselves whether or not they’re satisfied that we cannot get evidence … Is that where they want the state of affairs to be, where we cannot enforce the law?”

The Star and the CBC reviewed the case files at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa two weeks ago. Specifics such as names, locations and key identifying information were removed.

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Inside the RCMP file room

10 high-priority case files detail digital brick walls police couldn’t crack.

OTTAWA—The RCMP shared details of 10 ongoing “high-priority” investigations with the Toronto Star and CBC News to begin a public debate on expanding police capabilities while investigating crimes involving digital and online evidence.

This coincides with a federal review of Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-51) and a public consultation on the government’s Green Paper on National Security, which includes proposals to enhance police digital capabilities.

To allow access to the investigations, the RCMP conducted security screening and granted top-secret clearances to Robert Cribb of the Toronto Star and Dave Seglins of CBC News.

The RCMP provided summaries and interviews on the cases but withheld names, locations and key details that could compromise ongoing investigations, prosecutions and secretive police techniques.

The following are case summaries prepared by the Toronto Star and CBC:

Case 1: Child abuse video on locked phone

Police have testimony from a child alleging sexual assault by their father who they say recorded the crime on his phone. The phone is locked by a pass code and investigators have not been able to access the video, which would be crucial evidence. Police have no legal authority to compel the man to unlock his phone. The case remains under investigation.

Case 2: VoIP phones encrypted

The RCMP obtained a warrant to tap the phones of an individual suspected of financial fraud in Eastern Canada, only to discover that the VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone network the suspect was using encrypted the calls. Police made several covert entries into the suspect’s office to install devices to bug the calls. At one point, the interception method failed, and for two weeks “valuable” evidence was missed.

Case 3: ‘Too much information’ tests RCMP capacity

RCMP intercepted cell and residential communications of a “high-risk traveller” in Eastern Canada suspected of planning to join a terrorist group overseas. The Internet/phone provider lacked interception capabilities, so police spent considerable resources to install their own equipment, but were eventually swamped by 21 million data points (web searches, images, videos, texts). Much of the data was encrypted and unintelligible. The case remains under investigation.

Case 4: Delays seeking foreign info

RCMP waited close to four months to get “high-value” evidence in order to stop a suspected “high-risk traveller” from leaving their home in Western Canada to join extremists overseas. Police say they concluded the case but were hampered by an inability to intercept communications outside of Canada and delays in the MLAT (mutual legal assistance treaty) process. Police had to forward a Canadian judge’s order through government channels, which were then delivered to a social media company outside the country. The company eventually filled the order, sending the material back to police — again through government channels — but police discovered the messages were encrypted and unreadable.

Case 5: A 10-month wait to access records

During an investigation into a group of Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) supporters who police believed were “high-risk travellers” based in Eastern Canada, the RCMP spent 10 months trying to obtain social media communications outside Canada. Analysis of the data is continuing, and police have evidence that one of the suspects is abroad in a “high-risk country.” The case remains under investigation.

Case 6: Terrorist group communications prove elusive

RCMP are investigating a group of individuals suspected of participating in a terrorist organization and plotting to travel overseas. Police attempted a court-ordered interception of their devices but found the communications were encrypted. As a result, police had to design technical solutions which meant they needed an extension of the court order, and this has delayed the process. The communications among the suspected terrorists have not been obtained. The case is still under investigation.

Case 7: Digital chatter unreadable

RCMP obtained warrants to conduct surveillance on a group of people in Eastern Canada suspected in a terrorism conspiracy in 2014. Police discovered the main suspect’s phone was connecting to multiple different cellular networks, none of which was technically equipped to intercept the suspect’s text and Internet traffic. The Mounties spent two months and $250,000 to engineer a custom tool that would intercept the target’s communications, only to discover all of it was encrypted and unreadable. The individuals remain under investigation.

Case 8: Interception too costly

The RCMP seized kilos of cocaine and arrested low-level members of an alleged drug and human trafficking organization in Eastern Canada. After obtaining a warrant to monitor suspects’ communications, investigators determined it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to install interception hardware at the targets’ Internet service provider (ISP). Police abandoned the effort and resorted to using undercover officers and agents. The alleged criminal bosses and organization are still operational.

Case 9: Laptops, phones blocked

The RCMP, working with foreign intelligence agencies, obtained warrants to intercept residential and cellular traffic of a group of suspected “high-risk travellers” in a city in Western Canada. Police believed they were planning to join extremist groups overseas. Investigators attempted to intercept more than 30 laptops, cellphones and computers being used by the group but could only “successfully infiltrate” two of them. While those two devices delivered a bounty of intercepted evidence — 4.4 million pieces of data, including videos, images, web pages, text messages and emails — some of the data was encrypted and unreadable.

Case 10: Aaron Driver’s encrypted chats

The RCMP was unable to read Daesh supporter Aaron Driver’s encrypted messages in 2015 to and from other suspects involved in attacks in Texas and Australia. Despite suspicions, RCMP say encryption thwarted their ability to understand how far along Driver may have been in his bomb plot. He was killed in August 2016 outside his home in Strathroy, Ont., after police were tipped off to a martyrdom video Driver had made. The FBI alerted Canadian police to an “imminent” attack. He was killed amidst police gunfire and the partial detonation of a bomb he was carrying.