Activists and academics are calling on Canada’s privacy commissioner to investigate after an executive order from President Donald Trump last week stripped Canadians and other foreigners of the limited digital privacy protections they had enjoyed previously in the U.S. The move could affect up to 90 per cent of Internet traffic in Canada, which is commonly routed through the U.S. In an order signed last Wednesday, Trump declared that federal agencies “shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seal stands at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The Department of Homeland Security in 2007 extended certain Privacy Act protections to include “non-U.S. persons including visitors and aliens.” The original Privacy Act of 1974 did not cover non-U.S. citizens. Trump’s order “has enormous implications for the privacy of everyone living outside the United States,” wrote Michael Geist, a professor of e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. “Given the close integration between U.S. and Canadian agencies — as well as the fact that Canadian Internet traffic frequently traverses into the U.S. — there are serious implications for Canadian privacy.” Ronald Diebert of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab estimated that some 90 per cent of Canadian Internet traffic is routed through the United States. When it comes to the Internet, “there is no border,” he said in 2013.