Privacy rights at heart of porn trial
Author: Shannon Kari, Canwest News Service
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The trial of a former television pitchman could be a precedent-setting case in deciding the privacy rights of Internet subscribers who are the subject of a criminal investigation.

Robert Smith is on trial in Ontario Superior Court on one charge of possession of child pornography and one charge of making child pornography available.

The actor was featured in commercials for Alexander Keith's beer as a character with a thick Scottish accent, until his arrest in February 2006.

Toronto police arrested Smith after an investigation into distribution of child pornography on Internet-based file-sharing networks.

After discovering a specific Internet Protocol address and learning it belonged to a Bell Canada customer, police executed a search warrant to obtain the subscriber information from the Internet service provider (ISP).

Smith is arguing there were not reasonable grounds for the first warrant to be issued or for a second one to be executed at his home.

The Crown responded that Smith has no right to challenge the warrant executed against Bell because there are no privacy rights in Internet subscriber information.

In a 2005 civil case about the downloading of music from file-sharing networks, the Federal Court of Appeal found there were privacy rights in this data and it could not be disclosed without a court order.

The prosecution of Smith is believed to be the first time a superior court in Canada has been asked to decide whether police are required to obtain a search warrant to get subscriber information in a criminal case and whether a defendant can challenge the warrant.
© The Calgary Herald 2008

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