The Globe and Mail 16/03/2014 - How often, and under what circumstances, do Canadian telecommunications companies willingly hand subscriber information to government agencies? What about for cases where they are legally compelled? And what constitutes subscriber information anyhow? These aren't hard questions. But good luck getting answers. The government doesn't seem interested in answering them and our cellphone providers say they can't. Neither will tell us why. Recently, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab published responses from 10 of 16 Canadian telecommunications companies who were asked in January to clarify "the extent to which they voluntarily, and under compulsion, disclose information about their subscribers to state agencies, as well as for information about business practices and data retention periods." The companies that responded to Citizen Labber Christopher Parsons included Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, Videotron, Cogeco, Eastlink, MTS Allstream and Distributel, with the general sentiment that the privacy of their customers is of great concern. But their responses were short on details, instead citing vagaries about legal restrictions and national security, and in some cases shifting the onus on transparency to the government instead. According to David Fraser, a Canadian privacy lawyer and partner with the firm of McInnes Cooper, "They're able to provide a whole lot more information than they actually are."