No Charter-protected expectation of privacy in vehicle operation data

On July 20th, the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan held that an accused person who drove his pickup truck through a highway intersection and stuck a semi-truck did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that precluded the police from seizing a control module and its data from his vehicle before it was towed away.

The accident was horrible. There were six people in the truck with the accused, three of whom died, two of whom were children. The police charged the accused with dangerous driving and criminal negligence, and the prosecution relied on evidence retrieved from the wrecked pickup truck at the scene of the accident. Specifically, the police seized the truck’s Airbag Control Module (ACM) from under the driver’s seat. The ACM contained an Event Data Recorder (EDR) with data about the vehicle’s operation during the five seconds before impact in tenth of a second intervals – specifically, speed, accelerator pedal (% full), manifold pressure and service brake (on/off), seatbelt pretensioner readings, airbag deployment readings.

There are competing lines of Canadian jurisprudence regarding the warrantless seizure of on board vehicle computers and their data. The leading Ontario case is Hamilton, a Ontario Superior Court of Justice case that recognizes a reasonable expectation of (informational) privacy. In Yogeswaran, though, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that the territorial privacy interest in one’s vehicle is enough to preclude police search and seizure without prior judicial authorization.

Conversely, in Fedan, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia held that one’s territorial privacy interest in their vehicle is extinguished when the vehicle is seized and that EDR data is not associated with a strong enough informational privacy interest to warrant Charter protection.

The Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan followed Fedan. It reasoned that the accused’s truck, being totally destroyed on the side of a public roadway, was in the total control of the police whether or not it was yet to be formally seized based on section 489(2) of the Criminal Code. It concluded:

…the claim to a territorial privacy interest by Mr. Major in that component of his vehicle is weak. While a warrant could have been obtained, that does not mean one was required. I find that the state of the vehicle, Mr. Major’s loss of control over it, the nature of the ACM as a mechanical safety component installed by the manufacturer, and the focused task by Cpl. Green in locating and removing only it, do not support the continued existence of an objectively reasonable territorial privacy interest at the point when the vehicle was entered

Regarding informational privacy, the Court made the point that not all digital evidence is equally sensitive or revealing of one’s “biographical core.” EDR data of the kind at issue is limited to data about the operation of a vehicle immediately before an accident, and provides no “longer-term information about the driving habits of the owner or operator of a vehicle.” The Court concluded:

After considering the two lines of cases regarding EDR data, I find myself in substantial agreement with the reasoning from Fedan for the characterization of the data stored in the EDR. As in Fedan, the data here “contained no intimate details of the driver’s biographical core, lifestyle or personal choices, or information that could be said to directly compromise his ‘dignity, integrity and autonomy’” (at para 82, quoting Plant at 293). It revealed no personal identifiers or details at all. It was not invasive of Mr. Major’s personal life. The anonymous driving data disclosed virtually nothing about the lifestyle or private decisions of the operator of the Dodge Ram pickup. It is hard to conceive that Mr. Major intended to keep his manner of driving private, given that the other occupants of the vehicle – which included an adult employee – and complete strangers, who were contemporaneously using the public roadways or adjacent to it, could readily observe him. His highly regulated driving behaviour was “exposed to the public” (Tessling at para 47), although not to the precise degree with which the limited EDR data, as interpreted by the Bosch CDR software, purports to do. While it is only a small point, I further observe that a police officer on traffic patrol would have been entitled to capture Mr. Major’s precise speed on their speed detection equipment without raising any privacy concerns.

R v Major, 2022 SKCA 80 (CanLII).

Ont CA majority says no Charter right to text in private

In a case that speaks to the bounds of digital privacy, the Court of Appeal for Ontario recently held that a text message sender has no reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages stored on a recipient’s phone.

Text messaging is a unique form of communication. To text certainly invites the feeling of engaging in a private conversation, but a sender’s texts are received by another person who typically has no duty of confidence and who has exclusive control of the “inbox” in which the texts are invariably left to reside. Like digital messages of all kinds, once sent, a text message is beyond control.

The question for courts in these matters is a normative one – what ought to be treated as private in our society? – so the loss of control over information does not necessarily invalidate a Charter-based privacy claim. Nonetheless, there’s a real practical consequence to the loss of control that Courts must reckon with. If they do not, we risk unduly restricting the free flow of information and free expression. Privacy is always a matter of striking an appropriate balance.

The Court issued its balance-striking judgement about text messaging on July 8th. Justice MacPherson wrote for the majority that denied privacy protection, and held that control was of “central importance” in the context. He wrote:

The facts of this case demonstrate that, unlike in Spencer and Cole, the ability to control access to the information is of central importance to the assessment of the privacy claim. We are not talking about the appellant’s privacy interest in the contents of his own phone, or even the contents of a phone belonging to someone else, but which he occasionally used. We are also not dealing with deeply personal, intimate details going to the appellant’s biographical core. Here, we are talking about text messages on someone else’s phone that reveal no more than what the messages contained – discussions regarding the trafficking of firearms.

This is far from being a question of whether the appellant had “exclusive control” over the content. He had no ability to regulate access and no control over what Winchester (or anyone) did with the contents of Winchester’s phone. The appellant’s request to Winchester that he delete the messages is some indication of his awareness of this fact. Further, his choice over his method of communication created a permanent record over which Winchester exercised control.

It has never been the case that privacy rights are absolute. Not everything we wish to keep confidential is protected under s. 8 of the Charter. In my view, the manner in which one elects to communicate must affect the degree of privacy protection one can reasonably expect.

Justice Laforme dissented – clearly differing from the majority on the importance of control, citing numerous cases in which the loss of control has not precluded the recognition of a Charter-protected privacy interest, stressing that privacy is a normative concept and in general ascribing great value to texting in private.

While the debate between majority and minority about the significance of control and standing to raise section 8 of the Charter is important, the majority and minority do not differ by much in principle. Where they clearly do differ is on the value they ascribe to text messaging. To start with the minority, Justice Laforme says texting is the “modern version of a conversation,” and is nearly romantic about it: “In my view, these private communications are an increasingly central element of the private sphere that must be protected under s. 8.” Justice MacPherson, in contrast, has no interest in constitutionalizing texting. In a humorous and effective appeal to authority, he links to the Ontario health and physical education curriculum, under which we teach 12-year-olds across the province, “If you do not want someone else to know about something, you should not write about it or post it.” This, of course, dovetails with Justice MacPherson’s important point about electing how to communicate. To people older than 12, we typically say something like, “You want privacy, pick up the phone.”

R. v. Marakah, 2016 ONCA 542 (CanLII).

BCCA affirms its position on text message privacy

On April 11th, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia held that a defendant convicted of internet luring and sexual touching of a minor had a reasonable expectation of privacy in direct messages he sent to the complainant and others via a social media platform.

The trial judge had found no such expectation – a finding that rested in part on the nature of the messages. The trial judge held that the messages contained no personal information that the defendant had not posted in his public profile and were not sent to an intimate, trustworthy contact. The Court of Appeal viewed the messages differently – as “flirtatious” – and held that the trial judge rested too heavily on the “risk analysis” that characterizes American Fourth Amendment law. It reasoned:

While recognizing that electronic surveillance is a particularly serious invasion of privacy, the reasoning is of assistance in this case. Millions, if not billions, of emails and “messages” are sent and received each day all over the world. Email has become the primary method of communication. When an email is sent, one knows it can be forwarded with ease, printed and circulated, or given to the authorities by the recipient. But it does not follow, in my view, that the sender is deprived of all reasonable expectation of privacy. I will discuss this further below. To find that is the case would permit the authorities to seize emails, without prior judicial authorization, from recipients to investigate crime or simply satisfy their curiosity. In my view, the analogy between seizing emails and surreptitious recordings [as considered by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Duarte] is valid to this extent.

In then end, the Court found a breach of section 8 but held the evidence was admissible after conducting its section 24(2) analysis.

The Court’s reasonable expectation of privacy finding follows its earlier similar finding in R v Peluco. For the context see this Law Times article.

R v Craig, 2016 BCCA 154 (CanLII).