Trial on drug and conspiracy related charges. Issue being whether the police require a Part VI Criminal Code warrant, rather than a Production Order, to obtain text message content retained by Telus Communications, and related details.
Held: Part VI warrant required.
R. v. Telus [2013] 2 SCR 3 found that the seizure of text messages stored with a service provider constituted an intercept and required a Part VI authorization. There is no reduced expectation of privacy in historic text messages versus future text messages. “To adopt the Crown’s position … if a service provider, such as Telus, stores the messages as part of its service, the police could simply wait for the messages to be stored, then request them by way of a production order under less stringent requirements.”
S. Renouf – Defence Counsel