Special report to Parliament: Investigation of the RCMP’s collection of open-source information under Project Wide Awake
This special report from the OPC investigated the RCMP's Project Wide Awake initiative, which uses third-party services to collect open-source information. The investigation found that the RCMP did not conduct adequate due diligence to ensure that the personal information collected via the Babel X service and its data providers was compliant with Canadian privacy laws. Additionally, the RCMP failed to meet its transparency obligations under the Privacy Act by providing inadequate descriptions of its open-source information collection practices and purposes in its Personal Information Banks.
- Compliance with collection provisions of the Privacy Act
- Adequacy of due diligence regarding third-party data collection practices
- Adequacy of transparency obligations under the Privacy Act
- Sufficiency of Personal Information Bank descriptions
Investigation found contraventions of the Privacy Act regarding collection and transparency; matters remain unresolved.
The RCMP failed to conduct adequate due diligence on third-party data collection practices and provided insufficient transparency in its public disclosures, leading to unresolved contraventions of the Privacy Act.
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The OPC recommended that the RCMP cease collecting personal information via Babel X from sources requiring logins or authentication until a thorough review for compliance is completed, and that the RCMP improve the granularity and clarity of its Personal Information Bank descriptions.
- Section 4 of the Privacy Act
- Section 11 of the Privacy Act
- Section 18 of the RCMP Act
This summary is informational only and not legal advice.