Digital Journal - In just one year Canadian border guards asked telecommunication companies for information about customers almost 19,000 times. In most cases the information was handed over without leaving behind any paper trail to trace what was given.

Statistics about these transactions between the government and telecommunication corporations are almost never made public. However, the Canada Border Service Agency broke rank and released some information on its requests. It said that over 99 per cent of the requests were for basic subscriber information(BSI). These records would reveal who controlled a cellphone or Internet account. While this information is not necessarily public it does not require a warrant to obtain. Although these disclosures raise privacy concerns the telecoms seem to have adapted to receiving huge numbers of requests and almost always approving them. Of the 19,000 requests received in 2012 only 25 were refused and only 13 customers were actually notified that the government was snooping on them. The companies charge from one to three dollars to carry out each BSI request.