{"id":8221,"date":"2018-04-22T23:39:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T23:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/?p=16703"},"modified":"2018-04-22T23:39:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T23:39:28","slug":"canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada: Your Legal Pot Buying Data Could Get You Banned From The U.S., Lawyers Warn"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>When Canadians are able to buy legal recreational marijuana sometime this year, we are going to start generating a lot of consumer data.<\/p>\n<p>Some of it will be clearly linked to individuals: credit card purchases at physical stores and online ordering to home addresses, for example.<\/p>\n<p>If your Canadian marijuana-buying data ends up on a server in the United States, could it make its way to U.S. border officials? There\u2019s little to stop it, privacy experts say.<\/p>\n<p>And that could have lasting consequences. Canadians can be barred for life from the United States \u2014 even after legalization here \u2014 if a border officer decides that they are an \u201cabuser\u201d of marijuana.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cUnder current technical instructions, use in the last year would qualify as a drug abuser,\u201d says Scott Railton, an immigration lawyer in Bellingham, Wash.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf they were able to access that data point for home delivery and everything, it would open the door for more questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A U.S. border officer who knew of a Canadian\u2019s marijuana buying history could quickly put the person in an impossible position \u2014 admit to marijuana use and be banned as a \u201cdrug abuser,\u201d or deny it and be banned for lying. (Immigration lawyers advise refusing to answer the question, which will probably get you turned back on that one occasion, but doesn\u2019t carry lasting consequences.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny information that goes outside of Canada is up for grabs by local law enforcement,\u201d says Heather Black, a former assistant federal privacy commissioner. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the globalization of data. It goes all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerican authorities are pretty greedy for scooping up information, and they clearly don\u2019t confine themselves to the borders of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And under U.S. law, Canadians don\u2019t have the safeguards over their U.S.-held data that Americans would have, explains University of Toronto law Professor Lisa Austin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Canada, we would be protected by the Charter. In the U.S. we\u2019re not protected by the Fourth Amendment, as non-U.S. persons, so there\u2019s no constitutional protection for our data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MasterCard, Visa and the CIBC didn\u2019t respond to questions about where credit card data is stored. However, the privacy agreements of all five of the big banks warn that customers\u2019 financial data can be stored outside Canada, and be subject to the laws of the country it\u2019s stored in.<\/p>\n<p>Some don\u2019t specify the U.S. by name, but others do. BMO\u2019s agreement, for example, says that companies holding data \u201cmay be located outside of Canada (such as in the United States) and may be required to disclose information to courts, government authorities, regulators or law enforcement in accordance with applicable law in that country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a 2005 decision, the federal privacy commissioner noted that Canadians\u2019 credit card data held in the U.S. could be obtained by American authorities under the PATRIOT Act, an anti-terrorism law passed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.<\/p>\n<p>At issue was a CIBC Visa cardholder agreement in which cardholders were asked to acknowledge that \u201d \u2026 my information may be processed and stored in the United States and that United States governments, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies may be able to obtain disclosure of my information through the laws of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Under the law\u201d \u2026 certain U.S. intelligence and police surveillance and information collection tools have been expanded, and procedural hurdles for U.S. law enforcement agencies have been minimized. Under section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can access records held in the United States,\u201d the decision said.<\/p>\n<p>Canadians banned from the U.S. can apply for a waiver allowing them to cross the border, but the process is cumbersome and expensive, and the application has to be restarted from scratch every few years for the rest of the person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt could be a public relations disaster if people realize they\u2019re sending sensitive information across the border that could get them banned from crossing the border,\u201d Austin says.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cLots of people smoke pot, and we are all going to want to cross the border. It can screw up your whole work life if you can\u2019t cross.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Online ordering<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Online marijuana shopping may be popular, especially since a network of marijuana retail stores will take years to develop. (Ontario, which has 660 liquor stores, 450 beer stores, 212 agency stores and 17,637 licensed establishments, will start with only 40 physical cannabis stores to serve an adult population of 11 million.)<\/p>\n<p>Research by B.C.\u2019s Liquor Distribution Branch found that 15 per cent of the province\u2019s adult population, or about half a million people, were interested in buying pot online, spokesperson Viviana Zanocco wrote in an email.<\/p>\n<p>Global News contacted every province to ask where data about online marijuana customers \u2014 name, delivery address and so forth \u2014 will be stored:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u2022 Quebec, B.C., P.E.I. and Nova Scotia will operate their own online ordering systems directly, and plan to store the data only in Canada.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u2022 Alberta and Ontario have contracted out online ordering, but require the contractor to store the data only in Canada. Ontario won\u2019t collect date of birth information through the ordering process, verifying age through an ID check at delivery instead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u2022 Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick haven\u2019t chosen a contractor, but will impose a similar requirement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u2022 Manitoba and Saskatchewan will allow online cannabis sales by licensed private-sector companies, and won\u2019t limit where they store their consumer data. (Federal privacy laws have no requirement to keep data in Canada.)<\/p>\n<p>Neither Manitoba nor Saskatchewan prepared privacy impact assessments about their approach to marijuana legalization, spokespeople for those provinces said. (A privacy impact assessment is a tool to try to make sure that something government does doesn\u2019t affect privacy, or affects it as minimally as possible.)<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t have to because the data will be handled by private-sector companies, they said.<\/p>\n<p>(Another thing to throw into the mix: the U.S. argues that privacy laws in B.C. and Nova Scotia that require keeping most personal data in Canada are a violation of NAFTA.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit cards<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Credit card data is a more challenging problem.<\/p>\n<p>From the moment legal pot stores open, records of Canadians\u2019 cannabis purchases are going to start to pile up in credit card data which the banks that issue the cards warn may end up south of the border.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s an important question how credit card transactions will be recorded.<\/p>\n<p>Nova Scotia cannabis purchases will be entered as NSLC (Nova Scotia Liquor Commission), which will make them effectively invisible in the data. Did the cardholder buy Bud or buds? It\u2019s impossible to tell.<\/p>\n<p>(\u201cThat\u2019s smart,\u201d Austin says. \u201cIt seems like the easiest way to solve the problem, to just not have the data available.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>P.E.I., New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec and B.C. haven\u2019t yet decided how credit card transactions will appear on customers\u2019 statements.<\/p>\n<p>The credit card issue is \u201con our radar,\u201d says New Brunswick Liquor Corporation spokesperson Mark Barbour. Nova Scotia\u2019s cannabis sales will be run by a subsidiary of the NSLC, while New Brunswick\u2019s will be run by a separate Crown corporation, Barbour points out. That makes it hard for New Brunswick to copy Nova Scotia\u2019s solution.<\/p>\n<p>In provinces with private-sector retailers, the details of credit card transactions are somewhat beyond government control. In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, the name of the private-sector cannabis retailer will appear on the credit card statement, says liquor board spokesperson Greg Gill.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe whole data piece, from domain name registration to credit card information, anything that might fall into federal U.S. hands, I can see how that would be a matter of concern, for sure,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>(Interac debit card data is \u201cprocessed, encrypted and stored in Canada,\u201d Interac spokesperson Sandra DeCarvalho wrote in an email. Interac\u2019s privacy policy makes no mention of data crossing borders. )<\/p>\n<p><strong>At the U.S. border, enforcement is getting more intense<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As attitudes toward marijuana have softened on both sides of the border, attitudes at the border itself have hardened, warns Len Saunders, an immigration lawyer in Blaine, Wash. Saunders is now seeing a flood of Canadian clients who want help with waivers related to marijuana after being banned for life by U.S. border officials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see one or two cases a week now,\u201d he says. \u201cI used to see one or two a year. I\u2019m almost seeing one a day, and that\u2019s just me. It\u2019s like a tidal wave of cases. I\u2019ve never been so busy in my life doing waiver applications.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Saunders says he has three Canadian clients, senior executives in an agricultural equipment company, who were banned for life when they tried to cross the border to do a sales demonstration of a marijuana bud trimming machine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll three admitted that they were selling this legal product to the marijuana industry. All were banned from the U.S. on the basis of reason to believe that they are involved in the drug trade. That\u2019s how low the threshold is. They weren\u2019t even involved with the product (the marijuana itself).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Saunders and Railton both say they have no idea how U.S. border officials will react to legal marijuana in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe really need the United States, and particularly the Department of Homeland Security, to issue a policy statement about how they\u2019ll handle the fact that Canada legalizes,\u201d Railton says.<\/p>\n<p>Saunders recently appeared as a witness at Canada\u2019s Senate national security and defense committee, which was holding hearings about border-related marijuana issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithin a few days, I got an email from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa wanting me to discuss these issues with the embassy, because now the embassy is concerned about the thickening of the U.S. border,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sitting there thinking: \u2018You guys are just discussing this now, when it\u2019s almost legalized? It should have been discussed two or three years ago.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI haven\u2019t got a straight answer, or anything in writing, to give guidance when it does become legal in Canada, whether Americans are going to look at that favorably or not. You\u2019d think that if it is legal in Canada it\u2019s not going to create border crossing issues, but I\u2019ve yet to have someone say \u2018There\u2019s no issue here.\u2019 That\u2019s the big question mark.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/420-news\/international-cannabis-news\/canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn\/\">Canada: Your Legal Pot Buying Data Could Get You Banned From The U.S., Lawyers Warn<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\">420 MAGAZINE \u00ae<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Canadians are able to buy legal recreational marijuana sometime this year, we are going to start generating a lot&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/420-news\/international-cannabis-news\/canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn\/\" class=\"read-more\">[Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\/420-news\/international-cannabis-news\/canada-your-legal-pot-buying-data-could-get-you-banned-from-the-u-s-lawyers-warn\/\">Canada: Your Legal Pot Buying Data Could Get You Banned From The U.S., Lawyers Warn<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.420magazine.com\">420 MAGAZINE \u00ae<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1616,9,1,3],"tags":[4184],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}