The provincial privacy commissioner has never received a single privacy impact assessment from a police force over its use of software that snoops on people’s smartphones and other devices, Christopher Parsons, the office’s director of research and technology policy, said at the National Cybersecurity Consortium conference in Montreal on Thursday. (The Logic)

Talking point: Police ought to be transparent about how they use tools that collect personal data and potentially make users’ devices less secure, Parsons said. The provincial privacy authority will help police stay on the right side of the law, he said, but they need to ask. Researchers at Citizen Lab believe numerous Ontario forces are using these tools. The federal privacy commissioner has previously scolded the RCMP for violating privacy law by using third-party software from Clearview AI—software that Toronto police also used.