Privacy of IP Addresses: Understanding the Supreme Court Ruling in R. v. Bykovets
In R. v. Bykovets, 2024 SCC 6, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that for Charter of Rights purposes, a person being investigated by the police has a reasonable expectation of privacy in an IP address in the possession of a third person, in this case a payment processor, even when not linked to any personally identifying information. The decision and its importance is explained in a blog post written by my colleagues Dan Glover, Andrew Matheson, Connor Bildwell, Greer Hope and I on the McCarthy Tetrault TechLex blog.…