What police can and cannot do under the Charter, including searches of phones, vehicles, and homes, and the use of surveillance technology.
TL;DR
Section 8 of the Charter protects you against unreasonable search and seizure. The Supreme Court has ruled that phones, IP addresses, text messages, and even stranger mail are subject to constitutional privacy protection. Police generally need a warrant unless a narrow exception applies.
Section 8 and reasonable expectation of privacy
The starting point is Hunter v. Southam (1984): a search without a warrant is presumptively unreasonable.
R. v. Spencer (2014) extended privacy protection to subscriber information linking an IP address to an identity.
R. v. Marakah (2017) held that senders retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages on the recipient's device.
R. v. Bykovets (2024) held that IP addresses themselves attract Charter protection.
Searches of phones and devices
Police generally need a warrant to search a phone. Incident to arrest searches are limited to narrow and specific circumstances and must be well-documented.
Border searches of electronic devices have been a contested area. Recent court rulings have started to impose more constraints on suspicionless border searches.
Requesting information about yourself from police
You can file a privacy access request with the police service under the applicable provincial law (e.g., MFIPPA in Ontario) to obtain records about yourself. Some information may be withheld on law enforcement exceptions.