Privacy Impact Assessment – National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR)

Executive Summary

In 1988, eleven year old Christopher Stephenson was brutally murdered at the hands of a convicted pedophile on statutory release.  At the 1993 coroner’ inquest into Christopher’s death, the coroner’s jury recommended creating a national registry for convicted sex offenders, requiring that they register with their local police. As a result of strong public demand, the establishment of a National Sex Offender Registry had been a topic of discussion at various levels of government over a ten year period, and in March 2001 the House of Commons passed a unanimous resolution calling for the federal government to establish a National Sex Offender Registry.   In Bill C-16, Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA), received Royal Assent on April 1, 2004 and came into force December 15, 2004, thereby mandating offenders who received a court order to register with the National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR).  The NSOR is a national program where each of the thirteen Provinces and Territories, through the office of its Attorney General, and effective September 12, 2008, the Canadian Forces are all responsible for the implementation of SOIRA within their respective locations.  Under the act, the RCMP was tasked with setting up the NSOR database and, by extension, developing system models for the provinces.   

The NSOR is comprised of three (3) components namely, (1) the federal legislative framework (SOIRA); (2) an electronic sex offender database maintained by the RCMP; and (3) administration and enforcement of the legislation by all police agencies in their respective areas of jurisdiction.  These three elements combine to create a new tool to assist the police officers in the investigation of sexual offences by allowing them to quickly consult the registry, to search its contents using established criteria and to identify possible suspects in the vicinity of the crime.  Legislation also ensures that offender information in the NSOR is kept up to date.  The RCMP has been mandated with the maintenance and management of the NSOR database. 

The NSOR database contains personal information that includes an offender’s name, date of birth, gender, main residence and every secondary residence, address of employment, and volunteer, phone numbers, height, weight, photograph, identifying marks (e.g. tattoos, scars) and the sex offence for which the offender has been convicted.  Information registered on the NSOR database in done in accordance with Section 15(1) of the SOIRA which requires that information be retained in the database indefinitely.  In accordance with Section 15(2) and (3) of the SOIRA, though, removal and destruction of information can occur when an offender is acquitted for every offence connected to an order; when the offender receives a free pardon (Her Majesty’s royal prerogative of mercy) and; when an Exemption Order is granted.  The NSOR is secured to a Protected “B” level, uses Government of Canada (GOC) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Entrust enabled and operates on a stringent and internal role based access control (RBAC) mechanism.  The database resides in Ottawa at the Application Development Branch (ADB) of Chief Information Officer (CIO) sector of the RCMP.

The Government of Canada, in partnership with the provinces and territories, has created the NSOR to provide rapid access by police to current vital information about convicted sex offenders. The NSOR enhances public safety by assisting in the investigation of crimes of a sexual nature and identifying possible suspects known to reside near where a crime has occurred.  It provides all Canadian Law Enforcement agencies with the necessary tool to assist them in monitoring the location of convicted sex offenders and serve the immediate needs of the police officers responding to serious incidents of a sexual nature.  The database enhances public protection by improving investigations and helping to solve sex offences.

Sections 10 and 11 of the Privacy Act require a government institution to include in personal information banks (PIB) all information under the control of the government institution and to publish an index of all personal information banks within the institution.  A new PIB, CMP PPU 095, has been created for the NSOR database and will be included in the RCMP Institution Specific Personal Information Banks contained within Info Source.  The creation of a PIB for the NSOR database will ensure that Canadians are aware of the information being collected about them as mandated by SOIRA.