"An RCMP officer and a retired Vancouver cop say not even police are safe from high-tech spyware" 8 April 2025

Retired Vancouver police officer Paul McNamara was out with his family in August 2023 when he had a phone conversation with a friend, Ontario RCMP officer Pete Merrifield. As he talked, he noticed his phone became unusually hot, "like it was about to melt down."..

...Then, that fall, he learned that the national police force had used controversial spyware called an On-Device Investigative Tool (ODIT) to remotely hack into his and Merrifield's phones. This was revealed thanks to evidence in an ongoing court case involving another former RCMP officer where McNamara and Merrifield were witnesses.

McNamara says ODITs allow police to read messages on a person's phone in real time, even on encrypted apps like Signal, but two-step authentication can still otherwise block access to data on certain apps that would require police to know the person's password.

While concerns from privacy advocates and human rights groups have focused on these tools being used to spy on journalists and other citizens, in this case spyware was used on a current and former police officer who say they were only ever told they were witnesses, not suspects, in a foreign interference case. 

The two are now raising alarms about how the invasive technology was used in their case and the implications it has for broader police use. Meanwhile, one expert told CBC he worries this type of spyware has surpassed legal frameworks protecting Canadians' privacy rights...

...McNamara and Merrifield filed a lawsuit together last year against the federal government, seeking $5.5 million in damages and alleging defamation, claiming they lost their security clearances — and in McNamara's case, his job — because of "inaccurate, incomplete, misleading and/or false" information provided by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to their employers...