![]() That said, an accused and his representatives are permitted to investigate with a view to identifying an informant for a lawful purpose and by lawful means. The duty to protect and enforce informer privilege rests on the police, the Crown, and the courts. The Duty to Keep the Informant’s Identity Confidential Keeping in mind that informer’s privilege was created and is enforced as a matter of public interest rather than contract, it might be argued that in a situation of serious potential danger, the informer privilege (or other public interest privilege) might apply even in the absence of the contract-type elements of offer and acceptance (R. The Crown is better able to meet that challenge if it can point to clear evidence of informer status being conferred explicitly rather than after-the-fact supposition. Barros, 2011 SCC 51, paragraph 31).Ī claim to informer status is always open to challenge by the defence. The rule gives a peace officer the power to promise his informers secrecy expressly or by implication, with a guarantee sanctioned by the law that this promise will be kept even in court. The privilege arises where a police officer, in the course of an investigation, guarantees protection and confidentiality to a prospective informer in exchange for useful information that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain.Īlthough preferred, the promise need not be express. In a clear case, confidentiality is explicitly sought by the informer and agreed to by the police. Of course, not everybody who provides information to the police thereby becomes a confidential informant. Setting up the Confidential Informant Contract The police and the Court recognize that people who are available to provide information typically won’t give that information to the police unless they are protected (R. The obligation to protect confidential sources goes beyond a rule of evidence and is not limited to the courtroom. If there was not such an assurance, informers would be unwilling to cooperate. Because of its almost absolute nature, the privilege encourages other potential informers to come forward with some assurance of protection against reprisal. Once informer privilege is found to exist, no exception or balancing of interests is made except “if upon the trial of a prisoner the judge should be of opinion that the disclosure of the name of the informant is necessary or right in order to show the prisoner’s innocence” (R. 199, as an essential element in the investigation of crime and the protection of the public. Informer privilege has been recognized at least since The Trial of Thomas Hardy for Treason (1794), 24 St. ![]() In cases where fraud victims do wish to take action but remain anonymous, they may wish to consider the law as it applies to confidential informants. In other cases, persons with knowledge of fraudulent activity will only consider reporting such information as a confidential whistle blower. In many cases of fraud, for a variety of reasons such as embarrassment and fear, some fraud victims do not wish to report what has happened to them to either the police or to their own counsel for the purposes of bringing a civil recovery action. ![]()
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