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The Canadian Crime Stoppers Association (CCSA) is advising its local chapters to only accept tips by phone rather than online, it said in a statement to CBC News on Friday.
The “interim phone-only approach … allows participating local programs to receive tips without using Navigate360’s P3 platform,” the statement read, referring to the third-party US company’s tip management platform that suffered a massive data breach in March.
It appears to be a shift for the not-for-profit organization, which previously issued guidance to local programs that when members of the public asked about the breach, they expressed their confidence in Navigate360’s security improvements and said the platform “remains secure and suitable for continued use.”
In Friday’s statement, the CCSA asked that the public now call 222-TIPS to submit tips anonymously. For programs that have been paused, there will be local announcements about when phone reporting will resume, it said.
“Local programs will keep new information under their control and securely share it with law enforcement,” read the statement from CCSA President David J. Forster.
“This change cannot undo the burden of information already taken. We will continue to press Navigate360 for answers as we work to rebuild trust in a program that has long helped communities prevent and solve crime.”
The extent of the breach was revealed in a CBC investigation published last week, which found that over 1.5 million tips derived from Canadian Crime Stoppers programs that have been hacked over the past 25 years.
To date, more than 40 local Crime Stoppers chapters and police agencies in five provinces have temporarily halted their intake of anonymous tips or their partnerships with the organization. Meanwhile, the Privacy Commissioner investigate the breachfocused on Navigate360 and its security measures at the time of the hack in March.
“It’s hard to imagine [Crime Stoppers] always back to where they were in terms of trust,” said Randy Lippert, a criminology professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario, in an interview with CBC News before Friday’s statement was released.
At least 13 programs do not accept tips in any form
Before receiving the CCSA statement, CBC had attempted to contact all 64 Crime Stoppers chapters that we identified as compromising tips. (Six have no publicly listed contact information.)
To date, 13 Crime Stoppers programs in Ontario and Saskatchewan have said they are no longer accepting anonymous tips.
The latest addition to the list was Ontario’s Brant-Brantford Crime Stoppers chapter, which made the announcement on his Facebook page.
Three Crime Stoppers chapters explicitly confirmed that they are still accepting anonymous tips: New Brunswick in the districts of Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma.
The last one two Programs both have statements on their websites – published before Friday’s statement – that they are unable to accept tips intended for their local police services, which have stopped their participation in Crime Stoppers. But they said they are still accepting tips for “other participating police services in our area.”
CBC News reached out to the three chapters to see if they are reconsidering the decision in light of the new leadership of their national organization.
OPP ‘pause the promotion’ of the program
CBC also reached out the largest municipal police force in the country who have yet to comment on the breach, to ask them if they intended to end their use of anonymous tips as a police tool. Crime Stoppers sends tips to law enforcement when needed, but it operates independently of the police.
At least 29 police units across Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and British Columbia said they have suspended their partnership with the Crime Stoppers program.
However, some, such as Calgary and Charlottetown, said they continue to accept Crime Stoppers tips and that their use of the program “has not stopped.”
Meanwhile, the Ontario Provincial Police confirmed that it is pausing the promotion of the Crime Stoppers program. However, people can still use it if they prefer, a spokesperson said in a statement, and the agency will evaluate the information “as appropriate.”
The RCMP has not explicitly confirmed whether it still uses anonymous Crime Stoppers tips for active investigations. Instead, it said it was aware that some chapters had stopped their tip recording, and advised all potential tipsters to avoid sharing any identifying information in their reports.
Lippert said there could be long-term implications of police agencies distancing themselves from Crime Stoppers, going beyond the use of anonymous tips in policing, because of the program’s “strong overlap” with law enforcement.
“It’s just hard to imagine Crime Stoppers being able to survive without a lot of support,” he said.
For example, while Crime Stoppers’ reward money doesn’t come from the police, many agencies give their local chapters funding for other things, such as special events or marketing campaigns, he said. Some have provided their chapters with physical offices, or even assigned officers to serve as program coordinators and investigate tips.
CCSA previously insisted on ‘continuing operations’
The CCSA has previously appeared to take a different approach to how it will address the breach and its relationship with Navigate360, including with the fallout following the CBC’s initial investigation.
In an internal note to local programs dated October 22 and obtained by CBC News, President David J. Forster had advised them to direct all media inquiries to the national association, saying one of his key messaging points was that Navigate360’s “security improvements support continued operations.”
The memo, sent the day after Toronto Crime Stoppers stopped accepting tips, included a proposed answer to potential questions from the public about why other local chapters continue to accept tips: “We continue to receive tips because of our confidence in the technical work completed by our third-party software provider, along with stronger procedures for handling information within Crime Stoppers.
CBC News has reached out to Navigate360 for comment on Friday’s statement.
