Canada is also part of the crown with the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, though each has their own political systems and laws, which can ultimately be set aside for the interests of the crown. But this blurb below is pretty striking, as having access to you and your lawyer’s communications is pretty sinister from a state that routinely abuses its power. And actually, the medical communications is also a problem with a government that wants to offer everyone medically assisted suicide as the first option, recently reported that they are offering it to vets with PTSD… More Canadians die via white coats than all those killed by gun violence in the US, which is a striking statistic. TLDR, in Canada your life doesn’t matter to the state and they’d like to kill you, especially if a problem in soaking up tax money or resisting the Great Replacement.
The bill’s explicit protection of medical and solicitor-client information only applies when police make a warrantless demand for confirmation of service – but not to the production order.
https://reclaimthenet.org/canadas-bill-c-22-could-apply-to-vpns-and-gaming-platforms
A Senate hearing turned “electronic service provider” into a remarkably elastic phrase.
By Cindy Harper
The true extent of Canada’s controversial C-22 surveillance bill has been revealed during a Senate hearing, when officials were forced to answer questions from senators.
The questioning revealed that the bill is designed to be very broad in its scope – a point that was conceded by the minister.
“The term electronic service provider is deliberately broad,” Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree told the senators on November 2, as he was trying to defend the proposal that has been criticized as overreaching and poorly defined.
Senator Pierre Dalphond raised daycares, and Justice counsel Anne-Marie Lebel replied that an order “could be made to any service provider, a person who provides services to the public. It could be a daycare in some cases.”
Senator Hassan Yussuff asked if a VPN (Virtual Private Network) would qualify as an electronic service provider, and the minister replied, “the expansion to other platforms is not what is immediately envisioned, although, as technology develops, we want the ability to do that.”
The minister also said that “a world in which AI will be able to generate its own electronic service and sell it to Canadians” is “something the regulation and definition could capture.”
Assistant Deputy Minister Richard Bilodeau said that whether AI services end up as core providers is a question on which “time will tell.”
Shannon Hiegel of Public Safety Canada explained that the broad definition of an electronic service provider is “probably where we’re leaning the most forward when we look at the comparisons across all of the countries that we’ve taken a look at.”
The bill’s definition of an electronic service provider is anyone who provides an electronic service to people in Canada, and the minister can make orders that apply to any such provider.
Hiegel said that this would include “gaming platforms where communication isn’t the primary purpose of that service, but yet there is a predominant chat room and chat function that goes on.”
It also emerged during the hearing that the bill’s provisions could reach far beyond telecommunications and internet companies, and that its broad wording could allow it to be used to obtain sensitive information from health care providers, lawyers, and financial institutions, as well as dating apps.
This is according to Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne, who said that the subscriber information rules in the bill could apply to services “which could include health-care providers, lawyers, financial institutions and dating apps,” and that “such information could reasonably attract a heightened expectation of privacy due to its sensitivity.”
Bill tracker: Canada Bill C-22 (Lawful Access Act) · In progress · We oppose it
The production order, which would force these providers to hand over data, requires a judge’s approval, but the bar is set very low, at “reasonable grounds to suspect.”
The privacy commissioner wants to see a finite list of what counts as subscriber information, a carve-out for medical or privileged information, and a limitation of the order to telecommunications providers.
Another problem is that the bill does not define what is meant by “publicly available” information – something that Dufresne said was undefined.
“An individual does not automatically forfeit any reasonable expectation of privacy in information that has become public,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Intelligence Commissioner Simon Noël spoke about secret ministerial orders that would force companies to build surveillance capabilities, and said that “a clear proportionality factor that includes reasonable alternatives would ensure the minister explains the needs.”
The bill’s explicit protection of medical and solicitor-client information only applies when police make a warrantless demand for confirmation of service – but not to the production order.
Despite these and other criticisms, the government is trying to defend its bill. A spokesperson for the minister, Simon Lafortune, said, “Bill C-22 does not authorize indiscriminate surveillance and does not permit or compel companies to introduce systemic vulnerabilities or so-called ‘backdoors’.”
However, four cryptography and privacy academics who submitted a brief to the committee said that the bill risks “serious harm to Canadian citizens, companies, and government agencies” and could “open up attack vectors for the least trusted countries and bad actors in the world.”
One of the co-authors of the brief, Peter Swire, said, “If local protocols are broken, users in Canada can decide to use open-source models or use services that are hosted in other countries where the Canadian law can’t require broken encryption.”
Meta, meanwhile, said in its November 4 brief that some of the bill’s provisions “could jeopardize the ability of service providers to offer encrypted services” – and that the data retention obligations “treat all Canadians like potential criminals.”
Meta also criticized the secrecy requirements, saying they “disproportionately gag providers and undermine user trust.”
Constitutional lawyer Daniel Santoro, whose submission was funded by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, went so far as to say that “this bill renders true digital security illegal.”
He told Juno News that journalists’ sources are not protected from the warrantless demands for information, adding, “The failure to include journalist-source confidentiality in this provision means it is not protected.”
As Reclaim The Net has previously reported, the bill would force providers to keep metadata of all their users for up to six months, regardless of whether they are suspected of any crime.
In March, Anandasangaree told a gathering of police chiefs that the bill is “not about the surveillance of honest, hard-working Canadians going on about their daily lives.”
That is precisely what it is, and it has the potential to be much worse, critics have said. Some of the bill’s provisions are so egregious that VPNs have said they would have to either log identifying user data, which goes against their business model, or move their headquarters out of Canada.
Windscribe said that “in its current state, VPNs would almost certainly require us to log identifying user data” and that it would move its headquarters out of Canada.
Signal has also said it would not be able to operate in Canada under the new rules because storing metadata “would fundamentally break Signal.”
It is the same government that is now trying to push C-22 through the parliament that in May told citizens, via its Public Safety department, “Using a VPN protects your data.”
A government that writes a law that is so broad it could reach anyone, and then asks citizens to trust it to use its powers sparingly is not addressing the problem – it is describing the problem. The Senate should not try to trim these powers, but strike them.