{"id":17231,"date":"2026-05-15T08:14:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=17231"},"modified":"2026-05-15T08:14:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:14:24","slug":"canada-says-critics-dont-understand-its-surveillance-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/canada-says-critics-dont-understand-its-surveillance-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Says Critics Don\u2019t Understand Its Surveillance Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Consequently, I think the purpose of Signal is metadata collection, as the CEO is most likely a spook<\/a>. And the US government using it and promoting it was a clue. But this is a good test of how far they can go and what pushback they’ll receive from the population. And you have the crown in the UK calling for digital ID, countries passing age verification legislation… The digital Panopticon is being incrementally built before our eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/reclaimthenet.org\/canada-says-critics-dont-understand-its-surveillance-bill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
They do. That’s the problem.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"Close-up<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Ken Macon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada\u2019s Public Safety Minister is telling<\/a> Apple, Meta, and Signal that they don\u2019t understand his own surveillance bill. They understand it fine. That\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act<\/a>, would force telecoms, internet companies, and social media platforms to rebuild their systems so police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) can access user data more easily during investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would also require providers to stockpile metadata on every subscriber for up to a year, regardless of whether those people are suspected of anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill has the backing of police chiefs across the country and CSIS, who have long argued they are stymied by outdated legislation in a digital world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government describes this as organizing information \u201clike a filing cabinet, where certain types of information would be available with legal authorization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That filing cabinet contains a year\u2019s worth of data showing where every Canadian goes, when they go there, and who they communicate with. On a mobile network, that metadata includes which cell towers each phone connects to and when. Retained at scale, it amounts to a comprehensive surveillance map of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said at a press conference Wednesday that tech companies are \u201cusing this as an opportunity to double down.\u201d He added that \u201cTech giants are misinterpreting some of the safeguards that are already built in, including on ensuring that encryption is not in any way interrupted as part of Bill-22.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list of people who supposedly can\u2019t read keeps growing. Apple warned that the legislation \u201ccould allow the Canadian government to force companies to break encryption by inserting back doors into their products \u2014 something Apple will never do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company added that \u201cat a time of rising and pervasive threats from malicious actors seeking access to user information, Bill C-22, as drafted, would undermine our ability to offer the powerful privacy and security features users expect from Apple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apple has already shown it will follow through on threats like these. It pulled<\/a> its Advanced Data Protection feature from the United Kingdom rather than comply with a Technical Capability Notice ordering it to create access to encrypted iCloud data and is now litigating<\/a> the order before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Bill C-22 passes unchanged, Canadians could lose the same protections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Signal, the encrypted messaging service, went further. Vice-president Udbhav Tiwari told the Globe and Mail<\/a> that Signal \u201cwould rather pull out of the country than be compelled to compromise on the privacy promises we have made to our users.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiwari added in a statement that \u201cend-to-end encryption is incompatible with exceptional access, no matter how creative the route taken to achieve it,\u201d and called provisions that force vulnerabilities into communications systems \u201ca grave threat to privacy everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta\u2019s head of Canadian public policy, Rachel Curran, told a Commons committee that the bill\u2019s technical assistance obligations \u201ccould conscript private companies into service as an arm of the government\u2019s surveillance apparatus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She told MPs that \u201cit is not possible to build back doors to encrypted systems for law enforcement without creating vulnerabilities that will be exploited by malicious actors,\u201d and warned that \u201cweakening encryption affects not only the target of an investigation but all Canadians who rely on secure communications for banking, accessing healthcare, running their businesses, or simply communicating with loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, the Salt Typhoon<\/a> hack exploited a system built by internet service providers specifically to give law enforcement access to user data. The very type of backdoor infrastructure Bill C-22 would mandate became an entry point for one of the most significant foreign intelligence breaches in recent memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you build surveillance doors into communications systems, you don\u2019t get to choose who walks through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill does include language saying providers aren\u2019t required to comply if doing so would introduce a \u201csystemic vulnerability.\u201d But the definition of that term is unclear and essential terms like \u201cencryption\u201d are left to be defined later through regulation, while ministerial orders can override those same regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill would also allow the federal government to secretly order companies to weaken encryption or create backdoors and Meta\u2019s Robyn Greene told the committee that if the government quietly mandates changes to a platform\u2019s security architecture, Meta would be legally prohibited from telling its own users. Secret orders to weaken security, with a gag clause preventing disclosure. The government calls this \u201cencryption-neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consequently, I think the purpose of Signal is metadata collection, as the CEO is most likely a spook. And the US government using it and promoting it was a clue. But this is a good test of how far they can go and what pushback they’ll receive from the population. And you have the crown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17232,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17231\/revisions\/17232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}