Both the mandatory data retention and encryption backdoor requirements will cause encrypted messaging services like Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, Matrix, and others to block both Canadians and Canadian businesses from their services.
If you live in Canada or are impacted by this legislation, then you need to tell both your MP and the Minister of Public Safety of Canada to reject this legislation.
The blanket metadata retention and encryption backdoor requirements of Bill C-22 are illegal in the European Union.
Multiple groups have made easy to use tools for sending your MP and (other members of government) an email about rejecting this terrible legislation in its current form:
I'd also recommend emailing Minister of Public Safety of Canada (Gary Anandasangaree: gary.anand@parl.gc.ca), and the Minister of Justice (Sean Fraser: sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca).
You need to branch out a bit, and take a look at how countries on the brink actually operate. Go check out Hungary for a country that almost lost their democracy, or check out Russia for a country that never had it but tries to pretend like it does.
Canada is measurably not even close to countries like Russia, where voting truly does not matter (and could actually be hazardous to your health.)
Having spent my fair share of time in 3rd world shitholes, though I wouldn't particularly like Russia, most of them have levels of freedom in day-to-day life you could only dream of north of the Mexican border in the Americas.
In a great deal of area, no one bothers to get a license plate. You can just build a house, no government asshole to block you, and if they do they are only looking for a small bribe. There is no CPS for the next Karen to call to come harass your kids for them playing independently. Very little intervention in family disputes nor practical ability to extract alimony because your wife decided she was "bored." The cash economy thrives. The ability of the government to tax is weak. There is not the money nor personnel available to do Orwellian surveillance and the state has to very strategically pick how to spend its few resources oppressing the populace.
Canada and USA have more freedom on paper. If you don't count the fact you're spending 1/4 or 1/3 of the year slaving to pay taxes, burning another 1/3 of the year to make rent because it's illegal to just erect a shack on a postage stamp and live in it for next to nothing, and that the precious 'rule of law' means instead of the policeman asking for a bribe they'll just arrest you on one of the gazillion laws (ignorance of the law is no excuse!) on the books to get their money instead.
This isn't to say it's better. But a great deal of my family that could immigrate from the third world... have not.... or they use North America as a cash vacuum while they invest in their 3rd world hometown where they can actually get shit done without a gigantic pile of paperwork and environmental reviews with a gazillion rules attached to start and run a business.
I don't want to get into a big debate on libertarianism, but the The "freedoms" being celebrated here are largely freedoms from accountability: the freedom to build without inspections that protect neighbors from fire hazards or ensure you're building on land you own; the freedom from alimony that ensures a financially dependent spouse who made shared life decisions isn't left destitute because those decisions reduced their personal earning potential; the freedom to abuse and neglect your children to whatever extreme degree you wish.
The weak state and cash economy being romanticized also tend to mean no enforced worker safety, no recourse when a business defrauds you, and no accessible courts for the poor - all freedoms that disproportionately belong to whoever is strongest or most corrupt. Regulations are often irritating precisely because they encode hard-won protections for people who aren't you.
Isn't that what all freedom is? Every restriction on freedom is for the benefit of society. At least according to those making those restrictions. Even the soviets thought that the reason suppression was necessary was so that those at the top could fix the country and make it better for everyone.
They have tried and failed against some people I'm aware of. Unfortunately I don't feel comfortable going into details of exactly how they failed, but I understand it was quite persuasive. Of course in the USA and Canada, it is illegal to defend property by force, except maybe in Texas. So you will probably just get your things taken and then pray the police help (they probably will not).
In any case it's true that you'll probably have to defend your life and property if the government will not. Unfortunately I'm not seeing even western governments as effective at this, and to the extent it is effective, it's more a result of culture / personal self defense / non-governmental community efforts than anything related to the government. In this case having weak governance that at least doesn't have the judicial resources to prosecute people defending themselves can actually be a plus.
This seems to be the case in Canada as well, at least for myself and my demographic. I've yet to win an election and I doubt I will until the older generations die off in a couple decades.
So there's really no meaningful difference for myself, except I could get fined for drinking a beer on the beach and I smoke because Zyn's are completely banned. Really "free" country eh.
This sounds more like you're just unhappy that the majority of people where you live have different beliefs than you do. Have you tried running in an election or volunteering with a party? You might find it quite interesting.
You could always move to a riding with an MP you like better than the ones that win in yours. Easier said than done, of course, but it's democracy, not slopinthebag-ocracy.
I know this will be an unpopular comment but I actually somewhat like it when governments show their totalitarian side. It's both a wake-up call for some in denial and also drives my favorite type of innovation. That is, anything that subverts censorship. It won't be a lot of people but there will be splinter groups that break away from the big centralized platforms. It's not usually a big deal but it's also not nothing and that's maybe good enough for me.
In the past this occurred in the US as a result of having a totalitarian style Attorney General John Ashcroft in the early 2000's. Many new protocols and applications popped up around his time and his leveraging of the fears around 9/11. There were many articles written about his time in power if anyone was curious.
But, is it possible to undo any of the policies put into place? Seems like once the machinery gets implemented, everyone in government embraces it (my assumption being due to all the spending/enrichment of friends/family gov contractors).
It has been said that the worst government is the one in power, regardless of time or location. That is because they rarely teardown the bad ideas of the past.
Look to the US, regardless of the two parties, most of the time they just keep building on the pervious groups work no matter what the messaging to the people was.
"They look after number one, you ain't even number two" - Frank Zappa
I honestly don't know how things will (d)evolve from here. Official back-doors a.k.a. lawful intercept to encryption is an interesting twist, not a new proposal by any means but in the past this always ended up being hush-hush with small trusted inner circles of people at tech and telephony companies as they could never get such laws passed.
If this passes I suspect it will be much harder to monitor terrorist activities as terrorists will just move to self hosted or non technical solutions. That leaves us plebs to monitor and find excuses to make arrest quotas. People will need to be careful how they speak as anything that can be taken out of context will be taken out of context.
And you are right, such frameworks never go away even if they officially go away. There have been projects that have changed names so many times I can't even keep up with them. Total Information Awareness was renamed a few times. The lawful intercept code that was embedded in the firmware of all smart phones Carrier-IQ changed names a few times and last I checked it didn't even have a name any more which means people can't really talk about it.
Most countries currently have laws that openly require telecommunications providers, but not messaging apps, to do lawful intercept. This isn't hidden.
Most spy agencies find having to get a warrant from a judge for each target too cumbersome, so they tap into fiber cables and do unlawful intercept as well.
> People will need to be careful how they speak as anything that can be taken out of context will be taken out of context.
"As of late April 2026, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of threatening the life of President Donald Trump and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The charges stem from an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to say "8647," which prosecutors allege constitutes a threat of violence."
That's a perfect example. People can interpret that in a dozen different ways. There was nothing explicitly stated yet one specific interpretation was chosen and acted upon.
> If this passes I suspect it will be much harder to monitor terrorist activities as terrorists will just move to self hosted or non technical solutions
You vastly overestimate the technical abilities of random people who want to use non-state violence in pursuit of political change.
They specifically said non technical solutions. In the past they adopted things like xbox game chats as they were encrypted in some cases. Non technical doesn't mean non clever. And they do have very technical sponsors to train them. I wish insurgency training was a mandatory high school class, maybe middle school too.
They are clever, but being clever isn't enough. You can be as clever as you want, but if your understanding of the real world and it's systems doesn't match reality, something that you think is completely innocuous will doom your opsec.
And there are so many minor important details in digital communication that an amateur is not likely to get it right every single time.
You do realize that in all totalitarian states there is no significant "anti-censorship innovation" of note? Basically you are playing with fire and the only way playing with fire end is when everything burns to ashes. Not just the dust in the corner and that broken toy you don't like, but also everything you like too.
Oh I totally agree that once a nation goes entirely totalitarian nobody is circumventing anything. If people act even slightly suspicious it's boots on necks and gets far far worse from there. The UK, US and even Canada have quite a ways to go to reach that level even if people may think otherwise. A sign that we are approaching such levels would be nobody wants to enter those nations legally or illegally any more.
Canada is still trying to take away everyone's firearms and still trying to figure out how they will avoid turning many of their citizens into felons by October.
The Liberal leader was asked which nation he admired most. He responded: "There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime."
You do realize that that former Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is not the Liberal leader who is currently pushing this bill, right? Justin Trudeau is now a private citizen with no official role in his party, in the House of Commons, or in government beyond what applies to any former leader/MP/PM (e.g. former PMs remain Privy Council members).
The current Liberal leader Mark Carney has spent his whole career in the banking world, including running both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England at different times, except for running for and winning his current political roles last year. Far from being elected again and again, he’s only been elected once ever in party office and once ever in public office.
Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have very different policies on fiscal and economic matters, to the extent that Carney would probably be a Progressive Conservative if that party still existed at the federal level.
There’s more I could say about the substance of Trudeau’s remark and comparing his China policy to that ofnother PMs like Harper, but that whole tangent is off-topic for this thread, since - again - Trudeau holds no role relevant to current Liberal legislative decisions.
Any new legislation can override old legislation in most countries though? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if your legislature is hostile you need to fix that, not attempt to keep the hostile legislature from passing hostile legislation.
If they don't get voted out for attempting to pass it. Unfortunately it seems fundamentally destroying ou rights is enough for that, you need to do something truly outrageous like try to raise property taxes on seniors to get that from the electorate.
Well, the proper preventative step is to open up the constitution and make an amendment to the chart of rights and freedoms. All that is needed is 7 provinces representing at least 50% or more of the population being in agreement and not taking the opportunity to demand extreme concessions from the rest of the country at the same time! Hahahahah, oh dear.
If someone from the EFF is reading this, could we get a French translation of that article so I can send it to my MP and share around to friends and family. We need a mass movement on that to block it.
I've noticed a lot of bad digital rights stuff on HN over the last couple weeks - more pushes on age verification, attacks on end-to-end encryption, and now this. Is there something about the time of year? Maybe because the world cup is coming and people will be distracted?
Part of it is Meta (well Zuck) trying to get ahead of the curve by lobbying lawmakers to put the onus of age verification on OS's rather than platforms.
My engineering team would all take long lunches to catch matches, and most of us would have windowed streams for games not aligning to a lunch break. I'd be willing think it would be a larger intersection that you think it is
That article appears to be slightly biased in favor of attacks on privacy, and it omits important details like the UK's ongoing consultation includes questions on banning VPNs.
You must not think all the freedom they're taking away with this bylaw was important freedom, since you chose to fixate on some irrelevant piece of text.
Curious: what motivates the Canadian government to implement such law? It's not like Canada wants to be a police state in anyway. On the contrary, Canadian government looks pretty chill most of the time, except maybe during the Covid era when they were hellbent on implementing the Covid policies. Or it's the same "for your own good and the state knows how to take care of you" kind of European shit?
These things will keep on popping up until they destroy the careers of the politicians and civil servants who do. This is how you stop it. And you make this happen by getting organized and acting.
The media in Canada is given billions in subsidies by the Liberal government, and in turn they have a noticeable bias. They are especially having trouble criticizing the current government under Mark Carney, which has been pointed out by people in the media (and even on CBC).
Since this bill is indefensible they simply don’t report on it much. They’d rather talk about the opposition than the party currently in power.
My guess is that the legislators are completely ignorant of the technical implication of weakening the entire chain and the media are just as ignorant.
It's actually quite defensible from their perspective. They justify it with reason they decided wire tapping was reasonable for the past decades. It's just that they don't understand the risk and implication.
Yes that’s part of it. “Think of the children” is an effective strategy. You’d just expect the media to do the bare minimum of investigative reporting, especially when the CBC has an entire show dedicated to this kind of thing. But they’d rather show how Lays is shrinking the amount of chips in a bag or whatever.
It's sad because they can do good investigative journalism. They took the lead in the Panama Papers case, the hockey canada and Miller sex scandals, recent Indian and Chinese interference, and many more.
The problem might be that this doesn't even need investigation. It's too boring. Everything is said in the bill. They just lack technical literacy to realize the implication.
There would of course be much more of a public uproar about C-22 and the steady diet of online censorship and surveillance bills served up over the last 6 years if they were being pushed by a Conservative government. But it's the Liberals, and they get a free pass from mainstream media who are subsidized handsomely for their complicity.
If anyone believes the real intent behind this authoritarian legislation is to protect the kids or crack down on organized crime or to keep the public safe, I have a bridge to sell you. This is an administration that did away with mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes, considers pedophilia to be a minor offence, allow repeat violent offenders out on bail repeatedly, refuses to convict migrants if it might impact their chances of obtaining citizenship, has allowed thousands of terrorists to enter the country with minimal vetting, and openly tolerates election interference from China. Public safety is far, far down the list of their priorities. They are very thirsty to silence their online detractors, however.
The bill where one party is against it and one keeps trying to ram it through over and over again, is a good example that the parties are actually the same? Pure unadulterated bothsideism. You can't even defend it, your only hope is to try and make it seem like the one party trying to do this isn't uniquely worse than the other choices.
The way it'll happen is that the party in power is trying to ram it through and the opposition is firmly against it, and then the parties switch, and the party in power is trying to ram it through and the opposition is firmly against it. You see how this pattern works? To create the impression that the parties aren't the same?
Because there's zero electoral accountability, and the voting bloc that insist it be that way are so obsessed with importing all the bad parts of the Commonwealth here that this will not change for the foreseeable future.
That Commonwealth, of course, imports all the cultural ideas and outlooks Coastal Americans have with about a 5 year delay, usually with anti-Americanism as the excuse, at the expense of the local culture.
This is just what happens when you import American politics without the American system that restrains it to just being noise.
It's a confluence of two things: (i) Canada's government policy community tends to be heavily influenced by legislative trends in the UK/Aus/NZ; this particular one is almost a direct import from the UK's ill-advised Online Safety Act, though worse in some ways, and (ii) a series of Canadian Supreme Court decisions, most notably 2024's Bykovets, which the security intelligence apparatus in Canada feels has totally hamstrung data collection.
Both (i) and (ii) have led the government to this dark place, thinking they're doing good.
I think there could also be some lobbying from Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P). C3P's site is filled with anti-encryption and anti-privacy disinformation, and they are a major Chat Control lobbyist in the EU. They are also currently trying to kill the Tor Project by attacking anyone who funds it.
That's hardly surprising. I assume C3P is staffed by parents who have lost their kids. One can hardly blame them for trying to subvert privacy. Frankly their presence is a good thing; the more people who lose their kids to creeps, the stronger the social reaction to preventing that should be.
But factually I suspect we're almost as safe as we've ever been, so thankfully, their voices aren't too loud.
> led the government to this dark place, thinking they're doing good.
I'll take the other end of the bet claiming that they think they are doing good. I am pretty sure they know what they are doing full well, and it ain't good.
I'm in the middle. I have some sympathy for the Canadian intelligence community's perspective here; in recent years, much intelligence potentially preventing major criminal public safety incidents has had to come through five eyes partners because the legal situation for domestic collection has become unworkable. CSIS refers to the situation as "going dark", which is an unfortunate US terminological import.
That being said, C-22 goes way beyond what would be halfway reasonable to solve the main issues in a fair and rights-respecting way, and I have absolutely no sympathy for the reasoning and goals imported from the UK's Online Safety Act.
When I was young I believed this was the explanation. I though I was smart and everyone else (with politicians at the top of the list) are stupid. But then I learned humility, and I don't believe in good intentions anymore. They can claim good intentions, and mostly they do, but their motives are far from anything that can be called "good intentions". They are not stupid, you know. They just try hard to look stupid. The more stupid politician looks like, the more chances he is just pretending to avoid responsibility. The purpose of their actions is exactly what they get as the result. If they succeed of course.
> But then I learned humility, and I don't believe in good intentions anymore.
I don't either, I agree with that's how they sell it, the problem is that the marketing works and good intentioned people rally behind it, so the saying still applies.
What a deeply troubled time. It's accelerating so fast. All this age verification/surveillance shit is intensifying super fast.
Meanwhile personal computing is being savagely destroyed, as consumer channels to ram and storage disappear.
It's so bad. These people need to be punished. This is so so so unacceptable and the forces for state intrusion into all digital systems and pervasive survelliance have gotten so so so far in the past couple years.
There's an exceptional amount of money to be had in creating the new digital feudal state.
Given that most everyday digital technology is in the hands of a few powerful monopolies they feel they have the opportunity to actually pull this off.
It's not clear to me. Can you please elaborate on how it is to you? In particular I'm interested as to how you've fully excluded corporations from involvement.
To me, I don't believe you can have one without the other, in particular since so much of this power grab requires the instruments of corporations in order to accomplish. If _either one_ of Google or Apple said "we're not implementing these draconian controls, sue us" it would be over. It is interesting they're willing to use this tactic when it comes to protecting their app stores or in-game purchase streams but not when it comes to clear undemocratic overreach.
To be clear I'm not suggesting this is a natural outcome of capitalism in general, just that, in the wake of extreme monopolization, the current crop of mega corporations have become insulated from competitive reality, and are therefore hopelessly corrupt. They're willingly allowing their technology stacks to be used by the government in this way in exchange for the opportunities it affords them and the lack of enforcement it creates.
I worked in privacy and security in canada for decades. We could only hold them off so long. The whole country is being demolished to be reinvented as a technocrat machine levered against human desire.
It means the solutions aren't technical, and nobody votes their way out of this. I've checked out because the demoralization campaign worked, and there is nothing to save. The outs are Alberta separation, US annexation, civil war, or MAID. There is no longer a political solution. If there were, these surveillance controls would not be necessary.
Im confused by the supposed poor definitions of the bill that people keep pointing out. Doesn't the escape-hatch provided in the "systemic vulnerabilities" definition clearly signal that companies could absolutely refuse to implement backdoor encryption?
>(5) A core provider is not required to comply with a provision of a regulation >made under subsection (2), with respect to an electronic service, if compliance >with that provision would require the provider to introduce a systemic >vulnerability related to that service or prevent the provider from rectifying >such a vulnerability
The definition to me reads to me as very obviously blocking the government from demanding an encryption backdoor, especially since the Act allows for the company to challenge such an order in court.
>"systemic vulnerability means a vulnerability in the electronic protections of >an electronic service that creates a substantial risk that secure information >could be accessed by a person who does not have any right or authority to do >so. "
So what exactly is the problem with this definition?
The is the thing and it happens in every Country. If a bill fails to pass it or none like it should be brought up for 5 years.
I know doing that would be crazy, but Companies keep trying and trying until it is passed.
Tin Foil hat time: It almost looks like it is a way to funnel Political Contributions (bribes) to the politicians. The politicians fail the bill because they felt they did not get enough Contributions :)
> If a bill fails to pass it or none like it should be brought up for 5 years.
The republicans would bring up a bill for everything they don’t like and ceremonially vote it down which would make it inaccessible to the next round of democratic leadership.
Canada like all commonwealth countries is descending into authoritarianism. It’s not far off from making speech critical of politicians and government “hate speech”, in some cases it already is. I suspect Canada has about 15-20 years before it transitions fully into a state like Venezuela, and the economy will follow shortly after.
I'm reminded of a speech Barack Obama gave many years ago about the difficulty and necessity of finding a "happy medium" between protecting individual liberties and providing law enforcement with the abilities to provide security in a digital world.
I think the topic itself is difficult for everyone involved - there will likely be a lot of uproar for many years as we get closer to finding this happy medium.
There is no happy medium. Government will continuously push for the greatest surveillance power possible, because surveillance is in the government's own interest and personal liberties are not. Obama oversaw the NSA, which blatantly violated the US constitution and showed exactly where his idea of a "happy medium" lies (ie. complete and total surveillance of all Americans' prviate information), so anything he said on the subject is nothing more than lipservice utilising his charisma to prime people to accept more surveillance. He certainly wasn't suggesting a "happy medium" to convince people that less surveillance was needed to reach the target equilibrium.
Don't we all inherently know that government surveillance will constantly increase over time if we give in? In theory, we could achieve a "happy medium," but the same access used by a thoughtful law enforcement agency are the same tools that a fascist government would use to suppress dissent or other "wrong" thinking.
> I'm reminded of a speech Barack Obama gave many years ago about the difficulty and necessity of finding a "happy medium" between protecting individual liberties and providing law enforcement with the abilities to provide security in a digital world.
Yeah the problem is you'll never get a politician to say "OK, _this_ is what we've determined the 'happy medium' is and we're going to codify in law that it will never go beyond this point." It'll just keep inching further and further and anytime someone complains, just go back to step one and dish out some more "elder statesman" wisdom about having to find a "happy medium." Rinse and repeat. Worked on you, didn't it?
If you live in Canada or are impacted by this legislation, then you need to tell both your MP and the Minister of Public Safety of Canada to reject this legislation.
---
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) published information about Bill C-22 here just over a week ago: https://ccla.org/privacy/coalition-to-mps-scrap-unprecedente...
The blanket metadata retention and encryption backdoor requirements of Bill C-22 are illegal in the European Union.
Multiple groups have made easy to use tools for sending your MP and (other members of government) an email about rejecting this terrible legislation in its current form:
* The Internet Society's tool: https://www.internetsociety.org/our-work/internet-policy/kee...
* OpenMedia's messaging tool: https://action.openmedia.org/page/188754/action/1
* ICLM's messaging tool: https://iclmg.ca/stop-c-22/
I'd also recommend emailing Minister of Public Safety of Canada (Gary Anandasangaree: gary.anand@parl.gc.ca), and the Minister of Justice (Sean Fraser: sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca).
Canada is measurably not even close to countries like Russia, where voting truly does not matter (and could actually be hazardous to your health.)
In a great deal of area, no one bothers to get a license plate. You can just build a house, no government asshole to block you, and if they do they are only looking for a small bribe. There is no CPS for the next Karen to call to come harass your kids for them playing independently. Very little intervention in family disputes nor practical ability to extract alimony because your wife decided she was "bored." The cash economy thrives. The ability of the government to tax is weak. There is not the money nor personnel available to do Orwellian surveillance and the state has to very strategically pick how to spend its few resources oppressing the populace.
Canada and USA have more freedom on paper. If you don't count the fact you're spending 1/4 or 1/3 of the year slaving to pay taxes, burning another 1/3 of the year to make rent because it's illegal to just erect a shack on a postage stamp and live in it for next to nothing, and that the precious 'rule of law' means instead of the policeman asking for a bribe they'll just arrest you on one of the gazillion laws (ignorance of the law is no excuse!) on the books to get their money instead.
This isn't to say it's better. But a great deal of my family that could immigrate from the third world... have not.... or they use North America as a cash vacuum while they invest in their 3rd world hometown where they can actually get shit done without a gigantic pile of paperwork and environmental reviews with a gazillion rules attached to start and run a business.
The weak state and cash economy being romanticized also tend to mean no enforced worker safety, no recourse when a business defrauds you, and no accessible courts for the poor - all freedoms that disproportionately belong to whoever is strongest or most corrupt. Regulations are often irritating precisely because they encode hard-won protections for people who aren't you.
In any case it's true that you'll probably have to defend your life and property if the government will not. Unfortunately I'm not seeing even western governments as effective at this, and to the extent it is effective, it's more a result of culture / personal self defense / non-governmental community efforts than anything related to the government. In this case having weak governance that at least doesn't have the judicial resources to prosecute people defending themselves can actually be a plus.
Texas is probably the classic example but many of the other states have similar laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
This seems to be the case in Canada as well, at least for myself and my demographic. I've yet to win an election and I doubt I will until the older generations die off in a couple decades.
So there's really no meaningful difference for myself, except I could get fined for drinking a beer on the beach and I smoke because Zyn's are completely banned. Really "free" country eh.
Messaging campaigns at least have a chance of influencing things.
I’m not in love with bankers running the country either, but give us another option.
In the past this occurred in the US as a result of having a totalitarian style Attorney General John Ashcroft in the early 2000's. Many new protocols and applications popped up around his time and his leveraging of the fears around 9/11. There were many articles written about his time in power if anyone was curious.
Look to the US, regardless of the two parties, most of the time they just keep building on the pervious groups work no matter what the messaging to the people was.
"They look after number one, you ain't even number two" - Frank Zappa
If this passes I suspect it will be much harder to monitor terrorist activities as terrorists will just move to self hosted or non technical solutions. That leaves us plebs to monitor and find excuses to make arrest quotas. People will need to be careful how they speak as anything that can be taken out of context will be taken out of context.
And you are right, such frameworks never go away even if they officially go away. There have been projects that have changed names so many times I can't even keep up with them. Total Information Awareness was renamed a few times. The lawful intercept code that was embedded in the firmware of all smart phones Carrier-IQ changed names a few times and last I checked it didn't even have a name any more which means people can't really talk about it.
Most spy agencies find having to get a warrant from a judge for each target too cumbersome, so they tap into fiber cables and do unlawful intercept as well.
"As of late April 2026, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of threatening the life of President Donald Trump and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The charges stem from an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to say "8647," which prosecutors allege constitutes a threat of violence."
You vastly overestimate the technical abilities of random people who want to use non-state violence in pursuit of political change.
And there are so many minor important details in digital communication that an amateur is not likely to get it right every single time.
Canada is still trying to take away everyone's firearms and still trying to figure out how they will avoid turning many of their citizens into felons by October.
That is already true of Canada, as it is no longer possible to live like a Canadian [in the way they were hoping for] on immigrant wages.
>and still trying to figure out how they will avoid turning many of their citizens into criminals
The entire point of the gun bill is to do this. The purpose of a system is what it does.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/justin-trudeau-s-fool...
2013. Canadians went on to elect him again and again...
The current Liberal leader Mark Carney has spent his whole career in the banking world, including running both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England at different times, except for running for and winning his current political roles last year. Far from being elected again and again, he’s only been elected once ever in party office and once ever in public office.
Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau have very different policies on fiscal and economic matters, to the extent that Carney would probably be a Progressive Conservative if that party still existed at the federal level.
There’s more I could say about the substance of Trudeau’s remark and comparing his China policy to that ofnother PMs like Harper, but that whole tangent is off-topic for this thread, since - again - Trudeau holds no role relevant to current Liberal legislative decisions.
Only need to get it through once. We have to defend against it repeatedly.
[0]: https://ccla.org/fr/intimite/coalition-to-mps-scrap-unpreced...
non-permanently-online activists on the other hand...
https://www.pivotlegal.org/city_of_vancouver_s_new_fifa_byla...
Practically no Vancouverite would read this page and take it seriously.
Since this bill is indefensible they simply don’t report on it much. They’d rather talk about the opposition than the party currently in power.
It's actually quite defensible from their perspective. They justify it with reason they decided wire tapping was reasonable for the past decades. It's just that they don't understand the risk and implication.
The problem might be that this doesn't even need investigation. It's too boring. Everything is said in the bill. They just lack technical literacy to realize the implication.
If anyone believes the real intent behind this authoritarian legislation is to protect the kids or crack down on organized crime or to keep the public safe, I have a bridge to sell you. This is an administration that did away with mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes, considers pedophilia to be a minor offence, allow repeat violent offenders out on bail repeatedly, refuses to convict migrants if it might impact their chances of obtaining citizenship, has allowed thousands of terrorists to enter the country with minimal vetting, and openly tolerates election interference from China. Public safety is far, far down the list of their priorities. They are very thirsty to silence their online detractors, however.
https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1rrxqje/liberal_gov...
That Commonwealth, of course, imports all the cultural ideas and outlooks Coastal Americans have with about a 5 year delay, usually with anti-Americanism as the excuse, at the expense of the local culture.
This is just what happens when you import American politics without the American system that restrains it to just being noise.
Both (i) and (ii) have led the government to this dark place, thinking they're doing good.
But factually I suspect we're almost as safe as we've ever been, so thankfully, their voices aren't too loud.
A significant participant in a lobby group with similar aims, Nathalie Provost, is actually a sitting MP in Quebec.
I'll take the other end of the bet claiming that they think they are doing good. I am pretty sure they know what they are doing full well, and it ain't good.
That being said, C-22 goes way beyond what would be halfway reasonable to solve the main issues in a fair and rights-respecting way, and I have absolutely no sympathy for the reasoning and goals imported from the UK's Online Safety Act.
You can summarize a lot of government actions of any spectrum with: "The road to hell is full of good intentions"
I don't either, I agree with that's how they sell it, the problem is that the marketing works and good intentioned people rally behind it, so the saying still applies.
Meanwhile personal computing is being savagely destroyed, as consumer channels to ram and storage disappear.
It's so bad. These people need to be punished. This is so so so unacceptable and the forces for state intrusion into all digital systems and pervasive survelliance have gotten so so so far in the past couple years.
There's an exceptional amount of money to be had in creating the new digital feudal state.
Given that most everyday digital technology is in the hands of a few powerful monopolies they feel they have the opportunity to actually pull this off.
To me, I don't believe you can have one without the other, in particular since so much of this power grab requires the instruments of corporations in order to accomplish. If _either one_ of Google or Apple said "we're not implementing these draconian controls, sue us" it would be over. It is interesting they're willing to use this tactic when it comes to protecting their app stores or in-game purchase streams but not when it comes to clear undemocratic overreach.
To be clear I'm not suggesting this is a natural outcome of capitalism in general, just that, in the wake of extreme monopolization, the current crop of mega corporations have become insulated from competitive reality, and are therefore hopelessly corrupt. They're willingly allowing their technology stacks to be used by the government in this way in exchange for the opportunities it affords them and the lack of enforcement it creates.
It means the solutions aren't technical, and nobody votes their way out of this. I've checked out because the demoralization campaign worked, and there is nothing to save. The outs are Alberta separation, US annexation, civil war, or MAID. There is no longer a political solution. If there were, these surveillance controls would not be necessary.
>(5) A core provider is not required to comply with a provision of a regulation >made under subsection (2), with respect to an electronic service, if compliance >with that provision would require the provider to introduce a systemic >vulnerability related to that service or prevent the provider from rectifying >such a vulnerability
The definition to me reads to me as very obviously blocking the government from demanding an encryption backdoor, especially since the Act allows for the company to challenge such an order in court.
>"systemic vulnerability means a vulnerability in the electronic protections of >an electronic service that creates a substantial risk that secure information >could be accessed by a person who does not have any right or authority to do >so. "
So what exactly is the problem with this definition?
I know doing that would be crazy, but Companies keep trying and trying until it is passed.
Tin Foil hat time: It almost looks like it is a way to funnel Political Contributions (bribes) to the politicians. The politicians fail the bill because they felt they did not get enough Contributions :)
The republicans would bring up a bill for everything they don’t like and ceremonially vote it down which would make it inaccessible to the next round of democratic leadership.
I think the topic itself is difficult for everyone involved - there will likely be a lot of uproar for many years as we get closer to finding this happy medium.
Yeah the problem is you'll never get a politician to say "OK, _this_ is what we've determined the 'happy medium' is and we're going to codify in law that it will never go beyond this point." It'll just keep inching further and further and anytime someone complains, just go back to step one and dish out some more "elder statesman" wisdom about having to find a "happy medium." Rinse and repeat. Worked on you, didn't it?