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Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
- josefritzishere 6mo agoWhy are they so determined to do evil?
- jauntywundrkind 6mo agoWhat 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.
- AlanYx 6mo agoIt'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.
- Izikiel43 6mo ago> Both (i) and (ii) have led the government to this dark place, thinking they're doing good. You can summarize a lot of government actions of any spectrum with: "The road to hell is full of good intentions"
- ordu 6mo agoWhen 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.
- Izikiel43 6mo ago> 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.
- dmitrygr 6mo ago> 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.
- AlanYx 6mo agoI'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.
- EmbarrassedHelp 6mo agoI 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.
- bdamm 6mo agoThat'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.
- qball 6mo agoIt's LPC policy to listen to these kinds of lobby groups, no matter how unhinged they might be. A significant participant in a lobby group with similar aims, Nathalie Provost, is actually a sitting MP in Quebec.
- AlanYx 6mo agoC3P is not staffed by parents who have lost their kids. I've had some professional interactions with one person who works for the org, and she came across in a very negative way. I don't want to use pejoratives, and perhaps it's understandable that people who spend so much time on this issue become emotionally invested in it to an unhealthy level, but people so emotionally charged are not well-positioned to craft balanced, rights-respecting digital policy.
- EmbarrassedHelp 6mo agoIn the video from the CBC Gary Anandasangaree specifically mentions that the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) has been lobbying him for this legislation, and that he recently met with them to reaffirm his commitment to passing it. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7198040 https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7198040 C3P wants encryption backdoors, has been involved with lobbying for encryption in numerous other countries.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- fidotron 6mo agoBecause we've removed the ability for anyone non-evil to succeed politically.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- themafia 6mo agoUsually? Money. 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.
- briandw 6mo agoThis is clearly a government power grab, not a corporate one.
- themafia 6mo agoIt'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.
- qball 6mo agoBecause 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.
- rdevilla 6mo ago[dead]
- dismalaf 6mo agoThey just got elected a 4th time in a row this is what the average Canadian wants...
- onlytue 6mo ago[flagged]
- mcsniff 6mo ago[flagged]
- glitchc 6mo agoWhat would you have us do beyond voting against it?
- mcsniff 6mo ago[flagged]
- testfrequency 6mo agoShare resources on what to do
- mothballed 6mo agoThis would presume the rate-limiting factor is information distribution, which seems doubtful.
- testfrequency 6mo agoWhich is maybe my trap all along…
- subarctic 6mo agoI'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?
- nitrix 6mo agoI'm doubtful the venn diagram intersection of engineers and the world cup is as big as you think it is.
- dylan604 6mo agoMy 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
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoengineers sure non-permanently-online activists on the other hand...
- fidotron 6mo agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q3x19ddl7o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q3x19ddl7o is perhaps an unintentionally good summary of this situation.
- EmbarrassedHelp 6mo agoThat 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.
- u8080 6mo agoI mean, what do you expect from state-controlled media?
- wewewedxfgdf 6mo agoJust keep bringing legislation back eventually it gets through.
- black6 6mo agoThe legislative process has a check valve. Vote on it until passes, then it can't be undone ever.
- denkmoon 6mo agoAny 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.
- frakt0x90 6mo agoThat's p-values for you.
- HerbManic 6mo agoYep, if it fails this year it will be back next year under a new name. Only need to get it through once. We have to defend against it repeatedly.
- morkalork 6mo agoWell, 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.
- 8note 6mo agotheres a majority now, so it will definitely pass if brought forward by the government
- Nasrudith 6mo agoIf 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.
- jmclnx 6mo agoThe 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 :)
- dyauspitr 6mo ago> 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.
- stackedinserter 6mo ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 6mo ago[flagged]
- irishcoffee 6mo agoA rose by any other name… :)
- jasoneckert 6mo agoI'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.
- jimmar 6mo agoDon'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.
- xienze 6mo ago> 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?
- applfanboysbgon 6mo agoThere 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.
- noctads 6mo ago[flagged]
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- EmbarrassedHelp 6mo agoBoth 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 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-unprecedented-surveillance-measures/ 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/keep-canada-protected/ https://www.internetsociety.org/our-work/internet-policy/kee... * OpenMedia's messaging tool: https://action.openmedia.org/page/188754/action/1 https://action.openmedia.org/page/188754/action/1 * ICLM's messaging tool: https://iclmg.ca/stop-c-22/ 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).
- tw85 6mo agoThere 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.
- HerbManic 6mo agoThe major parties are usually just two sides of the same coin. This is a good example of it.
- slopinthebag 6mo agoThe 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.
- chadgpt3 6mo agoThe 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?
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- varispeed 6mo agoWhy this is not treated as act of terrorism by law enforcement?
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- aryan14 6mo agoHow is this not bigger news?
- wmf 6mo agoFatigue. They just keep proposing the same thing.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoThe 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.
- charlesbarbier 6mo agoMy 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.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoYes 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.
- charlesbarbier 6mo agoIt'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.
- Bender 6mo agoI 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.
- nomel 6mo agoBut, 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).
- HerbManic 6mo agoIt 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
- Bender 6mo agoI 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.
- Sytten 6mo agoIf 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.
- gucci-on-fleek 6mo agoThe linked CCLA article is available in French [0]. [0]: https://ccla.org/fr/intimite/coalition-to-mps-scrap-unprecedented-surveillance-measures/ https://ccla.org/fr/intimite/coalition-to-mps-scrap-unpreced...
- betaby 6mo agoComments are locked on reddit and brigades are downvoting the articles about it. https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1rrxqje/liberal_government_introduces_bill_it_says_will/ https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1rrxqje/liberal_gov...
- EmbarrassedHelp 6mo agoThat's a months old article, though I'm not sure why it was locked? The r/Canada subreddit unfortunately does not allow articles that the mods deem to be "blog posts" or from organizations they don't consider to be news organizations. Though the r/Canada community is still overwhelmingly against encryption backdoors, data retention, and mandatory age verification.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoCanada 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.
- throw546 6mo agohow are Canada and America different from China/Russia?
- gremlinunderway 6mo agoIm 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?
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- motohagiography 6mo agoI 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.
- vkou 6mo agoIf you think becoming an American colony is going to be an 'out', I have some seafront property in Edmonton to sell you.
- motohagiography 6mo agoThe King is the head of state, it's trivial to switch that to a US appointee. It's the highest likelihood on the list of alternatives to accepting a surveillance state. Canadians don't have the anything for a civil war, nobody who believes in anything will take MAID, Alberta secession has to go through imported "votes" and a process designed to sabotage it. If Canada had any kind of national identity it would not have become what was recently described as a "south asian country controlled by China," in a conversation about its relationship to US national security. Outside faculty clubs pickle ball courts, and maybe dog daycare pickup runs, there is zero resistance to annexation. It would be the only time the US would ever be "greeted as liberators."
- vkou 6mo agoIf you think that Canada can be described as a Chinese puppet by serious people, I'm not sure I can take any of the rest seriously. I'd suggest that you stop listening to MAGA propaganda in the particular, and anglonews in the general.
- motohagiography 6mo ago
- novok 6mo agoThese 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.
- hintymad 6mo agoCurious: 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?
- anthk 6mo agoFree software, free society. The FSF, GNU and Stallman were serious about this. Your communications should be private under liber (free as in freedom) software. OFC no one should enter your home without a warrant. Your computer data should be dealt in the same way. Your libre OS, your rights. Also, to hell with age fields laws on your own computing, and if Meta's services cant compete against the bots AI the social network themselves promoted, go cry a river and the sooner your lobby mafia collapses down, the better. Back in the day Gopher required a fee to serve content. Where's Gopher now? They allowed it after seeing the web were eating their lunch like crazy because the web has neither fees nor bullshit licenses. Too late. These laws will suffer the same fate, the lobbies like it or not. Minitel from the French, where in the 80's they were pioneers for a lot of things in Europe? Adieu, au reviour, bye, adios, killed by the web and open standards. No centralized idiocracy, no fees, no gateway, no nothing. It was Angelfire, Geocities or your duct-taped homesever with Slackware and Apache. And today ISP's are trying to ban user hosting/sharing by either disabling some ports or enforcing NAT/CGNAT so they purchase premium plans, but even networks like Yggdrasil are throwing these parasites down and letting every citizen no matter where they are from to create their own sites and freely hosts them without asking anyone what to do with their freedom of speech. The Nazis tried, they collapsed down from and outside. The Francoists tried the same. In the 60's even the die hard Falangists understood that with science and progress their 19th century bound regime was doomed. Even more with the landing on the Moon, there was a craze about the space, rockets, UFO... times just marched on. Ditto with Soviets and censorship. Good economy plans are useless if you don't allow your "camarades" to spend their resources on anything they like. You know, you could just implement... taxes, as Cubans are trying to do with small companies and co-operatives. Ditto with the Chinese, they learnt a lesson with the Mao famines and the Deng Xiaoping's openness. But unless they open their regime a little on speech, you can have a great economic plan, for sure, but people burns out. Machines can work without getting tired according to bureaucracy, but humans can't. You can perfectly set some laws making healthcare better; that works. But the moment you enter on personal lives, telecomms, privacy... you are playing with fire. The Communists don't understand this. Telecomms worked far better in Spain being deregulated and stating net neutrality (and user rights) as something good to be state supported/mandated, but not for the prices, which were really high for a state monolopy. Liberalization plumetted the prices down. DItto with classical liberals, but for opposite reasons. Illnesses are too random to be managed by individuals. Worse: a pandemic can wipe your own state, economy and every business if you let the random Joe vaccine or isolate on their own. If they can't afford the costs, they will lie and in weeks it would be too late, your populace can't sustain your business, 1929 but mixed with George Romero. Said this, if it's illegal to break packages by mail (snooping and intercepting it it's a serious crime in Spain with jail sentences or really high fines), your digital data must be under the same laws. Ah, yes, protect the children, the terrorists, yaddah, yaddah, for sure all the NSA spying with Echelon did prevent the Esptein and Dutroux cases among terror attacks in NYC, Madrid and London . F*ck off, please. Terrorists can just use pens, paper and table bound encryptions or, you know, cheap $1 devices with cardboard-printed spinning wheels.
- musicale 6mo ago> Minister of Public Safety to demand companies create a backdoor to their services to provide law enforcement access to data, as long as these mandates don’t introduce a “systemic vulnerability.” How is a backdoor not a systemic vulnerability?