As the concerns about Bill C-22 mount, the government’s incoherent response has included Justice Minister Sean Fraser implausibly comparing metadata to phone book data and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree suggesting that Canada was just trying to match U.S. metadata retention laws (the U.S. has no such law) and claiming that tech company concerns regarding breaking encryption were based on misinformation.
Yesterday, the RCMP appeared before the Public Safety and National Security committee and quickly contradicted the Minister, affirming that concerns about Bill C-22 are well justified. Indeed, the official confirmed that law enforcement wants the bill specifically because it would provide an opportunity to access encrypted communications. The exodus of tech companies, which now also includes DuckDuckGo, can be expected to continue. The relevant remarks embedded below.
Related posts:
The Government Tries to Make the Case for Bill C-22: Why Its Own Use Cases Reveal Disproportionate Overreach
Bill C-22’s Groundhog Day: Why the Government’s Dismissal of Signal, Apple and the U.S. Congress Concerns Runs Back the Disastrous Online News Act Playbook
Apple on Bill C-22: “This Bill Allows the Government of Canada to Force Companies to Break Encryption by Inserting Backdoors into their Products”
Slick Videos Won’t Save Lawful Access: Why The Government’s Bill C-22 Defence Avoids the Charter, Privacy and Security Concerns Raised By Critics
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“Modernize police community in Canada”—what does that even mean? Police state? Surveillance state? More tools to watch everyone?
If we’re all “fine” because we’ve got “nothing to hide,” then why the need to watch us all? Sounds less like safety and more like pre-crime logic: “just give us a bit more and it’ll be enough”—except it never is.
It’s like they think they’re entitled to sit between you and someone else on your couch, or in the middle of private conversations—online or in person—peeking through cameras, microphones, and devices.
Devices and computers are extensions of our brains. No one has the right to rummage in our brains without explicit, individual consent.
Why do governments and their branches think they can meddle in every part of our lives—education, what we eat, how and why, private health (not the “public health” framing they hide behind), what we see, hear, and read, who we choose to live with and how, our sex, our thoughts, what we buy and how, sexuality between consenting adults (online or in person), where we go, where we come from, what we say and talk about?
We’re not property to be tagged, branded, profiled, surveilled, tracked, and manipulated.
Why should a group that’s done the following be trusted with more powers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_the_Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police
If I’m a Canadian of Chinese descent, I’d be trying to emigrate because when you add this to the MOU signed with China’s public security ministry, the chances that you, or anyone you know will be harassed, threatened, intimidated, or even disappeared, just went way up.
Perhaps we could at least do a dry run of the legislation on Doug Ford’s cell phone…
As a hypothetical, is it morally acceptable for the government to send an agent to spy on and follow civilians just in case they are or might commit a crime in the first place? Tracking where they go, who they talk to, and where they make purchases. I find this to be immoral and an overreach by the government. This is not immoral simply because they pay an agent to follow someone around, the act of information gathering should be prohibited without sufficient warrant.
What if the government paid a private investigator or private company to spy on people. Now an agent of the government is not following you and recording your information, it is a private company. Is this now acceptable simply because the government has contracted private interests to spy on you? Of course not.
In this bill the government simply deputizes private companies to perform the espionage that they would be condemned for engaging in themselves. So often in the digital age immoral acts are given a pass simply because it is done passively or automatically. The only thing that marks it better for the government to passively spy on millions of Canadians through computer systems is they save the egregious waste of taxpayer funds by avoiding hiring a million agents to do the task manually instead.