One of the most heavily promoted features of Bill C-34, the government’s Safe Social Media Act, is that its social media ban for those under 16 comes with a potential exemption for platforms that satisfy the new Digital Safety Commission that they provide adequate safeguards for children. But based on comments from government officials, it appears the exemption is an illusion, at least for years to come. The legislation carefully sets out how the ban is supposed to work, but officials at a technical briefing on the bill this week described a very different plan that involves moving quickly after Royal Assent with regulations to bring the ban into force without waiting for the Digital Safety Commission to be fully operational. No Commission means no age verification standards, no privacy review, no exemption, and no effective enforcement. It also creates huge risks since the initial start of the ban is when tens of millions of Canadians would be required to verify their age, yet the government is sidelining the privacy protections written into its own bill and essentially conceding that the ban is unlikely to carry any real consequences for those services that fail to comply when it first takes effect.
Post Tagged with: "s-209"
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 261: Ian Goldberg on the Privacy Risks of Age Assurance Technologies
Age verification, estimation or inference is seemingly all the rage right now. Vendors are promoting it as the solution to thorny challenges to limit access to certain sites and services and politicians are eager to legislate in that direction, including in Canada with Bill S-209.
Hundreds of scientists and technology experts from around the world have taken note of the trend and come together to issue a public letter warning about the privacy, safety and discrimination risks associated with these technologies. Ian Goldberg, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Privacy Enhancing Technologies at the University of Waterloo, was one of the signatories. Ian has long been engaged at the intersection between technology and privacy and joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the technology, how privacy enhancing technologies could address some of the concerns, and the risks with current legislative approaches.
Court Ordered Social Media Site Blocking Coming to Canada?: Trojan Horse Online Harms Bill Clears Senate Committee Review
Critics of Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s successive bills that ostensibly target pornography sites have for years warned of the privacy and equity risks that arise from mandated age verification and the dangers of over broad legislation that would extend far beyond pornography sites by covering social media, search, and AI services. The Senate committee reviewing the latest iteration of those bill – Bill S-209 – met yesterday to conduct a clause-by-clause review of the bill. That the bill passed through committee pending some supplementary remarks was not a surprise. However, that the privacy and equity concerns barely merited a mention and that regulating social media sites was viewed as feature not a bug was a wake up call.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 247: My Senate Appearance on the Bill That Could Lead to Canada-Wide Blocking of X, Reddit and ChatGPT
Bill S-209, the legislative effort to establish age verification requirements for sites and services that are said to facilitate access to pornography, is back. The bill has some modest improvements from the earlier S-210, but the core concerns – overbroad scope that lumps in social media companies, Internet providers, and AI services with pornography sites, the privacy and equity implications of mandated age verification, and the use of nationwide website blocking – remain. Last week, I appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs where I identified many of the concerns with the bill and engaged in a detailed discussion with multiple senators. This week’s Law Bytes podcast goes inside the hearing room for my opening statement and the Q&A with Senators that followed.
Senate Bill Would Grant Government Regulatory Power to Mandate Age Verification For Search, Social Media and AI Services Accompanied By Threat of Court Ordered Blocking of Lawful Content
The return of mandated age verification legislation in the Senate – formerly Bill S-210 and now S-209 – has been working its way through a Senate committee with a wide range of witnesses appearing over the past two weeks. I wrote about the new bill in late May, noting that there were some improvements, including an exclusion of sites that “incidentally and not deliberately is used to search for, transmit, download, store or access content that is alleged to constitute pornographic material”. However, I argued that the bill still raised concerns, including the privacy implications of mandated age verification technologies and the establishment of website blocking requirements that would block access to lawful content in Canada. I will be appearing before the committee later this month, but discussion last week at committee merits immediate comment.
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The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 273: Rebroadcast of the Globe and Mail’s The Decibel on Canada’s First Steps Towards a Social Media Ban 
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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Bill C-36 Modernizes Canada’s Privacy Law, Then Delays It to 2030 
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Government Moves to Shut Down Lawful Access Hearing In Order To Fast Track Passing the Bill This Week
