Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act: Dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain | Hacker News Reader

Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act: Dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain

michaelgeist.ca

1,005 pointsopengrass335 comments

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-22/first-r...

Regarding warrantless searches and access ... reading the text of the bill (OP link) warrants seem to be required. Simple, right?

Well, no, this is a recently inserted block of text in the bill (confirm at the link above):

    Exception
    (2. 7)(b) However, a copy of the warrant is not required to be given
    to a person under subsection (2. 6) if the judge or justice who issues
    the warrant sets aside the requirement in respect of the person, on
    being satisfied that doing so is justified in the circumstances.

That's a pretty big, subjective loophole to bypass civil liberties IMO.

I don't really see an issue with this section. A judge still needs to issue a warrant, they can also additionally waive the requirement that the cop gives you a copy right away, in special circumstances.

Like are you envisioning a "I totally have a warrant but I don't have to give it to you" type situation? I think it's fairly unlikely, and you would likely be able to get the search ruled inadmissible if a cop tried it.

Are you familiar with parallel construction? That's what this is for. If they have a warrant and show it to you, it says what they can search and why. If they don't tell you what they're searching for and why, they can look for anything, and then construct a separate scenario which just happens to expose the thing they knew would be there from the first fishing expedition. They then use this (usually circumstantial) evidence to accuse you of a crime, and they can win, even if you didn't commit a crime, but it looks like you did. And now they can do it with digital information, automatically, behind the scenes, without your knowledge. (or they can take your laptop and phone and do it then)

But the warrant still has to originally exist with, presumably, a timestamp that shows it existed prior to the search. And modification of the timestamp or lack of such a feature would be a good way to get the evidence thrown out?

That’s not how evidence works in Canada. Illegally obtained evidence is still evidence - you simply also have a tort against the officer for breaching your rights.

It would be inadmissible if the court deems it to impact the fairness of the trial, no? https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...

Maybe. Courts aren’t magic machines that do the right thing.

You used a conditional so I assume you also know how such a system can fail. It's not hard to figure out how that can be exploited, right? You can't rely on that conditional being executed perfectly every time, even without adversarial actors. But why ignore adversarial actors?

This is such a weird attitude. We can't rely on anything being perfectly executed every time, so why have warrants at all?

Yes, in some cases, but this is not automatic, nor even close. The more serious the trial (ex, murder, child pornography), the more likely it serves the court’s interest to use the illegally obtained evidence. See https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.3711 for a longitudinal study. Illegally obtained evidence is routinely used.

my understanding: within the context of that specific action; the evidence still exists. If there is less clarity about how and when it was collected though, there is far more opportunity to use broad evidence obtained in the periphery of a undisclosed warrant in other contexts.

The existence of a category of warrants that allows operation that is indistinguishable from warrantless searches creates a kind of legal hazard and personal risk that is hard to overlook. Police lie on the regular.

This is a good perspective, thank you.

...and are allowed to lie within narrow and specific contexts, which seems a "balance of rights" scenario. My fear in this case is that a lie of omission is far more dangerous (specifically for misuse) than a specific & explicitly lie.

I don't get why people downvoted you, this is a very reasonable question.

I agree with you. However, talking about downvotes is not interesting and against guidelines.

Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.

There were two commenters that responded 15 minutes prior to your comment. I'd suggest starting there if you want to understand. Then if you disagree with those, you can comment and actually contribute to the conversation ;)

i know this is an american thing, but does it actually happen in Caanda?

one of those 'does it happen' vs. 'can it happen'. the latter is all that matters.

Respectfully, whether it "actually happens" is irrelevant. We want to prevent it from happening.

I don't see the problem with this. It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it. You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.

Nothing good is going to be solved by expanding law enforcement's power, reach, or lightening any existing restrictions. We are not suffering from crimes due to lack of law enforcement's legal scope. It's quite the opposite.

> It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it.

The police regularly lie to and manipulate people about their rights in order to coerce them into consent. If you believe the officer is in the wrong, push back.

> You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.

Parallel construction means they are using the opportunity to go on a fishing expedition. Dealing with it later is too late, they've already gone fishing.

This is a much bigger issue regarding the metadata of a wireless carrier. They're not issuing the warrant to you, they're issuing it to the carrier, who has a duty to reject overly broad searches. If they don't even get to see the warrant, they can't reject the search based on the merits. So now the police get to collect everyone's metadata. Who cares if we look at the warrant after? They've already got the data. Even if they "delete it" after, they already got to go fishing.

Your parallel construction is still too linear; this isn't git history. If they get a warrant AND tell you about it, the warrant dictates what they can look at, what you have to share, etc. Now they can look at anything because you have no idea what is off limits. If they find something unrelated they don't have to act on it immediately; they can then look for motivating reasons to get a warrant targeting an area they know will turn out. They go fishing, but for next time.

why even allow for the possibility of misuse? what is the utility of this little addendum?

If the statute doesn't lay out exactly where exceptions can be made, it can be abused.

And everyone should be skeptical enough of government power that they mentally switch out "can" with "will".

It’s a huge problem. The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know something wrong is being done to them. A warrant is not just a term for judicial approval.

The public must have the ability to easily verify police conduct is appropriate, and it must match the cadence of the police work.

> The warrant is the document the absence of which lets the public know

Er, the warrant is still there to be examined later, no? It's just not necessarily shown to the subject at the time of investigation.

How can you be sure, when no one ever knows it is there to examine it?

Hence my second paragraph. “Don’t worry, we have a warrant” leaves the public vulnerable to misconduct, actions that potentially cannot be reversed or sufficiently compensated.

Wouldn't having a warrant, with the purpose redacted - if that's the concern, be a good balance of "proof of legitimacy" but also keeping some presumably sensitive information private?

I don't think so, no. The purpose is essential.

A warrant usually isn't a free pass to search everything. They are often narrow.

The warrant is the receipt. Even if you believe it's fine most of the time I'm pretty certain most people would feel uncomfortable if they went to the grocery store and weren't offered one. You throw it away most of the time, but have you never needed it? Mistakes happen.

The stakes are a lot higher here. The cost of mistakes are higher. The incentives for abuse are higher. The cost of abuse is lower.

And what's the downside of the person being searched having the warrant? Why does it need to be secret?

Why... would you think this is unlikely? Have... you seen videos of ICE agents claiming to have warrants when they don't?

Unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't define what such special situations are. It leaves the determination of providing the warrant to the suspect entirely to a judgement call of the court.

There may well be reasonable scenarios a majority of people would agree that providing a warrant isn't feasible, but that needs to be codified in law in more detail than whenever the judge deems it so.

It's not bad. Judges are not crazy and they'll require a reason for this. It could mean 'fraying at the edges' of the law but this is not bad at all.

You can tell where things will land with this generally it's not bad.

If it were Texas or the South where the justice dept. leans a different way it could be a problem.

Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality, kind of hints of lawful, bureaucratic authoritarianism - not arbitrary or political or regime driven, but kind of an inherent orientation towards 'rules' etc. where the system can tilt wayward, but that's completely different than regime, or 'deep institutional' issues and state actors that do wild things.

While this might be true and we'll and good (for now) isn't it still a worry and a threat that the law is written as such?

That is to say, though the "vibe" may be as you say, the law now permits, if not now, at some future instance people with different perspectives or vibes can use the law as written, to other ends.

In short, yeah it may not be Texas now, but a "Texas-like" vibe could germinate and use the laws in the books later.

"though the "vibe" may be as you say, " it's not a vibe so much as a real characteriztion of the law in the context of the system in which it operates.

There is no such thing as a set of 'hard fast rules' like 'software' which governs us.

It's always going to depend on the quality, characteristic and legitimacy of institutions, among other things.

'The Slippery Slope' can be applied in almost anything and I don't think that it is a reasonable rhetorical posture without more context.

'Written Laws' is not going to really stop anywhere from 'becoming like Texas'

> Canada is a bit like Europe where they have statist mentality

If the last decade and a half has taught us anything, it's that you can't rely on the state and arms of the state to remain consistent permanently.

In the absence of a free media, as in the US where it's controlled by a handful of billionaires, the people can be manipulated to vote in a government that will run roughshod over precedent and norms.

I totally agree, but that's a question aside from the institutional authoritarianism of statist countries.

Canada and European nations are not very 'liberal' in the sense a lot of people would like - they are communitarian.

We lament Trump breaking norms ... the office of the Canadian PM is almost only bounded by norms, he has crazy amounts of power - on paper.

A Trump-like actor in Canada (maybe UK as well) could do way more damage.

I think that the quality of the judiciary is subjective but real, it can be characterized.

I don't have a problem with this law as it is written, to the extent it's used judiciously, which I generally expect in Canada - but that's only because of an understanding of the system as a whole, not as it is written.

On paper, there is no Canadian PM. The Constitution reads: "The Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen." The existence of a Prime Minister and the fact executive powers are delegated to them are customary.

A Trump-like actor in Canada would do far less damage than in USA. There is no position they could held that would give them the power to do lot of damage. The Queen (nowaday King) has no power. If they tried to use it's constitutional powers as written they would be laughed out. The Governor General, who may act on behalf of the Queen would be laughed out too if they tried to take any decision. The Prime Minister seems all powerful but they are one motion from the House of Common from being overthrown. When one's become POTUS, they are basically POTUS until the end of their term. The exception is impeachment which is a very complicated process that never worked. In Canada, the House of Common can simply vote the Prime Minister out. The Prime Minister is very powerful, I agree, but only as long as they behave.

"are one motion from the House of Common from being overthrown." - so this is a form of political constraint, which we can see in the US doesn't work very well if the ruling party wants to ignore concerns and acts at the behest of the Executive.

If the PM holds enough popular support and has even a narrow majority that he can effectively whip, he's almost above reproach.

Everything at the top in Canada is 'convention' even the Constitution and there's barely any real constraint at someone driving a truck through all of it.

Yes but that's marginal because support is entirely contingent on whether the legislative branch members believe that support won't get them voted out.

The US executive is very different because it's an independent election: it's almost impossible to get rid of a President, and relatively easy to deflect blame.

Australia's round of axing prime ministers had some essential logic to it despite the move being relatively unpopular with the electorate: it wasn't about whether the party would lose power, it was about whether replacing the prime minister would let them retain seats they faced otherwise losing.

It's a mammoth difference when the election for executive power and legislative power are linked and it shows.

I think one major difference is that MPs are far less beholden to their party for reelection and it is not uncommon for them to cross the floor when they feel the interests of their constituents are not being represented by the governing (or opposing) party.

Yes, a PM with a whipped majority is tremendously powerful, but getting that whipped majority is not an easy task and requires significant politicking and negotiating within the party precisely because individual MPs are proportionately more powerful than legislators in the US.

I'm not Canadian, but it seems similarly written to how laws in the US have been exploited to be used to spy on Americans. And despite not being Canadian, as an American I have a horse in this race, as the OP notes...

  | many of these rules appear geared toward global information sharing

I see a lot of people arguing that these bounds are reasonable so I want to make an argument from a different perspective:

  Investigative work *should* be difficult.

There is a strong imbalance of power between the government and the people. My little understanding of Canadian Law suggests that Canada, like the US, was influenced by Blackstone[0]. You may have heard his ratio (or the many variations of it)

  | It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

What Blackstone was arguing was about the legal variant of "failure modes" in engineering. Or you can view it as the impact of Type I (False Positive) and Type II (False Negative) errors. Most of us here are programmers so this should be natural thinking: when your program fails how do you want it to fail? Or think of it like with a locked door. Do you want the lock to fail open or closed? In a bank you probably want your safe to fail closed: the safe requires breaking into to access again. But in a public building you probably want it to fail open (so people can escape from a fire or some other emergency that is likely the reason for failure).

This frame of thinking is critical with laws too! When the law fails how do you want it to fail? So you need to think about that when evaluating this (or any other) law. When it is abused, how does it fail? Are you okay with that failure mode? How easy is it to be abused? Even if you believe your current government is unlikely to abuse it do you believe a future government might? (If you don't believe a future government might... look south...)

A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals. We generally have this philosophy because it is needed to keep a government in check. It doesn't matter if everyone involved has good intentions. We're programmers, this should be natural too! It doesn't matter if we have good intentions when designing a login page, you still have to think adversarially and about failure modes because good intentions are not enough to defend against those who wish to exploit it. Even if the number of exploiters is small the damage is usually large, right?

This framework of thinking is just as beneficial when thinking about laws as it is in the design of your programs. You can be in favor of the intent (spirit of the law), but you do have to question if the letter of the law is sufficient.

I wanted to explain this because I think it'll help facilitate these types of discussions. I think they often break down because people are interpreting from very different mental frameworks. Disagree with me if you want, but I hope making the mental framework explicit can at least improve your arguments :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

People are let go off all the time. Not because of the law but because who needs the work of chasing and punishing every law breaker in the land. In your own workplace,family and friend circle, count how many times you have seen some one do something dumb(forget illegal) that has caused a loss or pain to some one else. And then count how many times you have done something about it.

> A lot of us strongly push against these types of measures not because we have anything to hide nor because we are on the side of the criminals.

I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened, and where it was eventually reigned in with extreme measures (Usually broad and indiscriminate capital punishment).

I know your comment is about fixing failure modes in the legal system, and I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty, but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism? Much worse things are waiting on the other end of the spectrum when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

"He who gives up a little freedom for security deserves neither"

I never understood this quote. I happily gave up the freedom of driving without a seatbelt for security, what does that say about me?

You dont deserve either.

It's become more a shorthand for saying much more. Though the original context differs from how it is used today (common with many idioms).

People do not generally believe a seat belt limits your liberty, but you're not exactly wrong either. But maybe in order to understand what they mean it's better to not play devil's advocate. So try an example like the NSA's mass surveillance. This was instituted under the pretext of keeping Americans safe. It was a temporary liberty people were willing to sacrifice for safety. But not only did find the pretext was wrong (no WMDs were found...) but we never were returned that liberty either, now were we?

That's the meaning. Or what people use it to mean. But if you try to tear down any saying it's not going to be hard to. Natural languages utility isn't in their precision, it's their flexibility. If you want precision, well I for one am not going to take all the time necessary to write this in a formal language like math and I'd doubt you'd have the patience for it either (who would?). So let's operate in good faith instead. It's far more convenient and far less taxing

Exactly nothing because you can release the seat belt yourself.

It's about giving up freedoms you might never get back, because it's not your decision anymore after giving them up.

The quote refers to a Faustian bargain offered by the Penn's. They'd bankroll securing a township, as long as the township gave up the ability to tax them. The quote points out that by giving up the liberty to tax, for short term protection, ultimately the township would end up having neither the freedom to tax to fund further defense, or long term security so might as well hold onto the ability to tax and just figure out the security issue.

Moral: don't give up freedoms for temporary gains. It never balances out in the end.

The issue I have with this quote is that it implies that some people deserve freedom and others do not.

I think a better way to phrase it would be:

> he who gives up a little freedom for a little security ends up with neither

  > until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.

I don't think it's predicated on that. It's based on low trust of authority. Not necessarily even current authority. And low trust of authority is not equivalent to high trust in... honestly anything else.

  > You can look to parts of SE Asia or the Middle East to see some examples where that happened

These are regions known for high levels of authoritarianism, not democracy, not anarchy (I'm not advocating for anarchy btw). These regions often have both high levels of authoritarianism AND low levels of trust. Though places like China, Japan, Korea etc have high authoritarianism and high trust (China obviously much more than the other two).

  > but what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

It's a good question and you're right that the results aren't great. But I don't think it's as bad as the failure modes of high authoritarian countries.

High authority + low trust + abuse gives you situations like we've seen in Russia, Iran, North Korea. These are pretty bad. The people have no faith in their governments and the governments are centered around enriching a few.

High authority + high trust + abuse is probably even worse though. That's how you get countries like Nazi German (and cults). The government is still centered around enriching a few but they create more stability by narrowing the targeting. Or rather by having a clearer scale where everyone isn't abused ad equally. (You could see the famous quotes by a famous US president about keeping the white population in check by making them believe that at least they're not black)

None of the outcomes are good but I think the authoritarian ones are much worse.

  > when people don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

But this is also different from what I'm talking about. You can have my framework and trust your government. If you carefully read you'll find that they are not mutually exclusive.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? That implies that the road to hell isn't paved just by evil people. It can be paved even by good well intentioned ones. Just like I suggested about when programming. We don't intend to create bugs or flaws (at least most of us don't), but they still exist. They still get created even when we're trying our hardest to not create them, right? But being aware that they happen unintentionally helps you make fewer of them, right? I'm suggesting something similar, but about governments.

This and the previous post is well thought out, thank you for the clarity.

Are you of the opinion that peoples' default state is a Mad Max-like existence?

The question isn't about idealism or the realistic possibility of said idealism. The question, in my opinion, is whether we can only succeed as a species if a small number of people are entrusted with creating and enforcing laws by force when necessary.

That isn't to say we never need some level of hierarchy or that laws, social norms, etc aren't important. Its to say that we need to keep a tight reign on it and only push authority and enforcement up the ladder when absolutely necessary.

It will end poorly if we continue down the road of larger and larger governments under the fear of Mad Max, and this idea many people have that "someone has to be in charge."

>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society. At some point you reach a critical mass of crime that is so rampant, and the rule of law has so broken down that it’s basically Mad Max out there, and then these idealistic philosophies start to fall apart.

I see "High Trust Society" so much as a weird racist dogwhistle, but feel free to disabuse me of that notion.

I live in an extremely high crime area. Because cops abuse the law to keep their numbers up. If someone checked they would see that my local McDonalds car park is one of the biggest crime hotspots in the country because of administrative detections made on minor drug deals there.

It just so happens that my area is also where the government dumps migrants, refugees and poor people. Its also the case that they test welfare changes here.

I haven't had a single incident here in 6 years. We often forget to lock our doors. My wife takes my toddler walking around the neighborhood at night. I wave hello to the guy across the road who I have like 99% certainty is dealing drugs (Or just has a lot of friends with nice cars who visit to see how long it has been since he trimmed his lawn).

That said, if you turn on the tv 2 things are apparently happening. 1. We are under attack by hordes of immigrants tearing the country apart. 2. We are under attack by kids on ebikes mowing kids down in a rampage of terror.

Politicians, in order to be seen to be doing things, bring laws in to counter these threats. People bash their chests and demand more be done.

But the issue is that its just not happening. My suburb is great. The people are generally lovely, even those in meth related occupations.

When you complain about the trustiness of the society, consider that your lack of trust might actually be the problem? Nothing is necessarily going to break down because you didnt make your neighbors life worse by supporting another dumb as shit law. "Oh no crime is so rampant" buddy you need to get over yourself. Societies don't fail because of socially defined Crime they fail because people prioritise their perceived safety over everyones freedom.

> I’m not defending government surveillance, or the idea of considering someone innocent until proven guilty

Exactly what you are defending.

>what happens when the entire system fails due to misplaced idealism?

Its at threat from the idealism that you can just pass one more law to fix society.

>don’t feel like the government is adequately protecting them.

They come up with a bunch of dumbshit laws like the OP. Thats the result.

Re: High trust society general means people are pointing to some implicit unwritten structures that stop something from happening.

Collective notions of shame, actual networks of friends and families that reinforce correct behaviour or issue corrections.

Think about simply how credit networks form and function. And why visiting a food truck or medieval travelling doctor for your vial of ointment is different from buying special products from a brick and mortar establishment.

Basically if you or the network has a harder time back propagating defaults and bad credit in a way that prevents future bad outcomes then that is a loss of high trust.

This isn't about race really unless you are operating at the level of some biological or genetic connection to behaviour ... But that is a pretty strange place to be as there a whole host of confounding factors that are much more obvious and believable and I cast serious doubt that even a motivated racist would ever credibly be able to do empirical studies showing causal links between any given genetic population cluster and the emergent societal behaviour. These are such high dimensional systems it just seems insane to even think one could measure this effect.

The invisible substrate is the society unfortunately ... And we are all bad at writing it down and measuring it.

It seems to me that society isnt anything but a stick to beat against ones hobby horse. "Society is bad because of the thing that happened to me, save society by changing things my way!!!" etc. Where really if you turn off the tv and go to the shops its fine.

I think a practical argument against what you're saying here is simply that solving the mad max stuff doesn't require anything at all like this. The type of crime that's scary and impactful (e.g. terrorism is scary, but so extremely rare that it can't really be considered impactful) is generally trivial to bust.

>I had this view as well until I realized it’s predicated on living in a high trust society.

Building down these high trust scenarios has been the consequence of active policies. You don't just miss these trends and correlations. Not to this extent.

The Mad Max stuff is occurring at scale more due to unchecked governments, and governments that don't work for society than it is from insufficient surveillance

I use the speed chime in my Model 3 car to alert me if I'm more than 2 km/h over the posted speed limit, which it infers from its database with the autopilot camera providing overrides.

If I'm over that when passing a speed camera in Victoria, AUS, I'll be pinged with a decent fine to arrive shortly.

Imagine if instead of a chime I got fined every single time, everywhere? All this new monitoring makes it a bit like that, at an extreme. I don't want to live in such a society.

Consider: you don’t give a warrant to a wiretap subject. That itself is not that big a loophole. And therefore is unlikely to provoke change.

I don't even understand the concern here. Perhaps the parent thought this meant "a warrant is not required", which is absolutely untrue. Instead, the judge still creates the warrant, and any trial/arrest/action must have a warrant.

(Finding out what ISP a user belongs to, isn't really that private. If you look at the US comparatively, Homeland has a list of every single credit card transaction ever. The US doesn't need to ask an ISP if someone is a customer. What this does is simply confirm, and then the judge can create a warrant specific for that ISP.)

Such as compelling the ISP, or what not, to take action. The ISP is not the subject here. And obviously hiding the warrant from the ISP makes zero sense, as they're going to know who the person is anyhow.

This is stuff that goes back to phone taps. Nothing new here.

Does a warrant ever expire? How long can they monitor you once the warrant is issued? Do they ever have to notify you or anyone else that you were being monitored and they found no criminal conduct? Don't you see the potential for abuse here?

All of these questions, and more, are answered by examining what happens with phone taps. Phone taps, which historically were treated precisely the same, and further, there was only ever one phone company in a region back then.

All legislative change is interpreted by courts. So to answer your questions:

# look to see how the legislation is written for phone taps

# know that this new legislation is changing things, the code is being modified

# now look at judicial decisions, and you will have your answer

Seeing as you have no idea how other warrants work, when they expire, you're really just looking for the worst case scenario, without even attempting to see what would happen, and has happened for 100+ years.

Yes?

How would a wiretap work if you sent the person notice you're listening to their phone?

Clearly some criminal investigations require not notifying the suspect.

Even so, the exceptions don't nullify the rule: find a better way to investigate, citizen rights > all else.

Countries AND the government exist for and at the pleasure of their respective citizens.

Clearly, list the specific cases instead of letting the judge feel what is appropriate is the way to go. Also helps the judge doing the right thing.

This makes police indistinguishable from thugs.

I think warrantless access, deanonymising the internet, etc, are things that go together. If you want auto-governance (technocracy), to micro-manage every citizen, these are the foundations you need. As it is already determined that this is what will be happening, no amount of discussion will make a material change - the legislation is going in whether people want it or not. The individual justifications for each legal step in the construction are either going to be done with low visibility, or a trope like ('for the children/terrorists') will be wheeled out. Works every time, so why change?

There is no warrantless access to data here though. None. It's merely showing the warrant to the person being 'searched'. As mentioned elsewhere, the same has been true for decades with someone's phone being tapped.

The ISP can see the warrant. The judge creates a warrant. The court sees the warrant.

Is Canada (greatly) defunct? Many canucks around the world that I met seem to be of this opinion, but I've never been there and only know Canadians as hard workers.

I imagine you met the people who got tired of all the slobs.

Look at the recent report on CRA service inquiries and their accuracy. An amazing 17%. It's not hard work that got us there.

edit: Just one of many examples. People rarely even hold doors anymore, we're a far way from our prime.

Next you're going to tell me that Canadians have stopped bothering to apologize!

Meeting expats from any nation will hold a bias untoward the place they're from, so you're asking a poisoned well how thirsty it is.

Oh I really didn't think about this, that makes a lot of sense to be honest. But a good portion of them were also just tourists from Canada.

Canada does not have a concept of civil liberties in the way USA (supposedly) does. There is no illusion that the government has complete control to monitor, track, and even arrest anyone they want. They do this all the time, even physically tracking and boxing in protesters to beat them.

This is obviously a bot comment. Is there really no room for automoderation of new accounts on HN?

Bot? It sounds to me more like the words you’d hear from an astroturfing American who doesn’t understand anything about Canadian laws. I say that as an American familiar with only some Canadian law, but enough to at least be aware of Rights and Freedoms.

Bruh I've lived in Toronto for 30 years. Ask me more about Horseshoe Tavern and Danforth Hall.

I'm in Toronto since 92. And yes. Having Not Withstanding clause makes our Bill Of Rights a mockery. We have some rights until Feds / Provincial government decides that they do not like it. Basically it creates some friction / inconvenience for the government when they want to fuck with people but if they're in a mood than they will do it regardless. Judging by what is happening in the US lately maybe having "real" rights / constitution does not really guarantee protection either.

I couldn’t agree more with your last statement. It is up to the collection of individuals to ensure their rights are maintained. Unfortunately, that sometimes means the will of the majority can overrule what is logical, fair, reasonable or humane.

I mean yea, I assume that's the persona it was going for. It was an account just made to post this called canadian000, I would have called it out as a broke uni student being paid to astroturf ten years ago but I assumed that market has been fully cornered by bots by now. Maybe it's just a really dedicated politically-willed crazy but either way it contributes nothing to these discussions and should be banned. It's bad flame bait and ruins the quality of the site.

I see people forget how govt de-banked people in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest pretty quickly

Are you suggesting that when investigating members of a criminal organization, they should be notified? It seems pretty reasonable for there to be cases where making a target aware of investigation would be detrimental to proving the illegal activity they are currently engaged in but would likely discontinue if literally told “we are monitoring you specifically now”.

Yes, but the warrant should be revealed eventually. Worst case, if you can't prove or disprove someone committed a crime after X time, you should alert them to discourage future crime (they may have already done more crimes during X time; besides public interest, it also forces you to cut your losses when the alternative would be to dig a deeper hole).

Do these warrants have a fixed maximum duration of secrecy?

“warrant should be revealed eventually. Worst case, if you can't prove or disprove someone committed a crime after X time”

This is the normal thinking, normal brained, route. It’s what we should all strive towards. Anyone who doesn’t agree needs therapy. There should be a window of discovery. 30 days, 90 maybe. But if you don’t have enough to justify notification of investigation, that’s it. No more resources spent. This is how normal precincts work. If they suspect, enough times, to build a large enough case file, to connect the dots and prove you are guilty, they issue a warrant.

Normal, brained, behavior.

This isn't about criminal organizations. One person somewhere can decide to target you, monitor you for 30 years with all the government's resources, and never need to tell you or anyone about it. I don't like that personally.

What ever happened to hanging around, being a nuisance, and asking them questions? The real problem is cops are scared to cop. A detective used to show up around a place and just make their presence known. That was enough to notify you of investigation prematurely. Now, in the digital surveillance age, they can just sit in the basement eating Cheetos and phone in a SWAT.

What happened? We collectively over the course of time decided that the individual right not to be “harassed”, valid or not, overrides the ability to behave in such a manner. That happened because other officers proved they could not be trusted to exercise such power responsibly. “Being a nuisance” is a toe-length away from “harassing an ordinary citizen” when you don’t actually have proof. So, harassing a citizen to gain proof in order to prove it wasn’t harassment has an obvious problem.

Bad apples…

Yeah, it’s what happened. It’s not what has to happen.

> Bad apples…

As always, if you are going to use this expression, you should be required to complete it.

Remind me: what do bad apples do?

spoils the bunch

Is that really the case though? I'm not really sure I can think of any major cultural shifts or specific incidences that have changed Canadian law enforcement in the way that you describe.

How did these kinds of things happen in Canada and how do they relate specifically to bill C-22?

So we're worried about cops violating civil liberties by not getting a warrant, but we'd rather they go harass random (potentially innocent) civilians to do investigations?

You missed the point. The point was, like in mob movies or crime dramas, you go outside where the criminals are.

This is an interesting perspective, because from my point of view, the criminals ceasing their illegal activity would be a "win". Whereas, the alternative is the government knowingly allowing illegal activity to continue as they build their case with the goal of a "big bust" and larger jail sentences.

If their co-conspirators were also to cease, I would agree. But if that were realistically the case, arresting a single person would stop all crime.

Personally, I am rarely concerned about the crime private citizens are committing relative to the crime the government routinely commits. Cumulative historical negative effects are not even close on the two. Also, the vast majority of private crime with broad effects is economically motivated, almost always by laws passed by government making some act people want to do illegal (i.e. drugs, prostitution, gambling) and the solution that is sensible legalization with a focus on making it too inexpensive to be illegally profitable in the context of ensuring product safety (yes, I am aware Canada has already utterly failed at this with marijuana). The solution to those crimes is not more government surveillance and therefore more data to assist the government in doing the crime its representatives appear to be fond of.

the problem is that in democracies anybody can be dubbed 'criminal organization'. Today you're pro-life? criminal organization. Tomorrow you're pro-choice? 'criminal organization'. You're making protests in your big trucks? Criminal...

Are you suggesting that police should not be allowed to investigate anyone?

It sounds like they're suggesting that police shouldn't be allowed to bypass your civil liberties.

One of which is apparently the liberty to not be investigated without your knowledge.

Where did they say you can't be "investigated without your knowledge" ?

precisely. Especially without warrant. Any blanket surveillance techniques should be banned and penalised

> warrants seem to be required

Applies in the text you quoted, unlike true warrantless surveillance NSA-style?

You still have to get the warrant past a judge, and convince the judge of the higher bar for keeping the warrant secret.

I presume the distinction here could be between a search warrant, which you have to show the subject before entering their house, and a surveillance/wiretap warrant which you for obvious reason's don't.

(Meanwhile, FIVE EYES carries on as usual.)

Would the legislation become worse if any "redeeming" quotes were simply removed in the future?

The thing about laws is they can be made, and changed.

Without reading the bill, this sentennce seems to refer to the requirement to _give the person a copy of the warrant_, not the requirement for the government to obtain a warrant from a judge or justice

Quick summary for the impatient (the original looks like an extract from Orwell's 1984):

Bill C-22 (Canada, 2026) updates laws to give police and security agencies faster and clearer access to digital data during investigations. It expands authorities to obtain subscriber information, transmission data, and tracking data from telecom and online service providers and from foreign companies. The bill also creates a framework requiring electronic service providers to support access requests.

Sounds like a Canadian version of CALEA to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

You missed 'warrentless' in your summary. It's sort of important.

The push by the government here is because Canada is the only one of the Five-Eyes countries that doesn't have these powers, and for the government that's a bad thing.

That access has produced nothing for the USA, the director of the program has stated such to congress. Complete waste of time and money

> You missed 'warrentless' in your summary. It's sort of important.

Less than you would hope: https://web.archive.org/web/20140718122350/https://www.popeh...

Notably, a single secret warrant authorized the surveillance of everyone on the Verizon network:

That warrant orders Verizon Business Network Services to provide a daily feed to the NSA containing "telephony metadata" – comprehensive call detail records, including location data – about all calls in its system, including those that occur "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

I know those are about the US and this law is Canada, but the same things can happen.

The problem for all 5 eyes (or 9 or 14) is that our co-operation dates back to the cold war and the institutions and thinking have not caught up to current geo-political and technical changes. If anything we are accelerating our co-operation at a time when many voters are seriously questioning the future of the US alliance.

I wish some of our leaders would be more forthcoming about the amount of foreign pressure their governments are under. We talk about the negative influence on social media and politics of countries we are not allied with often but there is an astonishing silence when it comes to the biggest player. There is a very real threat to local values and democracy.

Letting a few cold feet throw away your relationship with the US is absolutely just as stupid as Trump throwing away the US's relationship with Europe/whoever.

Less so if the US is going to try to request current (prior?) allies to assist in a war against Iran which has already been declared 'won' and was recommended against by pretty much everyone outside of current participants.

I think it is very clear from the way all US allies have reacted to various provocations that we are taking a long term view. That is the reason we are still spying on our domestic populations for the US despite our reservations about the current executive and their actions.

I think you can justify this logic only in the case you sincerely believe that the current admin is a fluke and things will return to roughly the previous status quo on the order of a few years. And that isn't unreasonable to think, but you might also want to have a backup plan.

No the US clearly believes they would be better off not part of the rest of the world, the best thing we can do is not to drown in that tantrum, and provide the economic embargo they clearly think will bring them prosperity.

Silence? Didn't Canada's prime minister give some very loud speeches regarding the US and the changing geopolitical landscape, and start making deals in response to such?

Speeches are just talk. If I understand this bill, it makes it illegal for service providers that operate in Canada to avoid gathering unnecessary metadata about end users. It also makes it illegal for them to demand a warrant when the government (or US government) asks for the data.

We don’t have to imagine what this data will be used for. If someone goes through an airport and privately spoke to a Trump critic, CBP will use that to extort or disappear them.

The goal of this bill is to let the US censor private communication overseas.

Carny seems like two people when talking about trade vs security/military

No he bent the knee pretty badly and made a few headline sounds deals that do little to impact Canada's standing. Frankly Canada doesn't really have any choices the USA will never allow them to "distance" themselves and Canada doesn't really get a choice in the matter.

If you're upset about this bill:

- Call your MP (find yours at ourcommons.ca). - Back organisations that fight back (OpenMedia and CCLA have killed surveillance bills in the past - Submit written opposition.

The Cannabis Act angle is interesting.. extends full computer search-and-seizure powers to cannabis enforcement.

Just don't back those organizations too publicly or too loudly if you don't want your bank account summarily frozen

Do you have a source of people’s bank being frozen for backing those orgs?

"I'll grant that dozens were imprisoned for protesting on a Tuesday, but do you have a source proving that anybody was imprisoned for protesting on a Wednesday?"

So no?

The government has demonstrated it is perfectly willing to forcibly remove non-violent protesters and unbank anyone protest-adjacent when they don't conveniently go away. Local councillors have orchestrated firing people for voicing their opposition towards the genocide in Gaza [1]. I for one don't understand the goodwill and benefit of doubt a lot of Canadians still seem to exhibit towards the government.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/york-region-paramedic...

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you.' Fool me—you can't get fooled again."

The endgame is clear. Mass surveillance combined with AI agents. Would almost be like having a personal government spy watching each individual person.

Yep. Everyone can have their own “AI FBI agent” following their every move.

Just have to worry about the AI hallucinations.

Yup, it makes living in stalinist Russia seem like a libertarian paradise

People don't seem to understand how incredibly oppressive society is becoming

They do and they like it. That's what libertarians don't get. Majority of people do support such measures.

The bill claims that it doesn’t grant any new powers. Then it goes on to explain that if you don’t collect meta data and retain it for up to a year, that you can be fined or jailed.

It feels like many democratic leaders are starting to think the CCP model—mass surveillance of citizens—is the right direction, with growing demands for chat control, facial verification, age verification, and more. Fxxk any politician who thinks they are above the citizens in a democracy.

I've been in mainland China for the past year and I wish western politicians would get it through their skulls that most of the ccp model's upsides come from CCTVs in public areas and a police force that prioritizes stopping street crime.

Eh, if you see the reaction to Flock Safety, people object to that one as well.

Not familiar with that conversation, but is the concern that it will be used to raise ticket revenue from victimless crimes without doing much to prevent the other kind?

From what I've seen, it's simply an aversion to mass scale surveillance, even in public setting. The worry being how easy it could slide into a tool used by the state for nefarious purposes (punish political dissidents, etc).

Is there actually evidence of flock being used to stop street crime? I've never heard anything about Flock (or Shotspooter) stopping street crime.

Where I am, the local speed cameras have annual documents about the street their on detailing pre-camera vehicle speeds and fatal (pedestrian) accidents and the decreases in both of them since the usage.

Afaik, the concern isn't that it "could slide" its that flock _is used_ by say Texas to monitor out of state abortions. That isn't solving street crime and certainly didn't benefit the local residents.

The concern is losing all your freedom and privacy for no good reason

I don't think any constitution has ever guaranteed a right to privacy in public spaces. I can't imagine how that would ever work even if we were willing to make serious tradeoffs for it.

The problem is that those cameras aren't being put in areas where crime occurs in order to keep citizens safe. They are being put on busy streets to prevent people's ability to travel without being tracked.

Do they de-prioritize or ignore other crimes that are not visible in the streets? This is an honest question, I want to know if actually focusing only on the streets makes people feel safe even if other types of crimes are rampant.

EDIT: I guess I could add examples of what "other crimes" could be. Fraud, corruption, sexual abuse, all victimless crimes, hitmen?

Victimless crimes definitely. For example, street vendors without permits are asked to leave, but not fined. Car accidents are investigated but there seems to be no 'ticket quotas' like in the west, etc.

I don't know much about the other categories you mentioned but I do know that president Xi is associated with a 'tough on corruption' stance that's widely seen as a major positive of his administration.

Look at what social media considers to be safe countries.

You are absolutely bombarded with messaging about how Dubai and Chinese cities are the safest places in the world. I have friends who live in each who consider North America and Europe crime ridden shitholes because theft is possible to get away with.

If society believes that crimes is utterly rampant despite it collapsing over the past few decades, there is nowhere else to go but mass surveillance to make sure that even the smallest of visible crimes are stamped out.

There is also plenty of social media and politicians telling you that because of some statistic that the knife wielding gang you yourself saw in the shopping centre in east London in fact does not exist

>If society believes that crimes is utterly rampant despite it collapsing over the past few decades

After having to push for a crime to be actually registered and for others to even report small crimes because police has been so useless in Brussels I lost complete faith in this.

It also doesn't track with prisons overflowing more and more and damn near half of prisoners not having the nationality. It's safer now! But more and more people have experiences so keep your wallet in your front pocket. Watch out as a woman after dark. Avoid certain areas that your grandma described as posh and the trainstation you went to every day in your youth has stabbings now.

It feels like one of a bunch of fronts where we get some kind of hypernormalisation.

The streets of Dubai and pretty much any where in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam etc are orders of magnitude safer than UK, US, France, and other western European countries. Crime appears to be tolerated and reporting crimes doesn't do much, and statistics are managed in western Europe. If you get an opportunity to travel to China, do see for yourself how safe the cities feel, and how advanced (and safe) the public transport systems are.

Said leaders are only really democratic based on the literal name of the party they signed with when running for office. There's nothing democratic about these types of programs and I have to assume that a plainly explained referendum spelling this out on a ballot would fail miserably.

I believe that's it's sadly a necessity for control of the population when you have other superpowers employing this.

If you are Europe, and you have democratic elections, you have an informational power asymmetry towards the states that have mass surveillance and control. You are (as we saw last year with the Romanian election that was swung to 60% in 2 weeks over TikTok) susceptible towards influence of other superpowers. Even if you want to keep democratic elections, you need to somehow make sure that the citizens are voting in their interest. If the citizens at the same time are victims of the attention economy, their interest will be whatever foreign superpowers want it do be.

One well-tried solution is to engage and educate the population. However, this takes years, not weeks as the campaigns take, and takes immense resources as people will default to convenient attention economy tools.

Other option is to ban platforms/create country-wide firewalls. It's a lot harder in democratic societies, you ban one app and a new one takes it's place. Cat is kind of out of the bag on this one.

Last and easiest option is mass surveillance. Figure out who is getting influenced by what, and start policing on what opinions those people are allowed to have and what measures to take to them. Its a massive slippery slope, but I can clearly see that it's the easiest and most cost-effective way to solve this information-assymetry

Regarding banning platforms I’d say just ban the attention driven business model online by forbidding all social media platforms from serving ads entirely.

Ban all third party advertisement. Or taking payment for it at any rate.

Thank you. Haven't seen this problem framed in quite this way before. I find the point quite persuasive.

But, I don't understand how this step could possibly work:

> start policing on what opinions those people are allowed to have and what measures to take to them

A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.

> A much more effective counter to this would be to rebalance the information asymmetry by giving citizens the tools to coordinate against state sponsored influence.

Which tools, specifically? I know none.

I mean that we are in dire need of such tools!

I also am not aware of any existing tools.

It's a good suggestion, but the thing is that the average person does not care and does not want to use your tools. You can make an app that gives you correct news, where you can vote for local political issues, etc. Most people don't give a shit, you as a state are competing against the attention economy(evolving into an affection economy given LLM use).

You are competing against companies that are using biologically wired mechanisms, like short-burst 3-second information overload together with marketing signaling(consumer neuroscience) to make you do choices and then confabulate the choice to yourself as your own.

Any tool would have to either be made in a landscape where ALL of the attention/affection-economy tools are banned, OR use the same mechanisms.

I agree but I also think that authenticity is one quality that such a tool could offer that other things in the attention economy cannot.

Addictive things are addictive. But people are also capable, given the right circumstances, to go and "touch grass". People are capable of making choices that are good for them. Especially if we make those choices easy enough.

I often scroll too much but I also go into nature and meet irl humans. And it's not close to an insurmountable choice.

To what end would you say the surveillance is for?

So you surveil your citizens and precog their opinions... to do what? Make them have state-sponsored opinions? Don't we already have that without the surveillance?

It's trivial to predict how a human will behave without any surveillance at all. Facebook abandoned their Beacon system not because of the backlash, but because they realized all they really needed to predict user behavior was the user's credit card statements, which they could easily buy.

At some point the constitution is the backstop, and unless we amend it, it should hold true.

I don't think that the EU member states have the same data access as companies in the US like Facebook do, and therein lies the problem. There is no good way to gather and connect data like Meta or Palantir can, you can't just sell things to the maximum bidder here. I think that's where the necessity comes from.

>If you are Europe, and you have democratic elections, you have an informational power asymmetry towards the states that have mass surveillance and control. You are (as we saw last year with the Romanian election that was swung to 60% in 2 weeks over TikTok) susceptible towards influence of other superpowers

When Georgia tried to implement a law to inhibit this type of foreign meddling from all superpowers it was widely branded a "pro russia law", presumably because the west had invested more in astroturfing Georgia.

Which is no different to what the US and Europe was already doing in Romania on an ENORMOUS scale before Russia ran its Tiktok campaign. Russia's campaign evidently resonated with the populace far more than what the NED were doing.

Democracy is a bit like freedom of speech - either you support it even when it makes decisions you dont like (e.g. in opposition to western imperialism) or you hate it. There isnt a middle ground.

If you support the Romanian secret services' decision to cancel the election over a tiktok campaign which was more convincing than better funded NED campaigns which they permit, you probably just hate democracy.

If you think "pro russia law" is an accurate designation of what Georgia was trying to implement - again, you just hate democracy.

As always, the devil is in the details. How will "mass surveillance" be implemented? How will bad opinions be suppressed? How will misguided officials be blocked?

Even the vague outline you've provided has issues. You can't prevent someone from having an opinion. You can't figure out who is "influenced" vs merely "exposed" (and visible intrusion shifts people towards the former).

You should actually consider the downsides and failure modes of implemented mass surveillance, not "it prevents malicious foreign influence better than my other proposals", because it may be worse than said influence (which does not necessarily translate into control; keep in mind that Georgescu only won the primary and would've lost the runoff had it not been annulled). The world under free information is the devil you know.

I always hold that the problem with mass censorship and state overreach is, they are too powerful and people are too selfish and stupid. There's no good solution, but my prediction is that any drastic attempt to prevent foreign interference will backfire and fail at that (liberal leaders can't use authoritarian tools as effectively as authoritarians). Even Democracy, "the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried", is a better countermeasure; all you need, to prevent anti-democratic foreign capture and ultimate failure, is to preserve it.

I think the definition of what is "anti-democratic" is as hard as the initial 3 questions you pose. If you push second-order ideas, for example by using refugees as indirect fuel for anti-democratic sentiment, is that anti-democratic? The Romanian election propaganda in itself was not anti-democratic, the coordination from a foreign state was. This means that the future of this kind of interference could be a more diffuse approach, or an approach where this is done from within Europe.

Any countermeasure you propose will just lead to moving one level of abstraction, or finding another point of entry.

I do think it's a better idea than mass surveillance, but I believe that the states will see it as harder. It can be that mass surveillance is implemented, and then the states do not know what to do with the data and nothing is achieved.

> "control of the population"

Who is doing the controlling in this take? "The Government"? Calling for more government control when some say--at least in the US--too much government is the heart of our current political strife. Unless this argument is for corporate surveillance?

As for elections in the age of social media, why not just pass Blackout laws around the date of the election? One week not sufficient? Make it two.

But instead the answer is mass surveillance? To do what? Arrest & detain people, and let the judicial system incarcerate them for months or years while the process plays out?

>when some say

Some say very nearly anything you could imagine and many things you couldn’t.

I am not for mass surveillance, I am saying it's the cheapest option to achieve the goal without disturbing the individual and causing social unrest. If you have a blackout, you will have businesses stopped, people will complain, people will use VPNs anyways, massive economic costs. Mass surveillance will just allow you to monitor, flag and perhaps later exclude people without affecting the rest.

Your last paragraph spunds misguided

Getting a warrant for each person is not "mass surveillance". Why do you think a warrant is not required? It is.

This is a systemic problem of modern information technology. With social media for instance, either you let the technology run rampant and the worst case scenareo plays out. That is misinformation, tribalism, bidy dysmorphia and the pletora of other issues. The worst case pesamistic mode of what the technology can do, that is self termination. The alternative is that you have to have the watchmen over watch everything and you have the full dystopia model.

While there is a middle road, it is almost never taken as it is the hardest path. The real trick is to not invent the torment nexus but you cannot know this as the n'th order effects are decades beyond the initial creation. But that is so incredibly difficult to anticipate.

Think about it, the transistor was invented in 1947, 70 years later it turned into the surviellance panopticon. Very few could have seen that coming.

I dont have answers just explanations here.

Canadian leaders are currently very consciously choosing to partner with China as opposed to the U.S.

I get diversification, that’s a good call, but adopting policies that actively harm Canada to the benefit of China is where we’re at and it’s so far beyond the pale. Just take a look at Canada, who for as long as I have known, have tried to maintain its industrial base in Ontario, eg the cross-border supply chain for automobiles, but then this "new" government comes in and is like y’know what we really need right now? To compound the effects of tariffs, piss off our biggest trading partner, risk NAFTA (CUSMA) and our entire cross-border supply chains with the US all so we can get some cheap electric cars from China, which won't even be manufactured here (atleast not with Canadian jobs); meanwhile we just spent close to $100 billion in subsidies explicitly to try and kickstart electric vehicle manufacturing in Canada. May have been more productive to turn that $100 billion into pennies and throw them down a wishing well...

We're in a very low trust and illiberal era. Everyone is convinced that the other side is evil and cannot be trusted, and they are building to laws and infrastructure to contain the perceived threat. And no one imagines that infrastructure will be used against them.

> "Everyone is convinced that the other side is evil and cannot be trusted..."

And the scary part is that they're both apparently correct.

Canadian here.

I'm frustrated our governments keep trying to foist essentially the same garbage upon us that has already been rejected over and over before.

Why do we need what amounts to a massive, state-level surveillance apparatus, steeped in legislated secrecy, plugged directly into the backbone of every internet provider?

Would you be OK if police officers followed you around everywhere you go, recording who you talk to, and when and where you interacted - not because there's any suspicion upon you, but simply to collect and preserve all the metadata they might need to find that person up to a year later - "just in case" - to question them about your conversations? Because that's more or less what's being proposed here. The only difference is it happens opaquely within the technical systems of ISP's and service providers where it isn't as apparent to the general public.

It gets even worse if you presume the information will be stored by private contractors, who will inevitably be victims of data breaches, and will be sitting on a vast new trove of records subject to civil discovery, etc.

> The SAAIA ... establishes new requirements for communications providers to actively work with law enforcement on their surveillance and monitoring capabilities .... The bill introduces a new term – “electronic service provider” – that is presumably designed to extend beyond telecom and Internet providers by scoping in Internet platforms (Google, Meta, etc.).

As the article points out, jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of Canada has taken a dim view of warrantless disclosure of personal information. What precisely is insufficient in regard to existing investigative powers of law enforcement and their prerogative to pursue conventional warrants? Why do they need to deputize the platforms who you've (in many people's cases) entrusted with your most personal data?

To be frank, this is the sort of network I would expect in an authoritarian country, not here. The potential for abuse is too high, the civil protections too flimsy, and the benefits purported don't even come close to outweighing the risks introduced to our maintaining a healthy, functioning democracy.

I think it's a preparation for wildly unpopular measures in the next ~10 years. There will be dissent, and they need a way to catch dissidents at scale.

Maybe there need to be some adjustments but we also have to acknowledge that the world has evolved and there have to be some response to that.

In the "old days" when all we had is telephone law enforcement could wiretap your phone with a warrant. As I understand it with an order from a judge your phone could be tapped or your mail could be read. You wouldn't (obviously) be served that warrant or even be aware of it. This was part of a few existing laws/acts. I.e. that's the status quo. If we were a surveillance state back then, we'll be that again.

The other difference from the "old days" is that some of the communication companies are global and not Canadian. I.e. your encrypted conversations go perhaps [to] a Meta data-center in California.

If we remove the ability of law enforcement to monitor and access evidence of criminal activity with a warrant from a judge we are increasing the ability of criminal organizations to operate and coordinate. That is the balance here.

It is true there are other important differences. E.g. the amount of information, its persistence, the ability of hackers and other actors to potentially access it. This isn't easy. But doing nothing is also not great?

I'm also Canadian and I have to admit I haven't been following the details here. It's hard to separate signal from noise and it seems everyone cries wolf all the time over everything. I will read it in more detail and try to form an opinion.

I believe that this is actually a good thing because when the government is infringing on the rights it is what brings resistance to life.

If you really think about it, if the government can collect the data that means some entity is ALREADY collecting that data which more often than not goes to advertisers.

Another benefit is that it creates real use-cases for things such as I2P, (god forbid) crypto currency and matrix. I know crypto can be a hot topic and lacking in terms of true decoupling from the government these days, but coins like TRX have been great at this especially in china where yuan is an extremely controlled currency. Although it seems that most of the usage is in illegal activities rather than liberty or/and activist reasons.

And lastly, if the government can't get their hands on the data neither can the hackers and state sponsored entities.

You’re saying that it’s a good thing that the government is infringing on people’s rights because it might motivate activists to convince them to stop doing so?

It's more accurate to say that it gives legitimacy to using things that government has limited to no control over.

The people proposing these kinds of infringements on civil liberties need to start being criminally tried for treason. Not just in this case, or this country, or this hemisphere.

From browsing through the linked text of the bill, this sounds reasonable and in line with the lawful access to records granted to the security services in other western democracies, so that they can fulfil their duties.

Without diving into hyperbole and far-fetched dystopic speculation, what exactly is the problem?

Government overreach isn't far-fetched dystopic speculation and privacy is important to freedom.

But did you read the bill? The meat of it is the police want to be able to ask a carrier if they have any information on you at all and the carrier has to answer a yes or no and if it’s a yes, then the police can go to a judge and ask for a warrant.. right now the carrier doesn’t have to answer at all so it’s difficult for the police to do their job at all because they have to get the judge to sign off for every carrier just to find out if that carrier even has any information.

Wrt politicians trying to enact privacy-destroying laws in a permanent Ralph Wiggum loop - how about creating an agent monitoring incoming proposals and immediately spamming representatives and opposition the moment anything shows up?

I have a feeling that a large of portion of Meta's revenue lies with helping mass surveillance efforts in the West. Is it in their financials?

all these governments that supposedly prided themselves on their freedoms and fair processes are somehow becoming prisons to their own citizens

Seriously, and more than that, "by the people and for the people" are increasingly becoming hollow words contrasted with the reality of daily life. Corruption is increasingly rampant, and it's "rules for thee but not for me" everywhere you look (where thee are normal citizens, and me is corporations and government).

They don't pride themselves on those values though. Claims of democracy, tolerance, freedom, and rule of law are selectively used as justifications for whatever crap Western governments want to do. If they actually believed in these things they would act differently.

They're right to do that: they filled their country with criminals and gave them citizenship. The natural next step is to make them prisons.

How can I not be flippant? I lived in Canada for a large part of my life (30 years-ish, 15 years ago). The bills are introduced, not passed.

Policymakers automatically are assuming that private corporate infrastructure owned by national businesses and/or businesses operating in the country should be made as part of a surveillance apparatus. This is peak ignorance. The US cloud act makes this assumption without explicitly claiming such.

And I think here lies the opportunity for challenging this in court.

Seems the entire west is getting ready for the AI police state dystopia

Never vote for the politicians that even remotely support this.

Nobody who needs to see this will see it, unfortunately, but as a (woefully incomplete) bar: if you're an american who wasn't aware of the “not withstanding clause”, and its use, in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you have no business talking about this bill.

Worth mentioning that Canadian PM Mark Carney is the ex-head of the Bank of England and has a long list of pro-uk/globalist affiliations. Given the globalist aligned states and territories are the most on-board in progressing mass surveillance currently, it's sadly not a surprise.

It isn't as if the non-globalist affiliations are any less interested in this kind of control. This is frankly ad-hominem.

The bill must of course be read in its wider context. The Supreme Court of Canada cases of R v Bykovets [1] and R v Spencer [2] are essential context for interpreting these amendments.

From R v Bykovets, paras 6-8:

[6] I respectfully disagree. This analysis runs counter to this Court’s jurisprudence under s. 8 of the Charter. We have never approached privacy piecemeal, based on police’s stated intention to use the information they gather in only one way. The right against unreasonable search and seizure, like all Charter rights, must receive a broad and purposive interpretation, reflective of its constitutional source. Since Hunter v. Southam Inc., [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145, we have held that s. 8 seeks to prevent breaches of privacy, rather than to condemn or condone breaches based on the state’s ultimate use of that information. Privacy, once breached, cannot be restored.

[7] To that end, our Court has applied a normative standard to reasonable expectations of privacy. We have defined s. 8 in terms of what privacy should be — in a free, democratic, and open society — balancing the individual’s right to be left alone against the community’s insistence on protection. This normative standard demands we take a broad, functional approach to the subject matter of the search and that we focus on its potential to reveal personal or biographical core information (R. v. Marakah, 2017 SCC 59, [2017] 2 S.C.R. 608, at para. 32).

[8] Informational privacy is particularly critical — and particularly challenging. Our jurisprudence recognizes that computers are unique and present privacy risks that differ from s. 8’s traditional objects. Thus, this Court has determined that s. 8 generally prevents police from seizing a computer without a warrant — even though the device itself provides no information without judicial permission to search its contents — because seizing the computer gives the state the means through which to access its content (R. v. Reeves, 2018 SCC 56, [2018] 3 S.C.R. 531, at para. 34). (emphasis mine)

[1] https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/20302/i... [2] https://decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14233/i...

Posted for 2 hours and almost half the takes are pretty unhinged and downvoted.

I'd say this is pretty disappointing that they keep pushing these kinds of mass surveillance laws "just in case".

A preferable alternative is to have the hosts moderate the content they serve that is publicly available. But there are cons to that too - what content should be reported etc.

It is beyond time for a Representation Reconciliation. If the People do not control their destiny then tyranny reigns. There is no debate.

Canadians have no rights that the government can't override, unlike the US where the Constitution grants God-given rights over and above the government. Pierre Trudeau built in a safeguard so that the Canadian government or provinces can override whatever rights they want as they deem fit. They also have the War Measures Act or the Emergencies Act which they've also used to override any rights that Canadians have.

But none of that matters if Canadians just allow politicians to impose laws that strip them of their rights to avoid mass surveillance. Who needs a Charter of Rights if Canadians don't care enough about their rights to protest the government when they try to strip away their rights?

While it's true that Section 33 of the Charter can override other sections, it cannot override _all_ of them; and the Emergencies Act is roughly equivalent in effect to the USA's ability to deploy the National Guard. It allows the Federal Government to deploy our military to handle emergencies when it is apparent that Provincial and local services are unable to handle them.

No. The Emergencies act/War Measures act allows the government to override whatever rights they want. And it's been used twice in history to do exactly that.

What it's supposed to be for is in direct contrast to what it was used for, which is to suspect rights. And that's exactly what was determined later on by the courts that they did infringe on the rights of Canadians.

It really doesn't allow _any_ rights to be overridden. It's rather clear in its scope,[0] and while it's true that our justice system has taken the Government to task when it has exceeded the scope[1] it's not as though this is a regular occurrence or that those harmed by the excess are without legal recourse.

0: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/page-1.html

1: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/trans/bm-mb/other-autre/emerge...

How was Trudeau held accountable besides a small slap on the wrist? And regardless the Notwithstanding clause is more than enough to extinguish anything in the CoR.

This gets at the concept of accountability for those at the top of government. This is an issue in all governments, not just in Canada. A good parallel would be the United States. The list of actions the current administration has taken which have been determined illegal is astounding, yet no one is held accountable in a way that would deter future breaches of the law.

Trudeau became so desperately unpopular that he was compelled to step down.

As for legal responsibility and repercussions, that's a process that is still in motion. The law moves slowly in Canada.

It's not just the Notwithstanding clause. There's a general judicial tradition in Canada of utterly ignoring or dismissing or excusing blatant, objective violations of the constitution itself. Some examples:

1. in Cambie Surgeries Corporation v British Columbia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambie_Surgeries_Corporation_v...), where a private clinic challenged the province's ban on any private care whatsoever for procedures that are provided by the public system on the grounds that if the province bans procedures but then also rations access to those procedures to the point that they're inaccessible for many patients, it constitutes a violation of our charter right to life and equal protection.

It seems they were able to successfully argue that this does constitute a violation of our rights, but the decision says it's okay because it's done with the intent to preserve the equitable access to healthcare for the general public.

2. Employees in union shops are forced to join the union. This is arguably a violation of our right to freedom of association, but the supreme court says that it's okay if it does because "the objective of this violation is to promote industrial peace through the encouragement of free collective bargaining". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rand_formula#Freedom_of_associ...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Comeau, a famous case where a guy bought beer in Quebec and drove it to New Brunswick (for personal consumption) and was fined. His case argued that that's a violation of section 121 of the Canadian Constitution 1867 which states as black and white as can be:

121 All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.

But the Supreme court ruled that it's not enough for provinces to ban goods from entering their province for it to count as a violation, it must be a ban which has no other purpose but to impede interprovincial trade. But that means that this section is completely useless because a justification for protectionism can always be found or made up on an ad-hoc basis.

Basically, Canadians have no rights whatsoever. Our entire legal system doesn't sit on anything fundamental it's all just vibes and arbitrary whims of the justices of the day. Our charter and constitution are so full of explicit holes like the notwithstanding clause, that they're rendered almost meaningless even on their own terms, and then any other violations will be excused on the flimsiest grounds.

#2 - Not sure why you think this is a violation. You join a workplace with a union and gain all the benefits from collective bargaining, so yeah, you should pay for union dues.

You say that I gain all the benefits from collective bargaining but I had no other choice. Maybe I don't even like the contract very much and would have bargained for other things than what the union negotiated for. The union claims to negotiate on my behalf but if they really respected me they would give me the ability to opt out.

Your hypothetical isn't even always the case. When unions form, usually there are employees there that don't want to subject themselves to the union, but are forced to, so they didn't "join a workplace with a union" at all.

Now swap the union for any church of your (dis)liking.

(1) we have reasonable limits on all our rights, thanks to Section 1; this is rooted in our history of Toryism and ensures that the rights of the individual are balanced against the well-being of society. This is contrasted against how the USA puts the rights of the individual before the well-being of society, no matter what the consequences are and have been.

(2) Again, we balance the well-being of society against individual rights. In this case, defending collective bargaining is a reasonable action when considering that there is _plenty_ of other opportunities for work. Don't like unions, don't join one and find work elsewhere.

(3) Per the court ruling, Canada does not have a guarantee of internal _unlimited_ free trade; it only prohibits tariffs on internal trade. Whether or not that is a good thing is hotly debated, and a matter of current policy.

> Our entire legal system doesn't sit on anything fundamental it's all just vibes and arbitrary whims of the justices of the day.

It's Common Law, not Civil; and so it's based on layers of legislation and court proceedings.

In practice, we have plenty of strong protections for our rights, but those protections break down when our behaviour becomes harmful to broader society. Whether or not you think that's a good thing probably indicates where you are on the line between classical liberalism and toryism.

Ya, how's that constitution concept working out for the USA?

The difference between the US and every other country in the world is that in other countries, citizens believe they are given rights by their government, whereas Americans believe their rights are God-given and protect them from their government. The distinction is very different and powerful.

The belief of 'where' your rights come from has very little impact on reality - and in reality, it's the government (those that control the police, military) that grant you any rights whatsoever. The distinction between where your rights come from doesn't matter much when the people in power are willing to trample them either way.

You're wrong. The Constitution is there to limit the government, not the other way around. And Americans are very willing to stand up to defend their rights. Regardless of which way you lean politically everything we have seen in the last year in terms of political activism are people using their God-given rights as Americans.

The constitution isn't some divine sacrament that they'll respect any more than the laws being rewritten in other countries. They'll step over it all the same when the time comes.

I grant you that it is different, but you kind of left totally unaddressed the fact that it is not very powerful at the moment. The US is in far more danger than Canada.

How is it not very powerful? Just because you don't agree with whatever decisions are made doesn't mean that it's not working exactly as designed. The tariffs which are a lynchpin of foreign policy was deemed unconstitutional, which is something you wouldn't expect under a country controlled by the government. The system is working.

I don't think this tariffs are a good example of

> Americans believe their rights are God-given and protect them from their government

As I understand it, the unconstitutionality of tariffs is due to it being considered a tax so cannot be enforced by the executive branch. But there's no right being infringed if the other branches of government would have made them into law, nor is there anything that would stop the executive branch from implementing more restrictive trade barriers.

I actually agree with you that it is working exactly as designed. It is starting wars, separating families, sending citizens to foreign prisons to be tortured, and establishing concentration camps on American soil. The system is working :-(

Yet it's the US that loses its democracy and freedom first, not all the other countries. I guess the distinction isn't powerful enough eh?

Speaking as a Canadian: the general belief up here is that something like freedom of speech is not God-given, but is rather something we have built for ourselves using the mechanisms of civilization. I'm aware this is a long-term debate, philosophically, in America; but most folks I've talked to up here believe that rights are something we carve out of the world through our justice and policing systems, not something pre-existing that we're just recognizing.

Consider what freedom of speech means, in practice: to me, it means "you can say whatever you want, and you will retain all of your other rights, including the right to have police protection from those who would attack you for your words".

It doesn't mean "freedom from consequences" in some magical sense where people won't react to what you say or try to punch you in the face. It does mean you can engage the system to punish them for assault, though, and that you haven't given up those legal protections with your words.

I don't think it really means that you can't be fired / deplatformed over it, either. It's a relationship between you and the government, who agrees that they won't withdraw their other supports from you for your words. It also has exceptions: we've got hate speech laws here, though what most folks don't know is that you have to be posing a pretty credible threat, inciting groups to violence, etc (so you're actually still allowed to say a wide range of things that will anger others).

Now, we can imagine a stronger free speech protection - a second layer on top of the first - that says "you can say whatever you want, and your employer is forbidden from firing you over it" - but that kind of thing hasn't been created yet. I'd support it, personally, but I can see why it's a contentious concept.

So ... does that mean that under a thin veneer of democracy the USA are actually a theocracy like Iran, but christian-affiliated?

That would explain a lot of the recent actions by your current administration.

I don't really think you understand how profound (and incredibly rare) it is to have enshrined into law that every citizen has the right to criticize and protest their government.

It may not always lead to major change, but you have no idea how many people are currently sitting in prison around the world for doing exactly this.

Epistein files were released, trump tariffs overturned...

Pretty decent all things considered

Except that's not really true, is it? It may be the flavour-text of US tradition that the government is protecting your rights rather than bestowing them, but the outcome is the same. Nor is the US government particularly fastidious about protecting them: one need only ask the average person of colour whether they feel equally protected under the law.

It is your Declaration of Independence that recognises inalienable rights endowed by one's creator, not the Constitution, and is thus legally unenforceable. We know this because none of the rights enshrined in the Constitution are actually inalienable. For example: the First Amendment says that Congress can make no law prohibiting the right to peacefully assemble... but then how does federal incarceration work? The US has one of the largest mass-surveillance apparatuses in the world despite the Fourth Amendment. The President has also attempted to end birthright citizenship via decree, something which your Supreme Court is currently entertaining instead of immediately overturning as patently unconstitutional.

There's a common refrain that rights do not exist without remedies. Whether rights are given by one's deity or by one's government is immaterial: if you cannot remedy a violation of a right, that right does not exist. While I can certainly agree that certain systems do not entrench rights as much as they should (here in the UK, all our rights persist at the whims of a simple majority), words on a page matter less than access to remedies.

Any president can go insane and go against the country’s principles. Nobody is perfectly safe from that. The issue with the constitution and declaration is intellectual: it takes centuries to completely override them. And when the president does go insane, you have the whole intellectual apparatus working against him. It is something, not just a nonexistent “remedy.”

> it takes centuries to completely override them.

To completely override them? Sure, but that's an odd criterion since one of the US's biggest issues is the unequal protection of rights. I have never seen a society so rhetorically obsessed with individual rights and freedoms, and yet so submissive to authoritarianism that failure to "just comply" is enough to justify summary execution in the streets (eg: Alex Pretti and Renée Good).

Again, this post is about Canada attempting to pass a bill to facilitate mass surveillance, which "freediddy" (yikes name btw) responded to by expounding upon the loftiness of American constitutional rights, as if America is not one of the most extreme mass surveillance states. It's as if Canada's attempt to pass the bill is more offensive than the mass surveillance itself, ie, it's just virtue theatre.

>unlike the US where the Constitution grants God-given rights over and above the government.

Why don't you ask the folks in towns riddled with ICE agents how well those god-given rights are being respected. Your main point stands about infringement of freedoms and privacy, but your interpretation, or hallucination that anywhere is actually abiding by their founding principals is wildly naive.

The government will always override it's citizens rights and freedoms if it has it's power challenged. 2nd amendment collapsed in California when Black Panthers decided arming themselves was a great way to push back on kkkops. 1st and 14th amendment rights get trampled and attacked at just about any protest in history.

You can talk about ideals until your blue in the face but governments have always done whatever they want and almost never face repercussion. Anything that challenges the government keeping us in place as servants of capital is met with violence and incarceration. Any social progress comes at the cost of innocent blood being spilled to make the situation distasteful enough that the government minimally acquiesces as it keeps marching down the same path it always has.

> the Constitution grants God-given rights over and above the government.

Which are they: God-given or granted by the constitution? No-one in any country has rights that cannot be taken away.

I'm not sure why you are holding the US as a shining example here. There has been a long history of warrantless searches everyone knows about.

And why are you making false claims about the Canadian constitution? You can easily check that the scope of the notwithstanding clause is limited.

There isn't the political will to remove the organized criminals who have been running Canada for decades, since the 1960s if not longer. Most people don't see how dire the circumstances are and even if they feel the country is on the wrong path they continue to believe that voting for the other guy can fix it. Same for Australia and New Zealand.

There is some hope in the British Isles. To anyone reading this who can see that simply electing this party or that party changes nothing: Take a good look at what Restore Britain is doing there, and consider supporting if you're in a position to do so. Nothing is easy, but they are drawing together more people who understand what it really means to say "no" to this system than I've ever seen organize anywhere else.

Reading what Restore Britain stands for just makes them seem like another set of MAGA wannabes rather than the saviours of the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restore_Britain

You only need to look at the US to see that a government dedicated to mass deportation is more authoritarian and worse for civil liberties.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “organized criminals”? I hope you’re not poisoning the well!

I ask this as someone who has no love or support for the Liberals.

Even leaving aside the unsavory views of the party you mention, it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.

This defeatist attitude causes the situation we’re in.

Voting against someone rather than for someone is a sure-fire way to get some of the worst politicians in power as possible, they only need to be marginally less bad than the other candidate after all.

Restore Britain is a populist joke btw. Greens might be my side of the fence but they’re also populist. Hard to get air time as a small party without some form of sweeping emotional appeals and “common sense” thinking, even if it’s internally inconsistent and very broad.

Have you realised those in power right now are against you? And it seems to work very well for them.

No, I live in Sweden where coalition governments are pretty common and people tend to vote for the party they agree with.

Same is true in the EU elections, since their system is more democratic than the UK one.

I’m intimately familiar with the shortcomings of the election system in the UK as I am British, but I’ve experienced other formulations and I can see that this line of thinking enables the abuse you claim to be dispelling by allowing it to continue..?

> it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.

I wish.

Brexit was pretty unthinkable even just a few years before the referendum. And now… well, toss-up between the top 5(!) parties, because somehow the Greens and Lib Dems are polling at similar levels to Conservative and Labour, all a bit behind Reform who didn't exist a few years back.

And when bad times come, insular nationalism (both in the sense of xenophobia and autarky) poll well.

The world-wide bad-times storm is getting super-charged right now, though I can't tell how much this is malice vs. incompetence from the White House.

You can’t seriously be suggesting that a political party that most Brits haven’t even heard of has any chance of winning the next election.

"an election" (what you wrote first time) != "the next election" (what you write now).

Next-but-one, perhaps. Although even for the next one, everyone's so weak I'd only put mild odds against them.

I don't want them to win ever*, but failing to plan is planning to fail, and there's big money getting involved here, and the UK political system still hasn't caught up with the impact of social networks and foreign influence through them at all.

And one of those social networks is run by someone who sees no problem calling for civil war in the UK, though he's currently supporting one of the other "I wish it was a joke party" parties.

* Although I can also say that about Reform, where, if I still lived in the UK, if my options were them or the actual literal Monster Raving Loony Party, I'd pick the latter. Then again, that doesn't say much as I'd pick the Monster Raving Loony Party over the Conservatives, too.

I think it goes without saying that things can change unexpectedly in the longer run, but this party simply isn’t a factor in national politics at present.

Look to America to see what would happen to civil liberty in the pursuit of mass deportations. Discounting many things from the conversation - on the topic of this thread; Restore sounds like they'd be the single worst party to vote for if you were against mass surveillance.

crazy that we as Canadians get mass surveillance before venmo, robinhood, or any number of good financial tech that the government has been safeguarding to protect the monopoly that our banks have

What is the benefit of something like Venmo over Interac e-Transfer? And everything about Robinhood seems sketchy enough that I am comfortable keeping them firmly south of the border.

Imagine what this could be used for when a fascist/communist/genocidal maniac gets elected and make full use of such data to single out groups of people for persecution.

Mere proposals of such a thing should be illegal and people engaged in development imprisoned and banned from holding public office.

+1, democracies really need to start establishing some serious red lines that are not to be crossed. Mass surveillance of citizens by any means (including purchasing it from corporations or obtaining it from other governments). Corporations should not have the rights of citizens, monopolies should be dismantled, and politicians should be able to be ejected and tried for crimes when they're committing them in office (qualified immunity should not only not be an excuse - but we should hold anyone working for the government to a HIGHER STANDARD, not a lower one!). As a start!

You mean when Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of protesters? It's not even something you have to imagine, it already happened in Canada.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/c22/index.html

The ‘meta-data’ seems to be run off the mill things that telcos and isps already collect. I’m not seeing the tyranny of the police being able to ask bell if this number they have is a customer of theirs so they can ask a judge to get the list of people buddy called.

After the Epstein case these lawmaking thugs should be the ones to be put on surveillance cameras 24/7, even when they defecate; as we can see they have no problem to excrete similar stuff from their mouths with these anti-civilian laws.

Here you think Canada would be opposing the USA - then suddenly you realise how suspiciously the laws are all the same. This here is not the age verification sniffer, of course, but it falls into a very similar problem domain. Governments increasingly have an addiction to sniff after everyone, without a reasonable suspicion. Everyone is now suspicious to a government. And private companies profit.

I often wonder these days. When I refuse all this madness, just stick with Linux, put my kids on Linux. Use VPNs that obscure all my traffic, throw key parties (read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother from some suggestions). What are they going to do? Refuse me access? To what then? What if I find a way? What if I work around the madness?

Will they fine me? Drag me to jail?

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will treat my device as part of me. You shall not pass my firewalls, you don't have my permission. I use my devices to think, my thoughts are my own.

So no need to beat around the bush like other countries and bring the kids and age of verification as a justification, just straight up mass surveillance and call it a day.. the only time the Canadian government is being efficient and direct without the bureaucratic BS is when a mass surveillance is implemented, bravo!

this just legalizes what's alrsady happening.

Correct.

The "just" is underplaying how invidious this is.

Why are things getting worse and not better

Because everyone's head is stuck in their phone, doom scrolling.

It's sad I think we need complete control of "mainstream" internet because most people just scroll TikTok and believe whatever filter bubble they are in, and will vote thereafter.

The majority of people have intellectually regressed into sheep.

the infrastructure outlasts whoever is in office. that's the part that doesn't get repealed.

the false premise is is that totalitairianism can be written into the fine print and then managed for the better good by corrupt political, and legal entities. As noted in the article, the SAME people are reintroducing legislation that was so blatantly unconstuitional that they withdrew it, NOT that they couldn't get it enacted, but because they would have to then have to procede with full on terror policeing to maintain there grip on power, which as we all know has proven to be unworkable in the recent tests such as in Minnisota or the continueing blowback from the truckers occupation of Ottawa, and suspension of due process, there. Here in Canada the "spring sweep" by the RCMP, deploying a moving wave of police actions is underway, and they are all hungry for more POWER. All in the service of an over riding need for subserviant labour. I know of endless cases of abuse and have seen the actual police, fucking CISIS files, myself, from back in the day when there online system was essentialy wide open, and there only real issue, is not aquiring data, but deploying it in some way that does not result in the full nightmare of killing fields and concentration camps, for which these fucking assholes dont realise, there is no middle ground, and will go ahead with monitising something along the lines of Stallin Light™, in yet one more example of tedious , hubristic nialistic turds marching forward to create the perfect society. fuck them, as "think shield" pops up on my screen,doing it's unbidden, unremovable, changes to my phone, illustrating perfectly that the government is realy concerned with bieng cut out of the institutionalisation of everything, at least for the poor.

should have kept the internet open and free, govts and big business trying to control people is a missed opportunity for catching stupid people blabbing all their plans online. now the stupid people are going to think twice before sharing online.

Have to wonder whether Jordan Peterson will incite as much of a panic about this as he did with C-16.

And the preparation for the arrival of the fascist governments continues.

Is all this nonsense being pushed everywhere now because everyone's eyes are on the war?

It’s being pushed all the time

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/03/a-tale-of-two-bills-lawf...

Thanks! I've moved that link to the top and put https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-22/first-r... in the top text.

I am OK with this.

Thanks he has been consistently awesome on the topic!

Geist's headline is

"A Tale of Two Bills: Lawful Access Returns With Changes to Warrantless Access But Dangerous Backdoor Surveillance Risks Remain"

not

"Canada's bill C-22 mandates mass metadata surveillance of Canadians (michaelgeist.ca)"

Can you change the title? It's far more inflammatory than the content, and people here are reacting solely to it.

Yes, sorry I didn't get to this when the article was on the front page. The problem is that HN's title limit is 80 chars and it's not obvious how to shorten that one.

I've taken a crack at it now.

I'm somewhat concerned with the level of discourse in these comments; there's frankly a _lot_ of, well, ignorant americans talking about the civics of a country they clearly know nothing about. Would there be any chance of having a short note in the top text to the effect of “please keep in mind when you comment that you're discussing a foreign country that, in spite of the cultural similarity, does not work the same way as the US does.”?

Perhaps it's too late for this particular submission, but something to keep in mind in the future.

> ignorant americans

You're crossing into nationalistic flamebait if not an outright slur with that. This is not ok on HN, regardless of nationality, so please don't.

Low-quality comments (especially generic tangents) are always a problem in threads on controversial topics. Trying to address that is one of the core moderation tasks on HN, and we're quite dedicated to it. But the question needs to be framed without putting down groups of others.

I greatly admire your work on hn, but I have to express some skepticism that hn has the background necessary to effectively moderate a contentious discussion about another country's systems.

Specifically, I feel like the cultural similarities has bred a sense of familiarity that leads to unjustified confidence in making and judging claims. My sense is that the US is much more legalistic/formal in its approach to governance, with very few (if prominent) aspects of “binding social contract”. Likewise, the political discourse is different, and the intrusion of “American-style politics” is discussed widely as something that needs to be stamped out.

The current top comment is making a “point” that is predicated on a misunderstanding of how laws are actually applied in Canada; the vast majority of the replies to that comment are discussing the point without any reference to that, with one or two replies down near the bottom trying to educate (below a comment repeating a separatist/right-wing “canada is broken” talking point!).

Again, I'm not claiming that you're not making a good-faith effort to moderate; I'm not questioning your dedication, I just don't think hn is equipped to have nuanced discussions about contentious topics centered on other countries, and the moderation policy should reflect that.

It's impossible for a large public forum to have nuanced, correct, cogent comments on any topic, let alone contentious ones. All internet dynamics point against that. We're just trying to muddle through and stave off death for a little longer (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Even that modest, melancholy goal consumes all the time and energy we have, so the bar can't go much higher—at least not very quickly.

This isn't just a problem of other people being wrong and ignorant. It has to do with human nature, which applies to all of us. If you consider a little bit what led you to post a nationalistic swipe when you felt frustrated, that should be clear enough. We're all on the path of slowly learning not to react this way, but the solution needs also to be a self thing and not just an other thing.

By the way, it's not uncommon for people arguing about Canadian topics to both be Canadian and both be misinterpreting the other as a foreigner/outsider/other. (I say Canada because that was the topic here. It applies to other populations as well of course.) Such misunderstandings are excruciating and I sometimes wish I could step in and point this out, but we'd never out people like that. (Not a comment on the current thread; I didn't check.)

I don't disagree, and I'm content to drop it, but I do want to repeat because I feel it might have been lost that my suggestion was “having a short note in the top text”, similar to what sometimes happens on other contentious political posts.

Cheers.

Is this one also the work of Meta?

You forgot to add /s!

As a foreigner, It would be near impossible for one company to ask every govt in that world to make this happen (with current political weather conditions).

HN people will always find someway to connect this to their most hated companies (be it Meta, Google, Microsoft)

That might be because the biggest tech companies have the most skin in the game where legislation is concerned. Money and lobbying is essential if you want the market share and the market hold that they have. Doesn’t matter their political stance towards the US anymore when they companies are willing to compromise and host data centers within any govt’s jurisidction.

Meta is definitely lobbying in Canada, I don't know why you think this is so far fetched.

Near impossible? No, meta is frequently making themselves part of conversation on various regulations in the country.

https://tboteproject.com/

https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings

https://web.archive.org/web/20260314094348/https://tboteproj...

Why do you say that, did Meta sponsor similar legislation in another country? It doesn't seem like they have strong incentives to push for this. How does it make them more money?

If by similiar you mean more spying then yes.

https://wicks.asmdc.org/press-releases/20250909-google-meta-...

Yes. You can start here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...

"Meta is heavily lobbying for Linux age verification" is true but incomplete. So far as I can tell, in the case of them lobbying for age verification, they're trying to get ahead of public sentiment souring on them and wanting age verification and/or social media bans. Your own source admits that they're specifically pushing for bills that require verification by the OS itself, which conveniently offloads the burden off of them. It also pokes a hole in the (presumed) conspiracy theory, which is that meta is lobbying for the bill so they have an excuse to collect even more info on its users. However, if the verification is done by the OS, it won't have that info.

Why don't they lobby against it altogether if the don't like being responsible?

This is more in line with GamersNexus Community Channel as far as a putting the word out. He is more into this than Linus is IMHO.

It's not just me thinking this. I do want more data on this though. It is in their financial statements in terms of a revenue source?

Ah, really glad that we are keeping up with the fashion. /s

I expect we will see more and more of these things and people agreeing to them with the world plunged into more chaos.

C=3, so it's bill 322, Skull & Bones.

Just sayin'.

The future is self hosted encrypted invite only networks of trusted individuals.

I don't actually see a problem with this bill. Law enforcement should have access to as many tools as possible to improve their solve rates. In Canada, the police can walk you to the shipping containers confirmed to contain your stolen vehicle, but do not "have the authority to open the containers." [0] I am all for expanding the authority of law enforcement if it means justice is served and people get their (for example) stolen vehicles, wallets, bank accounts, etc. back.

Everyone in opposition of this bill simply has something to hide and is afraid that perfectly lawful legislation such as this will expose their criminal activity.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-man-finds-stolen-truc...

In East Germany typewriters were fingerprinted so police knew exactly who to look for.

Just solving crimes.

Imagine people you disagree with, politically and ideologically, have come into power and they intend to abuse this new capability to harm you directly. That’s where you should want to draw the line at government restraint. Expect abuse and ill will, and you’ll see where the boundaries ought to be. Even if you agree with those in power now, expect power to shift and define potential for harm on that basis.

> Imagine people you disagree with, politically and ideologically, have come into power and they intend to abuse this new capability to harm you directly.

I don't need to imagine, it's already the case; Toronto is a neo-Stasi city. I am simply asking that these capabilities now be applied fairly, across the whole populace, and not just towards people those in power disagree with. Torontonians demonstrate they will sacrifice freedom for safety, and now should obtain neither.

Privacy and rule of law are illusions. On a national level, the invocation of the Emergencies Act to squash the trucker convoy protesters (those deplorables) was recently found "unreasonable:"

> While the extraordinary powers granted to the federal government through the Emergencies Act may be necessary in some extreme circumstances, they also can threaten the rule of law and our democracy

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/convoy-protest-emergencies-...

I can only imagine the delays and damage that police officers opening random shipping containers without a warrant would if it became normalised. Saying "it's definitely one of those" is a rather big claim for someone who hasn't experienced the extreme unreliability of GPS and other radio systems on container yards. I feel bad for the yard personnel needing to re-sealing (and convince the shipping container owner that the seal was broken for a good reason) every single container in that GPS dead zone because there's an air tag beeping somewhere.

The story ends with the police indicating that they do actually have the power to retrieve the car, the officers just didn't want to use their powers in that case.

Nothing in your anecdote would go any differently with these new powers. The police officers refusing to take timely action would still refuse to take action, but now they also know the kind of porn you like. Good for them, I suppose?

I can make sweeping generalizations and baseless accusations too. Everyone in support of this bill is a filthy pervert with a voyeuristic relationship with their government, wishing to push their weirdness onto the rest of the population.

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