Google warns Canadian internet bill would lead to ‘surveillance infrastructure’
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Google recently criticized Liberals’ Bill C-22, which mandates that internet companies include surveillance capabilities in their systems, saying that it would harm ‘global user privacy.’
(LifeSiteNews) — Tech giants Google and Apple have warned that a “dystopian” Canadian Liberal internet censorship bill, which would demand that people’s data be kept for potential police review, would lead to a “surveillance infrastructure.”
Speaking before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security about Bill C-22, or “An Act respecting lawful access,” representatives from Google and Apple demanded that Canadian MPs add protections for encrypted content.
“Secret orders are out of step with other democratic countries and would severely restrict companies’ ability to be transparent with users about how their data is protected,” Jeanette Patell, Google Canada’s director for government affairs and public policy, told MPs recently.
Google, in a brief it had submitted to the committee, warned that Bill C-22 allows for a “surveillance infrastructure,” as it gives Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree, bold new powers.
According to Google, this bill would allow for backdoors that would lead to “systemic vulnerability.”
“Without a stronger definition of ‘systemic vulnerability,’ the law could be used to decrease overall user security by creating backdoors that would break end-to-end encryption and create significant cybersecurity risks, facilitating foreign interference and weakening global user privacy,” said Google in its brief.
Google claimed that it has “never built a backdoor or other mechanism to circumvent end-to-end encryption in our products. If we say a product is end-to-end encrypted, it is end-to-end encrypted.”
Bill C-22, known as “An Act respecting lawful access,” was recently introduced by Anandasangare, purportedly to address privacy concerns related to another bill, Bill C-2, which would have permitted police and government officials to open and examine Canadians’ personal mail and would also have banned cash donations over $10,000.
The bill mandates that telecom and internet companies ensure that their systems include surveillance and monitoring capabilities, which could be shared with police and intelligence agencies.
When it comes to Apple, its senior director for user privacy and child safety, Erik Neuenschwander, told the committee his take on whether or not the company would leave Canada should Bill C-22 become law.