[EmbarrassedHelp]

Its far worse than the Patriot Act.

Its legislation that attempts to weaken and break encryption so that law enforcement and others can access encrypted communications. It also seeks to require mandatory suspicionless metadata for all online services.

The legislation was explicitly written to target both telecom companies and every online service.

Citizen Lab has a good writeup on the legislation here: https://citizenlab.ca/research/analysis-of-proposed-surveill...

[beloch]

The collection of metadata is almost certainly bad for people even if they do nothing wrong. It can (and will) be sold if regulations and enforcement are not airtight. It will almost certainly be leaked as a result of incompetence, negligence, or outright criminality. The only way to prevent your metadata from getting out into the great unknown is to ensure it isn't collected in the first place.

If you don't see what the big deal is, I suggest you consider the recent leak of voter data in Alberta. For those unfamiliar, a list of eligible voters is routinely shared with political parties for the purposes of running their election campaigns. One of those parties, the "Republican Party of Alberta", shared their copy of the list with separatists, who made it freely available to any of their pals. What's the big deal you ask? Who cares if their address is public knowledge? Isn't this the sort of thing that used to be in phonebooks? Just for one example, anyone who has moved away from an abusive ex now has to worry about their address, phone number, etc. being made available to that abusive ex. Privacy isn't just important for people who like wearing pants.

C-22 is supposed to protect Canadians but, instead, it endangers them. This is a bad bill.