home | list info | list archive | date index | thread index

Re: Bill C-2 and Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act

  • Subject: Re: Bill C-2 and Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act
  • From: Nash JC - NCF <nashjc [ at ] ncf [ dot ] ca>
  • Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2025 13:13:54 -0400
I "signed" the openmedia version of a similar petition and had 2 responses from Bruce Fanjoy.
He trotted out the party line about "need to counter criminals" etc. and that only
authorized law enforcement would be allowed to use the measures. Between the lines,
I got the sense of a newby back-bencher not very comfortable with C-2. Never got 2
responses before, and seemingly less than fully on board.

For myself, I'm NOT opposed to appropriate parts of government having powers to
investigate fully, and I don't think we have people doing enough at the moment,
but I do want to see good safeguards in place, with truly independent
oversight and serious consequences for mis-use of powers. C2 doesn't get close.

I would also not be surprised that the people behind wanting these powers won't
be chasing most of the scammers and the internet data combers etc., but looking for "reds
under the beds" or whatever they perceive as the latest fashion in democratic dissent.

If you are hard-core for proprietary software, are Linux users a surveillance target?

JN

On 2025-07-27 11:43, John Brooks via linux wrote:
I have been made aware of an ourcommons petition on this topic: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details? Petition=e-6627

Thanks
John

On 2025-06-06 11:38, John Brooks via linux wrote:

Tucked away in Bill C-2 <https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-2> is Part 15, which enacts the "Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act". I uploaded the text here for easy reading. http://www.fastquake.com/files/ supporting-authorized-access-to-information-act.pdf

This act allows the Minister of Public Safety to secretly(!) order any electronic service provider (extremely broadly defined — any service that involves computers or digital data in any way) to implement, among other things:

the development, implementation, assessment, testing and maintenance of operational and technical capabilities, including capabilities related to extracting and organizing information that is authorized to be accessed and to providing access to such information to authorized persons

the installation, use, operation, management, assessment, testing and maintenance of any device, equipment or other thing that may enable an authorized person to access information

Or for the Governor in Council to create regulations to publicly require a class of such services to do the same.

This is a pretty concerning expansion of government surveillance power. I am not at all confident that existing restraints (some of which are weakened by other parts of Bill C-2) are enough to prevent this from being misused. And implementing any kind of soft backdoor increases the attack surface — increasing the number of ways that private data is stored and processed internally — adding yet another way for your data to be compromised.

If you are concerned about this, I encourage you to tell your Member of Parliament.

- John



To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org
To get help send a blank message to linux+help [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org
To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org