Bill C-22 has become a political hot potato in Canada. It would allow police and CSIS access to information from telecommunications companies and internet providers. Is this a good or bad thing? To find out, we speak to Richard Fadden, the former Director of CSIS and a former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and a Deputy Minister at many departments over the years.
00:01:45.620It's an attempt to say that police are able to access data, information about you that may come from an electronic service provider,
00:01:54.580a telecom company, an internet provider, an app that you use online. Is this a violation of your
00:02:02.220privacy? Quite possibly. Is it legitimate? Again, quite possibly. To get the pro side on why this
00:02:11.340legislation is needed, we're going to speak to Richard Fadden. He is the former director of
00:02:16.280CSIS, a former national security advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and to Prime Minister
00:02:22.340Justin Trudeau and a deputy minister at many departments over the years, and someone who
00:02:27.060understands what the government is trying to accomplish and supports it. We reached him in
00:02:32.640Ottawa. So let me start with asking you, what is the reason for Bill C-22? We started with Bill C-2.
00:02:43.280That went away quickly. The government decided that they would put that on pause and they said,
00:02:49.100okay, we got this wrong, let's redo it.
00:02:52.180But what is the basis for why law enforcement and national security says we need Bill C-22?
00:03:00.760I think at its very essence, it's based on the fact that both law enforcement and CSIS have to deal with increasingly sophisticated adversaries,
00:03:14.060state, non-state, criminal groups. They are in many ways very difficult to find. They're very
00:03:21.480difficult to get a latch on to. And with the increase in technology across the board, one of
00:03:29.160the things that they need, I think, to help them identify and get a hand on people is if they have
00:03:36.440reasonable grounds to suspect. And that's a very, very essential first part of all this.
00:03:41.460You can't just get up in the morning, whether you're police or CSIS, and decide that Dick Fadden or Brian Lilly are going to be the object of an investigation.
00:03:50.140You have to have reasonable grounds to suspect that a crime has been committed or that it falls within CSIS's mandate.
00:03:57.260You want to figure out more information.
00:04:01.120So basically, CSIS and the law enforcement crew want to be able to ask telecommunications and internet providers whether Andre Proulx, for example, who's reasonable grounds to suspect is a reprobate, uses that particular provider.
00:04:20.620Once they know that provider has a client, they can then go to the courts and ask for a production order asking for all sorts of information.
00:04:29.940It may seem simple, but if you think about the number of telecommunications and internet providers that are available to people, being able to narrow down as quickly as you can who is providing the service to enable a court order request is very, very helpful.
00:04:48.480but does this go beyond what we currently have in terms of you know going before a judge asking
00:04:58.200for a warrant um does it lessen the protections that are currently there um you know my understanding
00:05:07.280is that uh um it drops it down to reasonable suspicion um it is that lessening the protections
00:05:16.860that are there for individual citizens?
00:05:44.860particularly when both law enforcement and CSIS have a whole range of protections built into their systems already.
00:05:52.980So technically, yes, it means the judge doesn't have to bless this initially.
00:05:56.640I personally don't believe that's a material assault on an individual's privacy.
00:06:02.260So, finding out that I am, you know, having a conversation with you online via Signal or WhatsApp or, you know, whatever encrypted technology is there, you know, the police being able to access that, that's not a violation of my privacy?
00:06:26.440yeah it is i agree it is we could do it before with a judge now the only difference is you don't
00:06:32.920have to go to a judge you still have to have reasonable suspicions that a crime has been
00:06:37.480committed or that you're falling within ceases ambit of investigation i don't think given the
00:06:43.020environment and i think this you know a lot of people you know privacy organizations people
00:06:48.700worry about the charter i think raise entirely legitimate issues but on the other hand you have
00:06:54.280increasingly sophisticated adversaries who can hide very effectively from law enforcement and
00:06:59.600CSIS, this is just one small way of giving them a bit of an advantage in dealing with all these
00:07:05.380adversaries. If there is a reduction in privacy, and I think there is, I think it's microscopic,
00:07:11.520I think on balance, it's sufficient support to law enforcement and national security to be warranted.
00:07:17.440So is it more of a national security issue? Is it more of a crime issue?
00:07:22.320What crime, what violation of the law is this trying to solve that doesn't already exist in terms of what police and investigators are able to accomplish?
00:07:42.100What can't they do now that this law is trying to fix?
00:07:45.120What it enables them to do at one level
00:07:48.440Is to, on the basis of their own internal procedures
00:07:51.280And police and CSIS would have different procedures
00:07:53.860They can request, they can demand from a telecommunications company
00:10:57.440I come back to the view, and this may be my professional malformation in national security, that privacy and national security has to be balanced.
00:11:06.800Both are important. I think this bill sets out a standard that's entirely reasonable, since the core objective is to enable law enforcement and CSIS to protect you and I and Canadians generally.
00:11:18.600i think aside from the fact that this bill provides for a variety of protections court
00:11:26.160orders the intelligence commissioner has to do a variety of things we have the full panoply of
00:11:31.360review i call it the fog of review in canada you know you have parliamentarians the court the
00:11:36.900minister the intelligence commissioner all of these people are going to be monitoring what
00:11:42.120thesis in particular is doing in this in this area so i think the increased risk to individuals
00:11:48.400is not material i appreciate people some people feel otherwise i just would not agree
00:11:53.360i i mean we are all online we all live our lives online and to a degree i think a lot of us just
00:12:04.180assume that well the companies and the government already have all of this information yeah is it
00:12:11.240difficult, though, for law enforcement to get this information currently?
00:12:17.860Well, it is. They could ask. I mean, one of the things another part of this bill does is it
00:12:23.020confirms in law that CSIS and law enforcement can ask these companies to provide the information.
00:12:29.980It was actually, in some doubt, given a Supreme Court ruling. So it's not confirmed they could
00:12:33.980ask for this information. It goes one step further. But to your broader point, you know,
00:12:39.880I don't think today we all have as much privacy as we think we do. And I sometimes think the
00:12:46.280private sector is a greater threat to our privacy than the government is, because the government
00:12:50.680has a whole raft of protections written into the way they access this kind of information,
00:12:57.760rather less so from the private sector side. So from my perspective, I tend to assume that
00:13:04.500any privacy that I have is always at risk. I think in this day and age, if you don't make
00:13:09.340that assumption, you're probably putting yourself as an individual at risk.
00:13:15.600Let's back out for a moment and talk about what are the main crimes that we're looking to
00:13:22.780deal with here. Is this about human trafficking? Is this about the scammers that are constantly
00:13:30.160going around trying to get you to hand over your credit card information? Is this organized crime?
00:13:36.820what are they trying to accomplish here? Well, I think there are two sets of answers to your
00:13:42.280question. On the CSIS side, it's crimes relating to national security, you know, sedition,
00:13:48.180terrorism, nuclear proliferation, that sort of thing. Whatever CSIS is authorized to do under
00:13:54.540the CSIS Act, broadly speaking, they're defined fairly precisely in the CSIS Act. It has to fall
00:14:00.620within one of the categories that CSIS is mandated to deal with.
00:14:08.680On the law enforcement side, basically, if I understand the legislation correctly,
00:14:13.520it does not specify which category of crime is to be dealt with.
00:14:17.560It says that if there's a criminal offense set out in the criminal code
00:14:21.840or another statute that creates a criminal offense,
00:14:26.820then the police are authorized to use this legislation.
00:14:29.360So it could be something as terrible as child pornography, as money laundering, or something as mundane as an international criminal group trying to access our bank accounts and everything in the middle.
00:14:44.700The law does not specify in any detail what kind of crimes it's meant to deal with.
00:14:50.180We've seen the, you know, there's been some pushback on this.
00:14:55.860And, you know, when the government still had a minority, they walked away from C2, the original iteration of this.
00:15:03.420Then they brought in C22, still while they had a minority.
00:15:09.060The conservatives are saying, well, we'll help you pass it quickly if you split the bill in two.
00:15:15.340And there's a lot of talk from the tech sector about part one and part two.
00:15:21.020Do you see, you know, how do you view that in terms of, because I think most Canadians are looking at this and saying, I'm not quite sure what part one and part two are.
00:15:33.200I'm not quite sure what the fight is about.
00:15:36.400Do you see a difference between part one and part two the way that the politicians do?
00:15:40.980Well, I think part one basically sets out the regime whereby the police and CSIS is allowed for lawful access. They can ask for, they can demand information. You know, there are details, but that's fundamentally what part one is doing.
00:15:57.340Part two deals with the telecommunications
00:16:42.460Yeah, I don't quite understand what the, from their perspective, what the concern is.
00:16:49.280This particular approach to the law is not unique to Canada.
00:16:52.820I mean, all of our close allies have something similar. They may or may not call it lawful access, but there are means of accessing information, sometimes just the yes or no of whether a service is provided, sometimes a great deal more.
00:17:08.680You know, if Apple is trying to argue that in the United States, the FBI can't gain access to the kind of information we're talking about here, I think they're being disingenuous.
00:17:19.680I mean, the Americans have said that this bill is problematic. They have said that this is a couple of members of Congress have said this is an assault on American companies. But, you know, and, you know, I trust you, Dick. I mean, you know this stuff better than I do. You say that the FBI would be able to access similar information.
00:18:09.440Now, in various countries, sometimes the institution can ask for the information without a court order. In some cases, there is a court order. Procedures vary a great deal between, say, the Five Eyes or NATO. But broadly speaking, our allies have provisions in their legislation that allow for access. I think it varies in respect of the extent to which they can require companies to organize themselves.
00:18:36.120You know, to be honest, I don't remember the details
00:18:38.960I've been out of this life for a while
00:18:40.440But I have difficulty understanding how
00:19:04.000all right uh thanks very much for the time today my pleasure i hope i made a little bit of sense
00:19:11.940it's a complex area to be honest and i think parliament and various organizations are right
00:19:17.800to push it through but i come back to my initial point the adversaries that these organizations
00:19:23.400have to deal with are very sophisticated and i think sometimes we forget how sophisticated they
00:19:28.940are when we look at the tools that our law enforcement and CSIS organizations require.
00:19:35.560When we come back, the opposite view. Why are people opposed to the bill? We'll speak to
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00:23:01.740there is of course a great deal of opposition to bill c-22 including from those who say it goes
00:23:08.800too far in invading your privacy there's a great deal of concern around encryption and end-to-end
00:23:15.420communications that are supposed to be private well to understand that point of view we reached
00:23:21.060out to natalie campbell she is the director of government relations for the internet society
00:23:25.180and we reached her just outside of ottawa at her home so natalie let me start here the
00:23:31.620government initially introduced bill c2 and then faced a lot of pushback they backed off of that
00:23:39.260they brought in bill c22 not that those two names aren't confusing in and of themselves but
00:23:45.420did they they promised that they would listen to critics of c2 and and get things right in your
00:23:52.800view did they that's a really good question and i'll start by saying that i think it's a good
00:23:57.840thing that people are thinking about, how we can make sure people can have safe and secure
00:24:03.080experiences online. And that's part of what the Internet Society works towards. Our mission is
00:24:08.320to connect the unconnected and to make sure we protect the connected. That's one of the reasons
00:24:14.920that we've been following this bill. When it was introduced as C2 as part of a broader border
00:24:20.980security package. We were concerned that the lawful access to data part of that bill had some
00:24:29.120pretty significant threats to the foundation of security online, which is our ability to use
00:24:36.360encryption technologies. So the main threat that was in C2 and that remains in C22 that we're
00:24:44.940concerned about is that it creates powers that would allow the government to order any service
00:24:51.520in Canada to create backdoors to information in order to allow law enforcement to access that
00:25:01.560information for their purposes. Can you expand on what that is? Because I think a lot of people
00:25:08.360aren't quite sure about that. I have a decent understanding of what they're asking from
00:25:14.700talking to various people in tech companies, you know, be it Meta or Google or the different
00:25:21.920telecoms, Rogers and Bell, which everyone in Canada loves to hate them. But yet they're
00:25:27.920going to be required by these laws to do certain things. Explain what you mean by creating back
00:25:34.140doors? Sure. So the, as I said, the law allows for the government to issue secret orders
00:25:43.600that would force services to have to weaken their security to assist law enforcement with
00:25:51.920investigations to get access to certain information. The means that they want to
00:25:58.440be able to force these services to have to comply with could entail having to circumvent or not use
00:26:08.900at all in tools like encryption, which essentially ensure that the things that we share online or the
00:26:16.600communications that we have are only accessible to those who are intended to have access.
00:26:23.500So we do know that, you know, from C2, there was an attempt to kind of make sure that these orders could not create any kind of systemic vulnerability.
00:26:34.360But the problem is that the way systemic vulnerability is defined in C22 doesn't fully protect against some of the ways, some of the orders that companies might get that could, in fact, create systemic vulnerability.
00:26:53.500And I'll give you an example, because we track these kinds of laws all around the world because we know that that's usually where we tend to spot things that could threaten people and companies' abilities to use encryption.
00:27:07.860And we heard a lot of cases where some folks don't think that there should be a technological way to be able to get access to encrypted information just for law enforcement.
00:27:28.080But the fact is that there's no way to provide access to encrypted information in a way that's just for law enforcement.
00:27:36.800So when we talk about encrypted information, we're talking about everything from using WhatsApp to Signal, some of the messaging options offered by Apple because they've been quite outspoken about this.
00:27:52.700Are those the general platforms that we're talking about that people might say, oh, yeah, I use that app.
00:27:58.920What are you talking about in terms of the apps that people are using that might become vulnerable to their private messages or personal data being released to law enforcement without them even knowing and, you know, perhaps without good reason?
00:28:17.140so this these secret orders can be issued to electronic service providers and the way that
00:28:24.980is defined um is and the way the government has described who this would apply to is has to be
00:28:32.660taken in a broader sense possible um and they've said this could apply to businesses online or
00:28:38.060apps um that use secure messaging it could basically apply to anyone it could apply to
00:28:44.100medical services, video conferencing services. My Shopify account. Precisely. And so each and
00:28:52.720every one of these services, if they're offering private messaging, if they are having to secure
00:29:02.200any kind of sensitive data, you can't do that without encryption, because encryption is a
00:29:07.120technology that basically ensures that the things that we do, the websites that we go to,
00:29:13.460the communications that we're sharing if encrypted or the data that we're storing
00:29:17.920in a lot especially those who have those kinds of services that are speaking out against this bill
00:29:24.640encryption is core to their service offering if they're guaranteeing that you know your information
00:29:30.520is going to be protected and only you have access that's because of tools like encryption encryption
00:29:34.900scrambles information whether it's internet traffic or personal communications private
00:29:39.400communications, it scrambles it so that only those with intended access have access. So if I'm
00:29:45.040sending you a message over Signal, for example, I know that that message can only be understood by
00:29:51.960myself and the intended recipient, which would be you, and that even if Signal tried to get access
00:29:58.300to that transmission, all they would see is scrambled gibberish. That is core to their
00:30:04.540service offering. I'm a little surprised by this because Prime Minister Mark Carney was on the
00:30:10.320board of Stripe prior to entering politics. And for folks that don't know Stripe, it is one of the,
00:30:18.000it is the preeminent, I would say, payment transaction provider for online. And they use
00:30:27.720rigorous encryption. They use tokenization. They use all kinds of measures to ensure,
00:30:34.340as you say, that the transaction that you make with me is not picked up by somebody else and
00:30:40.560your payment data isn't stolen. So a company like Stripe that we all rely on to accept payments or
00:30:48.960to make payments is suddenly going to have to build in back doors so that police can see things if
00:30:56.460they want. They're going to have to keep this information for years. I mean, this, you know,
00:31:03.340most of us, I mean, pretty much anyone listening to a podcast, if you're so much of a Luddite that
00:31:10.720you're not ever doing an online transaction, you're probably not listening to a podcast.
00:31:14.700So I feel comfortable in saying those of us involved in this or listening are doing online
00:31:21.080transactions. Are you saying that those are at risk through this legislation?
00:31:26.460I think that those services could be at risk.
00:31:31.960It's not this bill doesn't mandate that backdoors be created.
00:31:35.700It gives the government new powers to be able to issue secret orders that could involve forcing companies to weaken security, to either circumvent encryption or to create backdoors to provide access to information that would otherwise be encrypted.
00:31:55.180So, yes, that could involve a service that is a service that is that is securing the banking industry that could that could involve anyone.
00:32:07.820And, you know, to your point about Stripe and banking services online, I am of a certain age where when I first started using the Internet, online banking was not a thing.
00:32:19.920I've been able to see the Internet's development over the decades and to see an online banking service be created.
00:32:29.420Right. Like this this capability didn't exist when I was younger.
00:32:32.640The only reason that we're able to offer these kinds of service online or do things like online shopping or be able to like store really personal information online is because of technology tools like encryption.
00:32:44.800without it. Like, I can't think of a single bank that would offer this kind of service if they
00:32:51.600weren't able to trust that there were technology tools that allowed them to guarantee that
00:32:57.860customer data and their own private data could be controlled in terms of access, both when it's
00:33:05.100at rest and storage, or when it's being transmitted over the internet. So I don't
00:33:12.160don't think that um you know there's been a lot of broad pushback on c22 because of that
00:33:20.240very threat to encryption um it's not just me sending naughty messages to someone on whatsapp
00:33:27.800or signal it's everything that we do online everything when i think about the way i'm not
00:33:34.660sending naughty messages that's just an example and i'm not judging if you are
00:33:39.680But the way that I think about these things, and I'm a mom of two kids, 11 and 13, I'm hyper aware of the amount of sensitive information that I rely on the Internet to be able to send about my kids, whether it's to their teachers or to health care providers or any range of services that I interact with.
00:34:06.200now email is not the most secure i know yes that's right um but i couldn't imagine um
00:34:17.480feeling comfortable sharing any of that kind of information without the guarantee of encryption
00:34:23.960to give me some amount of control over who has access to that kind of information
00:34:29.680Let me ask you this, though. You raise valid concerns, and I have some sympathy towards your arguments. But to average people care? I mean, we just went through a pandemic a few years ago where the government decided they could control every part of your life, and people said, yes, give me more of that.
00:34:50.740um are you a voice in the wilderness in saying hey look your stuff could be at risk and meanwhile
00:34:58.400you've got people saying well i don't care if the government has everything i've got um what do i
00:35:03.680have to hide or well i thought they had it all anyway so what does it matter what do you say to
00:35:11.060those people yeah it's a really good question i think regardless of what people feel about what
00:35:16.840access their government has, what kind of information their government can have access
00:35:21.900to, I think the question is not what kind of government, what kind of information government
00:35:28.220should have access to, but who else will have access to this? Because there's no backdoor that
00:35:34.740is only ever going to be available to government or law enforcement. A backdoor is available for
00:35:41.520anyone in the world to walk through. And we know that attackers are finding these quicker than
00:35:48.460ever. We're at the start of a new era of cybersecurity where the threats are scarier
00:35:54.300than ever. We've seen how AI tools can not only spot and detect these vulnerabilities,
00:36:01.780you know, it used to be a matter of months, but now they can do so in a matter of minutes
00:36:06.640and then create code to exploit those vulnerabilities.
00:36:10.680That is downright scary because it only takes one slip up,
00:36:15.720one back door for an attacker to get in
00:36:18.540and have access to all kinds of information
00:36:21.820that they could use for nefarious reasons.
00:36:24.700Encryption helps protect us against those attacks.
00:36:29.300And so I have a lot of sympathy for the efforts of law enforcement
00:36:53.360without even being forced to engineer vulnerabilities.
00:36:57.100What scares me is the risk that they're going to have to carry
00:36:59.480if they are forced to carry additional vulnerability.
00:37:03.840um and i think the exposure that it will create for them is is just it's reckless and it's dangerous
00:37:11.300and it's going to hurt it's going to hurt a lot of people so i've spent a lot of time over the
00:37:17.800years dealing with issues i'm going to jump to something completely unrelated but then bring it
00:37:22.500back so bear with me natalie um issues around gun control and people will say well if you're
00:37:29.740going to have guns, then everyone should keep their guns at the gun range. And no one should
00:37:34.980have their guns at home. And then the guns will be secure at the gun range. And I just look and I,
00:37:40.460you know, because I do go target shooting now and again, and I look and I say, these people have no
00:37:45.320idea where these gun ranges are. They're out in the middle of nowhere. They're completely remote.
00:37:50.540And it is basically inviting the criminals to go and raid them in the dark of night and get all
00:37:56.800kinds of guns very easily. And I look at what we're talking about with the storage of metadata
00:38:02.140in this bill and the weakening of encryption. And it's like, hey, criminals, come over here,
00:38:12.140get all the stuff that you can sell on the dark web at this location. Would you say that's an
00:38:18.720accurate depiction of what could be happening? I would say that creating lawful access systems
00:38:26.940is a very lucrative target for cyber criminals. That is 100% guaranteed. If you build it,
00:38:36.360they will come. And if there's forced vulnerabilities that allow law enforcement
00:38:44.360to have access to these systems, then those doors are going to be open to anyone that wants in. And
00:38:49.740there's a lot of criminal organizations around the world that are very well equipped and funded
00:38:54.360to find those vulnerabilities and have access. And sometimes it doesn't even take a backdoor
00:39:01.120to get access. Often it's, you know, a social engineering attack. Phishing email is enough to
00:39:08.160to enough of a slip up to let an attacker in. But we do know that for sure, when you create
00:39:18.080these kinds of capabilities, it does get on the radar of these criminal organizations. And
00:39:24.040it's too juicy to try and pass up. And the other point I would make on that is that
00:39:31.520Um, we've seen this happen before. There's, uh, I think it was a few months ago, the FBI revealed that they had a breach to their own wiretap system. Um, and this was through a third party.
00:39:48.900Attackers got in through a third party to a wiretapped system that revealed potentially information of different targets and everyone associated with those targets.
00:40:01.580So this is a real threat to the services that we get. Is it a fair tradeoff in terms of what law enforcement says they need?
00:40:12.440Well, in terms of we're making it easier for police to catch criminals, to deal with organized crime, to deal with terrorism, is that a fair trade-off?
00:40:24.080That's a really good question. When I think about how law enforcement are going about
00:40:35.020taking access to this information, I think about the vast amounts of information that are already
00:40:42.860available. And I think it's definitely we're thinking about how can we better equip law
00:40:49.160enforcement to make use of the information that currently exists. A lot of information exists on
00:40:54.600in open text that can be really helpful to investigations. I don't like the framing of,
00:41:01.920well, is this a worthwhile trade-off? Because I don't think it's fair to ask people,
00:41:07.920should they be willing to have virtually every interaction in their day-to-day lives from work
00:41:14.300to keep in touch with family, to accessing services that we have no choice to access online,
00:41:22.440and doing so in a way that could make our security and safety more vulnerable than ever.
00:41:30.000So essentially, I don't think the answer to stopping crime is making us more vulnerable to crime.
00:41:36.140There's a lot of other ways we can definitely support the efforts of law enforcement,
00:41:41.180And it's really important to think about those. Bill C-22 is not the answer to that.
00:41:48.100Does C-22 weaken the protections that we have through police having to go to a judge and ask for a warrant?
00:41:57.580Because I think the warrant system is one that we have developed over centuries. It offers protections, also offers access for law enforcement.
00:42:09.640It is a compromise that we've all come to live with.
00:42:15.920Does C-22 weaken that system so that you don't have as many checks and balances or that you have a lower threshold in terms of what police must provide to gain access?
00:43:08.520So that's really our focus in this bill and part two specifically, because giving law
00:43:18.340enforcement the ability to issue secret orders that could undermine encryption, create these
00:43:25.500back doors. And in a way that prevents people getting these orders from even seeking counsel
00:43:32.900from a lawyer or an IT specialist on whether it does create systemic vulnerability, that's where
00:43:41.680we take a real issue with this bill because of the threat that has to online security.
00:43:47.360The Conservatives recently said that they would help the government pass Bill C-22 if they split
00:43:53.940And they said they're willing to pass part one, but not part two, that part two needs more study, needs to have more hearings. That's the position that Meta took forward when they went to council. Is that an acceptable compromise to you and to the Internet Society? Is part one okay and part two bad? And if so, give me like a simple, quick answer as to why.
00:44:19.700i don't know that the answer is going to be quick but um i'll do my best so i think so like i said
00:44:27.360the internet study when we think about uh the kind of internet we want we think about it in
00:44:32.060terms of one that is open globally connected secure and trustworthy crucial to a secure and
00:44:37.160trustworthy internet are security which are possible because of tools like encryption but
00:44:42.160also privacy um which is two sides of the same exact coin when it comes to internet security
00:44:49.040So while there are a lot of privacy concerns from organizations, and certainly we feel that forcing services to have to collect more information than they might already do, that is a privacy concern.
00:45:03.400But from our perspective, the core risk in Bill C-22 is part two and its ability to force services to create those back doors.
00:45:13.460Now, we do know that the minister has said that they were willing to propose amendments to better protect things like encryption and to better define systemic vulnerability.
00:45:25.880But that doesn't address the fact that there's a sort of loophole in the bill that could allow any of the terms in the bill to be redefined through regulations.
00:45:36.220So that's where we would still have concerns even if we did see great amendments. We would certainly love to see amendments that better and explicitly protect things like encryption, making sure people can keep using those tools and making sure that these orders would not create systemic vulnerability and better definitions there.
00:45:56.580um but that still does not give i think um assurances that that will continue to be the
00:46:05.560case in an enduring kind of way that um it doesn't provide legal certainty um for a lot of people
00:46:12.500if this is vulnerable to being redefined in in the regulation phase natalie i'll leave you with
00:46:19.620this i've got a quick reaction and comment um going through the legislation i spotted this part
00:46:26.420which reads, it's section 5.1, it says the governor and council, which means cabinet,
00:46:34.480the governor and council may, by regulation, amend the schedule by adding, amending, or deleting a
00:46:41.800class of electronic service providers. That may not sound like an awful lot to people, but what
00:46:47.320this legislation does is say, okay, after we've passed it, cabinet can change who this law applies
00:46:53.820to, how it applies to them, and what this all really means. And to me, that is a weakness of
00:47:02.360any legislation, whether it's on privacy, encryption, it doesn't matter what it's about.
00:47:08.760If you give cabinet the ability to change and amend everything after the fact, you're essentially,
00:47:16.560we've moved from rule of law to rule by decree. And that's not what our system is based on.
00:47:23.820Yeah, I don't know if you're looking for comment or a reaction to that, but I think that's kind of the crux of that concern when I talk about legal certainty.
00:49:11.500They knew that nobody was effectively hunting them.
00:49:14.140They knew they had escaped justice, that they were going to die in their beds.
00:49:18.420When I give talks at law schools is that the charter ultimately is empowering a minority,
00:49:22.420and it's empowering a minority that's a guild across the country,
00:49:25.380and it's a fairly elite guild, and the guild is lawyers.
00:49:27.240Families who were split by referendum and brothers and sisters who never talked to each other for years after the referendum because they were so angry at each other because of the emotions on both sides.
00:49:40.160The reason he was assassinated was not because he was trying to put a satellite into space, but because the gun that he was creating had other applications that made him and the gun very dangerous.