Secure messaging service Signal is still ready to shut down its Canadian operations if Bill C-22, known as the Lawful Access Act, becomes law and is enforced.
The news: Signal VP of strategy and global affairs Udbhav Tiwari reiterated his non-profit’s stance against Canada’s Bill C-22 at an intimate gathering of senators and lawmakers on Monday evening. The bill, which is currently before the Senate, would compel companies like Signal to keep user data and give law enforcement more power to collect it.
Tiwari said that Signal has three main issues with Bill C-22: how it engages with encryption, how it engages with metadata collection, and its technical access measures. Tiwari explained that Bill C-22 could effectively sidestep Signal’s encryption with an order to share encryption keys with the government, force it to collect more than the bare minimum metadata it already collects and store it for six months, or demand Signal make a targeted change to how its platform works so it collects more information.
From the source: “For us, this is a serious enough issue that it would fundamentally break Signal,” Tiwari said. “If we would have to [choose between] serving the users of Canada with the end-to-end encryption that we provide around the world, or creating a much weaker version of our product that connects all of this metadata, the choice for us, unfortunately, would be starkly clear.”
“We will not make changes to our products … to comply with such demands that place the privacy of not just Canadians but everyone else in the world at risk,” Tiwari added.
The context: Bill C-22 is currently in the Senate, after being rushed through the House of Commons before the chambers broke for the summer. The Canadian Internet Society, which ran the event Tiwari spoke at, said the session was being recorded and would be sent to relevant Senate committees.
The act has been met with vocal opposition from Canadian civil liberties groups, which argue it would give police unprecedented surveillance powers. Canadian and European tech companies also argued in an open letter sent to the ministers of industry and public safety last month that the proposed legislation would “erode trust” in Canada’s tech industry and weaken the competitive landscape.
Final thought: In response to a question from BetaKit, Tiwari explained in a panel discussion that Signal has never deliberately cut off access to any country in the world, but that it has refused to comply with legislative orders from certain countries like Russia, China, or North Korea. Those countries, in turn, order their internet service providers to throttle access to Signal.
If C-22 passes, Tiwari said a similar order of events would have to occur in Canada for the app to become unavailable to Canadians. While it’s possible that would end in some kind of stalemate, he said he thinks the powers granted by C-22 make that outcome very unlikely.
Feature image courtesy Alex Riehl for BetaKit.