Unfortunately even if this blocking is only temporary, a precedent has been set.
The government will likely be more willing to target open source models in the future that they deem to be too powerful. A lot of open source AI infrastructure exists within reach of the US government.
The Internet will find a way to route around censorship. I’ve already started downloading notable open weight models onto my NAS and will distribute via eg BitTorrents if needed. I’m not in the US, and you can’t ban VPNs overnight.
I keep imagining what we would be hearing on loop if a Dem administration had done this.
"Typical Dem overreach and regulation! The nanny state!"
"Frontier models are expensive to create! Why should US companies continue to invest in them, if the government won't let them make sales! This is how China wins!"
Bill C-22 is the Canadian government's attempt to require encryption backdoors and mandatory data retention, for all online services.
The invasive mandatory age verification requires are part of bill C-34, which was just tabled yesterday. Its obviously an unacceptable violate of privacy, but the Liberals are far closer to passing C-22 at the moment.
my error, i actually thought it was an omnibus. it doesn't change my view, but toward the specific encryption concern, indeed, less relevant. thank you.
> Heck, China, Israel, India, South Korea, and Taiwan all have larger tech industries than Canada and have much stricter internet speech requirements (and in Israel and Taiwan's case are much smaller than Canada population wise).
That's actually not true for most of those countries. None of those countries other than maybe China have laws requiring encryption backdoors.
Suspicionless bulk metadata retention is also illegal in the EU, and no such law existing in many of those other democracies you listed.
China and Israel have pretty strict requirements. Korea was recently on the news for something some might say is an "internet speech requirement" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406198)
And how much of the conservatives issue with it are because the Liberal party put it forward. They have absolutely been bringing similar bills when they have control of the government.
That's not true. Most people are not legal experts with extensive expertise in technology, knowledge of how Canadian courts will interpret the legislation, and knowledge of how governments around the world are trying to attack encryption (ex: they do their best to hide and not to explicitly say it in the legislation).
> And let's be real: 99% of the industry already logs everything.
That's your opinion. That's not a real scientific claim, and yet you are using it to justify an unprecedented attack on privacy rights.
Suspicionless metadata retention has been illegal in the European Union since 2014, and it violates the Charter. There is no world in which it is acceptable.
There will be a SECU Committee meeting on C-22 later today, where the committee will be performing a clause by clause review of Bill C-22, and voting on amendments. It may be the final meeting. You can watch it live by clicking the "Watch on ParlVu" button on the meeting notice page: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/SECU/meetin...
After bill C-22 leaves the SECU Committee, it will be sent to the House of Commons for the third reading and a final vote before being sent to the Senate.
If you are a Canadian citizen, you can also use the following tools to message your MP:
You can also email Gary Anandasangaree (gary.anand@parl.gc.ca), Marc Carney (mark.carney@parl.gc.ca), and Sean Fraser (sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca), and tell them that any weakening of encryption or suspicionless retention of metadata is unacceptable.
I get that Quebec and Ontario have 65% of the population, but why do they have 100% of the seats on a committee that shoves surveillance and gun bans down everyone else’s throats?
Not a clue, but if there are only 7 seats then all 10 provinces can't be represented anyway. I highly doubt political opinions about surveillance are aligned with provincial borders.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba are also over-represented.
BC, Alberta, and Ontario are under-represented. Ontario, for example, is about 39% of the population of the provinces, but only 36% or so of the seats.
The allocation is an imperfect formula, to be sure. I doubt it makes much of a difference in practice, except as propaganda fuel for foreign influence operations driving Alberta separatism. The degree to which most provinces are under- or over-represented is less than 1%.
The last time I remember feeling that I had representation, as a Western Canadian was 3 Prim Ministers ago. I didn't even vote for Harper, but the others simply ignored the gulf between Regina and the Okanagan. It doesn't get better once you move to Ontario. You then realize that your MPs also don't represent you, but at least they're in government now.
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.
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.
The UK should just be banned from modern technology until their government has evolved socially enough to respect privacy. Companies need to pull out and stay out, because that's the only way the UK government will learn a lesson.
I'm sure when this law goes through they won't stop and will shortly be lining up some even crazier surviellance tech.
I'm thinking something that automatically scans your computer for porn or other things, like ripped film mp4s and sends it to the goverment to be analysed.
Or perhaps little gps trackers that children are mandated to wear at all times.
That's not what the UK is demanding. They want client side scanning malware that breaks DRM, circumvents encryption and VPNs, and bypasses other security features in order to scan everything visible on your screen.
The government will likely be more willing to target open source models in the future that they deem to be too powerful. A lot of open source AI infrastructure exists within reach of the US government.
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