Concerns Over Encryption Legislation

Eric, you mentioned earlier about encryption,

and we've heard many times from the government's

perspective that encryption is not being asked to be unlocked.

How is it that you still are coming to the committee,

but the main thrust of your testimony is around encryption and your concerns

about it being unlocked?

How do you square that circle?

To bring this into a real world analogy,

I might say something like, we're concerned about a hole being put in a wall.

And I would say that the bill does not put a hole in the wall.

It merely allows for secret orders to force putting a hole in the wall.

And so our concern is motivated because at the end of the day,

there would still be a hole in the wall.

I just wanted to establish whether or not you'd ever seen a bill that you

didn't have objections to some portions of.

I would point to a few

other areas where we've put forward four recommended amendments.

A few others relate to both the metadata retention

provisions and to the sweeping nature of ministerial orders.

That's something that we believe is unprecedented and unnecessary.

And therefore we would recommend the elimination of secret ministerial

orders as well. I see in your brief a comment that Google

has never built a backdoor or any other

mechanism to circumvent end to end encryption in our products.

Is that limited to Canada or that is globally?

That is global. In other words, this would be a first.

If this legislation is successful,

if it passes in its current form,

Google would be forced to do something it has never done anywhere in the world.

If this legislation passes in its current form,

the minister would have the power to order Google or any other electronic

service provider to comply with the core obligations that are listed in section,

I believe it's 5 2.

Could you perhaps tell us what are

some of the boundaries that may be tested

here that have not been tested before other than the breaking of encryption?

Of course, because there are in fact comprehensive layers of security

architecture that are at stake here that go well beyond encryption.