So, someone please educate me here. Doesn’t law enforcement already have access to digital information during investigations? I think companies already retain metadata, even if they say they don’t. And, wouldn’t it be like any investigation where you would need a court order to get that information?
Bill C-22, formally the Lawful Access Act, 2026, is a proposed Canadian federal law about giving police and intelligence agencies access to digital information during investigations. It would update rules for obtaining subscriber information and other data, and require some service providers to support lawful access requests.
Parliament of Canada
The bill is controversial because critics say its provisions could expand surveillance, require companies to retain certain metadata, and pressure providers to make their systems accessible to authorities—potentially weakening encryption. The government presents it as a way to help law enforcement investigate serious crimes.
The difference is that metadata needs to be retained for a year by any and all online services available to Canadians.
It also asks that companies or services that don’t retain metadata to do so. The wording is also so generic that it includes personal websites, or sites like lemmy as well. It also means communication you might have with your lawyers or therapists must be completely logged and retained for a year as well.
It also at one point asked to provide backdoors so that police could access all data as soon as needed without warrants or roadblocks.
Services like signal for example would not be able to comply with any of these requests, one it would break encryption, and two they don’t retain any logs on their servers.
The issue with all this now is that it exposes all Canadian to a large surface area of data breaches. It also makes it more likely that many more Canadians will become victims of fraud and scams.
So, someone please educate me here. Doesn’t law enforcement already have access to digital information during investigations? I think companies already retain metadata, even if they say they don’t. And, wouldn’t it be like any investigation where you would need a court order to get that information?
Bill C-22, formally the Lawful Access Act, 2026, is a proposed Canadian federal law about giving police and intelligence agencies access to digital information during investigations. It would update rules for obtaining subscriber information and other data, and require some service providers to support lawful access requests. Parliament of Canada
The bill is controversial because critics say its provisions could expand surveillance, require companies to retain certain metadata, and pressure providers to make their systems accessible to authorities—potentially weakening encryption. The government presents it as a way to help law enforcement investigate serious crimes.
The difference is that metadata needs to be retained for a year by any and all online services available to Canadians.
It also asks that companies or services that don’t retain metadata to do so. The wording is also so generic that it includes personal websites, or sites like lemmy as well. It also means communication you might have with your lawyers or therapists must be completely logged and retained for a year as well.
It also at one point asked to provide backdoors so that police could access all data as soon as needed without warrants or roadblocks.
Services like signal for example would not be able to comply with any of these requests, one it would break encryption, and two they don’t retain any logs on their servers.
The issue with all this now is that it exposes all Canadian to a large surface area of data breaches. It also makes it more likely that many more Canadians will become victims of fraud and scams.
deleted by creator