Tell our Senators: NO SPYING WISHLIST, fix Bill C-26!

New cybersecurity protections are needed to protect Canada’s critical infrastructure – but they must be balanced with appropriate safeguards to prevent their abuse and misuse.¹ We rely on access to essential services, like the Internet, to participate in democratic life; Canada can’t afford prolonged attacks or Internet outages. But while the new cybersecurity measures of Bill C-26 aim to better protect essential services – like our access to the Internet – the bill as drafted still lacks critical provisions for public transparency, accountability, and oversight. To give a few examples:

• Bill C-26 empowers government to break into our private communications at the ISP level. While a minister cannot order ISPS to hand over our private messages directly, they can require they install government devices in their systems that intercept our messages in transit. A bit like saying we don’t have to report our conversations to government - but we do need to leave a government phone off the hook and in the room, everywhere we go!² 
• Bill C-26 forces ISPs into new information-sharing arrangements with Canada’s spy agencies.³ Right now, these spy agencies face limits on accessing the sensitive, private information of people in Canada; judicial oversight is required before ISPs respond to lawful access requests for things like records related to our use of the Internet. However, Bill C-26 radically changes EVERYTHING––granting Canada’s spy agencies power to embed themselves permanently s within our telecommunications infrastructure, hoovering up as much of our sensitive data as they can. Worse, this data could be shared globally with Canada’s Five-Eyes spying partners, putting our privacy at unprecedented risk.
• Power left in the dark often goes wrong.⁴ Despite strong pushback from our community in the House of Commons, Bill C-26 continues to allow a government minister to order telcos to do anything they believe necessary for national security – and keep the order PERMANENTLY secret. While there is an understandable need for some degree of confidentiality in this sphere, the public needs basic reporting  of how these powers are being exercised, how often, and to what effect – if decision-makers are to be held to account.

There’s no reason why we can’t have cybersecurity protections alongside the essential privacy and due process protections that allow us to participate in democratic life. As currently written, Bill C-26 strikes the wrong balance, granting overly broad powers to the executive branch of the Canadian government without the necessary accountability, transparency, and privacy protection mechanisms that are required to protect our fundamental rights. But we’re at the LAST stage to fix it, with just a few DAYS LEFT! Email the Senator TODAY to fix C-26!