I imagine these surveillance powers won't be used to address any of these issues, like cracking the network of retail theft. Rather they'll be used to arrest people for mean tweets. Canada is not as bad as UK at the moment, but consider the scope of what's tolerable these days in a Western society. For instance UK police reportedly made ~12,000 arrests, or about 30 per day, in one year over online communications offenses.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-...
Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare
As I've said before, the implicit lie Hollywood has sold is that these weapons will be used with the gravity and seriousness they deserve by consummate professionals.
NSA employees have used multi-billion dollar American surveillance assets to spy on women they're infatuated with. It's called "LOVEINT."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loveint-nsa-letter-disclo...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-spouses-...
In another instance, a foreign woman who was employed by the U.S. government suspected that her lover, an NSA civilian employee, was listening to her phone calls. She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it. An investigation found the man abused NSA databases from 1998 to 2003 to snoop on nine phone numbers of foreign women and twice collected communications of an American, according to the inspector general's report.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/31/expats-fle...
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15693741/Paranoid-Dub...
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15739739/airline-work...
They've arrested hundreds of ordinary people for messages that they've sent privately to their friends and family, including Americans,
According to official figures released alongside the announcement, the 109 arrests form part of a broader enforcement campaign that has seen 189 individuals detained since the beginning of the conflict on February 28. Of those arrested, 67 are UAE nationals, while 122 are foreign residents or visitors representing 23 different nationalities. The largest groups among the foreign detainees include Indian nationals (31), Pakistani nationals (22), Filipino nationals (18), Egyptian nationals (14), and British nationals (9). The remaining 28 detainees come from a mix of other nationalities including Americans, Canadians, Australians, and various European and Asian passport holders.
They're doing it for these photos today. Sooner or later one of these states will expand this to lèse majesté laws and then eventually defamation in the west; when it (inevitably) gets imported back home.
We all get to have the Stasi in our pockets now.
I feel like this was fundamentally disproven during the US/Canada response to India's Sikh assassinations. The US and Canada both very clearly used lawful intercept to break secure messaging systems and track the killers to their handlers.
Multiple threat vectors. One pattern.
A "threat vector" is the path a surveillance harm takes to reach you. They look unrelated on the surface. The shape underneath is the same.
With Bill C-22, the government would hold the copy. The lock you trust would no longer be a lock only you can open. It would be a lock the locksmith was ordered to duplicate.
Not only that, but when you can just generate everything, pacing goes out the window. Fifteen hundred word blog posts. The food is terrible but hey, at least the portions are large!
i get the message and agree this sounds awful but holy shit.