The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published an article explaining why the Canadian government should reject Bill S-210.
The Canadian government is now back in session. That means that it’s possible that the Conservative mass internet censorship bill, Bill S-210 (AKA the age verification bill) could complete the final steps to becoming law.
We’ve long warned about the severe consequences of this bill should it become law. What’s more, the legislation has been universally condemned by experts and civil rights organizations as well. So, you don’t even have to take our word for it. You can also get analysis from Open Media, David Fraser, Michael Geist, and Emily Laidlaw if you really want other opinions on the matter. The concerns raised by others are quite similar to what you saw with us.
Supporters of internet censorship, however, have been running disinformation campaigns to try and fool people into believing this bill is the right approach. Many of their talking points have been debunked here including how the tools to carry out the objectives of this bill exist today (they do not) or even how children are too stupid to use a VPN service, so therefore, that’s a non-issue (do I really need to explain why that is such a stupid talking point?). When those talking points failed, Conservatives began pounding the table and said that people who support privacy rights are “shocking” and “disgusting”. When you run out of justifications, well, some people resort to name calling. That transition really didn’t take too long thanks to a complete lack of justification for this bill.
Of course, Conservatives took things a step further and blocked witness testimony and prevented evidence from entering the debate. In all likelihood, the Conservatives saw what happened when study was permitted with the equally dubious Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 where there was absolutely no evidence supporting the need for either bill. Witnesses explained in painstaking detail why those bills would cause significant damage to the Canadian internet (that damage has already been felt) and concluded that evidence and witness testimony has no place in legislative study. So, all that got blocked to prevent the public from learning in more vivid detail why Bill S-210 is so awful.
Canadian’s, for their part, were horrified to learn that this terrible bill could’ve become law before the Summer break. Mercifully, the final vote didn’t happen and the House of Commons adjourned before that vote took place, delaying the bill for the Summer. So, Canadian’s were, at the very least, able to breathe a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve.
Unfortunately, the reprieve was just that: temporary. With lawmakers back to work, Bill S-210 could soon head to a final vote. That has gotten international attention. US digital rights organization, the EFF, has published an article explaining why Canadian lawmakers must reject Bill S-210:
The motivation is laudable, but requiring people of all ages to show ID to get online won’t help women or young people. If S-210 isn’t stopped before it reaches the third reading and final vote in the House of Commons, Canadians will be forced to a repressive and unworkable age verification regulation.
Internet infrastructure intermediaries, which often do not know the type of content they are transmitting, would also be liable, as would all services from social media sites to search engines and messaging platforms. Each would be required to prevent access by any user whose age is not verified, unless they can claim the material is for a “legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts,” or by implementing age verification.
Basic internet infrastructure shouldn’t be regulating content at all, but S-210 doesn’t make the distinction. When these large services learn they are hosting or transmitting sexually explicit content, most will simply ban or remove it outright, using both automated tools and hasty human decision-making. History shows that over-censorship is inevitable. When platforms seek to ban sexual content, over-censorship is very common.
Rules banning sexual content usually hurt marginalized communities and groups that serve them the most. That includes organizations that provide support and services to victims of trafficking and child abuse, sex workers, and groups and individuals promoting sexual freedom.
S-210 notes that “online age-verification technology is increasingly sophisticated and can now effectively ascertain the age of users without breaching their privacy rights.”
This premise is just wrong. There is currently no technology that can verify users’ ages while protecting their privacy. The bill does not specify what technology must be used, leaving it for subsequent regulation. But the age verification systems that exist are very problematic. It is far too likely that any such regulation would embrace tools that retain sensitive user data for potential sale or harms like hacks and lack guardrails preventing companies from doing whatever they like with this data once collected.
We’ve said it before: age verification systems are surveillance systems. Users have no way to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used in unexpected ways, or even shared to unknown third parties. The bill asks companies to maintain user privacy and destroy any personal data collected but doesn’t back up that suggestion with comprehensive penalties. That’s not good enough.
Companies responsible for storing or processing sensitive documents like drivers’ licenses can encounter data breaches, potentially exposing not only personal data about users, but also information about the sites that they visit.
Finally, age-verification systems that depend on government-issued identification exclude altogether Canadians who do not have that kind of ID.
Fundamentally, S-210 leads to the end of anonymous access to the web. Instead, Canadian internet access would become a series of checkpoints that many people simply would not pass, either by choice or because the rules are too onerous.
These are among the many concerns people like myself and others have raised already. It’s heartening to see international observers sharing these same concerns as well. I’ll go one further and note that facial recognition scans being required to access the open internet should be a non-starter – yet this is basically what this bill calls for. Tying things like government ID and facial recognition scans to the ability to access adult content is a high level of sensitive information that would invariably be targeted by fraudsters who intend on blackmailing people. As the EFF points out, there’s no way to know where that information is going to go and there’s no law enforcing any requirement to destroy such information in the first place.
If anything, third parties would have enormous incentives to sell that information to third party data brokers afterwards. It would be enormously profitable for them and there is no legal penalty for doing so. Thanks to a complete lack of privacy reform in Canada, the most that would come out of something like that is a strongly worded letter from the Privacy Commissioner (or multiple privacy commissioners) before the matter is considered resolved. It’s a system that is absolutely ripe for abuse. The last thing that is needed right now are requirements from users to put even more sensitive personal information on the web and Bill S-210 does precisely that. There’s already way too much personal information randomly floating around thanks to, among other things, careless companies. The Canadian government doesn’t need to be contributing to the problem.
For the Conservative party, however, this is likely yet even more logic and reasoning that they intend on ignoring. They did it throughout the debate, why start now? Ideology is their god and they will devoutly worship it all the while calling others heathens and “woke” for raising concerns of any kind. Still, it is nice seeing more unanimity about why Bill S-210 is so bad, so we got that going for us, which is nice.
