By Stephen Nellis<\/p>\n
SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Reuters) – Apple has publicly opposed a Canadian bill that the company says could require it to break the encryption \u200cof its devices if passed.<\/p>\n
Bill C-22 was proposed by Canada’s ruling Liberal \u200cParty, which gained a parliamentary majority last month and is currently being debated in the House of Commons. \u200bCanadian law enforcement officials say the bill would help them investigate security threats earlier and act more quickly. It is part of a broader push by governments to expand lawful access to encrypted data, a move tech companies say risks weakening user security.<\/p>\n
The Canadian bill \u200ccontains provisions that, depending on \u2060how they are implemented, could be similar to a UK law data access provision order sent to Apple last year.<\/p>\n
That order prompted Apple \u2060to withdraw a feature allowing users to store data in its cloud with end-to-end encryption. U.S. officials later said Britain had dropped the request after the U.S. director of national \u200bintelligence, Tulsi \u200bGabbard, raised concerns it could violate a cloud \u200bdata treaty.<\/p>\n
End-to-end encryption means that only \u200cthe user – not even Apple or law enforcement – can access the data without a key. The technology is widely used in services such as Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage, and security experts say it provides powerful protections against spying and cybercrime.<\/p>\n
“At a time of rising and pervasive threats from malicious actors seeking access to user information, \u200cBill C-22, as drafted, would undermine our ability \u200bto offer the powerful privacy and security features users \u200bexpect from Apple,” Apple said in \u200ba statement. “This legislation could allow the Canadian government to force companies \u200cto break encryption by inserting backdoors into \u200btheir products \u2013 something \u200bApple will never do.”<\/p>\n
Executives from Meta Platforms were also scheduled to testify at a hearing about the bill on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Public Safety Canada and the U.S. Office of \u200bthe Director of National \u200cIntelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Stephen Nellis in San Francisco. Ismail Shakil, AJ Vicens and Raphael \u200bSatter contributed reporting; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Stephen Nellis SAN FRANCISCO, May 7 (Reuters) – Apple has publicly opposed a Canadian bill that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15917,17,15918],"class_list":["post-36464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple","tag-canada","tag-canadian-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}