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Canada just joined the club that you do not want to be a part of.
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These orders are trying to force Canadian tech companies like VPNs,
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cloud providers, and app developers to build surveillance tools into their products.
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And if you think it's just Canada, we're seeing this all around the world.
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I've been covering privacy for about a decade now,
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and I've never seen these attacks be so prolific and so one after the other on a global scale.
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And so this is something we need to talk about.
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And I want to give you all the tools that you can use to pretty much be proactive
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and hopefully prevent any of the stuff from actually passing.
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The domino effect is that, you know, it's easy to look at one country,
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like in this case, Canada, who's trying to build in encryption backdoors
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and go, oh, wow, Canada sucks.
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But actually, we have a ton of other people who are doing this as well.
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The UK just passed age verification requiring websites to verify the age of their users,
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and it's a pretty big rabbit hole for us to go down in a different video, perhaps.
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But what's more potentially relevant to this video is how the UK was trying to backdoor
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Apple's encryption and Apple fought it.
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And I did all the coverage for that.
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You can find it in a different video there.
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Australia also has wanted an encryption backdoor and literally visited the house of an encrypted
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messenger session and forced them to leave the country.
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And I want to talk about that because that's very important.
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Switzerland even, who is notoriously well known for their pro-privacy stances on things,
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have now tried to pass rules that would require VPNs and messaging apps to identify and retain
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users' data. The US has continued to try this, and of course we have chat control in the EU that's
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also trying to try this all around the European Union. The frustrating part about all of this is
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that it's the same playbook everywhere. It's always public safety justifications with a ton
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of technical ignorance. These are politicians who don't understand how encryption works. Encryption
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anybody can access. There is no middle ground. The other frustrating thing about this is the moving
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goalposts. 20 years ago, it was about terrorism and 9-11. Then it was child protection when terrorism
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didn't sell as well as they thought it would. Now it's tax evasion and drug trafficking. Tomorrow,
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it's going to be copyright infringement or misinformation or any of these other things
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to try to justify things that are overall bad for individuals. So not only can we see this domino
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effect globally where one country tries to do something and the other one says, that's a good
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idea. Let me try that too. There's also this domino effect in terms of moving the goalpost and keep
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trying to find new justifications for trying to pass the same thing. If you keep trying to pass
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the same thing, but use different justifications for why you're doing it, then maybe those
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justifications aren't the reason you're trying to do it. Now I want to talk a little bit about why
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this makes me angry, but the real reason for this section is to hopefully give you some language to
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understand some of your feelings. Some of the problems here. Laziness. I think this is objectively
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lazy. Politicians think encryption is just a lock where you can just make a master key for the good
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guys. They refuse to understand that this isn't the case and that cybersecurity is much more
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complex than that. It's easier also for them to just say tech companies should fix it and they
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need to have all the liability, not us. Their laziness can be summed up as this. It's like
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asking an engineer to build a safe bridge that only collapses for bad people. So anytime a
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politician is saying, we need to backdoor something, we need to do this, we need to do that,
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you need to realize they are taking literally the laziest approach to trying to deal with a very
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complicated problem, which is protecting people on the internet as well as keeping countries safe.
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Backdoor encryption is the laziest solution. That's problem one. Problem two is the hypocrisy of it
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all. Governments themselves use encryption constantly to protect their own communication.
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Banks rely on encryption for financial transactions. Somehow, though, citizens don't deserve this,
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and they can't be trusted with the same stuff that governments need. Governments seem to
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understand when they need to use it, but suddenly don't understand when citizens want privacy.
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Three, dishonesty. I don't think that all politicians are just ignorant of how this
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stuff works. A lot of them still push the thing of whole backdoors for good guys only, and they are
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told constantly by experts why that's not possible. Every expert universally agrees on this basic fact,
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yet they still try to push client-side scanning, they still try to push this idea that we need a
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backdoor, and they have this myth of just targeted surveillance that only seems to impact individuals
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doing something wrong when we know that surveillance typically requires surveilling everybody just to
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maybe catch one or two people. And the last problem is this has a chilling effect. We have services
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that are leaving countries over this stuff, right? So Session left Australia for Switzerland, and also
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Proton, due to Switzerland now going down the chute, is leaving Switzerland for the EU. I hope Session
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doesn't have to move another country now, but this is causing valuable services to leave the countries
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that they're a part of. It stifles innovation. Why would you ever build private or secure services
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when the government will break them anyway? And also, it's self-censorship. No one wants to be on
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an internet where they feel like the government or companies are tracking every little thing they
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say or do. And this is why people seem to really be enjoying end-to-end encrypted services like
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iMessage or WhatsApp pretty much all around the world. They want to feel like their conversations
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are safe. You should know if you're using WhatsApp especially, it's a bit of an asterisk there,
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So maybe check out my video covering WhatsApp recently.
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So now we've covered why it's pretty overall valid
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to be frustrated about everything going on.
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I now want to share why I'm still optimistic
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about what's happening.
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First, the resistance does work.
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Even big tech companies,
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which we're not friends with at all back here,
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actually pushed back against a lot of this
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because they still see value
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in having their customers be safe.
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So Apple fought against the UK's encryption order
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and they're doing pretty darn well
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because as of the most recent coverage that we saw about a week ago, the UK is rumored to be
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backing down on their demand for backdoor access to Apple's end-to-end encrypted iCloud. Now,
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this was due to political pressure from the US, and we can get into the nuances of that
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in a different video, perhaps. But there is pushback, and we even see the same thing with
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WhatsApp, who did tell BBC it backs Apple in the legal battle with the UK over user data.
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Now, that's resistance, but even if resistance falls, there's still some things to be optimistic about.
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We have decentralized protocols that are becoming harder and harder to control that no government can really stop.
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We have open source encryption. We have mathematical reality where you can't ban math.
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And so realistically, no matter how much a country tries to ban end-to-end encryption, you're always going to be able to connect to Tor.
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You're always going to be able to use encryption when you need it.
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I personally think that anybody technical will always have the option to use some of these more sophisticated tools.
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But why we don't want to get here is because we want everybody to be a part of that.
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And if we only have encryption for just a select few people who know what they're doing, then it's not really a net good.
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It's just leaving privacy and security for the select few who know what's going on.
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One other really important thing for us to keep in mind is there is an economic reality here.
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Digital economies and shopping online and all this stuff kind of depend on encryption.
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There's also competitive disadvantage for companies that break encryption.
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They lose tech investment and they're going to lose talent.
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Like if Proton decides to leave Switzerland completely, and we've also seen Session leave
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Australia, like you're losing valuable talent.
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What if one of these big tech companies says we're going to leave the US?
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That's going to put the US in a really crappy spot.
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And in a similar note, there's brain drain.
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If a country is going to start bringing in the privacy and security tech that some of
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the brightest minds are putting together, they're going to leave for more privacy-friendly
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jurisdictions.
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And so as a country, they are not directly incentivized to really make enemies of these
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organizations.
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Put simply, there are still many reasons to be optimistic.
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And we need to be optimistic if we're going to have something to fight for, right?
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If we all just think, ah, it's going to happen anyway, then they've already won and there's
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no reason to put up a fight.
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So I encourage all of you to find something that makes you optimistic and makes you feel
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good about what's happening.
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Otherwise, you're not going to be spending any time or energy to do anything about it.
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On this note, what can we actually do?
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I want to start by saying the easiest thing you can do. Individual actions that anybody can start
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right now. Use encrypted services. The more of you out there who are using it and encouraging other
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people to use these services, the more normalized they're going to be, the more that other people
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will be using them, and the more that countries will go, oh yeah, there's nothing illegal about
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using this. Get a VPN. Get a DNS service. Get an end-to-end encrypted messenger. Use these services.
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It really makes a difference, and you're also giving them your support.
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So if you do use any of these services, consider supporting them with your wallet,
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especially if it's in place of a big tech service that doesn't have privacy or security.
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You're directly supporting those private alternatives that should ideally be the defaults.
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This is all on our website, by the way.
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You can check it out.
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And also, if you go down to digital rights at the bottom,
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it's going to go to the next thing that I want to talk about,
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which is support organizations who are fighting especially the legal battle.
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all of these orgs here do some kind of legal advocacy.
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And that's a really important area for us to also be targeting.
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And lots of us, including myself, don't have the skill set and time and patience to fight
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the legal fight, but these people do.
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And or you can contact representatives and tell them how you feel about some of the stuff
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they're passing.
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And again, don't forget to support some of these privacy-friendly businesses because
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they're the ones who are actually building the next reality.
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And again, make sure to maintain long-term optimism.
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Remember that there's generational change.
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A lot of people who are older might not understand this stuff, but some of the younger people
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might actually come into office and be a bit more passionate about this.
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Remember, there's international competition, and these companies also need homes, and a
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lot of countries want these companies in their homes.
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And remember that there's technical innovation as well.
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These tools are going to get better.
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Decentralized protocols are going to get better.
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And a lot of this tech is going to become harder and harder to stop as these services
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ideally become more resilient to things like encryption backdoor requests. And if we zoom
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out for the bigger picture, why this matters beyond just privacy. One of my favorite articles
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online is actually this really old Tor site. I wish they updated this, but it pretty much just talks
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about all the people who use Tor. It talks about normal people using Tor, journalists, law enforcement,
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activists, whistleblowers, high and low profile people, business executives, bloggers, militaries,
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IT professionals. Literally everybody has some kind of use case for Tor, and it's not always
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just privacy. Remember that this is important for journalists protecting sources, which is important
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for maintaining democracy. We need activists. We need dissidents who are communicating freely and
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aren't under pressure from administrations. Remember that the slippery slope actually can
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be real. A lot of the surveillance tech that's being pushed on us was originally for terrorism.
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Then it was protecting kids. Now it's really looking like tax enforcement more than anything.
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And also remember that a lot of the surveillance technology is part of the authoritarian playbook.
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So democracies that adopt authoritarian tools to spy on their citizens are not doing them a long-term service.
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So don't despair and look at the news and go, oh no, another country.
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Get active.
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In the last five years, these attempts keep coming forward and not all of them actually succeed.
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A lot of them have enough pushback where they don't happen or they keep delaying it or they have to water down the amount of surveillance.
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So keep in mind that you being active and actually getting involved is a big difference.
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And this is a fight that we can win, but only if we engage.
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Make sure you're supporting the correct organizations, companies, and also channels and people that
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you look up to to fight for this kind of stuff.
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And the future of privacy, again, depends on what you're doing now, as well as just digital
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rights as a whole.
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A lot of people are waking up to this, but not everybody.
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And you can be a part of the solution and getting those last few people up to speed.
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And that really is some of the biggest impact you can make.
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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time on Techlore.
