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Oh, Canada. The Great White North is the latest country to contemplate legislation that could essentially mandate backdoors and increase data retention in encrypted services. The proposed changes have prompted the Canadian anti-censorship company Psiphon VPN—which keeps millions of Iranians online during repressive internet shutdowns—to say it will leave the country if the bill passes. And Psiphon is not the only one.

Encrypted messaging app Signal has said it would exit the Canadian market because the legislation would require unacceptable changes to its open source projects. Apple and Meta have criticized the bill, and DuckDuckGo and NordVPN say they would consider pulling their services, too. But as countries around the world contemplate similar legislation, even larger questions begin to emerge about which states or regions could differentiate themselves as being safe havens for privacy services if global hostility to encryption continues to rise.

It’s been maddening and disturbing to see more and more democratic countries around the world propose changes to their surveillance and data collection laws, with the aim of giving cops and intelligence agencies greater powers to access people’s information. Governments already have broad digital surveillance powers and investigative tactics to solve crimes that involve encrypted data , but legislative proposals almost inevitably include provisions to expand this access even more—mandating additional logging and what amounts to backdoors or intentional flaws in encrypted products, which cryptographers and security engineers have consistently said cannot be built safely.

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