The Democracy Fund lawyers fear Bill S-209 may expand to threaten online anonymity.
TDF lawyers are concerned that the government's proposed Bill S-209, called "An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material," is the beginning of de-anonymization and privacy violations for Canadian internet users.
The Bill is officially presented as an effort to shield children from online pornography - a laudable and non-controversial goal. Outlined in the preamble of the Bill is the statement that pornographic material is associated "with a range of harms."
However, the Bill's technical implementation is deficient. It would make it an offence for an organization to commercially provide pornographic material unless it implements "age verification or age estimation systems." Failure to do so can result in severe financial penalties. Importantly, the "age-verification and age-estimation methods" are undefined terms in the Bill. Presumably, government-issued identification such as a driver's license would qualify as acceptable verification but that would ultimately be left up to bureaucrats drafting future regulations to define. Since the Bill does not clarify which types of verification are state-sanctioned, its vagueness allows for broad conceptual expansion.
Although the Bill mentions privacy interests of internet users, it provides no specifics regarding the retention, storage and deletion of user information. Given that the effect of the Bill is to force the creation of massive centralized databases of intensely private information at risk of leaks or exploitation, this presents an extremely grave security and privacy threat.
While the Bill is presently limited to pornographic websites, it forms a template which could be used to compel users to submit ID or biometrics as a condition of accessing the internet generally - digitally banishing non-compliant Canadians and destroying online anonymity. Once it is legally acceptable to regulate access to "harmful" websites through ID verification, the requirement can be expanded by arbitrarily designating any material as "harmful." In essence, the Bill lays the groundwork for a digital social credit-style system.
TDF litigation director, Mark Joseph, said: "Obviously, both parents and government should have a role in restricting children's access to pornography. But building a government-mandated database of private user information and enacting a law that can form a template for a digital social credit system is a threat to basic civil liberties. There are better ways to achieve the objective of protecting children, such as parental controls and filtering, without sacrificing privacy for adults."
The Bill is currently in second reading at the Senate committee.
About The Democracy Fund:
Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education. TDF supports an access to justice initiative for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.