EmbarrassedHelp

Now, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands must determine whether the geo-blocking used by the website was state of the art and effective in practice. If so, the intended audience would not have included Dutch users, and no communication would have been made to the public in the Netherlands.

This seems extremely problematic, depending on what "state of the art and effective" means. It seems like blocking VPN users is unfortunately still on the table, as are other invasive enforcement methods.

One of the core functions of Court of Justice of the European Union (CEJU) is to perform judicial review, which means they can strike down laws. So it would not be legal to pass legislation attempting to make legal what they struck down.

Hopefully this ruling adds to some precedent in favour of VPNs to future court battles attacking VPNs for circumventing age verification.

A mandatory client side scanning system with an opaque database filled with unverifiable entries would render many of the protections provided by ADP meaningless. Its was insane that Apple was even considering such an idea in the first place.

Circumventing encryption with client side scanning is on par with requiring encryption backdoors, and goes against the purpose of having end to end encryption.

The judge's comments are extremely disturbing, as she seems to want legislation passed that requires companies to violate user privacy.

And client side scanning is just as bad as encryption backdoors. There's a good reason Apple was attacked for even considering it: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.07450

The controversial part is having the system enabled by default with age verification required to turn it off, and having the system impact non-Apple/Google apps. The UK for example wants Apple and Google to forcibly enable nudity blocking on all devices in the UK, and they want the system to bypass app/DRM security to scan all content visible on a device.

The problem is that Paxton is attempting to do the same thing to every site that doesn't forcibly violate user privacy with mandatory age verification. Its part of Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundations goals, and its incompatible with privacy rights.

So he managed to block the site globally for not forcibly violating the privacy of its users with mandatory age verification.

The US court system really needs to do something about this, and overturn Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton in favour of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.

There's no such thing as "reasonable age verification measures". Its lie spread by fascists like Ken Pax­ton, the Heritage Foundation, and ton of other evil people.

I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.

Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.

We could lock every kid and adult in a padded cell to prevent kids from being harmed, so why don't we pass a law requiring that? Because its not a proportional response, just like demanding mandatory age verification for every adult is not proportional either.

Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.

If it becomes law, then other US states and countries will try to copy it as well.

Any sort of identity/age verification here is problematic and unacceptable.

The moment the UK does this, politicians in other Western countries are going to start thinking that its a good idea and attempting to copy the UK.

For those who do not know, bill C-22 is the Canadian government's attempt to force encryption backdoors and mandatory metadata retention on all online services in Canada.

If you know anyone who uses WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and other encrypted apps, those apps will be blocking Canadians. The blocking will either happen imminently, or suddenly at point in the future without warning (because organizations are not allowed to publicly reveal that they have been told to weaken encryption or illegally retain metadata).

Unfortunately even if this blocking is only temporary, a precedent has been set.

The government will likely be more willing to target open source models in the future that they deem to be too powerful. A lot of open source AI infrastructure exists within reach of the US government.

Well, the meeting ended early today after a member who supports the bill basically rage quit. Everyone else was trying not to laugh.

It seems possible that C-22 could be delayed in committee long enough to stop it from being passed before the summer recess deadline of June 18.

Bill C-22 is the Canadian government's attempt to require encryption backdoors and mandatory data retention, for all online services.

The invasive mandatory age verification requires are part of bill C-34, which was just tabled yesterday. Its obviously an unacceptable violate of privacy, but the Liberals are far closer to passing C-22 at the moment.

The SECU Committee meeting is now live, and is set to go until 11:59 p.m. ET.

The livestream of the meeting is available here: https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrows...

Heck, China, Israel, India, South Korea, and Taiwan all have larger tech industries than Canada and have much stricter internet speech requirements (and in Israel and Taiwan's case are much smaller than Canada population wise).

That's actually not true for most of those countries. None of those countries other than maybe China have laws requiring encryption backdoors.

Suspicionless bulk metadata retention is also illegal in the EU, and no such law existing in many of those other democracies you listed.

Both the conservatives and the NDP have been fighting against Bill C-22.

It's online and easy to read

That's not true. Most people are not legal experts with extensive expertise in technology, knowledge of how Canadian courts will interpret the legislation, and knowledge of how governments around the world are trying to attack encryption (ex: they do their best to hide and not to explicitly say it in the legislation).

And let's be real: 99% of the industry already logs everything.

That's your opinion. That's not a real scientific claim, and yet you are using it to justify an unprecedented attack on privacy rights.

Suspicionless metadata retention has been illegal in the European Union since 2014, and it violates the Charter. There is no world in which it is acceptable.

An RCMP witness speaking about the bill during a recent committee meeting literally said the legislation will help them "solve the problem of encryption": https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/05/rcmp-confirms-bill-c-22-...

The Liberal party members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) are:

* Jean-Yves Duclos: jean-yves.duclos@parl.gc.ca

* Sima Acan: sima.acan@parl.gc.ca

* Marianne Dandurand: marianne.dandurand@parl.gc.ca

* Anthony Housefather: anthony.housefather@parl.gc.ca

* Marcus Powlowski: marcus.powlowski@parl.gc.ca

* Jacques Ramsay: jacques.ramsay@parl.gc.ca

* Amandeep Sodhi: amandeep.sodhi@parl.gc.ca

That is a lie. None of those countries other than maybe China have laws requiring encryption backdoors.

Suspicionless bulk metadata retention is also illegal in the EU, and no such law existing in many of those other democracies you listed.

There will be a SECU Committee meeting on C-22 later today, where the committee will be performing a clause by clause review of Bill C-22, and voting on amendments. It may be the final meeting. You can watch it live by clicking the "Watch on ParlVu" button on the meeting notice page: https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/SECU/meetin...

Direct link to the upcoming live ParlVu video: https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrows...

After bill C-22 leaves the SECU Committee, it will be sent to the House of Commons for the third reading and a final vote before being sent to the Senate.

If you are a Canadian citizen, you can also use the following tools to message your MP:

* The Internet Society's tool: https://www.internetsociety.org/our-work/internet-policy/kee...

* OpenMedia's messaging tool: https://action.openmedia.org/page/188754/action/1

* ICLM's messaging tool: https://iclmg.ca/stop-c-22/

You can also email Gary Anandasangaree (gary.anand@parl.gc.ca), Marc Carney (mark.carney@parl.gc.ca), and Sean Fraser (sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca), and tell them that any weakening of encryption or suspicionless retention of metadata is unacceptable.

Its far worse than the Patriot Act.

Its legislation that attempts to weaken and break encryption so that law enforcement and others can access encrypted communications. It also seeks to require mandatory suspicionless metadata for all online services.

The legislation was explicitly written to target both telecom companies and every online service.

Citizen Lab has a good writeup on the legislation here: https://citizenlab.ca/research/analysis-of-proposed-surveill...

Nothing will ever be enough for the anti-privacy fanatics pushing for this. They will always demand more.

The UK should just be banned from modern technology until their government has evolved socially enough to respect privacy. Companies need to pull out and stay out, because that's the only way the UK government will learn a lesson.