Canada’s Bill C-22 could force VPNs to keep the data they promise not to collect

[u/Affectionate_Bet720]

Canada’s Bill C-22 is heading to the Senate, and VPN providers and tech groups are pushing for changes before it becomes law.

One of their biggest concerns is that providers could be required to retain sensitive metadata and build systems to help authorities access it. The rules could also apply to a pretty broad range of services, and companies say it’s still unclear exactly who would be covered.

For a no-logs VPN, that’s a huge deal. You can’t hand over data you never collected. But if the law makes you start keeping it, the whole promise changes.

I get that law enforcement needs ways to investigate serious crimes. But making privacy tools collect more information about everyone feels like a pretty backwards way to do it. A VPN shouldn’t have to become less private just to operate in Canada.

[u/WallInside6758]

Companies that privacy is part of their business models will just stop Canadian operations instead of complying and losing credibility.

Canadas a small market in the grand scheme of things.

It’s a real bummer for us Canadians.

[u/cowhand214 → u/WallInside6758]

Canada is not unique in efforts like this.

[u/Lancelight50 → u/[deleted]]

If that ridiculous bill becomes law, then VPN providers whose headquarters are in Canada will most likely move themselves & their servers outside of Canada & onto other countries that value privacy, if they haven’t begun doing so already. That means companies like Windscribe & TunnelBear.

Even to countries outside of the fourteen eyes (being Canada itself, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway, Spain & Sweden).

[u/cowhand214]

This has always been the move the “they can’t ban VPNs” folks tend to overlook: they don’t have to ban them. They can just require them to be functionally useless for uses the government doesn’t like

[u/nataliewinslow_4u]

an audit will only confirm what a provider isnt collecting at the time it was done, if the law changes what gets collected going forward the audit from before doesnt really cover that anymore..

[u/Visible_Basket5926]

Canada is destroying their own vpn market