Apple to Canadians: Liberal Spy Bill Would Gag Us From Warning You

A senior Apple executive walked into a federal committee hearing this week and said the quiet part out loud. If Bill C-22 passes, companies like Apple won’t be able to tell you what the government is making them do to your phone.

Erik Neuenschwander has been at Apple for 19 years. He worked on the original iPhone and built the company’s privacy engineering team from scratch. He knows what he’s talking about. And what he told Parliament wasn’t reassuring.

“This may be one of the last times we are permitted to discuss the consequences of this legislation publicly,” he said. “That’s because of the bill’s secrecy provisions, which forbid companies like Apple from even discussing the orders we receive with our users or the public.”

Read that again. The bill has gag provisions baked into it. Apple is saying that once this passes, they may be legally barred from telling Canadians what data the government is forcing them to hand over.

Then Neuenschwander got to the part that should worry every Canadian with an iPhone. “Our users trust Apple with their most sensitive information. They expect and deserve the strongest protections. That’s why we’re so concerned about the threat to encryption posed by C-22. As drafted, this bill allows the government of Canada to force companies to break encryption by inserting backdoors into their products, something Apple will never do.” Not will reluctantly consider. Not will push back on. Will never do. That’s about as clear as it gets from a company that has fought the FBI in court over the same issue. Ottawa is pushing a bill that one of the world’s most powerful tech companies has flatly refused to comply with.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather didn’t like any of that very much. Rather than engage with the substance of the warning, he went after Apple’s motives. His argument was basically that Apple only ever shows up to these hearings to complain, never to support anything.

“Has Apple ever gone before a parliamentary committee or submitted a submission to a national parliament on a lawful access regime that Apple actually supported?” Housefather demanded. “I doubt that you did.”

Then he went further, suggesting Apple’s real loyalty is to its bottom line, not to Canadians.

“You have a specific obligation related to the company, and the company’s obligation is often to respect its user agreements with end users and to do what’s best in the company’s interest, not necessarily in the national interest.”

A sitting Liberal MP just told the guy who built Apple’s privacy team that protecting user privacy is a corporate interest, not a Canadian one. Let that sink in.

Neuenschwander didn’t bite. “With respect, I think that we’re trying here to act in users’ interests, both Canadians worldwide, and ensure that we can provide the strongest protections possible while supporting law enforcement.”

Housefather then tried a different angle, bringing up Apple’s IDFA advertising tracker as proof that even Apple gets things wrong sometimes. It was meant to undercut Neuenschwander’s credibility. It backfired. Neuenschwander agreed that threats evolve and used it to make his point stronger.

“Attacks and uses of data only increase and grow stronger over time. We have to continually move forward to continually protect against the stronger attacks.”

That’s the whole problem with what Ottawa is doing here. Backdoors don’t stay in the hands of the good guys. They get found, exploited and used against the same Canadians the government claims to be protecting. Once that vulnerability is built in, it doesn’t matter how noble the original intention was. It’s open season.

Housefather called fears about surveillance equipment being installed on consumer devices not “reasonable or logical.” But in the next breath he admitted Parliament needs to guard against what he called “pernicious effects” that could creep in over time.

So which is it? If the concerns aren’t logical, why does he need to account for them?

Bill C-22 isn’t just a law enforcement modernization bill. It’s a framework that would let Ottawa issue secret orders to tech companies, force them to break their own encryption and then legally prevent those companies from telling you any of it happened. Neuenschwander flew to Ottawa to say that to Parliament’s face.

If this bill passes, don’t expect anyone to be allowed to say it again.