BTC Sessions - New Law Creates ‘Giant Surveillance Map’ of Every Citizen | Dr. Michael Geist

Starting point is 00:00:00 They are literally telling you this is what they want. They want a surveillance map to know where people are located. And, you know, I think that raises obviously really significant privacy concerns. You can't in the morning talk about creating fundamental right to privacy and in the afternoon create mandatory metadata retention. 99.99% of people won't have no reason to have their data collected. This might lead to things like mandating breaking encryption or creating backdoors. Signal is one example. They've been pretty emphatic. We can't offer this service and meet your requirements at the same time. So we're going to stop offering the service or operating in Canada altogether. I would rather be listened to now than proven right later.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Quickly, guys, I'm not going to ask you to like or subscribe, but if you do want to help us out, share this episode in particular with anybody who values online privacy. So for today, we have government watchdog Professor Michael Geist, one of the most cited internet law scholars. He is raising the alarm on Bill C-22, one of the most dangerous. pieces of privacy legislation the Canadian government has ever attempted to pass. And make no mistake, this is much bigger than just Canada. In this episode, we cover what exactly is in this surveillance bill, the broader impact and international implications of this Orwellian legislation, and what you can do about it. All right, good morning, Professor guys. Thank you so much for joining me today. Normally, I'd say I'm very excited to have this conversation, but this one's actually personally

Starting point is 00:01:24 very concerning for me. So we've got a lot to cover government surveillance backdoors to encryption, in a fight over digital privacy playing out in Canada right now with Bill C-22, and there's some other ones like it as well. But I think it's also important to highlight for an American audience how this hits them too. Canada being a five-eyes partner means that American metadata could get swept up in the same net. So, Professor, what's actually going on with Bill C-22? What are you and others raising concerns about? Should we be worried about security risks and vulnerabilities, not to mention violating our charter rights? Yes. Okay, perfect. Great podcast. As a short answer. Yeah, there we go.

Starting point is 00:01:59 Yeah. So, I mean, it's probably helpful to take a bit of a step back and just explain that this legislation, part of lawful access, part of what's really been an ongoing debate now for decades, really, in terms of what are the appropriate tools for law enforcement in a digital environment. And so you've gone on the one hand law enforcement regularly saying that the tools have failed to keep pace, that, you know, digital environment presents some unique challenges. They want to ensure that they can investigate appropriately. And on the other hand, you also often will have people on the privacy and security community. communities suggesting that some of the proposed solutions may raise real concerns. So to give you an example, a year ago, it's almost exactly a year ago now, the government introduced its first version of lawful access, and it envisioned warrantless access to subscriber information from anyone providing a service in Canada. Anyone. That could be a podcaster too, right? So it wasn't just telecom companies, and it was hotels and car rental companies, but really almost anyone, with no court oversight. Now they argued, well, it's just basic subscriber information,

Starting point is 00:03:02 not more than that, but it struck, I think, many of us as being pretty clearly offside. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canadian Privacy Law, government backed down a little bit and said, okay, we'll reintroduce the legislation. We will exclude that warrantless access. And so they really did fix that part of their proposal, but where they have caused, I think, a significant amount of concern amongst many is in what's known as part two of the law, which focuses more on the relationship between electronic service providers, which would include your typical wireless and telecom companies, but may also include many other digital services and law enforcement. And that's where you get into at least a pair of issues that have left a lot of people

Starting point is 00:03:46 really worried. One is mandatory metadata collection, the prospect of requiring these companies to retain the metadata on their users for up to a year, which raises. I think huge privacy-related concerns and render certain services really just unusable and they can't offer the service in Canada with those kinds of requirements. And as well, this issue of working closely in terms of trying to identify what's in the network,

Starting point is 00:04:12 the ability to obtain access, there's discussion about safeguards against security vulnerabilities, but just about anyone that's looked at it has said the language is way too flexible, not nearly specific enough, and a lot of worries that this might lead to things like mandating breaking encryption or creating backdoors. And so that's where you've seen a lot of concern about where this legislation might be headed. No, that makes it. I'm curious just even just your sense of it is the, what almost seems like strategically vague language.

Starting point is 00:04:45 Is it coming from a place of ignorance regarding specificity needed for these sort of things? Or are they trying to get as, are there people advocating trying to capture as much as they can in this legislation? Yeah, so how big is your tinfoil hat? Pretty big. Yeah, no, and I would say this. I mean, I think experience with lawful access has typically been that law enforcement asks for as much as they think they can get and then go further, knowing that they may not get at all. And so, you know, the fact that some of the stuff is vague, I think the concerns that people have raised saying, you know, a government response saying, well, that's not really our intent. isn't good enough because their intent at this moment may not be the intent down the road.

Starting point is 00:05:29 And the interpretation that they use right now may differ as well. And so, you know, encryption is a good example where we've had the government say, you know, cool your jets. This is, you know, you're really overstating some of the concerns here. And then we've had law enforcement representatives literally approved before the committee and say, yeah, encryption is a big problem for us. We want to ensure that we can gain access. And so it's pretty tough to, on the one end,

Starting point is 00:05:54 you know, say that, okay, I'm going to trust you and trust your current interpretation. When we know those that are the so-called beneficiaries of these policies, the one designed to use them, have themselves identified some of the problematic applications of this law as one of the reasons they want to see it happen. So, you know, who do you trust? No, fair enough. The other thing that stands out to me immediately, too, is that the, I feel like metadata is a nefarious request in the sense that I think most people would interpret metadata to like, oh, not be so important. But if I send you like a message saying, hey, Michael, how's it going? But it's giving you my location the time where I'm currently at. That it seems way more intrusive

Starting point is 00:06:38 than even the message itself that I was just checking in. So I'm curious your thought specifically around the request for metadata. And the other one that jumps out too is if you're going to make companies hold on to this for a year, that's a giant honeypot of information for threat actors to go after. Yes. Yeah. All of that is true. And, you know, I think there have been attempts by the government really to downplay the risks associated with this information. But I think if you take a step back and you realize what mandatory metadata would mean for basically the entire population, right, just about everybody has a device on their person. And that notion that you would be collecting and retaining information about where people go, who they communicate,

Starting point is 00:07:20 with when they communicate, how they communicate, all of those kinds of things, which is, of course, exactly what metadata collects. Retaining all of that for a year, I mean, it becomes truly just this giant surveillance map that can then be accessed at different points in time. And I have to say, the government, or at least law enforcement, hasn't been shy about basically saying that, well, yeah, that's what this would do. So when asked for a use case to demonstrate why this is necessary, there's really two that they've provided. And I think both, they're quite telling. One, they've said, well, there may be instances where we need this for a long period of time because it may take a number of weeks or a month to stand up an investigation.

Starting point is 00:08:01 You know, we don't know what we don't know. So we need to know that we can go back in time, essentially, and get this info. But nobody has provided a use case where we're talking about a year. So even if we're talking about for a brief period of time, at least for certain services, to retain that information and then go get a court order. if you need it retained for a longer period of time. That still seems doable, but they're like, no, we want this for everyone. Even acknowledging that 99.99% of people won't have no reason to have their data collected. We want it all on the off chance that we might need it.

Starting point is 00:08:37 And we want it all for a year, even though we haven't really demonstrated why we needed this data for a year. The other example really highlights the surveillance mapping concern. So they said, well, there might be a lot of value. There's a violent incident, a shooting that takes place. we want to know who the bystanders were, who people were around there. Well, they are literally telling you this is what they want. They want a surveillance map to know where people are located. And, you know, I think that raises obviously really significant privacy concerns.

Starting point is 00:09:05 I completely agree. Are things really gotten, like, don't get me wrong. I don't think things are necessarily as good as they were in my youth. I think Canada has definitely seen some struggles in the major cities. Have things really gotten to the point where we need this full, like, dystopian lockdown in order to actually deal with criminality in Canada? I don't feel like it's that bad to justify the ass that they're requesting. Yeah, no, I think that's true. One of the issues for this debate, for really a long time over the years, has been often that it feels like it's been a bit evidence-free where

Starting point is 00:09:34 enforcement wants this and then you say, okay, where is the evidence that your current tools aren't sufficient, right? And the reality is, if you look at the transparency reports that come from the large telecom companies, it becomes clear that they already do gain access to information on thousands of subscribers every year. I mean, we have a system where they can go out and get production orders and telecom companies will provide it. Now, there may have been problems with some of those systems. And so, for example, law enforcement would say, it's a problem where we go through a whole process to get a production order. And then it turns out that the individual is not even a subscriber for the particular company that we targeted. That was just a complete way

Starting point is 00:10:15 of time and really set back our investigation. And so now the government has included a new power known as a confirmation of service demand power that would allow law enforcement to go to the provider and basically just say, I'm looking into Michael Geist, is a person of customer. And that's it. And that doesn't strike me. And they've still had to have some sort, they still got to meet some sort of threshold to be able to ask for that information. But assuming they can meet that threshold, that doesn't strike me as unreasonable. They haven't disclosed anything beyond just that basic provision of service as a mechanism to sort of further an investigation. So there are instances where we can identify things that could be improved,

Starting point is 00:10:55 but the extent to which this goes so much further on some of these other issues really is enormously problematic. No, I completely agree. And then even just quickly from the legal standpoint, too, and I'm sure there is some case law, some justification that I'm not aware of. But how does this circumvent, I think it's, what is it, charter, charter rights? Section 8 in terms of right from lawful search and seizure kind of thing? Yeah, no, I think, well, let's be clear. If this passes in its current form, I suppose, even if it doesn't pass in its current form, but in an associated form, this will ultimately go to the Supreme Court Canada.

Starting point is 00:11:30 And there will be challenges as to whether or not these laws are consistent. So there will be a case. Law enforcement will have used these powers and a defense attorney representing the accused will challenge the evidence that's used on the basis that it was, that the law law that was used to gain access was itself unconstitutional, eventually we will have the Supreme Court issue or ruling on it. Frankly, if I was law enforcement of the government, I would, and I was serious about the need for these rules, I would want to have rules that were more likely to be upheld as constitutional rather than taking the, taking a very real risk based on

Starting point is 00:12:09 past precedent. When we look at some of these other cases that, yeah, you got your law. But Before you know it, you're back in the courts and it may be that it gets struck down and then you're back to square one in terms of developing the kinds of tools that you say you need. No, fair enough. I'm curious if my comment in the opening there too. So for anyone that's not familiar, Canada is part of the Five Eyes Alliance, which I believe is Canada, US, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Am I right in that this because just the very nature, like if you're communicating with somebody

Starting point is 00:12:38 in Canada or you are perhaps residing in Canada traveling at that point in time, that your information would also be collected and be subject to these same. surveillance nets? Yeah, no, I don't know if it's that. There's what, it more speaks, I think, to the active cooperation between the various five-eyes countries as opposed to the notion that it's all just one big collection by all five working together. I don't think that's the case.

Starting point is 00:13:02 There are, there have been at times concerns that prohibitions on what a given signals intelligence agency or security agency can do in a given country. that they essentially sort of wink, wink, nudge, let one of the other country's agencies do the work that they are themselves unable to do. And then if you've got a sharing system, that's a way to lawfully gain access because they didn't do the collection someone else did. So there are concerns at times about how the system itself works, but it's not like there's this sort of this immediate kind of sharing conglomeration. And in fact, you know, on an issue like metadata, the United States does not have mandated metadata retention in the way that Canada

Starting point is 00:13:52 is contemplating. So, you know, the government has at times tried to argue that this is really just bringing us up to speed with what our five-ice partners are doing. Truth is it's not. Some of the rules that the government envisions are not found in some of the other five-ice countries. Well, some of what the other five eyes countries are doing seems a little bit crazy to me. I don't even know if you saw, I saw this today. It was a comment from, I think, Kier Starmer, at some sort of tech convention, something along those lines. I saw Signal responding to it talking about on device scanning. Do you have any thoughts on what's going on in that alliance and what else we're seeing around the world that I'm worried because I'm not mistaken, I think Australia may have had

Starting point is 00:14:29 the social media ban beforehand or maybe it was the UK was talking about it. It seems like they're trying it out in one area and it's coming to the others. Yeah, no. So, yeah, so we're kind of blending a few things there. You're right, Australia does have, was the first and still does have a social media ban and Canada is now talking about following suit. In the UK, my understanding is that part of what they're talking about is putting on-device level age verification type systems that would then allow for the implementation of limiting access. They're focused on pornography as their use case, the ability to try to limit access to pornography. if I actually I think I have a I have a note for it here is um you may not have like it was I just saw before

Starting point is 00:15:12 recording was Keir Stummer gave three month warning at London Tech Week uh for device level scanning for underage justification uh for nudity but it's talking about having the photos being pre-scanned prior to encryption like actually going through it on the device prior to any encryption it feels like it's I wonder if it's ever going to be enough so maybe I'll even throw in there for context too. The thing that it reminds me of is almost kind of like, for lack of a bad analogy, gun legislation, where it's like the criminals don't care about your gun legislation. I'm pretty confident that I can circumvent a lot of the things that they're talking about right now in terms of using open source software, different, using things like Graphene OS,

Starting point is 00:15:52 using Nostra for Relay and Communication, things like there's a wonderful protocol called White Noise using Noster for Relays. It's basically like a signal alternative. That I feel like the worst possible actors that you would be going for, are just going to be able to circumvent around this sort of thing, but maybe I'm mistaken. Yeah, I think that's always one of the concerns is that this, this captures those that are less technically sophisticated, but there are others that may find ways or have some capabilities to get around it. Now, part of what they're doing, depending of, again, depends a bit on what you're trying

Starting point is 00:16:24 to achieve. If you're trying to stop youth from seeing pornography, well, then you're perfectly happy with a system that does that and recognizes some may circumvent, but you may say that that's okay. Social media one's a little bit harder because so far the data suggests that these bands have not been very effective, at least not effective in Australia, and they cause a whole series of harms along the way as well. For some of the other security related ones, that's where it is more complicated.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And it's always been that way, where I can recall, I recall early debates around lawful access focused on the extent to which you might have telecom providers provide direct assistance and terrorism was at the time, much of the focal point, you know, 9-11, things like that. And at the time, they recognize it, some of these requirements are going to be very costly. And they said, well, we're going to certainly require the large players to obtain the necessary equipment and meet the other compliance requirements. But some of the smaller providers, this will be too much. They simply can't undertake those sort of expenditures and remain viable in the market. Well, I mean, that was as if, you know, the bad guy, so to speak,

Starting point is 00:17:29 don't read the paper. Couldn't figure out that, you know, If you wanted to avoid this, then there were certain providers that you could use that didn't have some of these sorts of technologies. Now, none of that ever really got off the ground in the way the government thought about. But it does highlight that there are these competing objectives that exist around this. And so as government tries to account for some of these sorts of things, they are themselves effectively creating their own vulnerabilities in the effectiveness of their policies. Yeah, no, fair enough. I'm curious what sort of messages, what sort of response we're getting out of basically tech industry within Canada, what they're saying about this legislation and their thoughts on it moving forward. Yeah, there's been a nervous concern. And it's not just Canadian tech companies, but of course from some of the large international players as well that have really highlighted that, you know, in some instances, they think it's a really bad idea. It undermines some of their practices and the security that they offer.

Starting point is 00:18:27 In other instances, you've got large players that say, listen, when we've been confronted with some of these kinds of policies elsewhere, we have to withdraw certain of our services because we just can't comply and continue to offer the service. Apple is a good example where they withdrew their advanced data protection privacy policy approach or system because they said they couldn't comply. And then you get other services that say, we just can't operate at all in Canada if this passes in the way that it does. signal is one example. They've been pretty emphatic about the challenge of both meeting their technical requirements and what they see is their obligation to their users and what this might entail from a Canadian government side. And there are a number of VPN services that have said much the same. That is that, listen, if you are establishing a system that's going to require us to maintain logs on our users for up to a year and offer the prospect of breaking encryption,

Starting point is 00:19:24 well, I mean, that's our service, right? I mean, we can. can't offer this service and meet your requirements at the same time. And so if presented with that choice, we're going to stop offering the service or operating in Canada altogether. Now, it seems like such a footgun in the sense, too, that if you end up weakening encryption or throwing in a backdoor, like, there's so much scams and fraud and like digital attacks that go on as it is with encryption that we already have, you're just making it easier potentially to make Canadians potentially a target there. It also feels like there's an economic, impact that like you're just going to drive the tech industry out of Canada. You're setting a

Starting point is 00:20:00 precedent that we're not the place to basically invest in a tech company to do a tech startup. I think there are real risks along those lines for sure. I mean, it's a good point to raise. There are real risks that, you know, the government strategies around attracting the sector, around AI adoption and investment, which is part of the strategy that they just put out, is directly undermined by policies that really run counter to that. So, you know, you can't, on the one hand, the way I put it last week actually was you can't in the morning talk about creating fundamental right to privacy and in the afternoon create mandatory metadata retention. And I think the same applies here where you can't in the morning talk about how much you want to ensure that you've got

Starting point is 00:20:50 AI adoption and encourage investment in the country. And in the afternoon, create the policies that drive some of those very companies out of the market altogether. Quickly, guys, you and I both know that things like Bill C-22 is just the beginning. There's going to be more attacks on our online privacy, on our dignity as we continue to go forward, which is why we're launching the new channel Sovereign sessions. That's strictly just tutorials for Freedom Tech. So not only Bitcoin, but also locally run LLMs, as well as self-hosted data, secure communications, everything that you need in order to deal with this kind of Orwellian environment.

Starting point is 00:21:23 So it's not podcast, it's not live streams. It's strictly just freedom tech tutorials. If that's something that's of interest to you that you want to make sure that you have, go ahead. There's a link to subscribe in the description down below and we'll be launching the first video in August. All right. Awesome. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Let's get back into it. No, 100%. Yeah, it's talking out of both sides of the mouth there. I do want to come to the AI for All strategy and get your thoughts on that and everything we're saying there because it feels all very related. But even just want to make sure I quickly hammer this one in it as well too. One, do you see this legislation actually passing and moving forward? And two, if someone is vocally opposed to this, what is the best cause of action?

Starting point is 00:21:57 What is their best action they can take, if anything? Well, listen, it's majority government. So, yes, I see a passing. They've got the power to do it. Now, there's passing it in its current form and there's a long last taking into account some of these considerations in passing something that's a bit more palatable and addresses some of the very real concerns. And, you know, that I suppose remains to be seen as we talk. the committee that is studying this bill in the House of Commons is at what's known as

Starting point is 00:22:27 clause by clause. So they're going through each clause in the bill and they may discuss and debate various amendments. Whether they will be able to pass all of this before the summer in committee and then in the house before the house breaks for the summer, which as we speak occurs in a couple of weeks, remains to be seen. It's pretty, it will be pretty challenging, to be honest. The government has said that they're going to extend the timeline. that the House is open for hearings. So they are trying to find more time in their schedules

Starting point is 00:22:58 to deal with different bills. But this bill is still pretty early-ish a committee. So at least for clause by clause, there's quite a few amendments they've got to deal with. So it's going to, it should take a bit of time unless the government just tries to ram it through committee as well. So I guess I would say this, at a minimum in the fall, it's going to the Senate. even better is the prospect that it will still be at committee or still be at the House when they come back in the fall. And if that's the case, there is the summer for people to speak out and make the, make their, ensure their elected representatives know. And so for those in Canada that are listening, you know, the reality is your member of parliament is going to be back in the writing for much of the summer. In a couple of weeks time, they're leaving Ottawa.

Starting point is 00:23:42 They don't come back until mid-September. And so they are, they're around more than their next. not. And there's the summer barbecue circuit and any number of different ways to get out there. I mean, this is what MPs do. And they typically are more approachable than you might think. And it doesn't take that much for them to realize there is an issue back in the riding. And they bring that back to Ottawa when they come back. And so I think the best case way to deal with this is that when members of parliament reconvene in September, assuming the bill still hasn't passed in the house. They say, you know what, we've got a problem with this bill and we need to

Starting point is 00:24:21 fix it before it gets out. And it was an issue that we heard about all summer long. Okay, good. Well, at least we've got a little bit of time to try and push back on this. I'm not in any way to get necessarily political and find myself particularly annoyed by getting the majority government via floor crossing right now. If this is the kind of stuff that they're pushing through, it feels a little bit sneaky and a little bit nefarious if I was a skeptical man, I might say it was done on purpose. I'm curious also before going to the AI subject. If you're talking with the political representatives, if they're heeding any of your particular warnings, I'm reminded of, I think you, I think you spoke out a lot against the, it was like the CRTC, like the, regarding the online, like the Canadian content laws. And if I'm not mistaken, you were, you were bang on right. That everything you called for, they ignored. They went forward. And I believe they're now kind of pulling it back and repealing now. Yeah, but they listen to me as they were calling through it, right? Only now. So, yeah, no, I have a pretty, I think I, I think I, I, I think I, I, I think I have.

Starting point is 00:25:16 have a decent enough track record on some of these issues where I've said there are concerns, and I think I've been proven right on some of those. Are they listening? I don't know. I've tried. I've tried to raise awareness, obviously, through a number of different platforms that I have and in my appearance of four committee. But listen, there have been a lot of really important voices that have spoken out. And so far, at least on some of the really concerning areas, the government's been a bit unmoved. So I can't say, oh, it's optimistic. I would rather be listened to now than proven right later. And in this case, the proven right later would be that some of these rules get struck down by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional, which, as I mentioned,

Starting point is 00:25:58 I don't think it really serves anybody's interest. No, it's one of the things that I, I dislike about that system in the sense that, okay, they push it through, they get to run with it for a while. Tech companies pull out. People are buying whatever is necessary. Like, they're already acting as if it's the law of the land that they had to adhere to and they get struck down later. It's like how much damage was done in the meantime, right? What do we lose in the meantime? And are they ever necessarily coming back? I'm not sure if you have a comment on that. I just wanted to get that statement in. Yeah. No, I think that's right. So I'm an agreement. Okay, beautiful. It's always a faster podcast when we agree on everything. Okay. So the AI for all strategy, what is going on here? We just had this

Starting point is 00:26:40 drop last week. What exactly is the Canadian government trying to do and get it. hands around AI here. Yeah, no, it's a good place to start. I guess a few things. I mean, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're, their, their marketing line is AI for all. Um, if we set that aside, um, what they're trying to, they're trying to do, I think, a few things here. They are trying to increase adoption, although even that is a bit. Okay, just even pausing on that for a second. Why? Like, I feel like it's the, the, the hottest topic in terms of, like, the upcoming IPOs in terms of like Navidian investment, you know, all the group chats, all the guys, everyone was starting to tinker with it. It's not very costly to get started.

Starting point is 00:27:26 Where is the need for additional like I would say besides grassroots adoption? Well, no, and well, it is there, although I do actually think the adoption discussion is a little bit misplaced. Most people think when they say that Canada has low levels of adoption and the number that is included in the strategy is 12%. They are thinking about the public and its low levels of adoption. But that is not the case. The public uses, general Canadian public uses AI a far higher percentages than that. We've seen hockey stick growth for that.

Starting point is 00:28:00 The 12% is referring to business use of AI. And on that front, we are told Canada ranks poorly relative to other countries. And so the one hand, the government is saying, well, for the economic well-being of the country, and the benefits that might accrue, we need to find ways to get businesses to be more rapid adopters of AI. Part of the problem, though, is there's a bit of confusion because I think some of the strategies themselves are actually not necessarily about business adoption of AI, but the

Starting point is 00:28:28 public use of AI. And as I say, there's less evidence that there's a problem there. So I actually do think there's a bit of confusion where we jump from one stat, but it's actually not necessarily making the case that the government would like it to make. But I mean, all of that, whether it's adoption or literacy to improve adoption or investment in certain kinds of aspects of AI is driven by the view that, you know, government can be supportive in different sectors to try to position Canada in a better leadership position. And I think there's some areas where it's reasonable to be pretty skeptical of that. And I think even with some of the money that they're putting in the reality is that this is small change compared to the massive global. capital that's being flowing into the sector.

Starting point is 00:29:14 So how much does it really move the needle is open to debate? They have in some instances tried to target some areas that make some sense. So in my view anyway, so for example, health data is one area where they're pretty focused on health AI. The announcement itself took place in a hospital, which I think highlights how the government's looking to make a strong connection there. And, you know, health AI is one of those areas that when people say, are even those who are skeptical of AI and say, listen, we haven't seen the benefits.

Starting point is 00:29:41 that we were expecting, or we'll often at least acknowledge that health is actually one example where we can more directly see where some of the benefits might come from. And Canada is potentially positioned to be a leader in this space. Public health care system, 40 million people, if you put some of that data to work in a way that it's adequately protected, it's a very diverse population. There's potentially some real opportunities there to leverage that data in some pretty interesting ways. And so the government's trying to get behind that. But the other areas, you know, it's always going to be the case that I think the government tries to have a little bit for everyone. And I don't know that really advances the, advances the ball that much.

Starting point is 00:30:22 No, fair enough, I say, I'm coming from the anarcho-capitalist perspective. It's not really in favor of much government programs, if any, but I could see the, you could try to make even the cost reduction case, because if I'm not mistaken, I remember hearing a status, something on the lines of like over the certain period of time, Alberta's population had doubled, but the number of hospital admins had 10xed, right? So in terms of documentation, just even client onboarding, and even just the thought process of what you could gleam from something like a smart watch and then AI analyzing the data, I could see our bloated healthcare system getting at least quite a cost savings in boost. It probably would come at the cost of a lot of jobs as a big employer

Starting point is 00:30:59 as well, too, from AI being integrated into their systems. I'm curious, specifically on the investment and if they're looking, because are they looking to outsource like to foreign hyperscalers and foreign companies and then just give access to Canada? Or are they looking to actually build infrastructure here? Yeah, no. So I guess two things. One, they are looking to build infrastructure here.

Starting point is 00:31:21 So that's part of the goal is there's a whole digital sovereignty piece there that the government is focused on creating sovereign based infrastructure. You know, my view would be that there's an important legal component there in some ways the most important component is a legal component. And if sovereignty is a, by and large, a legal concept, if you haven't addressed the rules to better ensure sovereignty over your data, let's say then, I'm not sure that you've addressed the issue. But nevertheless, they are thinking a bit about that.

Starting point is 00:31:50 In the case of health, they're thinking about more than just efficiencies into the system, though, you know, the notion that you can engage in really interesting drug discovery or better diagnoses or things like that by using AI, given that. you know, even even the best most experienced, let's say family physician is still going to see a relatively small patient population pool relative to just how many people are out there. And so, you know, they've got a lot of skill, a lot of instincts that come into play. But an AI might well, you know, have seen, you know, something that is magnitudes, many more of the same kind of case and may be able to identify certain things that wouldn't otherwise

Starting point is 00:32:30 occur. If you've got data that can really be put to use in that regard, that can really spark both developments that improve your own health care system, but then also potentially create new companies or commercial opportunities that actually allow Canada to assume a global leadership position when it comes to this, right? Think of LLMs that are Canadian health database properly protected that might actually allow for some pretty interesting things. So they've tried to put the investment there more in trying to, because health is, you know, brings together both a public side and potentially a private side, they've, they've tried to position themselves as trying to give a bit of a jumpstart to some of that. What about on like the, I have some privacy

Starting point is 00:33:15 concerns about it. I'll bring up at a second as well too, but about like the, the data center infrastructure side. Because I remember we had Hamilton, Ontario was planning a old steel mill that was rejected. And then even in Alberta here, Olds was rejected by the provincial regulator. So it seems like you're getting a little bit of this. Nobody actually wants to have the data center around them. They're talking about within infrastructure, but there seems to be at least public pushback.

Starting point is 00:33:38 Yeah, no, you raise an interesting point, which I must admit, I find, actually have a piece coming out, I think, fairly soon about this. I find it a little tough to reconcile where feels like oftentimes the same people calling for AI sovereignty are the ones that are protesting against building data centers near communities. And I, you know, I

Starting point is 00:33:55 I can't frankly make sense of that. You know, so we've got certain governments trying to address some of those concerns by saying, okay, we are going to try to bring the data in house and they're saying, oh, no, no, we don't want that either. You know, I get that there are those that are opposed broadly to AI and new technologies, and these kinds of new technologies. But I'm assuming I don't think that sort of saying that we're not going to allow the data center here is going to stop the development of this technology or its integration in Canada or anywhere else. It just means that we're going to be more reliant on foreign-owned or foreign-based data centers.

Starting point is 00:34:34 And that seems to be the case of cutting your nose to spite your face. I don't know if it was even referenced in the initial documents that were released there. But are they planning on basically having a government-operated AI infrastructure? Like, would they actually be the ones setting up the service? And I'm reminded of Petro Canada. And this might not necessarily go very well. Yeah, no, no, the focus is more on providing support to different entities in this. I mean, government, there is some amount of discussion around government adoption of AI and sort of government as a leader, as an example for as a model user, but not necessarily government in terms of providing the services that others would rely upon from an sort of from an AI infrastructure perspective.

Starting point is 00:35:23 Okay. And then the other one that I'm concerned about and wondering if you have any insight into, again, going back to the original premise even for the podcast, was the idea of privacy is if the government would end up having access to the data that the data centers are processing, that they're involved or invested in in any sort of way. And kind of what I'm thinking of is like, the one that I like to point to is, look how big Google got just off of the data that they collected from search, that you were just typing in in search. And they grew to this massive behemoth, right? That information really is kind of the currency of the digital realm outside of Bitcoin. And so my worry is that especially if you're doing things like having agents running on your computer locally and you're using a data center, it's not local LLM inference, you're handing over a ton of information regarding everything that's on your machine to these data centers, which I don't think most people are necessarily aware of. And I'm concerned that we're going to have basically the government have all the local, all the inference from your computer in their data set. Yeah, no, I get that. I do not believe that's what they're focused on. They've been more, well, I mean, they may be, but not in the strategy. The strategy itself talks about, frankly, the importance of providing privacy. It doesn't provide as much specificity as I think some of us hope for.

Starting point is 00:36:38 But as we record this, my understanding is that we're likely to see a privacy bill introduced next week just before the House rises for the summer. So assuming that's the case that we will get some of those kinds of specific. So, I mean, data that is housed in data centers is the same as data that's housed in any other sort of cloud computing infrastructure or anywhere else. It's subject to the same kinds of rules and would be here as well. And it's not, the strategy is not, I don't think about government trying to gain specific access to it. Were there other areas of this specific AI strategy that you were skeptical of that we didn't necessarily hit on or touch on that are worth highlighting? Well, you know, in some ways, my initial reaction to it was that, This was version 1.0 and that we really needed a 2.0 version that, you know, the policy side, which tends to be my area of focus, is, was that we didn't have a lot of specifics around the harm's safety piece and not a lot on the privacy piece either. But it now appears that the government is moving quickly on that. So I may disagree with what they do, but nevertheless, they are at least putting some meat on that bones, both with a digital safety bill that is scheduled.

Starting point is 00:37:50 to be introduced as we talk tomorrow. And the piece on privacy, as I say, probably in a week's time. So we'll get essentially the totality of this, the version two, will essentially be there for the public to consider, I suppose, by the time government rises for the summer. And the other one that stands out to me, too, is the energy requirements for new data center infrastructure. Like these things just soak up energy like nobody's business. is there any, I don't think it really goes well with clean energy unless we're going to really spin up a ton of nuclear to be able to do this.

Starting point is 00:38:25 I feel like they're going to have to rely on or at least initially rely on something like LNG, which again, the government seems very opposed to any kind of hydrocarbon usage. Yeah, there wasn't a lot on the issue of the environment, or at least not the way that those focused on the environment had hoped for. That's for sure. Maybe we're getting a pivot. Maybe they're doing the same thing where we want AI a little bit more. we're worried about necessarily having green energy or the appearance of green energy. Yeah. I think that's possible.

Starting point is 00:38:56 I mean, it certainly feels like, you know, this is a new government in the sense that the priorities at a minimum have changed and they are different from Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau. And the environment would be one really good example of that. Beautiful. We have, yeah, we have the digital safety bill coming out, which will be, it'll be the day before the podcast gets released. I'll get this out of here on Thursday. And then we have the privacy bill coming up. Is there anything that you're already aware of in those that we should highlight for the audience as well? There certainly is because we've already seen reports that there will be a

Starting point is 00:39:29 social media ban for those under 16 as part of the online safety bill, digital safety bill. The government will frame this as a temporary measure arguing that they are first going to create a digital safety commission. That commission will set standards, companies, that then meet those standards can then essentially opt out of the system that limits, that excludes under 16s from using their service. I've already been out there arguing that this is enormously problematic, ineffective, harmful policy. That's not to say that I don't think there's a role for regulation in social media companies.

Starting point is 00:40:11 I think there is. In fact, I think that some of the kinds of concerns that arise with respect to these companies around algorithmic regulation, around privacy, or sort of things like that, I don't think they stop when you turn 16 and suddenly you're 17 and these are no longer issues. It seems to me these are concerns that exist, you know, really for society as a whole. And so, you know, if we are going to try to tackle some of these things, and we ought to try to deal with them. And this is just a Band-Aid that is designed to satisfy a bit of a moral panic around kids in social media. but I don't think it really does address,

Starting point is 00:40:47 doesn't address the underlying issues. The focus of regulation should be on the platforms, not on the users. And the solutions that we see come out of this to sort of basically literally require everyone to engage in age verification in order to use these services because that's, if you say it's no one 16 and under can use this, well, everyone still has to prove

Starting point is 00:41:09 that they're over 16, which means either provide identification or engage in age estimation, all of which raises its own set of issues. So just I think really bad policy that sort of misses the mark in terms of some of the kinds of things that we ought to be trying to deal with. No, I completely agree. Because yeah, it's not going to be like,

Starting point is 00:41:31 did you say, like a zero knowledge proof in order to show that like the person is over the age that is demanded. They're going to want like passport photo and your birth certificate. They're going to need some sort of ID with all your information, they really don't need, right? They don't need necessarily your birth name or address or location or your, sorry, your birthday or said, but they just need to know whether you're over the age. And, of course, they're going to capture way more than need to.

Starting point is 00:41:53 And it's going to go hit everybody. I'm curious if you've given any thought to. So not a fan, not a fan of like the CBC necessarily, not a fan of subsidizing media, the podcast space, right, did the free market space thing. When you mentioned the idea of being able to, what was it like, meet the criteria to opt in, Do you have any concerns around essentially narrative control? So to take an extreme example, if I say something like the platform Twitter or X, my apologies, is tends to be a little bit more right or conservative leaning, a little more male leaning or libertarian leaning,

Starting point is 00:42:25 and something like Blue Sky where they might be approving the one that might be a little bit more generally favorable to the current administration, the current regime instead of the one that is opposed? Yeah, no, I think there's always going to be some amount of concerns about whether Biden, IACs enter into the system in terms of what that regulation looks like. I mean, these are challenging things as you start getting into speech for sure. I mean, I think there are real harms, though, and I think that there is the ability to address some of these issues. Many of the kinds of things that are envisioned around what is often referred to as a duty to act responsibly, doesn't always have to get directly into the content level, though. I mean, so you can speak to,

Starting point is 00:43:06 for example, better transparency on the part of the companies themselves, better enforcement of their policies and liability where they fail to meet some of their policies, design choices that they might make to better protect users. So there's a lot of things that you can get into that don't necessarily touch any of the underlying content itself, but still can make these safer places. And one would hope that that's part of what will come into play as part of this. Wonderful. Professor, guys, was there anything else that we missed that's important to highlight for everybody right now? No, I think it was a pretty good tour of what's been happening in Canada. A lot of, a lot of issues that I think are of real concern. And as we were saying,

Starting point is 00:43:48 some of the stuff, I can repeat it a few times, some of these issues feel like issues that, that may be introduced, but ultimately will not really see their, their kind of their end game until the fall, which means the summer is a real opportunity for people to speak out. Perfect. I love it. I love it. Professor guys would love to have you back in the fall to get an update of where things currently are and just kind of see how this is playing out. Where can everybody go to follow you and your work to stay up to date on this? Oh, great. I'm glad you asked. So a lot of different places, I mean, my website is Michaelgeist.ca. And that's, they'll find pretty much everything there. But, uh, they can find

Starting point is 00:44:22 me on substack. I've got a Michael case substack. They, I have a regular podcast called the Lobbytes podcast, which can find on Spotify, Apple or, uh, the podcast platform of your choice. Um, and on, I'm like active on both Twitter and blue sky, uh, at M-G-E-I-S-T on Twitter and something similar. I can never remember the full blue sky. handle, but nevertheless, it's M-Gaist. You know the world is heading down a dark path. Online censorship, central bank digital currencies, a complete loss of privacy, and it's only accelerated.

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BTC Sessions - New Law Creates ‘Giant Surveillance Map’ of Every Citizen | Dr. Michael Geist

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