secret orders

Bill C-22 Lets the Public Safety Minister Order a Telecom to Build Surveillance Tools. The Telecom Cannot Tell You. Here Is How That Works.

Bill C-22 contains a provision that civil-liberties advocates from Meta, Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and academic privacy law have uniformly flagged as the bill's most aggressive feature: the Public Safety Minister's power to issue "capability orders" to electronic service providers. Under Part 2 of the bill (the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, SAAIA), the Minister can require a provider to build a specific surveillance capability into their service, maintain it, and not disclose its existence. The provider must comply. The provider is legally prohibited from disclosing that the order exists. The Intelligence Commissioner reviews the Minister's reasonableness on a case-by-case basis. There is no statutory requirement of public reporting — even aggregate. This article walks through how the order is issued, what the provider is and is not allowed to say, how the Intelligence Commissioner's review works in practice, and what amendments could restore public accountability.