Signal, Windscribe warn of Canada exit over Bill C22

Signal and Windscribe have warned they may exit or relocate operations from Canada rather than comply with Bill C22, a proposed law that would require electronic service providers to retain user metadata for up to one year and build technical surveillance capabilities.

The encrypted messaging app Signal issued the statement through its vice president of strategy and global affairs, Udbhav Tiwari, in an interview with The Globe and Mail this week. Tiwari said the company "would rather pull out of the country than comply with a law that undermines its privacy commitments." He added that the bill could introduce vulnerabilities into electronic systems, making private messaging services targets for hackers and foreign adversaries. "End-to-end encryption is incompatible with exceptional access, no matter how creative the route taken to achieve it," Tiwari stated.

Windscribe, a virtual private network provider headquartered in Toronto, echoed the warning in a post on X. "We won't be far behind if C22 passes," the company said. "In its current state, VPNs would almost certainly require us to log identifying user data." Unlike Signal, which operates servers in Canada but is based...