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Censorship Industrial Complex

Report recommends government surveillance to monitor “disinformation”

Published

9 months ago

3 minute read

From The Democracy Fund

TDF’s Legal Team

Written by 

The Hogue Report recommends the creation of a government surveillance department to monitor Canadians for online disinformation.

TDF is troubled by comments in the Hogue Report that “disinformation” is an “existential threat” to Canadian democracy. Disturbingly, the Report recommends that the government consider creating a separate entity to “monitor the domestic open-source online information environment for misinformation and disinformation that might impact Canadian democratic processes.”

Problematically, while the report claims that “disinformation is difficult to detect,” the report does not sufficiently define “disinformation.” It assumes that there exists people in government capable of infallibly discerning truth from falsehood.

No government has been able to defend or articulate its claim 1) to a superior theory of knowledge or 2) that government agents have extraordinary truth-seeking cognitive skills. In fact, history demonstrates that governments are often the biggest purveyors of falsehood. TDF lawyers have repeatedly raised this issue, particularly during a 2023 meeting with UNESCO representatives.

Additionally, the Hogue Report claims that “information manipulation (whether foreign or not) poses the single biggest risk to our democracy.” It even acknowledges that online disinformation campaigns could be used to create conflict and amplify division.

However, the Liberal government’s Bill C-63 would require social media companies to create a system whereby anyone in Canada can flag and report “harmful content.” As outlined in TDF’s Online Harms Brief this would, unwittingly, allow for mass reporting of content by bad faith actors, human or AI, domestic or foreign (through a domestic proxy). Rather than strengthen the information environment against manipulation, Bill C-63 would weaken it. It is a contradiction for the government to complain about the manipulation of the information environment while simultaneously pushing a law that makes it easier to do so.

Litigation Director Mark Joseph said: “The Report laments that Canadians are exposed to disinformation, as if this is something new: people have always been exposed to ambiguous or false claims. Canadians have simply used basic human discernment to differentiate between truth and falsehood. It is perilous for citizens to surrender their role as final arbiters of civil, political and moral truths to the government since government censors have no special claim to truth-seeking or infallibility.”

About The Democracy Fund:

Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education, and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education and supports access-to-justice initiatives for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Pro-freedom group warns Liberal bill could secretly cut off Canadians’ internet access

Published on November 3, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

“The minister could order this dissident’s internet and phone services be cut off and require that decision remain secret”

Free speech advocates have warned that the Liberals’ cybersecurity bill would allow them to block any individual’s internet access by secret order.

During an October 30 Public Safety committee meeting in the House of Commons, Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) counsel Josh Dehaas called for Liberals to rewrite Bill C-8, which would allow the government to secretly cut off Canadians access to the internet to mediate “any threat” to the telecommunications system.

“It is dangerous to civil liberties to allow the minister the power to cut off individual Canadians without proper due process and keep that secret,” Dehaas testified.

“Consider for example a protestor who the minister believes ‘may’ engage in a distributed denial of service attack, which is a common form of civil disobedience employed by political activists,” he warned.

“The minister could order this dissident’s internet and phone services be cut off and require that decision remain secret,” Dehaas continued, adding that the legislation does not require the government to obtain a warrant.

In response, Liberal MP Marianne Dandurand claimed that the legislation is aimed to protect the government form cyberattacks, not to limit freedom of speech. However, Dehaas pointed out that the vague phrasing of the legislation allows Liberals to censor Canadians to counter “any threat” to the telecommunications system.

Bill C-8, which is now in its second reading in the House of Commons, was introduced in June by Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree and contains a provision in which the federal government could stop “any specified person” from accessing the internet.

The federal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney claims that the bill is a way to stop “unprecedented cyber-threats.”

The bill, as written, claims that the government would need the power to cut someone off from the internet, as it could be “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption, or degradation.”

“Experts and civil society have warned that the legislation would confer ministerial powers that could be used to deliberately or inadvertently compromise the security of encryption standards within telecommunications networks that people, governments, and businesses across Canada rely upon, every day,” the Canadian Civil Liberties Association wrote in a recent press release.

Similarly, Canada’s own intelligence commissioner has warned that the bill, if passed as is, could potentially be unconstitutional, as it would allow for warrantless seizure of a person’s sensitive information.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Senate Grills Meta and Google Over Biden Administration’s Role in COVID-Era Content Censorship

Published on November 2, 2025

By

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By Cindy Harper

Lawmakers pressed Meta and Google to explain how far White House outreach went in shaping their censorship decisions.

A Senate hearing this week discussed government influence on online speech, as senior executives from Meta and Google faced questions about the Biden administration’s communications with their companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The session, titled “Part II of Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans,” highlighted the growing concern in Washington over what lawmakers describe as government-driven pressure to suppress lawful expression.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the hearing, began by declaring that “the right to speak out is the foundation of a free society” and warning that “censorship around the world is growing.”
He accused the Biden administration of pushing technology companies to restrict Americans’ speech during the pandemic, and he faulted both the companies and Democrats for failing to resist that pressure.
“Today, we pick off where the story left off,” Cruz said, pointing to Meta and Google as examples of firms that “were pressured by the Biden administration to censor the American people.”
He pledged to introduce the Jawbone Act, which he said would “provide a robust right to redress when Americans are targeted by their own government.”
Markham Erickson, Google’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, defended the company’s approach, emphasizing that its moderation decisions are guided by long-standing internal policies, not by government direction.
“While we are a company dedicated to the goal of making the world’s information universally accessible, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have certain rules,” Erickson said, citing restrictions on “terrorist content, child sexual abuse material, hate speech, and other harmful content.”
He acknowledged that officials in the Biden administration had contacted Google during the pandemic to urge the removal of certain COVID-19 content from YouTube.
But Erickson maintained that the company “develop[ed] and enforce[d] our policies independently” and “rejected suggestions that did not align with those policies.”
Erickson also alleged that Google has a record of resisting censorship demands from foreign governments, citing its refusal to remove politically sensitive videos in Russia despite threats of imprisonment against employees and fines “that exceed more than the world’s GDP.”
Neil Potts, Meta’s Vice President of Public Policy, took a more reflective stance.
He reiterated that Meta has a “foundational commitment to free expression” and acknowledged that the company had yielded to “repeated pressure” from the Biden White House to restrict COVID-related posts, including satire and humor.
“We believe that government pressure was wrong and wish we had been more outspoken about it,” Potts said. He added that Meta “should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.”
Potts pointed to policy changes the company has made since then, such as ending its third-party fact-checking program, reducing restrictions on political topics, and adopting what he described as “a more personalized approach to political content.”
These steps, he said, were intended to “return to our ideals about free expression” and “allow for more speech.”
Senator Cruz pressed both executives on whether their companies regretted complying with government demands.
Potts responded that Meta “do[es] regret our actions for not speaking out more forcefully.”
Erickson, however, declined to use similar language, saying Google regularly receives “outreach from a lot of actors” and evaluates flagged material independently.
The exchange grew more pointed as Cruz questioned Google’s removal of a YouTube video that compiled election-fraud claims made by both major parties. Erickson conceded, “Yes, that is news,” when Cruz asked whether statements by presidential candidates about election integrity should be considered newsworthy.
But Erickson defended YouTube’s policies during the 2020 election, saying that after states had certified results, the company acted against “claims of widespread fraud” due to potential “real-world harm.”
Cruz accused Google of ideological bias and suggested the company was “unwilling to express regret for anything at all.”
He contrasted that with Meta’s statement of remorse and concluded that Google’s position reflected “a level of contempt for free speech that does not reflect well.”
Where Erickson had insisted that Google “continued to develop and enforce our policies independently,” the company’s letter to Congress acknowledged that “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach” urging the removal of COVID-19 content that did not violate platform rules.
This was somewhat of a departure from the defensive posture Google maintained before the Senate.
You read Reclaim The Net because you believe in something deeper than headlines; you believe in the enduring values of free speech, individual liberty, and the right to privacy.
Every issue we publish is part of a larger fight: preserving the principles that built this country and protecting them from erosion in the digital age.
With your help, we can do more than simply hold the line: we can push back. We can shine a light on censorship, expose growing surveillance overreach, and give a voice to those being silenced.
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