Senator calls on Rubio, Blanche to push back against Canadian surveillance legislation
Senator Ron Wyden is urging the Trump administration to push back against Canadian legislation that could force U.S. tech companies to create backdoors and share user data, potentially compromising U.S. national security and privacy. This follows a similar situation in the UK, where authorities attempted to pressure Apple to weaken encryption. The proposed law would allow Canadian authorities to compel U.S. companies to facilitate surveillance of American citizens.
Senator Ron Wyden is urging the Trump administration to assess and push back against Canadian legislation that could force U.S. tech companies to create backdoors and share user data, potentially compromising U.S. national security and privacy. The proposed Canadian law, known as the Lawful Access Act, would require providers to store user metadata – for example, location history – for up to a year. It would also allow the Canadian government to force providers to create backdoors or set up tracking.
The bill passed in Canada’s House of Commons but still requires Senate approval. Senator Wyden argues that this legislation creates a ‘statutory vacuum’ and allows Canadian authorities to bully companies like Apple and Google into turning over data.
Similar proposals previously have created rifts with U.S. allies. In February 2025, it emerged that the U.K. secretly pressured Apple to make encrypted iCloud backups less secure for spying purposes. The disclosure sparked an uproar and British authorities abandoned the plan six months later.
Foreign requirements mandating U.S. companies help create backdoors violate citizens’ privacy and create severe cyber risks, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress at the time.
U.S. law does not “explicitly prohibit American companies from secretly facilitating foreign surveillance of U.S. citizens – even if the target is the president or another senior U.S. government official,” Wyden’s letter said.
He recommended that U.S. officials leverage current negotiations over the U.S.-Canada CLOUD Act agreement “to establish ironclad, explicit prohibitions against these extraterritorial technical and prospective engineering mandates.”