Of course, I would start this with the need to balance security and privacy. Privacy here would be in the form of safeguards, in technological terms, to protect the personal information of individuals on the Internet, and these safeguards rely, to an important degree, on encryption.
First of all, the debate that has been happening in the past few days involving the Apple company and the U.S. government is in the context of U.S. legislation, and there may be some differences between U.S. and Canadian legislation. However, the debate is not a U.S. debate; it is a universal debate, and it absolutely has extreme relevance in Canada.
One important factor to keep in mind, other than the general balance between security and privacy, is that companies ought to be amenable to law—to warrants, to court decisions. Companies are governed by law. That's one important factor. However, the law needs to bear in mind the realities of technology, and I think that's where the dilemma lies.
Law can dictate to companies to act in a certain way and provide information to government and law enforcement. The difficult issue here is that if the law were to do this, what impact would that have in terms of technological capacities? If you break encryption or somehow create an exception to the protection provided by encryption technology, what impact does that have outside of the case in which the information might be sought, and does it undermine protection for the population generally?
It's a complicated issue. There are legal issues, but the technological issues are at least as important.