Hello, friends. I feel like most of us have met before, but in case we haven't, I'll quickly introduce myself.
My name is Melissa Lukings. I'm a juris doctor candidate in the University of New Brunswick's faculty of law. I'm also a cybersecurity law and legal researcher, an alumnus of Memorial University of Newfoundland with a B.A. in linguistics, and a social justice and legal reform advocate. I have intersectional lived experience as related to previous testimonial evidence, which was invited to be heard by this committee before. I sent in some handouts. Everyone can read about my background there. I don't really want to waste time on that. I just want to go right into what I wanted to say.
My message to you today, basically, is one of concern at the overbroad and ambiguous nature of some of the proposed legislation that has been put forward.
Here are the issues.
We're being told that the rationale behind the proposed regulations and the push for digital content censorship is to prevent the prevalence and dissemination of non-consensual pornographic material, child pornography and other abusive material, which tends to pop up mostly on the surface web, as we heard earlier. We also want to deter and detect illegal material, prevent it from being uploaded and, optimistically, reduce the instances of human trafficking done via a connection in Canada, and/or with some ties to Canada.
The last time I was here, I expressed my concern that creating more intensive regulations of any sort on surface web content will inevitably push fringe traffic onto dark forums, which are much more difficult to detect and where an influx of user access would saturate an already challenging area for law enforcement. As Dr. Lashkari pointed out, whereas you can detect dark web traffic from the user source computer, it cannot be detected in the Net, from inside, which presents a challenge.
We have some graphics that we've created. They're all in your handouts. They explain how all the different aspects of the dark web work, so if you have any questions, we have illustrations for that.
When I was last here, the response was that it's not the intention of the federal government to push human trafficking, sexual exploitation, illegal content, violence, child porn and all of that onto the dark web. That's great.
Also, as a side note, I really enjoyed being a professor for, like, a minute in your last meeting. Thanks. That was super fun. I made a GIF.
True, we don't want to push these things onto the dark web, and that's great. You wouldn't want to sweep these under the metaphorical rug that is the hidden Internet, yet we're continuing to discuss the creation of additional regulations as if there's not a direct consequence of doing so, even though there is. It's not just a matter of NIMBY or not in my backyard when it comes to illegal content. Hiding it doesn't make it go away. It just hides it from sight, which isn't really a way to address these issues.
On point number four on my notes, when I was last here, I found it really frustrating that the adult entertainment issue and sex work in general had been conflated with sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking within discussions at this very committee.
Indeed, MP Arnold Viersen was so taken by the emailed testimony of people with common experiences in commercialized sexual activity that he felt it was appropriate to waste his speaking time reading out victim porn-type emails from unknown persons, rather than engaging with the spoken testimony of people who also had common experiences in commercialized sexual activity and who had been invited to be heard at the committee hearing.
That's not okay. Hearings are usually for being heard. You're supposed to be hearing from the people who you invite and who are to be heard at your hearing. That's why it's called a “hearing”. Anyway, that's that.
Through highly inaccurate media portrayals, the dark web has become nearly synonymous with illegal activities. However, it is also used....