u/555phones

I'm pretty dumbfounded that a supposedly democratic government railroaded Bill C-22 through the house, arguably one of the most dystopian surveillance bills in a civil society.

As I understand it, it will compel companies to retain metadata on all users for at least six months, as well as permit the government to make tech companies install secret backdoors into hardware and software products as requested by the feds. These orders can't be disclosed at all.

My question is what is the legal future of this horrible bill? Many parts of the bill seem to contravene our rights and freedoms (specifically against unreasonable searches and seizures). The secrecy aspect is particularly troubling. How can you even use evidence in a trial if you can't disclose where you got it from? And doesn't prohibiting disclosure impact open justice and infringe on our freedom of speech? On the other hand, how will we challenge Bill C-22 if we don't know what to challenge? In other words, how do we challenge a secret backdoor that gave the government access to my messages, if we don't know that this secret backdoor exists?

Please give it to me bluntly and no need to be warm and fuzzy. The only thing that makes me feel better when I think about this bill is imagining this is going to be a slam dunk to tear this down in court. But I realize it's probably not going to be that simple.

How can a democratic government do this, and will we possibly be able to stop them?

Edit: also, in a practical context how will this bill affect the legal system? For instance, won't we know there's a secret backdoor somewhere as soon as evidence is used in a trial, because the crown/prosecution will have to disclose where and how they obtained their evidence against you? Or will we get into a situation where the government won't "waste" their backdoor by presenting evidence obtained from a backdoor until they get a "big enough" trial?

Tl; dr: migrated Google Photos to an empty iCloud Photos library, and iCloud is using almost twice the size.

Longer version:

Last week I did something I've wanted to do for a long time: I migrated my Google Photos library to iCloud Photos.

My iCloud Photos library was completely empty when I began the migration, actually it was nonexistent since iCloud Photos was switched off on all my devices. I checked under iCloud's manage storage settings, and iCloud Photos wasn't even listed there before the migration as it was completely empty. all good so far.

I used a 256 GB phone to do the job. I downloaded Google Photos, scrolled through and selected all my photos/videos, then downloaded them to my camera roll. Then I switched on iCloud Photos and connected the phone to power till the sync was completed.

In Google Photos, my storage was listed at 177.49 GB, but in iCloud they are taking up 351.1 GB!!!

As I was using a 256 GB phone to do the sync, this is even more data than my phone could physically hold, so iCloud clearly added some cruft, and I have absolutely no idea what it did. Photo count is exactly the same between iCloud Photos and Google Photos.Note that I watched the storage climb under "manage storage" as it was syncing, from just a few MBs all the way up you double the storage I expected it would take up.

I synced the photos library to my Mac, and my pictures folder has now grown to 380 GB.

What's really frustrating about this is I had to buy the next iCloud storage tier to fit everything. I was hoping it would just sort itself out after a few days, but it hasn't. What can I check? How could this have happened?

I'm curious, what would everyone say are the benefits and drawbacks you find with Tello? I was thinking about this today and decided to start jotting down a list so I have some data when recommending an MVNO.

Here are the benefits:

Rollover, as long as you're renewing an in market plan with specific voice/data limits. You can renew any time and keep your existing text, data and calling balances. Limited rollover feature for loyal users on the unlimited plan now too. This is a unique feature, I haven't heard of it on any other MVNO.

You can do everything yourself via self serve including obtaining your port out PIN, and also toggling a bunch of stuff that many providers don't let you change yourself (e.g. disable voicemail, disable roaming, block data roaming but keep it on for voice/text). This isn't trivial stuff. It's a snap to disable voicemail, set up call forwarding somewhere else like Google Voice or YouMail, but then change your mind and re-provision voicemail.

Tello tolerates ex-pat usage via Wi-Fi calling and roaming, as long as you activate in the USA first. You can use the service indefinitely abroad, swap your phone, and Tello will support you when you need it.

Extremely helpful user to user community on Reddit (here). Reasonable support for an MVNO through customer service.

Here are the drawbacks:

Random automated account bans that are never explained with no way to escalate. Tello will not care or try to help you, although it seems like sometimes you can save the phone number by porting it out. This is the big one, it seems to be incredibly prevalent, and it’s why I'm sometimes afraid of using this company.

Deprioritization on T-Mobile with no access to other carriers.

Doesn't support phone to phone e sim transfers, and drastically limits how many times you can generate new e sims yourself on self serve.

No support for some iPhone features like 5G Standalone or end to end encrypted RCS messaging. This seems to be an issue with the bundle T-Mobile provides to its MVNOs.

Is this a fair list? Anything y'all would add or dispute?