From: Marc Azar <marca_-at-_arobas.net>
To: NO WAR LIST <Nowar_-at-_list.nowar-paix.ca>
Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 12:43:21 -0400
http://www.republic-news.org/archive/139-repub/139_kevin_potvin_police.htm
Police state looms as Vancouver engages in the War on Terror
Comments made by Chief of Police Jamie Graham reveal the direction
he is intent on taking police powers of surveillance and monitoring
May 25 to June 7, 2006
By Kevin Potvin
Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham last week breezily invoked the
American-invented War on Terror to justify his proposal to install
police video cameras around the citys public spaces. In an interview
May 19 with Bill Good on CKNW radio, he said public cameras would help
in the Vancouver Police Departments contribution to the War on Terror,
before he went on to dismiss critics warning of privacy invasions with
the usual corker, If youre doing nothing wrong, youve got nothing to
hide.
This weak argumentalways trotted out by authorities whenever the issue
of police surveillance comes upmust be quashed once and for all. Why
the nothing to hide cat has never been held under water long enough
well never know, but it does seem to have amazing abilities to keep
coming back.
There are any number of replies that should have killed it by now: Then
I suppose you wont mind me installing a camera in your bathroom, or
the always reliableor always should be reliable Why stop at cameras?
If youre doing nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, why not allow
police to search your body, your house, your computer files?
Why indeed not? Besides the pure voyeurism of it, what is it that makes
us shudder so chillingly at the idea of unwarranted police searches of
our selves, our homes, and our computers? What really lies at the root
of our strong natural resistance to the idea of those powers landing in
the hands of police?
The same arguments advanced in favour of video surveillance cameras can
be used to justify unwarranted police searches of our bodies,
homes, and files. It will surely reduce crime, it will expose crime
where police werent aware of it, it will be a strong deterrent to more
crime, it would provide great tools to police investigating crimes, and
to follow Police Chief Graham, it would be an important tool in the War
on Terror. All good things, no?
Yet, no one who makes those arguments is even remotely convinced it is a
good idea to allow police these extraordinary powers of
surveillance. The reasons invoked to resist these powers are the same as
those that can, and should, be invoked to resist the installation of
police surveillance cameras in Vancouvers public spaces.
Nothing is more corrosive to the social fabric of a city than
unwarranted police surveillance. This is what all veterans of bloody
battles for democracy and justice in countries around the world
throughout history tell us, and our own most observant commentators,
from George Orwell to Robert Fisk and John Pilger, repeat it: the
encroachment of the police state marches in lock-step with the shrinkage
of the democratic and just state.
It is our well-founded fear of the potential use of this information as
a tool of corruption and abuse of powerand the equally frightful
potential for mistakes made with that informationthat brings on the
chill we feel at the mere mention of unwarranted police surveillance
and monitoring in any of its forms, no matter how little we have to hide.
What is the price we would pay for Chief Grahams local version of Total
Information Awareness? The new police-installed anti-terrorism-juiced
cameras wont be your garden-variety, convenience-store set-up, but
instead will be a centralized web of digital recorders linked to
sophisticated computers running facial recognition software. These work
in some airports around the world by flashing a miniscule light bright
enough to cause everyone to glance up at the source to allow the
computer to frame the face perfectly for the facial recognition software
to work its magic.
That magic is simple enough. Facial recognition software measures the
distance between the centre of the eyes and compares that measurement to
one between the eyes and the centre of the chin, and makes other similar
types of measurements and comparisons. It turns out such ratios and
distances produce a unique profile for each of us, as unique as our
fingerprints. But our facial characteristics are much easier to gather
than our fingerprints.
This software, in tandem with police cameras and data banks of public
information, is no longer the sort of anonymous, disconnected, and
relatively sporadic surveillance we are familiar with as we move from
bank to store and through traffic lights. It is an interconnected web of
total surveillance showing our every move, complete with a sign over our
heads showing our names, our addresses, our phone numbers, our ages, and
our drivers licence numbers, as well as a good deal more information we
think is private, but is not. Our credit ratings, our email addresses,
our online habits, where we shop, what we eatall of it is available
with no warrants.
There are a lot of things we do that are not criminal, but that can
nonetheless be something we dont want known. People have affairs, or
they go to massage parlours; they might wish to meet with future
employers they are considering jumping to, or they might meet secretly
to settle sensitive business transactions; government and private sector
whistle-blowers might meet with journalists to pass along information;
political operatives might need to meet with opposition figures to
arrange secret deals. Despite Chief Grahams assurances, there is plenty
we may wish to hide, even when we are doing nothing criminal.
And whats more, even if we are up to no good, is this level of
surveillance justified? Imagine getting a jay-walking ticket in the
mail, complete with a photo. How about a debilitating tax audit
triggered by too many visits to Holt Renfrew, information police shared
with Revenue Canada?
Imagine a crusading police officer tracking every move of an
abortion-providing doctor. How would you feel if you made a career of
making public speeches highly critical of the police, knowing they can
track all your patterns and know where you are at any moment?
Politically motivated people may have friends in the police department
who can help them learn who an opponent is having lunch with, and where.
The opportunity for blackmail and other forms of corruption this
information makes available is staggering.
There is a well-known and widely practiced police technique of catching
minor criminals and offering to drop charges for information on
more major criminals. Informants are useful because they can go places
police cant. Use of this technique would explode once police gained new
evidence of petty crime on countless more potential informants. The
power police would have in our society would match that exercised by the
worlds most tyrannical police-state regimesall without their having to
dispense with the façade of democracy, accountability, and justice.
When Chief Graham mentioned the War on Terror in justifying the web of
cameras he envisions for Vancouver, this is what came to my mind. He
should be opposed, and opposed strongly.
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