Vancouver

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

By Kevin Potvin

http://www.republic-news.org/archive/139-r...tvin_police.htm 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 city’s public spaces.


In an interview May 19 with Bill Good on CKNW radio, he said public cameras would help in the Vancouver Police Department’s contribution to the War on Terror, before he went on to dismiss critics warning of privacy invasions with the usual corker, “If you’re doing nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide.” This weak argument—always trotted out by authorities whenever the issue of police surveillance comes up—must be quashed once and for all. Why the “nothing to hide” cat has never been held under water long enough we’ll 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 won’t mind me installing a camera in your bathroom,” or the always reliable—or always should be reliable—“Why stop at cameras? If you’re 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 weren’t 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 Vancouver’s 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 power—and the equally frightful potential for mistakes made with that information—that 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 Graham’s local version of Total Information Awareness? The new police-installed anti-terrorism-juiced cameras won’t 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 eat—all 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 don’t 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 Graham’s assurances, there is plenty we may wish to hide, even when we are doing nothing criminal. And what’s 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 can’t. 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 world’s most tyrannical police-state regimes—all 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.