SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS: "THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE"

(Whitehorse Star, Feb. 15, 2002)
by Jane Gaffin

 

The first principle of people-control is not to let them know they're being controlled. So governments propagandize crime-reduction as a favorite motive when sneakily setting out to re-engineer society.

Take surveillance cameras in public streets, for instance. They are people-control devices billed as crime-reducers. And the public blissfully embraces the government 's tools for spying.

Following the 9-11 Attack on America, polls showed an astonishingly high percentage of the populace was eager to trade a pound of precious individual freedoms for an ounce of what they perceived to be safety.

One of those lost freedoms will be privacy, as well as dignity, both which are interwoven into the fabric of individual well-being. Unless this dangerous slide into an Orwellian age is stopped, soon all freedoms will be deadly sins and free-spirited, free-thinking individuals will be cast aside as shop-worn relics.

A person only has rights to something that can never be taken away by another. Natural--or birth-- rights can never be taken away because the government is not the source of those rights. However, those rights can be and are denied in countries ruled by two-bit, tinpot , backwater dictators.

Canada seems bent on doing down this same path, easily denying people their inalienable rights through vaguely-written laws, which are the tools of dictators, whether or not dictatorship was the original intent. Under the guise of fixing a perceived problem, the newly-created laws end up watering down democracy. Incrementally, governments chip away until laws are abused. Then power is expanded that trample personal rights and freedoms like the environmental legislation, the Firearms Act and Anti-Terrorist Act.

The government pretends that any new set of laws takes precedence over everybody's natural rights. Unfortunately, they do, as long as people believe it. As a Christian nation, however, Canada was built on a concept that people have certain inalienable, God-given rights that cannot be tampered with by governments at any level.

In the past, those rights and freedoms were cherished to the degree that gun-bearing people were always at the ready to rise up and fight to preserve them. Some of the basic rights, which make-up the foundation on which Canada and the United States were built, are:

1. the right to defend self, family and property against the depredations of evil people.
2. the right of freedom to worship according to the dictation of one's own conscience.
3. the right to quiet enjoyment to own property without harassment by government.
4. the right to freedom of speech, thought, belief, opinion and expression; the right of freedom of peaceful assembly; the right of freedom of association; and the right of freedom of the press, including other media communication.

Now, almost 800 years after King John signed the Magna Carta that ordered the state to cease interference with people's rights and freedoms, people are oddly willing to reject their civil liberties in exchange for a false-sense of security. Freedom is a fragile thing, each one linked tenuously to another for the whole. If one is destroyed, the domino effect will eventually topple them all.

Interwoven into those rights and freedoms is the innate need for privacy and dignity. That is why people wear clothes, have blinds on windows, doors on bathrooms, private telephone lines and sealed mail.

Anybody who has suffered a house burglary knows the horrible sense of violation and uncleanness after an intruder has invaded the private domain and riffled personal belongings. Surveillance cameras give governments legal licence to be peeping Toms, invading your privacy. Yet it is not government's business which store you go into or which restaurant you come out of.

Police have a passion for these high-tech toys which are one step removed from enforcement officers barging into your house whenever they feel the urge, just to look around, and possibly help themselves to whatever they fancy.

The next step will be to bring the cameras into your neighbourhoods, homes, tap your phones and intercept your mail--all under the excuse of crime reduction. Under the firearms, terrorism and environmental legislation, enforcement officers already enjoy variations of such descretionary powers.

Federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski described the cameras contemplated for Vancouver and other cities as "the thin edge of the wedge that will irrevocably change our whole notion of our rights and freedoms."

Surveillance cameras on public streets needlessly and dangerously tip the balance, he recently told the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Bar Association.
Radwanski, who answers to Parliament, ruled earlier that such monitoring is against the law. Yet monitoring is rampant as governments break the law, and is only now in its infancy.

Meanwhile, politicians rejoice in their ability to concoct new crimes by writing an inordinate number of laws and by-laws that send ordinary people tiptoeing through life in an unsuccessful attempt to be "law-abiding" citizens.

The term is a misnomer. Nobody can get through a day without committing sins on a regular basis. Now the city of Whitehorse is toying with installing extra sets of eyes--and maybe ears--to nab those respected citizens who are getting away with "crimes" that councillors and legislators fabricate by the ton.

If super snoops see you talking with someone already on the police list, they will assume you are guilty by association. Your mug will end up in the database of suspects. You may have an inkling how your photo got there, but you won't have any recourse for removing it.

Digitizing leaves a lot to be desired. There are many sets of look-alikes. Your face can be wrongly matched to photos already in the police files. And these guys often work more on assumption than fact.

Whitehorse mayor Ernie Bourassa has tried to peddle the claptrap over CBC radio that cameras on public streets will reduce crime. He has parroted airy-fairy, idealistic notions that "criminals" (that's you) will be caught, dragged into court, justice served and restitution paid.

I've heard the oft-repeated theory he espouses:

If people aren't doing anything wrong, they should have nothing to hide or fear. My answer is: If people aren't doing anything wrong, why the indescribable urge to spy on them?

Because public officials aren't going to be happy until every person is labelled a criminal and registered in the police's database.

Yet people have a God-given right to go about their business without someone peering over their shoulders, in their windows, observing every transaction, perhaps every human contact.

No one can be truly free who has to go through life feeling their every action is being observed and monitored, stressed Radwanski. "That is the very essence of the fundamental human right to privacy, which is a crucial element of our freedom."

One argument is that private businesses and public buildings already have cameras. So what? You don't have to go in. The owners set the rules of the "house". A customer has a personal choice to enter or not to enter the premises to obtain a service or product.

Back on the public street, privacy should be restored. However, if armed policemen and/or cameras are stationed on every corner, pedestrians will start to scurry along streets Orwellian style.

They'll duck their heads, not speaking to any one, especially strangers, for fear of being wrongly associated with some drug dealer or rapist. People will start imitating those who do crimes of force by disguising their identities with hoods, masks and balaclavas.

When traveling in non-free, police-state countries, Radwanski spoke of the drabness of life that results from this utter lack of privacy. "There's kind of sullenness in the air," he added.

Why would residents want to intentionally turn Whitehorse into an oppressed community where people are afraid to talk with friends on the street, or who become so xenophobic they are reluctant to give assistance to valued tourists?
Freedom is the easiest thing to give away and the hardest thing to get back. Adults and students should think long and hard before nonchalantly trading a pound of liberty for an ounce of false security.

Something can be done to overthrow this wave of madness, though. According to author Tammy Bruce, activism relies not on groupthink but on individualism--a word that does not even exist in Chinese and other languages used in dictatorships.

In Bruce's book "The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds", the author explains why the socialists feel compelled to destroy individual liberty.

Be prepared, she warns, to suffer the initial wave of attacks from every group you anger with your logical and strong opposition. However, the big reward she promises for fighting the good fight to preserve freedom is the ease with which you will be able to sleep--not having to fear somebody will kick down your door in the middle of the night because you did the right thing for yourself and your fellowman.

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