Officials intent on removing privacy, civil rights, and we’re not helping ourselves

WE ARE WELL-ADVISED TO fear governments taking away our privacy. Legislation increasingly has removing your rights as its primary goal. But they’re not the only ones putting us at risk: we’re often our own worst enemies.

Through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, we’re laying ourselves bare to the world.

Facebook, like many Internet sites, exist to harvest information, sell it to advertisers and target you with personalized ads. Tracking is the norm, as is collecting as many details as possible of what each of us does online. There’s nothing neutral about most of it: this is not just a sociology study, though, of course, it’s that too.

Leaving aside the issue of why exactly people feel compelled to post the upto-the-second minutia of their lives, there’s a danger of what you post being used against you. Police have culled through social media feeds, particularly photos and videos, to track participants in protests and violent acts such as riots. They’ve also used technology to recover stolen goods and the not-very-bright thieves who post the items for sale using online sites.

That’s an obvious peril, brought about by, well, stupidity. A less obvious risk has to do with employers demanding access to the Facebook pages of prospective employees. People going in for interviews are now sometimes asked for login names and passwords right on the spot so that the interviewers can poke around their online lives. In the U.S., border officials are pushing for such powers to examine the devices – phones, computers, tablets – of any and all travellers.

Authorities routinely use and abuse electronic surveillance. Governments are spying on you. Somewhere along the line, your personal information – your emails, phone calls and digital likeness captured on video – has been scooped up and stored away for future use. Check that. Future abuse.

There’s only one reason for this. No, it’s not about national security. Or even your security. It’s so that they can control you. Well, millions of yous. The surveillance state isn’t about keeping the bad people out, it’s about keeping those inside under wraps, with no escape.

Authorities monitoring for dissent is precisely what led to the massive abuse of the Andrew Abbass’ civil rights. The Newfoundland man was arrested by police and quickly committed to a psychiatric hospital for having the temerity to post some angry tweets in response to a police shooting in April of 2015. Though eventually released, he refused to simply take it, pursuing the issue to the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal, which last week defended political dissent and condemned the policestate activities.

“If anger about political events and words of defiance to authorities are dealt with as signs of mental illness …. warranting involuntary committal, then our society is in a dangerous place,” wrote a panel of three-judges in handing down a scathing decision.

“Such anger and defiance are characteristic of political dissent. As the history of authoritarian societies has taught us, confinement in a mental institution is a particularly insidious way of stifling dissent, directly and through intimidation.”

Police reacted to Abbass’ social media posts, made in response to the shooting of a Newfoundland man, Don Dunphy, by an officer who went to Dunphy’s home in response to political comments made on Twitter.

Abbass was quickly railroaded into a psychiatric facility and committed after a cursory examination that lasted less than 20 minutes.

This seemed like an intimidation attempt, aimed not only at Abbass but at other would-be challengers of the police and politicians.

“Was this the intent of the police in this case? Did the physicians simply lend their authority to what the police asked them to do? Did they assume that a person who acts in the way Mr. Abbass did needs help and further assessment and observation, without turning their minds to the specific limited statutory criteria that would justify his deprivation of liberty?” asked the panel of judges.

“The reality is that if you are involuntarily confined, you are viewed differently; you are seen as less credible. That is not how it should be but that is how it is. As well, there is the intimidation factor. If the police can take you away once and the physicians confine you, maybe they will do so again.”

Stifling dissent and exercising control are the defaults for all authorities ... not just authoritarians.

Oh, this is all couched in the language of increased safety, drawing heavily on terrorism rhetoric. Our current governments aren’t the first to take authoritarian steps – that’s been going on for decades – but it certainly has been eager to take advantage of the post9/11 frenzy, joining the U.S., UK and other nominal democracies in clawing back hard-won rights.

Many governments in the West have been quick to foster a culture of fear, allowing them to impose laws that would have been unthinkable before 9/11 and to spend vast sums of money on military, police and security programs that have enriched the coffers of a few at everyone else’s expense.

With each new measure that increases video, phone and Internet surveillance, overrides the judicial process and creates new enemies through wars, we edge a little closer to the kind of dystopian state Orwell, Huxley and countless others have warned us about.

The sweeping powers and vague language of legislation such as Bill C-51 leave Canadians open to routine violations of their rights, particularly their privacy. The prospect exists for almost anyone to be treated as suspect. It’s not difficult to foresee the label of “enemy” being affixed

to environmentalists opposed to a pipeline project, or to anyone opposed to Harper – he of the already established Nixonian enemies list.

Certain types have always had the urge to spy on people; in the post-9/11 world, the paranoid and dictatorial have found new ways to curtail public freedoms. Their attempts to play on current fears have many precedents – think of McCarthyism and the state police of hundreds of oppressive regimes.

Information gathered will do nothing to deter real crime, but would serve as an excellent vehicle for public control. Misuse would be rampant. Throw in a lack of data security and oversight and we quickly see the perils become even greater – what happened in Newfoundland won’t be an aberration.