The proliferation of "spy-cam" cameras in our cities and how it erodes the public's trust in the police and the politicians.

 
This summertime we stroll down the steamy streets of our fine city. Tagged to the lampposts is the warning in French that you are under surveillance. Not a very comforting thought. Where are our civil liberties going when citizens have to be watched if not spied on by the police while strolling during the daylight or after dark on St. Denis Street? The city’s most dangerous and crime-ridden Latin Quarter? Personally this gives a bone chilling feeling, even on a hot day of festival fever. What is the camera for? Is it looking for criminal elements, suspected terrorists a hue darker than they should be, bikers trespassing on the sidewalk, or SUVs double-parked over the curb?

Recently I sat at a brew up sipping my cool one and as I spoke to the bartender about the camera installed I noticed there was a lense staring at me, as I sat at the bar. I was being electronically eavesdropped on the street, a public space and as well in a bar, hotel, airport (yes they are privately run now), conference centers, mall, cinema plexes, tunnels etc.

Nearly everywhere citizens go today they are being monitored by cameras with or without their consent. Does this increase security? In London with one of the world’s highest concentration of these devises, crimes stats have not shown a decrease in petty crime and camera surveillance. In fact petty crime in the UK such as robbery, pick-pocketing in the metro or underground, assaults, have skyrocketed over the past years as cameras have been popping up in both private and public spaces in foggy old England. Meanwhile while cameras appear the police are nowhere to be seen as there are fewer Bobbies or police patrols on the beat. More cameras, means there is less police out there keeping the peace and protecting citizens from crime.

What is more irksome about this Orwellian nightmare in the making is the governments have not said a word about our rights being rapidly eroded under the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms. The politicians are too busy decriminalizing pot to care about our rights to privacy. So if the dope dealing becomes legal after the next elections, why do we need the cameras in the first place? To keep Squeegees off the roads? Cameras belong at military installations, or maximum-security prisons, or embassies in the Middle East, museums displaying Grecos, Picassos maybe, but not the streets! The Cameras being introduced in the Latin Quarter have further eroded our civil liberties. They exist in other places in Canada too and the high tech crime-busting trend is spreading fast.

The first time they appeared was in 2000 in Kelowna B.C. One of Canada’s -- the world's, for that matter -- most dangerous cities after Detroit, Johannesburg, and Mexico City ... the now disgraced privacy Commissioner George Radwanski questioned the legality the cameras. Oddly enough the Supreme Court was considering the case at one stage. Mr. Radwanski’s crusade against the public electronic peeping was cut short when the government coincidentally ousted him for misuse of public funds. Something we now know is a national sport in Ottawa. So why did Mr. Radwanski really go? Maybe he rocked the boat too much. If the case had gone to the courts, is may have set an unpleasant precedent for those advocating cameras in public places such as the lucrative surveillance technologies industry, which is making a fortune these days selling the goods. Anyhow, overworked police can now spend more time watching hockey or baseball and less time patrolling the streets. So smile for the camera next time you are out on the town, you are being watched, which makes us all safer right?