Aleatoric - tehowe.blogspot.com
Friday May 2, 2008
Like mushrooms after a spring rain, a new surveillance zone has appeared in the downtown area at the intersection of Bathurst and Queen St W.
Walking through the area, this reporter had noticed activity at the corner over the past couple of days - ladder trucks with the usual protective complement of officers to administer pedestrians and vehicular traffic. Expecting that it was just electrical work or streetcar repair that they were doing, I thought nothing of it until this afternoon:
No longer any need to beware occasional panhandlers and concert goersThis latest installment in the installation of Toronto's new 'panopticon'-styled system of enforcement represents an outrage inflicted upon it's citizens - the cumulative effect of their betrayal by their current municipal public servants, 'Toronto's Finest', and the local media as well for failing to alert them to this plan.
Because it's easy enough to figure out - some of you must have known. Jeremy Bentham outlined the theory behind this setup in 1785. He called it the 'panopticon'. It was the design for an open-concept prison in which the prisoners were visible to a nearby guard station at all times but could not see if the guard was there or not. Michel Foucault famously included the Panopticon's design in his critique of hierarchical structures like the army, the school, the hospital and the factory - implying that it's an exercise of power in order to impose some particular idea of social order, whether its purpose be to train, to nurse, or to bring to heel. The intention of these systems was exemplified in ancient Rome by the words of one Gaius Cassius, a senator noted for his history of corruption, when he said "exemplary punishment always contains an element of injustice".
Sufficient cause? Site of unsolved arson.Presumably the reasons given to justify the new cameras will be; the recent arson, the occasional panhandler, kids going to punk shows. All of which are, no doubt, fine reasons for a crackdown. But it becomes clear that the use of local events as justification is to some degree a ruse. Similar surveillance networks - grids of cameras with the capability of being hooked into central stations for police observation - are being installed throughout Britain, The United States, Australia, and Canada, despite the lack of evidence to prove they have any effective deterrent effect on criminals.
Privacy International, in their 2007 "International Privacy Ranking", portrayed Canada's privacy as "decaying", and made it clear that we would soon be on the road to joining the club of "endemic surveillance societies" if we didn't clean up our act - although the beleageaured efforts of the nation's privacy commissioners are given due credit.
Can we ever justify the kind of enforcement that treats citizens in the same way as it treats criminals?
Outside "The Meeting Place", a drop-in centreIt's a suitable irony then, that the name of the drop in-centre on the north-west corner of the intersection is 'The Meeting Place', often identified as the Huronian translation of 'toronton' - one explanation for the origin of our city's name. The department of Natural Resources Canada, however, takes care to point out on their website that the true origin is found in the French name for the fort that stood on these grounds prior to the establishment of York. Fort Toronto was named, instead, after the Mohawk site 'tkaronto' - a good place for catching fish.
It's up to the people of Toronto, though, to decide what the city of Toronto means to them.
We can choose to have a meeting place - Toronto the Good? - or we can reconstruct, and update, the old garrison.
Call your councillor and tell them that you're opposed to Toronto the Panopticon.
Members of Toronto City Council 2006 - 2010
http://app.toronto.ca/im/council/councillors.jsp
Stumble It!
When Orwell wrote his classic novel, he had no information about infra-red or night-vision cameras.
from George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-four
http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/
Nineteen Eighty-four is in the public domain in Canada, Russia, and Australia and perhaps others.
It is put about that the Harris government was installed on the promise to do away with phot-radar---it pissed voters off.....this will too.
The orwellian 1984---BIG BROTHER aspect.....
London England's comprehensive CCTV setup didn't prevent the bombings but did enable Scotland Yard to run down the perps within 2-3 days----some halfway around the world.
Photo-radar never pissed me off it was a joke....At the timer of it's deployment, my activity involved small "tow" vehicles which were tow-bar hauled by commercial vehicles being delivered. The firm never kept an account of who had what tow vehicle so the talent pool was indifferent to the photo-radar and sped up. The 20-30 delay would cover their tracks----but no tickets arrived.
Red-light cameras seem to have a deterent effect (perhaps) on the air-heads who drive in the GTA. To object indicates an indifference to safety and the law....
The unsolved arson and the interdicted terrorist plot are incentives. No doubt the crazies are aware that BIG BROTHER is watching and that complicates their plots just that much more.