The Dominion - security

Cameras, Cops and Crime

dawn — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:43:08 +0000

Police, business and the city of Peterborough collude for more closed-circuit television cameras

PETERBOROUGH—Even though surveillance cameras seem to be everywhere these days, their effectiveness in ensuring safety and lowering crime rates is still contested. That debate is heating up in Peterborough, Ontario, where city council recently considered joining the ranks of other medium-sized cities in Ontario that have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

On Monday, June 20, the Peterborough-Lakefield Police Service made a presentation to the Peterborough city council, requesting support for a plan to install 12 closed-circuit television security cameras in the downtown core. The following week, council debated the request, which would see the initial cost of the cameras be provided by a Civil Remedies Grant Program from the Ontario Attorney General's office.

On top of the initial $150,000 grant, the proposal would require the city to shell out an additional $5,000 each year for continued operation of a system that opponents and even some of its backers admit may not prevent crime.

A number of other medium-sized municipalities, such as Cornwall, Belleville and Barrie have already installed CCTV cameras with funds from the same grant, and it is expected that other towns and cities will follow suit. The city of Barrie, which only has six cameras, spends double what Peterborough proposes to spend on the operation and maintenance of its cameras.

Despite the increasingly widespread use of this surveillance technology in Ontario, Peterborough residents are questioning the value of being watched around the clock. Some of these opponents are concerned about the general privacy implications of such cameras, making reference to the dystopian police-state vision of author George Orwell.

Other concerns are much more immediate, like those of one Peterborough homeowner who asked to remain anonymous. She noted that in her experience working at a women’s clinic in another city, cameras near the clinic became a barrier to women accessing important services. Similar services, such as the Kawartha Sexual Assault Center, are located in Peterborough's downtown core, and she is concerned that such services may be forced to move to more inaccessible locations if the cameras are installed.

Some backers of the plan appear to be banking on the cameras' ability to simply displace crime and other "antisocial behaviour" to other less-visible areas of town. Councillor Bill Juby stated that pushing crime out of the downtown core and over to the next street would be a good start.

This seemed to spark some outrage in the packed council hall, with one attendee shouting that he lived on that next street. The approval came despite 13 presentations opposed to the cameras, and only two in favour.

The two people who spoke in favour of more cameras downtown were both board members of the Downtown Business Improvement Area (DBIA). In A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada, prepared by the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queens University, it was found that local Business Improvement Associations are largely responsible for the proliferation of cameras, with the political impetus and funding often coming from them.

The same report found “camera surveillance has never been extensively debated as a national policy issue.” What doesn't happen nationally, however, is unfolding on the local level, as illustrated by events in Peterborough.

In an interview, Paul Raino of the Peterborough DBIA stated that "people shouldn’t be overly concerned” about being watched by cameras, noting the “international dangers out there.”

While acknowledging that the cameras will likely not act as a deterrent to crime, Raino thinks that they are a good idea, saying that the DBIA stands behind the idea in order to “support the police.”

According to Peterborough Police Chief Murray Rodd, the Peterborough-Lakefield Police Service made the request to city council on behalf of the DBIA, though he denied that the police were doing the bidding of business at the expense of other communities. Rodd maintained that regardless of the concerns brought up in regards to the system, “New tools will always help the police do their job.”

Redge Smith, who works in Peterborough's downtown core and attended the meeting at city hall, disagrees, arguing that these tools will be disproportionately used against marginalized communities. When interviewed a few weeks after the council debate, he also spoke of the lack of consultation with people who may be impacted, including downtown residents, people who work downtown, the homeless and others who shop and visit the downtown area.

The report given to city council is endorsed only by the police and the DBIA, and indicates no other consultation.

“There is a shockingly transparent partnership between political power in the city, businesses and the police,” said Smith. The money could be much better spent to address underlying causes of crime, says Smith, such as poverty and marginalization. “Instead, it is being used to watch us.”

Matthew Davidson is a community organizer based in Peterborough, Ontario.

Surveillance

Beating Bad Habits

Tim McSorley — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:00:27 +0000

How community organizers are working together for more secure online communications

Image by Shira Ronn

KITCHENER, ON—Over the past two years infiltration and disruption of activist and media organizations as well as anarchist communities by undercover cops have been on the rise across Canada. This has included high profile cases of police infiltrating groups organizing resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympics on Coast Salish Territories and the G20 summit in Toronto.

Throughout these experiences one thing is now clear: beyond our often naive approach to security culture many in the social and ecological justice movements are not practicing good computer security habits.

In response to this growing need the Montreal-based Anarchist Tech Security collective (Anarchistes pour des technologies solidaires—ATS) formed after the G20. Mobilizing to fill the tech security gap they provide workshops and information about online safety and anonymity. “I think in a general sense we are working on bringing the secure technologies and useful tools to anarchists,” said founding member Boskote (a pseudonym).

The ATS has been travelling throughout the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario since summer 2010 holding workshops on tech security in front of all kinds of crowds: from small groups in living rooms to standing room only halls at anarchist book fairs.

“People were stressing due to all the surveillance and we responded to that,” said Boskote. “Email and instant messaging is insecure by default; it was normal, but as surveillance and infiltration was becoming more obvious, that normal became a problem.”

Beyond showing participants how to set up certified and encrypted email, anonymous and secure web browsing and verified and encrypted instant messenger programs, the two-and-a-half hour workshop also opened up discussions on hard drive and file encryption, security firewalls and the way internet communications work. Sometimes the workshops were followed by discussions on open source software (see box 1), steps for establishing difficult to break passwords (see box 2), or emerging ideas on the intriguingly named “zones of opacity.”

”The inspiration for the ‘zone of opacity’ comes from a community in Athens, Greece, where there is a really strong anarchist presence,” said Boskote. “The relationships...and all the aspects of what is going on in a space (physical, social, or technological), are opaque to the state or other form of dominating power,” he explained. “It is not possible for the state to see or know what is going on there.” The ATS emphasizes that if the state cannot determine your daily patterns and movements, your attitudes and relationships, or how you accomplish the objectives of your aspirations, it will be hesitant to invade your community’s spaces.

“We hope to help build zones of opacity in anarchist communities,” said Boskote. “If we can prevent the state from surveilling us we will be stronger.”

One of the challenges of sharing these kinds of skills, though, is the widely varying degree of experience among community members. While some—especially those with prior computer experience—have found the ATS's information relatively straightforward and easy to understand others find the learning curve a bit steeper.

“[The workshop] was a lot of info and I will likely have to go over a lot of it again,” said one participant after their first session with ATS. “But it was surprising how easy it was to set up and start using these tools. Plus, if practicing better computer security will help keep my friends and allies out of jail, then yeah, it is obviously worth it.”

It is not only participants who are still adapting to the new reality of online security.

“Far from being experts, we started out knowing nothing about this. We were figuring it out by ourselves and it took quite a while,” said Boskote. “It is through the process of these workshops that we are learning more and more about computer security as some people who come attend the workshops help to fill the gaps in our knowledge.”

It is important for us to recognize the values in the way these tools were created, Boskote said, relating as they do to the horizontal, anti-corporate organizing of the subculture of open source software and self-identified hackers who built these tech security systems.

Even with this recognition however, he explained “The technology that we use needs to change along with, and contribute to, the changes of the rest of society.”

With so many in need of creating a safer space online, and with a limited supply of knowledgeable facilitators, people may be overwhelmed at the prospect of setting up their own systems of computer security. Thankfully, those who are yet to organize a tech security workshop in their town can start practicing good computer security guided by great online resources.

Security In A Box is a collaborative project whose aim is to "meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders." The site includes how-to guides addressing various digital security issues and offers free instruction taking users through the processes of setting up and maintaining private internet communications and secure file storage systems.

With the spread of social media, computer security and web anonymity have become important issues. “The kind of information people are posting on the internet is the kind of stuff that the state usually infiltrates groups to get: social networks, personal relationships, day-to-day movements. That is what surveillance is and that is a major problem that needs to be criticized and thought about,” said Boskote.

Noting that facebook and other social media are “really useful tools,” Boskote argues that “we need to figure out how to separate out their usefulness as tools and the dangerous aspects of sharing information that the state can use to infiltrate, disrupt and repress our movements. We need to use the tools in a safer way.” (See box 3.)

As social and ecological justice movements grow in the face of increasing criminalization of dissent, there is a need to build a tech security culture beyond the use of secure communications and Trojan-free computers. (Trojans are malicious programs which create “back-door” access to your computer over the internet or use your computer to carry out attacks on other computers).

“We stress this in our workshops: tech and computer security technologies are necessary but not sufficient part of security culture,” said Boskote. Taking out your cell phone’s battery while planning demonstrations may eliminate audio surveillance but, as was highlighted at the ATS workshop, if tech security is being used and the other security measures are being ignored then there are obvious failure points. In other words: tech security does not identify an infiltrator or informant in your community.

In addition to understanding and implementing computer security, the need to build supportive and resilient communities that communicate across regions remains. “There is no way to make communication 100 per cent inaccessible to surveillance and it's obviously not possible to make ourselves socially secure,” said Boskote in his final remarks before departing to New York to hold another workshop at the city’s annual anarchist book fair. “In both cases, we just have to try our best. Security goes way beyond tech security.”

Box 1

Quick Reference Guide:

More Secure Email address: riseup.net, resist.ca
Secure Email Client: Thunderbird with gpg and enigmail addons
Browser: Firefox with ToR (software which works to anonymize web browsing), noscript, https anywhere addons
Online Chat (most services): Adium or pidgin with otr plugin
Encryption: True Crypt
Operating System: Linux
“Secure” social networking: we.riseup.net
Guides and Info: security.ngoinabox.org- security.angrynerds.com - help.riseup.net - we.riseup.net/ats-mtl

Box 2

Password creation:
Search Youtube for: How To Choose Strong Passwords

A sentence that only you will think of/a unique phrase that you will remember (8+words long).
Substitute numbers for words where possible or add numbers to end of phrase.
Take the first letter from each word.
Substitute special characters and numbers for letter (a=@, s=$, i or 1=!, etc.)
Use suffixes for different sites (facebook=fbk, twitter=twt, youtube=ytb, etc.)
Have a few of these passwords depending on how secure you need.
Change passwords every 3-6 months.

Box 3

ATS Facebook Tip
Setting up a single account on Facebook which is for a whole group who shares a password, where members can access the accounts anonymously through ToR (torproject.org), and folks can communicate with these entities and remain anonymous. It does not get away from all the problems of Facebook but it creates barriers between these online presences and peoples’ actual identities. Things like that try to make it so we can use these important tools when it is necessary without having all the negative consequences.

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L in Kitchener, co-host of AW@L radio on rabble.ca and 100.3 SoundFM co-op radio Waterloo, and was a co-conspirator with the 2010 G20 and anti-Olympic media centres.

This article was produced with the support of Koumbit, as part of an ongoing series on technology, society and politics. Koumbit is a non-profit company which promotes the use of free & open source software by community groups in Quebec, Canada and abroad.

Tech Watch

Gaming the Budget

Tim McSorley — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:08:41 +0000

Full cost of Olympic security even higher than we thought

TORONTO—The amount the Canadian military spent on its portion of securing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was more than double the publicly stated cost of $212 million, indicate files obtained by The Dominion.

Initially, the Department of National Defence (DND) only publicly stated the much lower "incremental costs" of its Olympics operation, know as Operation Podium. Incremental costs do not include the salaries and other expenses the military says they would have spent anyways. When taking the “full costs” into account—including salaries for members of the Canadian Armed Forces—the number jumps much higher.

“The number we're going with is $212 million, that's the incremental cost,” said Lieutenant-Colonel John Blakeley. “The incremental costs are the additional costs.” He did not disclose the full cost of Operation Podium during the interview, but according to data on governmental websites, the full costs for Operation Podium reached nearly $470 million.

If the entirety of DND expenses are taken into account, the overall security budget for the Winter Games breaches the $1 billion mark, well above the government's 2002 budget of $175 million. “Incremental costs are basically the costs excluding salaries,” said Steven Staples, a military analyst and president of the Rideau Institute. He explained it is usual for the military to use the incremental cost instead of the full cost when publicly stating budget figures.

“This is an old argument back and forth—should you be using full costs? Should you be using incremental costs? We often use full costs here [at the Rideau Institute] because you can't do missions without people, but the military is trying to diminish the apparent cost. They go with incremental and they say 'well, we would have [to pay] these troops anyway,'” said Staples. “In our work we tend to use both.”

A chart published on the website of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff in March 2010 listed cost estimates for the Canadian Forces operation to secure the Olympics Games. Full DND cost was listed as $471 million in the 2009/10 fiscal year. The chart also listed the publicly stated Incremental DND cost which came to $216 million in the 2009/10 fiscal year.

Blakeley said that if the Canadian Forces were paying soldiers regardless of where they were deployed, their salaries should not be included in the cost of operations.

“I think you do need to look at the full cost,” counters Staples. “Wouldn't it be great if we could buy cars from General Motors and not pay for the labour that was involved in building [them] and only pay for the steel and rubber and plastic? But we don't. We have to pay for the whole cost.”

“Generally if you want to do more military missions, you need to recruit more troops and pay for them. That is a cost associated with doing those missions, and should be included,” said Staples. “Similarly if you weren't doing many missions I don't think you would have these troops hanging around, in fact you would let them go back into the economy just like any major company does.”

The budget for Olympic security released in February 2009 totaled $900 million. This figure only budgeted $212 million for the Department of National Defence. There was no indication that this was only the incremental cost. By including DND full costs the total reaches $1.15 billion.

It has become increasingly difficult for Canadians to keep track of the ever-changing budgets, even four months after the Games.

“I guess I believed that $900 [million] was the full number, but it changed so often I have a hard time being surprised that it's more, which is horrible because we should be outraged and shocked that it went so far over budget and that we can't believe these numbers,” said Myka Tucker-Abramson, a Vancouver resident who opposed the Games.

This revelation comes as questions arise over the cost of securing the three-day G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto. The government originally released a $179 million security budget for the two meetings. Known as Operation Cadence, the Canadian Forces operation to secure the summits has an estimated budget of $72 million in incremental costs, as published on the website of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. In late May the government released a new security figure of $933 million. When the full cost of Operation Cadence is taken into account, as opposed to the incremental costs, this figure is pushed to over a billion dollars.

Following public outcry and pressure from opposition parties over this massive increase, Auditor General Sheila Fraser says she will investigate the G8/G20 budget. No such investigation is being held for the cost of Olympic security.

“It seemed like the budget was limitless, that any Olympic project, be it security or infrastructure, could use as much as it wanted,” remarked Tucker-Abramson. “Given the recent cuts to public education, health centres on the Downtown East Side [of Vancouver] and all the cuts that women's centres and other vital social services have faced due to unavailable funds, the money budgeted for security was shameful.”

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher and journalist based in Toronto.

Olympic budget burning up

Recovering from the Heart Attack

Moira Peters — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:31:10 +0000

Arrestees fighting off Olympic side-effects in court

VANCOUVER—Although the Olympics' closing ceremonies were three months ago, for those who opposed the two-week spectacle, the Vancouver 2010 Games have not yet left town.

Guillaume Pascal was arrested and accused of involvement in the February 13 Heart Attack Demonstration. "Two cops say that I instructed people to smash the windows of the RBC [Royal Bank of Canada]," he said. "VPD [Vancouver Police Department] said that they caught the ringleader of the action when they arrested me."

The Heart Attack was a demonstration meant to clog the roads leading through Vancouver to Whistler where many of the sports events were taking place. 300 masked people walked through downtown Vancouver, vandalizing symbols of the Olympics and capitalism. Olympic sponsors' advertisements on city buses were spray-painted; newspaper boxes of the Province and Canwest newspapers were overturned and the windows of the Hudson's Bay Company were smashed. The group was dispersed finally by riot police in the West End.

Pascal was arrested two days after the Heart Attack demonstration, after his residence and vehicle were constantly monitored by the police.

"VISU [Vancouver Integrated Security Unit] really dropped the ball on keeping the peace," said Pascal, who believes he was arrested because security agencies needed to save face after property was damaged during the Heart Attack. "They spent eight times the amount [on security] as the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, and needed a scapegoat for their incompetence in letting the Heart Attack take place."

"The Heart Attack ended the violent protests, and that had a lot to do with the response of the police," said Deputy Chief Constable Steve Sweeney at a March 17 Olympic security debriefing. "The public came over to our favour," he said about support for police conduct during the Heart Attack.

But few saw footage of police conduct during the February 13 demo. Police were brutal in arresting protesters, and even detained people peacefully walking to a prison vigil later that day.

"There were no charges made against me," said Sozan Savehilaghi, who marched with a pink-wigged, coverall-wearing group calling itself the Olympic Cleanup Crew. She was detained for video-taping arrests during the Heart Attack. "I was never read my rights or told why I was being detained. There were just lots of empty threats."

Savehilaghi was one of 27 protesters arrested during the Olympics, according to Solidarity with Anti-Olympic Convergence Arrestees (SACA)—a group formed to bring together arrestees and supporters to raise funds for the formers' defence. Ten of the arrestees were charged, of whom two are still fighting charges in court.

SACA member Ed Durgan was arrested February 13 near Pigeon Park, fifteen blocks away from where the Heart Attack demo ended. He was arrested for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk after questioning a group of police, whom he believed were harassing someone sleeping on a bench near the park.

"I was nearly deported. We had to fight for me to stay since they were going to revoke my student visa," said Durgan. "They put effort into intimidating me because I was a high-profile activist. But [the detainees] realized we'd all been arrested for political purposes, and wanted to stick together and fight these charges." Durgan said SACA goes beyond fundraising, and is considering legal action against the police for harassment.

Fundraising for SACA is tricky in Vancouver, where recently a benefit rock gig at the Pitt Pub at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was cancelled by the Alma Mater Society (AMS).

"AMS is claiming that the policy is that only student groups can book events on-campus," said SACA organizer Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, "which makes no sense because off-campus groups"—such as the Red Cross and Vancouver General Hospital—"work with student groups to book space at UBC all the time."

Despite UBC AMS' actions, there is support for SACA. The launch of the Dominion's G20 special issue on May 14 at the Vancouver Media Co-op included a solidarity statement with SACA. A dance party at the Secret Location on the same night included a silent auction for SACA.

Pascal's case is still going through court. "And there are other things like finding a job, that is hard after this," he said. "Marginalizing someone into being a 'terrorist' stops him from ever being able to live normally."

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and communications graduate student researching media representation of marginalized people. He is a collective member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Olympic Cleanup Crew

Main & Hastings Cop Shop

Olympics Sidelines Youth

Moira Peters — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:22:21 +0000

Understanding wider impacts of the Games

OTTAWA—The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and Vancouver is left to take stock of the lasting effects of having hosted this global mega-sporting event. As decisions are made about the fate of social housing in the Athlete’s Village, and as the last of the Red Tents are taken down, Vancouver might consider what the Olympics has meant for one of its most marginalized populations—homeless and street-involved youth.

Young people who watch the Olympics are expected to benefit from the Games, according to sociologist J.J. MacAloon in This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games. MacAloon says youth ought to relate to the athletes, who are themselves young adults, and be inspired by the example of these fine role models. Go to any Olympic host city organizing committee’s website, and you will encounter special games, educational activities, and interactive content geared directly at youth. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recently taken its focus on youth a step further with the introduction of the Youth Olympics, whose inaugural event is to be held in Singapore in August 2010. Its stated goal is to “inspire youth around the world to embrace, embody and express the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect.”

Vancouver is the capital city of the province with the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So, consideration might have been given to the effects the Games would have on these young people. Whatever the Olympics has meant for Canadian youth overall, the Games' effects on Vancouver’s homeless and street-involved youth are not so rosy. The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) failed to meet approximately half the commitments outlined in their Inner-City Inclusivity Statement, according to the Interim Report Card compiled by the Impacts on Community Coalition. VANOC used these commitments to promote their bid and recruit wider support in Vancouver for hosting the Olympics. One such failure, according to the Report Card, was of VANOC’s commitment to protect inner-city housing and shelters. The Report Card points out that homelessness has more than doubled since Vancouver won the Olympic bid, and at the same time, between 1,085 and 1,580 units of low-income housing were lost in the inner city alone. The majority of housing losses occurred as a result of the transformation of Single Residence Occupancy (SRO) hotels into condominiums. According to a report by Pivot Legal Society, low-income housing loss in this period is a direct result of real estate speculation pressures generated by the Olympic Games.

A report by the Social Policy and Research Council of BC indicates BC Employment and Assistance Rates (i.e., Employment Insurance and welfare) remain far below a living income, particularly in an expensive city like Vancouver.

These factors, albeit not all related to the Olympics, combine to exacerbate homeless and street-involved youths’ difficulties surviving in Vancouver.

“You don’t know what it is to live on welfare until you’ve lived on welfare. It’s awful. Especially in BC. You can’t even live off welfare and have a place unless you have housing [provided], which is impossible,” said Sarah*, a young woman living in a youth homeless shelter in Vancouver.

The irony, of course, is that the Olympics are touted—especially at the bidding stage—as an event that will make things better for the inhabitants of host cities.

But Helen Lenskyj, in her book Olympic Industry Resistance, points out that Olympic host cities face a multitude of negative effects, particularly in relation to affordable housing and homelessness. Sara pointed out, “Not only are they making condos to try and shove their problem under the carpet but they’re deciding that oh, if they make some place and get [homeless people] off the street [the city will] look good... But actually [now that] the Olympics is done those places [temporary shelters] are coming down and new buildings, which people are going to pay for, are coming up and the homeless people are right back where they were.”

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions published an extensive report in 2007 about housing and the Olympics. Their research suggests that Olympic Games “are often catalysts for redevelopment entailing massive displacements and reductions in low cost and social housing stock.” They also note the common use of legislation “to allow for speedy expropriations of property or to criminalize homelessness.”

In BC, the provincial government passed a controversial Assistance to Shelter Act less than three months before the Vancouver Olympic Games began. The act gave the police new powers to move homeless people off the streets and into shelters. Advocates for homeless people dubbed the law the “Olympic kidnapping act.”

Such policies are consistent with global efforts to market cities to tourists and potential investors, according to E.J. McCann’s 2009 article, “City Marketing.” These strategies include “the constant policing and management of the city itself, so that its public spaces—and even its people—or at least those who are on public view in spaces likely to be traversed by tourists or business people—correspond to and enhance the brand.”

This happened with particular intensity—according to a number of homeless and street-involved youth who witnessed police activity—during the year leading up to the Games. In particular, homeless youth found themselves increasingly moved from downtown tourist streets such as Granville or Robson.

“There are certain neighbourhoods [the police] won't let you in, but in the West End, if they find you in one place? They'll be checking it every night after that for about a month,” said Curtis, a young Aboriginal man living in a youth homeless shelter. The Downtown East Side—an area notorious for open drug use, sex trade work and poverty— was the only neighbourhood these young people felt was free from police harassment in the year before the Olympics.

“They don't care if you're down there. They'll come up to me while I've been using drugs and they're like, we don't care that you're using. Just stay out of sight,” said Jennifer, a formerly homeless woman who continues to attend the youth drop-ins at her local homeless shelter.

The pressure to get off downtown streets meant that some youth had trouble accessing the services clustered around the West end of the city, including youth shelters such as Covenant House and Directions. It also meant they were pushed into areas of the city where they faced increased risks of drug involvement or crime.

“The East Side is the worst because you can get caught up in anything out there. We don't want to do that. That's why a lot of us come out to this area,” said Michael, a street-involved youth currently living in a shelter in the West End.

During the Games themselves, scrutiny by police seemed to ease. “The worst of the bad effects didn’t materialize,” noted Am Johal of the Impacts on Community Coalition (IOCC), “largely because of civil society pressure on government.” Pressure tactics included volunteer training offered by Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association for Vancouver residents to monitor police, and an ongoing campaign against Olympic-induced displacement by the Carnegie Community Action Project.

Despite these efforts, homeless and street-involved youth still encountered the police during the Olympics, particularly if the young people were perceived to be out of place. Justine, a young Aboriginal woman who had recently secured social housing in Vancouver’s affluent West end, relayed a conversation she had with police during the Games: “[I was] just walking down the street, like [the police said] ‘You don’t look like you’re from around here.’ And it’s like, ‘I just live down the street actually.’ And they’re like, ‘Are you sure, what’s your name, what’s your address?’ and like interrogating me when I walk down the street just because you don’t look like you belong in the area.”

Homeless and street-involved youth also noticed police treated other young people differently during the Games, particularly if they were obviously Olympic revellers. “If you’re wearing Canada gear, you can be as hammered as you want and the cops won’t bother you, as long as you’re going, ‘Go, Canada!’” said Jason, a young man currently housed in Vancouver’s east side. This injustice rankled Jason and other youth, particularly given that they experience regular police harassment for relatively minor infringements.

As cities gear up for future Olympic Games—London 2012, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016—and as Toronto begins to prepare in earnest for the arrival of another mega-sporting event (the 2015 PanAm Games), it will be important to assess the effects on people from all walks of life, including low-income and homeless youth. These young people live in a city in a way most people don’t. Athletes, tourists, international media, and police and security forces will be stomping through the bedrooms and living rooms of street-involved and homeless youth when they descend on a host city. If the Olympics are marketed as the purview of the young, then young people ought to be the true beneficiaries, rather than the victims, of the Games.

*All names used in this story are pseudonyms.

Jackie Kennelly is an assistant professor at Carleton University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, currently studying the effects of the Olympics in Vancouver and London on low-income young people.

Street Youth & the Olymics

Fear: An Olympic Legacy

Moira Peters — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:21:09 +0000

How the security apparatus rules our world

Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better
Matt Hern
New Star Books: Vancouver, 2007

ROME, ITALY—East Vancouver author Matt Hern wasn’t talking about Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic Games when he penned Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better several years ago, but he may as well have been.

Indeed, the book should have been required reading for each security agency linked to the three levels of government as it contemplated delivering a “safe and secure” Winter Olympics without descending into total security hysteria. Alas, the book never made the must-read list of the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), the organization created by the RCMP to coordinate Games security.

The ISU’s mandate, at least as they understood it, was to ensure that absolutely nothing could go wrong during the Olympics and Paralympics. The ISU began by considering possible “threats” based on the evaluations of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). ITAC identified three key concerns: foreign-inspired terrorism, crime, and domestic protests—and pretty much in that order. However, long before the Games had arrived, the order had shifted and the fear of protest became paramount. Vocal critics of the Olympics found themselves followed, monitored, surveilled, visited, and, in more than a few cases, intimidated and threatened by undercover ISU agents.

In the end, nearly $1 billion was spent on Games security; thousands of police from across the country patrolled Vancouver and thousands more soldiers patrolled cold, wet, mountain slopes. Close-circuit cameras (CCTV) in the downtown core monitored people 24 hours a day and the city and province passed egregious laws that violated our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And despite all of this, the authorities could not, or chose not to prevent the breaking of a few Hudson’s Bay windows during the second day of the protests.

In hindsight, it all sounds ridiculous. And it was. Any half-bright ISU agent (and there were a few) or any Vancouver Police Department deputy chief could have done a more realistic assessment of the real threats and responded appropriately—and far more parsimoniously—by realizing that the assessment itself was badly overblown. The massive preparations were so over-the-top and out-of-proportion that the entire plan should have been significantly scaled back.

But nothing was scaled back. All threats were considered massive and the response even more so.

Indeed, the state of mind that sees anything and everything as a potential threat is precisely the subject of Watch Yourself. And Hern’s book taps into they ways we respond when we let fear rule our world. This mindset dictates that kids need to be safeguarded from being kids; forget protecting your child from playground equipment and strangers, we need intrusive policing and scores of cameras to keep them safe. We need constant surveillance for our own safety, and adults need to have their habits controlled for their own good too. We have become, in effect, the perfect example of the ultimate security state that is ruled, not by a dark authoritarian presence, but by our own fears. And, one might say, such fears enable and nurture the apparatus that feigns security.

Although Hern did not address the Olympic madness—the five ring circus—his book foreshadows the mentality of a security-obsessed society. “l’d say that the Olympics were a monumental exercise in total securitization,” he told me over the phone after the Vancouver Organizing Committee shut up shop and left town. “Not just the billion-dollar, multi-layered policing effort, nor the sea of CCTVs, nor the endless security guards, nor the reaction to protest, nor the bewildering array of security agencies from all over the globe...” a point well made, I thought, “but all these in combination and the willingness of our elected officials and civic leaders to mobilize a huge swath of citizens—city workers, volunteers, bus drivers, garbage collectors, the media—into a comprehensive exercise in discipline and abhorrence of anything not officially corporatized and cleansed.”

In barely a few breaths, Hern had summarized the detriments of the 2010 Winter Games and pin-pointed its greatest legacy: fear.

He continued: “The effort largely succeed[ed] in moving huge chunks of capital from the common wealth into privatized hands and continued to cleanse the city of working class, radical, alternative and affordable possibilities by insisting on a relentlessly ‘safe,’ contained, controlled, clean and tourist-slash-investor friendly ethic where nothing out of order is permitted.”

I write this from Rome, a city that is alive in ways that Vancouver may never be in spite of the aching need to feel world-class. Indeed, much of this angst drove the Olympic venture from the beginning. While we still debate the role of police in Canadian society and worry that kids might fall off the jungle gym, here in Rome kids play outside unsupervised and wander into bars with their parents while people picnic with wine in full view of the constabulary. And who could care less? The streets are filled with people day and night, drunk and sober, happy and sad. Romans have not yet let their fear blind them to the possibilities of being human—a vista that is remarkably refreshing coming from “no fun” Vancouver.

Maybe if we listened to Hern (or simply heeded our own better instincts) and accepted that some risk is the price for being human, we can escape our self-imposed state of fear, a state that is not only sterile, but also soul-destroying.

Chris Shaw is a Vancouver-based neuroscientist, academic and author. He wrote Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, published in 2008 by New Society Publishers.

For a recent example of Canada's security apparatus at work, see the Vancouver Media Co-op's latest coverage of protests and police response at the G8 University Summit in Vancouver over the weekend. Check out the Vancouver Observer's case-in-point of security using fear at these protests.

Watch Yourself

Elite Insecurity

Martin Lukacs — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:06:37 +0000

Ten thousand to guard summits in Huntsville and Toronto

VANCOUVER—The buzzword at the upcoming G8 and G20 summits in Toronto and Huntsville—both inside the boardrooms and on the streets below—is “security.”

According to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, the summits will provide “an important opportunity to address issues of vital interest to global and national security.” Such issues include the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the broader War on Terror and the perceived threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, all in the interests of charting a secure course for global capitalism in the 21st century.

While the way forward for counterinsurgency operations in Central Asia and the Middle East is discussed on the inside, on the outside security forces will employ tactics that have become standard fare at international summits. G8/G20 security forces will keep protesters behind an “unscalable” security perimeter, likened to an “urban combat zone” by a Toronto Star journalist.

Security operations are being touted by officials as “bigger than anything Canada has seen before.” Speaking at a meeting of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Toronto, Constable Ed Boltuc, spokesperson for the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit (ISU), said the scale of security will surpass the Vancouver Olympics, previously the largest domestic security operation in Canadian history.

“There’s going to be a massive—absolutely massive—presence of police and security on the ground like you’ve never seen before,” said Boltuc.

The Globe and Mail reported in April that more than “10,000 uniformed officers and 1,000 private security guards” will comprise a “small army [that] will descend” on Huntsville and Toronto from June 25 to 27.

The security perimeter will reportedly include two three-metre fences and five levels of security screening. According to the Council of Canadians, protesters in Huntsville “will be facing a $6 million galvanized metal fence that will stretch 15 kilometres around the summit site,” while in Toronto, “it is expected that the convention centre will be surrounded by a four-metre-high steel and concrete fence, with military helicopters overhead and sharpshooters on rooftops.”

According to an RCMP inquiry posted on merx.com, pedestrians in the designated areas may be subject to magnetometers, walk-through metal detectors, X-ray scanners and hand-held metal detectors. The private security contractors, who will “perform pedestrian screening in designated areas,” must have either NATO Secret Security clearance or a security clearance approved by the Canadian Public Works and Government Services Canada.

For the three-day event, the federal government has already allocated at least $179 million for the operations of the RCMP, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Department of National Defence, Industry Canada, and CSIS. Also expected are “several specialized police units—SWAT teams, intelligence analysts, motorcade escorts,” while “soldiers and spies will also work behind the scenes.”

According to the Supplementary Budget Estimates tabled by the Conservative government earlier this year, “This funding will support planning and operations related to policing and security at the G8 summit and to cover the costs of initial planning and preparations for the G20 summit,” indicating that the costs may be much higher.

The full amount may never be known. Addressing the question of security costs on its website, the ISU states, “It would be inappropriate to speculate on what the costs will be prior to the event...security plans can and will be adjusted right up until the end of the event.”

The police and media have begun drawing distinctions between “good” and “bad” protesters in an apparent attempt to preemptively demonize more radical demonstrators.

In an article earlier this month highlighting NGOs that will be taking a more “diplomatic” approach to protesting the summits, The Globe and Mail contrasted them with another group, Resist Toronto G20 Summit 2010: “On the group’s Anarchist Forum, one member advised visitors to bring ear plugs as police will ‘be using the sound cannons,’” the article states. “A member from Quebec City solicits contacts with ‘militant organizations in Toronto.’”

The Globe and Mail reported that “police are already reaching out to protest planners and monitoring websites on which they are planning their events.”

“It’s not keeping tabs; it’s not unlike policing a city normally,” said G8/G20 spokesperson Michelle Paradis. “You know the people who are expressly bent on wreaking havoc.”

Typically, protesters who are construed as “wreaking havoc” are labelled “anarchists.” A draft of the Canadian Forces Counterinsurgency Operations Manual states, “The most potentially dangerous form of insurrection is that of the anarchist group which sets out to eliminate all political structures and the social fabric associated with them.”

Christine Jones of the Canadian Peace Alliance warned the police against utilizing agents provocateurs, as they have done at past demonstrations. During protests against the 2007 Security and Prosperity Partnership in Montebello, Quebec, police agents provocateurs were caught on video. More recently, Montreal police were videotaped attempting to infiltrate an annual march against police brutality.

Chief of Toronto Police William Blair said security forces are preparing for the worst. “If protesters want to come to Toronto and do that, I’ll facilitate that,” Blair told reporters. “If they want to cross that line, and start breaking windows and damaging property and putting people at risk, then there will be a different response from the police.”

In another evocatively headlined article, “The summit of all fears,” The Globe and Mail warned of “wild protests,” while the Toronto Star invoked the spectre of “throngs of screaming protesters confronting police officers in riot gear,” and quoted an unnamed resident who stated, “Everyone knows that these conferences create very, very large protests...All it takes is 10 or 20 very violent protesters to turn the area into a war zone.”

The Toronto Community Mobilization Network has voiced its concern about the scale of militarization. In a press release, they stated: “The Canadian government is going to militarize Toronto for the G20 summit by bringing in...troops and thousands of metres of fencing to disrupt the lives of people in the city.”

UPDATE: Since this article was written, more information on security costs for the G8 & G20 summits have revealed the total security price tag to be between $833 and $930 million, as opposed to the original $179 million predicted in March, a 465 per cent increase.

Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based in Pitt Meadows, BC. Fenton can be reached via WebofDemocracy.org.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Peacekeeping fighters

Metro Toronto Convention Cenre 1

From H-Ville to G-Spot

Moira Peters — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:41:58 +0000

G8 host has little control over how Legacy Fund touches Huntsville

HUNTSVILLE—This June, the ritzy, resort-rich Muskokas will see the life, leisure and liberty of its residents change in preparation for the interplay between heads of state and their entourages, private security forces, temporary workers, the global media, protesters and police.

Huntsville, Ontario, and the Deerhurst Resort will take the world stage for a few days to play host to the "informal" and private working meeting of the world’s richest states.

“Prior to the announcement that the G8 was coming to Huntsville, there were no community consultations,” said Dan Powers, assistant to Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty. “The G8 summit is a federal responsibility,” he said, administered and determined by the prime minister and his office.

“No, we (Huntsville) didn’t have an option,” said Kelly Haywood, General Manager for the Huntsville/Lake of Bays Chamber of Commerce, explaining that despite lack of initial community input regarding the G8 summit, “the idea was primarily embraced as an opportunity to benefit the business community.”

For many in Huntsville, the undemocratic nature of the G8, the lack of safe and clear forums for debate and dissenting voices, and the tremendous police presence and control over the area are still secondary concerns overwhelmed by the economic benefits that will come to the Muskokas through the G8.

The G8 will bring money and interest to the area—an area that Chaffey District Town Councillor John Davis says faces struggles in tough economic times. Huntsville, he said, is a “sort of weird community where there are people who are really rich and people who wait on tables and clean hotels for minimum wage.”

Operating in trying economic times and dealing with problems such as an aging population, youth out-migration and underemployment, Hunstville town council is debating tapping into its rainy-day reserves to finish funding G8-related projects to make up for the projected shortfall.

“There will be a debenture of almost $9 million that the township is going to have to somehow pay,” said Davis, whose constituents are worried about housing, the public library and road maintenance. He said not all the money coming to the area for the G8 is being spent wisely, but that “everything that goes on in a community, if there is money being spent, is beneficial.

“Is it solving poverty? No. Is is solving homelessness? No,” he said. “What does?”

For a town that Davis describes as having “not a lot of money” in the municipal coffers, the G8 summit brings with it a sudden and great opportunity for building local infrastructure and economy. “It is the cheapest, best advertisement we’re probably going to get.”

Jack Tynan, Managing Editor of local newspaper Huntsville Forester holds that “if someone is going to come and fix up your neighbourhood for you, you smile and thank them.”

Parry Sound and the Muskoka region will profit directly from hosting the G8, receiving a $50-million G8 Legacy Infrastructure Fund, to be distributed by Muskoka MP and Minister of Industry Tony Clement and The Federal Economic Development Initiative of Northern Ontario.

Projects benefitting from this money have been pulled directly from Community Municipal Master Plans, according to Haywood—plans she said were developed through community input and, where possible, have been contracted to local businesses. Bracebridge-based Fowler Construction, for instance, has been awarded a $3.9-million security contract.

The Legacy Projects include replacing asphalt sidewalks with concrete sidewalks in the village of Rosseau and new signs for Bracebridge. A Summit Centre, a University of Waterloo research centre and an icepad will be constructed in Huntsville, according to Municipal G8 Information Co-ordinator Lauren Parrot.

Parrot, a Federal Youth Intern, is clear that despite her professional title, she can offer minimal information about the G8 summit. Her job is to deliver inquiries to the Summit Management Office (SMO)* or to the Integrated Security Unit (ISU)**.

“Security is really run by the SMO—they plan and organize everything and we’re really sort of bystanders.” said Councillor Davis. The SMO briefs town council and staff, and conducts community meetings. To stay informed, Davis explained, the ISU (which has been in the community for over a year) has taken to frequenting local coffee shops and listening for rumours they might need to dispel.

The growing police presence in Huntsville will swell to thousands in the days leading to the summit, and will control movement in the city with security perimeters and flight, marine and traffic restrictions.

An ISU information pamphlet explains the G8 is “a private, working meeting between several working leaders” and that “the general public is discouraged from coming to observe the event.” The ISU has set up a toll-free number for townspeople to “report unlawful activity that could be related to the summit.”

The ISU has come under criticism in the recent past for selectively dismissing civil liberties during the Olympics.

Richard Cusson, who works at Deerhurst Resort, said what has recently changed is the notable presence of plain-clothed police integrating into town activities. “It’s not too hard to tell (that they are police officers) when you see two guns sticking out,” he said.

In a town thickening with police, rumour and suspicion, Cusson, for the most part, is choosing to keep his lips sealed. As an employee of the host resort, he is “not supposed to talk about it,” he said. “The least amount of info I get, the better for me.”

The ISU seems to be following the example set during the Olympics. It declared it will honour Charter rights to assembly, free speech, the press and other fundamental freedoms. Special note is made by the ISU G20/G8 website, regarding Breach of Peace, a designation that allows police to arrest people without laying charges, and thereby skipping scrutiny and accountability in the courts.

Police seem to be gathering information and allies in the community. People living within the interdiction zone have all been visited personally at their houses by the ISU, explained Councillor Davis, and people living in the summit area must register with police forces. “They must provide a name, date of birth and, of course, a background check is done,” said Powers.

He said only a small number of people will truly be affected by the police presence and that others, including those in the area who are opposed to the G8, need not worry about police involvement in their lives.

The Huntsville Forester has received and printed relatively few words from those opposed to the G8, said Tynan. Though he knows some locals may oppose the G8, Davis suggested that Huntsville “is a small town and those people still have to live in this town after.”

Local media are most inhabitants’ means of accessing information, and most of the information reported comes directly from the SMO or ISU.

Davis, critical of the Forester for delivering what he calls “cookie-cutter journalism” and acting as “a mouthpiece for the Mayor” said that when a small town of 20,000 receives the majority of its news from one paper that tends to print whatever the reigning political bodies offer, “it becomes an autocratic society; democracy is not served well.”

Rachelle Sauvé is a cook, gardener, educator, agitator and advocate working for over a decade at Food Sovereignty and Anti-Poverty Movements in Ontario.

* A federally administered project of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
** Overseen by Public Safety Canada and is a combined force of the RCMP, OPP, Canadian Forces and other security agencies.

Welcome to Huntsville 2

Police to Receive 'Olympic Legacies'

hillarybain — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:42:01 +0000

Vancouver, Richmond Police Departments to move into Games-related digs

VANCOUVER—As soon as the 2010 Olympic Games are over, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) will be moving into the facility now occupied by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (VANOC). The Richmond Police Department (RPD) will be taking over the headquarters of the Integrated Security Unit, a 2010 Olympics-specific police unit that comprises the RCMP, the VPD and RPD, and the Canadian Forces.

“This move has been long anticipated and we are very pleased that the timing was such that our new building will be a valuable and cost efficient legacy of the 2010 Winter Games,” said VPD Chief Constable Jim Chu in a January 18 press release.

The move to reward police with new office space doesn't surprise critics of the Games.

"It's very appropriate that the police would move into the VANOC headquarters, since [VANOC is] their little puppet master for the duration of this Olympic regime that they've imposed on the city," said Gord Hill, the editor of no2010.com and member of the Olympics Resistance Network.

"They also got other facilities...including the Force Options Training Centre near Clark Drive and First Avenue," said Hill. "So you see a real expansion of the police forces here in the city, as a result of the Olympic security budget they put in place." The Force Options Training Centre was scheduled for to be complete for the Olympics.

Chris Shaw from 2010 Watch told the Vancouver Media Co-op that rewarding police with new equipment and new offices paid for by taxpayers was typical of the Olympics.

"[International Olympic Committee President] Jaques Rogge was very clear about this, he said you get a 'Security Legacy' and he's exactly right," said Shaw. "Unfortunately most of us don't want that."

The federal government will contribute $5 million to upgrading police facilities, and the City of Vancouver will contribute $10 million, money that critics say could have been better spent.

That the 2010 Olympics would leave a positive legacy for Vancouverites, specifically for poor people in Vancouver, has long been forgotten.

In addition to the boost for local police, tangible Olympic legacies for Vancouver will go to real estate developers like Bob Rennie, who developed and is marketing the 2010 Athletes' Village through his company Rennie Marketing Systems, and to the corporations that got in on the flurry of Olympic spending while the getting was good.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the 2010 Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

VANOC's HQ

Map

Securing Haiti

hillarybain — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:29:05 +0000

Soldiers vs doctors in post-earthquake Haiti

VANCOUVER—Within hours of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Cuban doctors, Chinese search and rescue teams and Venezuelan medical professionals were on the ground. When the US military took control of Port-au-Prince Airport, however, they prioritized landing soldiers instead of humanitarian supplies, according to humanitarian organizations like Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) and Amnesty International. The militarization of disaster relief has led to harsh condemnation of what critics call an American-led occupation of Haiti.

Speaking to the heavy reliance on military troops, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez observed that “thousands of men are disembarking in Haiti as if it were a war.” Chavez’s sentiments echoed his counterparts in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Beleaguered with increasingly bad press about Iraq and Afghanistan, Western armed forces have an opportunity to highlight their humanitarian face in Haiti. But, some wonder, with what costs?

Military-led versus the civilian-oriented approach favoured by regional countries highlights a difference in approach to disaster relief. Fusing humanitarianism and the military, both the US and Canada say that order must come first to prevent the descent into chaos. Alternatively, Nicaragua told the UN General Assembly that “Haiti needs doctors, engineers, teachers, construction materials. It needs to strengthen its agricultural production; it doesn’t need soldiers.”

Venezuela is providing Haiti free fuel, delivered along with other aid shipments through the Dominican Republic.

Cuba and Venezuela have co-operated to deliver health services to Haiti, according to Al Jazeera’s Tom Fawthrop. Cuban doctors are specially trained for disaster relief and have proven themselves during the earthquakes in Pakistan and Indonesia in 2005 and 2006. Washington declined Havana’s aid during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

However, regional groups, states and humanitarian organizations have had difficulty accessing Haiti. As MSF’s Francoise Saulnier explained to Reuters, “Urgent and vital attention to the people has been delayed (for) military logistics.” As planes and supplies are delayed or re-routed, doctors have had to employ impromptu measures, such as hand-operated breathing devices and saws for amputations, according to media reports.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was unable to secure US approval to land in Port-au-Prince in January, even though Haiti is a member state. Instead, they have had to form their base for disaster relief in Jamaica.

As the Responsibility to Protect doctrine was invoked in 2004 to justify Haiti’s military occupation, disaster relief justifies the current military intervention. Some 27,000 foreign soldiers are currently stationed in Haiti.

The Canadian Forces contingent consists of 2,046 military personnel, including the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), a Naval Task Group, six Griffon helicopters, an urban rescue and recovery team, a detachment of military police, a field hospital, and a sizable Land Force presence, including a light infantry battalion.

Yves Engler, co-author of Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority, describes the militarized response: “Canada sent 2,000 troops while disaster relief teams in Calgary, Toronto and other cities were told to stay at home.” Engler sees this response as a “dangerous sign for a continuation of long-standing policy.”

The policy Engler is referring to is the political interference in Haitian democracy emanating from the ousting of democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004: a move planned by Washington, Ottawa and Paris. In his recently published Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Engler documents how Canadian elite JTF-2 forces secured the airport while 500 Canadian soldiers patrolled the streets and engaged in counterinsurgency operations against Aristide supporters.

In the post-earthquake context, the Canadian military is present in a different capacity. Engler explains that there is “no doubt that Canadian troops are fulfilling a humanitarian function, but troops are not the preferable option.” Engler says doctors and search and rescue teams should be on the ground, not soldiers.

There is growing fear from regional states that the US is establishing a large, permanent military base in Haiti with Canadian support. Recently on the A-Infos Radio Project, Anthony Fenton, co-author of Canada In Haiti, said that states such as Nicaragua and Venezuela have expressed concern that Haiti is becoming "a launching pad for destabilization and continuing Western military and economic hegemony for the entire hemisphere.” With a long-term American presence in Haiti, the US can further its strategic interest in the Caribbean/Latin American region, much like it’s doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US influence in Latin America has declined in the past decade, explained in part by the strengthening of grassroots democratic governments in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia. Caracas and Havana’s leadership in establishing the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) Trade Bloc based on social issues rather than trade-liberalization, for example, has been a direct challenge to the US-led attempts at establishing the Free Trade Area of the Americas. This movement, combined with the crisis in Haiti, has led analysts like Engler to believe there is “some concern [in the US] that the earthquake would [increase] Venezuelan and Cuban involvement in Haitian affairs.” Increased Haitian involvement with ALBA would strengthen this movement, which has already attracted eight states.

As Michel Chossudovsky, Editor for The Centre for Research on Globalization and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, writes: "In all likelihood the humanitarian operation will be used as a pretext and justification to establish a more permanent US military presence in Haiti."

Andrew Crosby is a writer, musician, and member of the Vancouver Media Coop. Ajay Parasram is a researcher and writer.

Soldiers in Haiti

Smile, Vancouver!

dawn — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Nearly 1,000 new surveillance cameras are here to stay

VANCOUVER—When the last of the Olympic athletes ski, skate and slide out of town, Vancouverites will be left with an unexpected legacy: 970 cameras.

“Security investment always leaves a good legacy of security for the country,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told media gathered last February in Whistler, marking the one year countdown to the Games.

The security bill for the Olympics is expected to reach the $1 billion mark. A March 2009 Vancouver city report includes the total cost of installing Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems. The Vancouver 2010-Integrated Security Unit (V2010-ISU) will pay $2.1 million, in addition to the $435,000 the province is contributing. But all costs do not appear on the balance sheet. There are also social costs, such as the diminished personal privacy in public spaces.

In March 2009, Philip Boyle and Kevin Haggerty from the University of Alberta, published a report about surveillance and the Vancouver Olympics.

“Public officials occasionally use the pretext of the Olympics to introduce forms of surveillance that the public might oppose in any other context, capitalizing on the fact that in anticipation of the Games citizens tend to be more tolerant of intrusive security measures,” wrote Boyle and Haggerty in Privacy Games: The Vancouver Olympics, Privacy, and Surveillance.

The apparent acceptance of increased surveillance is something that requires a sober second thought, according to Adrienne Burk, professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.

“It’s important to ask ourselves what happens socially when we set up this kind of system of monitoring,” she told The Dominion. “Does the presence of cameras transmitting our images to unknown viewers help us know our neighbors better, or less well? Is there an increase in fear and suspicion, or in feelings of community and safety? We have to be careful when cameras are introduced for one reason, but left in place, or re-deployed for another, without these contextual conversations taking place.”

Although the Vancouver city report Privacy Games: The Vancouver Olympics, Privacy, and Surveillance points to the cruise ship terminal and entertainment district as key areas the cameras will be installed, the City of Vancouver and the V2010-ISU have not been specific regarding locations for all CCTV systems.

“Approximately 900 CCTV security cameras [have been] installed at venues for the Winter Games with another 50-70 CCTV security cameras installed in the urban domain," states the report. "The urban domain consists of areas where the public gather outside a venue,” reads the V2010-ISU's website.

The urban domains have been dubbed "Safe Assembly Areas" by the ISU. These are areas, also known as "Free Speech Zones," or "Protest Pens," where people are allowed to engage in lawful protest.

Minimal research has been conducted on the number of surveillance cameras that currently exist in the Downtown area. A collaborative effort between the Vancouver Public Space Network and the Simon Fraser University Surveillance Project aims to change that.

Late in August, volunteers set out to count and record the locations of cameras they could spot on city streets and alleyways.

“Surveillance cameras are distributed primarily in focused local areas or higher end shopping areas,” David Eby, Executive Director of BC Civil Liberties Association told The Dominion in a telephone interview.

Eby calls attention to the irony of the scenario of increased cameras in Vancouver. “You end up with a paradoxical situation where low income and middle income neighborhoods essentially, financially and logistically, facilitate the displacement of crime into their neighborhoods.”

People who are engaged in so-called “undesirable activities” such as panhandling in shopping districts like Robson Street or Gastown, may end up being displaced from public spaces as a result of security cameras that business owners argue are necessary in order to increase consumer confidence.

BC Civil Liberties has received confirmation from the ISU that no new cameras will be installed in the Downtown Eastside, an area of Vancouver that is the poorest off-reserve postal code in Canada.

The Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) identified some of the the problems with CCTV back in 1999 when it challenged the VPD’s efforts to install cameras in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“Cameras do not provide employment or housing opportunities... Rather than targeting business-operators or landlords who take advantage of poverty and addictions, [the use of CCTV] focuses on the behavior of those individuals who do not fit the expectations or mores of the camera monitors,” their report states.

Ten years later, the CCAP report is still relevant to the concerns about the social costs of these cameras in the context of the Olympics and the Downtown Eastside.

Andrew Pask, director of the Vancouver Public Space Network, cautions that CCTV cameras should only be seen as a “tool of last resort.”

The pattern of Olympic cities, including Athens, Turin, and Beijing, has been to retain surveillance cameras after the Games.

The City of Vancouver has admitted the $435,000 worth of cameras will not be temporary, but part of a “redeployable unit.”

“You know, witnessing has always been a fundamental aspect of democracy, involving actors, observers, and recording of incidents,” professor Burk indicates.

“But cameras complicate that relationship, because the viewers and actors can be removed from each other, and recordings substantively altered," she said, arguing for a public debate before more cameras are installed.

Francesca Galasso is a 4th-year sociology student at Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

surveillance stencil

Military, Mounties Trained for the Games

dawn — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:41:52 +0000

Demonstrations a greater security threat than terrorism: CSIS

VANCOUVER—The role the Canadian Forces play in domestic security is not new in Canada but the security plans for the 2010 Olympics demonstrated an intensification of using military strategies to control public dissent.

The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is a CSIS unit and part of the RCMP’s Joint Intelligence Group (JIG). The Centre initially identified foreign-based terrorism, crime, and domestic protests (in that order of severity) as the most plausible threats during 2010, but later reconfigured their analysis. The ITAC most recently listed international terrorism as a low-level threat and anti-Olympic demonstrations—including anti-globalization and First Nations activists—as the primary threat with a medium level rating.

The conflation of protests and terrorism has steadily increased since the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” and the 9/11 attacks which even further entrenched the notion that militarized strategies were essential in quelling dissent. The deployment of military forces alongside police is part of a “continual flow of technologies that are first developed for the military and later flow into police departments,” Luis Fernandez, author of Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-Globalization Movement, told The Dominion.

“In the past few years we are seeing an increase, not of the police being militarized, but of police working with the military. It goes beyond militarization,” said Fernandez.

Domestic military support dates back to the "aid-to-the-civil" power mandate in the Militia Act of 1855. Indeed, the use of military force has been used steadily since the early 17th Century by the French, British, and Canadians to impose colonial rule under the auspice of maintaining law and order.

More recently, Canada deployed 16,000 troops during the 1976 Montreal Olympics and 4,500 soldiers during the Oka crisis in 1990.

"This role (of the military) has certainly expanded and evolved in the post-9/11 environment, and perhaps for the first time, we are seeing a much more concentrated effort on the part of the military to fulfill that obligation," Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine, told The Dominion via email.

During the G8 Summit in Kananaskis in 2002, the RCMP coordinated the largest security operation in Canada. Approximately 1,500 officers and 5,000 soldiers were deployed and ordered to “shoot to kill” any demonstrators who breached the security perimeter.

Canada Command was established in 2006 to focus on domestic operations, as well as the remodeling of the Reserves into specialized geographical units responsible for, among other things, assisting law enforcement agencies and providing support for large public events.

At the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) meeting in Montebello, Quebec, in 2007, camouflaged Canadian Forces were in position to reinforce riot police, and military helicopters were used to patrol the Ottawa River. Meanwhile, police were using agents provocateurs to incite violence amongst demonstrators.

During the 2010 Olympics, the Canadian Forces will have had 4,500 military personnel in land, air, and sea capacities, including the use of “Special Operations Forces” (JTF 2). They have been allocated $212 million of the total security budget.

The military have set up bases and facilities throughout the region and have conducted numerous training exercises including Operations Bronze, Silver, and Gold, as well as anti-terrorism training exercises and a mock biological warfare scenario in suburban Vancouver.

Although the public has been assured that the military presence would be discrete, bomb-removal squads in Victoria, helicopter and CF-18 fly-overs above Vancouver, and other public displays of training exercises have not gone unnoticed. Some residents have grown wary from being subjected to the growing military presence.

Pre-Olympics military training was supplemented by the construction of up to 10 temporary military bases between North Vancouver and Pemberton in the lead up to the Games. Increased military presence could be felt in the region from Victoria to Kamloops, part of what has been dubbed "Fortress British Columbia."

In the months the Olympics began security forces received new gadgets, including: weapons, bullet-proof body armour, radar systems, surveillance equipment, and Vancouver Police-requested "tactical armoured vehicles."

The Olympics also acted as a catalyst for integration with the US, increasing the transfer and training of military and security knowledge and equipment. Phil Boyle, who studies the long-term effects of Olympic-style security systems on host cities and states, said the 2010 Olympics are “setting a precedent for harmonizing protocols between Canada and the US over military use.”

“The time and context are being provided by the Olympics,” said Boyle of an agreement signed early in 2008 which allowed cross-border military expeditions in times of distress.

At the upcoming G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario, in June, the Canadian military operation is expected to be even larger than in Vancouver.

Andrew Crosby is a writer and musician based in Vancouver.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Olympic Security Tally

"We Better Be Ready"

Tim McSorley — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:00:14 +0000

2010 resistance anticipates a rough ride

VANCOUVER—Earlier this year, RCMP officers with Vancouver 2010 security intelligence began knocking on doors in Victoria and Vancouver to interrogate social justice advocates about their plans for the Olympics. The officers had no warrants, no probable cause, and no due process. So far, they've gotten no information. But it appears that this tiny piece of the Olympic security machine has spent thousands of dollars on intimidating local residents.

The cost of security for the 2010 Games will be around $1 billion, and may be more, when the final tally comes due. A billion dollars could feed, clothe and house 20,000 homeless people for a year, or provide clean drinking water to dozens of remote communities.

Instead, the government is funding 16,000 police, soldiers, and security personnel. The Games will include helicopters overhead, military vessels offshore, large-scale road closures, miles of security fences, and almost 1,000 closed-circuit television cameras.

Two key figures in the RCMP's Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit have extensive experience in using force to quell dissent.

Readers may remember RCMP Sgt. Maj. Hugh Stewart, nicknamed "Sergeant Pepper" after the 1997 Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) at the University of British Columbia. Stewart won fame for unleashing streams of pepper spray on a crowd of students holding a sit-in outside the Leader's Summit. Stewart is also the master architect of the secret security plans for 2010.

Assisting Stewart in pepper-spraying students at APEC was Sgt. Gary R. "Bud" Mercer. The RCMP has named him chief of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit.

Mercer, now an assistant RCMP commissioner, has shown up at crucial moments in other high-profile political confrontations. In 1995, he tracked two people who fled a pickup truck disabled by RCMP explosives outside Gustafsen Lake, where First Nations activists were occupying a Sun Dance ceremony site. That confrontation became the largest paramilitary operation in BC history. After a heavy one-sided firefight and a month-long standoff, the Ts'peten Defenders surrendered and 15 people went to jail.

In July 2000, Sgt. Mercer appeared at the climax of a siege in the Elaho Valley near Whistler, BC. Wilderness advocates were using civil disobedience to block loggers from accessing old-growth forests. Four environmentalists were perched in tree platforms supported by ropes and cables fifty meters up when Mercer pulled in with dozens of emergency response officers, sharpshooters, helicopters, and canine units. Mercer then led the charge to dismantle the blockade, using a long-handled cable-cutter to sever one of the cables attached to the tree platforms, causing them to shift and drop under the four tree-sitters. Branches and backup ropes stopped the platforms from falling further, and no one was hurt, but the action panicked the activists and witnesses on the ground.

One of the tree-sitters made a complaint, and charges of aggravated assault were filed against Mercer. The charges were quickly dropped, however, and the tree-sitter was later convicted of filing a false report—a charge that he and other witnesses still feel is a gross miscarriage of justice.

More recently, a massive 2008 police raid at the Bear Mountain Tree Sit on Vancouver Island may be a premonition of 2010 security operations. There, a protest camp next to a rare cave and endangered wildlife habitat was delaying highway interchange construction. The raid consisted of a small army of SWAT-type officers—armed with automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and dogs—storming the camp before dawn and forcing five terrified campers to surrender at gunpoint. All charges were later dropped. While there is no evidence thus far that Mercer or Stewart was involved, the raid draws from the same playbook they used years ago. Hundreds of military ration boxes left scattered across the site suggest a joint RCMP-military task force was at work.

In July 2009, Mercer spoke to Vancouver City Council about the threats the security police are preparing to handle. He made several references to past incidents of police violence against protesters, according to observers.

Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, an outspoken Olympic critic, found Mercer's speech disturbing. "Certainly all the violent incidents that Bud Mercer brought up to justify the RCMP's security plans—Montebello, APEC, WTO in Seattle—those were all incidents of police violence, not protester violence."

Chris Johnson filmed Mercer's presentation for B-Channel News. He said Mercer's Vancouver presentation was illuminating. "He's talking about police suppressing political demonstrations, not controlling rowdies or preventing terrorism, for example. He's describing their bag of tricks here. So we better be ready."

Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-based writer and environmental non-profit director.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Mercer

Low-balling Security

Moira Peters — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:57:31 +0000

Toronto's Pan Am budget likely to inflate, Olympics-wise

TORONTO—While most pundits have championed Toronto’s successful bid for the 2015 Pan Am Games, critics are asking what the true cost of the Games will be. Escalating costs of security are among their main concerns.

The Pan American Games is a multi-sport event in which only countries from the Americas compete. In November 2009, the 2015 Games were awarded to Toronto and 16 surrounding municipalities, including Hamilton, St. Catharines, Oshawa and Mississauga.

“It is going to be an incredibly good event for the city and the region,” says Jagoda Pike, President of the Toronto Bid Committee. “This is second in size only to the Summer Olympics. The Winter Olympics are actually a smaller event.”

This is not good news to everyone. “You can expect to see more homelessness; you can expect to see people displaced,” says Christopher Shaw, author of the book Five Ring Circus, which documents the social and economic impacts of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

“They’re going to start ramping up their security apparatus.”

The current budget for the Pan Am Games calls for $1.4 billion, plus an additional billion to pay for the Athletes’ Village. “For sure the number is vastly higher; they just don't want to tell people that,” says Shaw.

He points to the Vancouver Olympics as an example of a similar sporting event whose budget has vastly expanded. The original budget for the Vancouver Games was $660 million, but that number has since escalated to $6 billion. If the budget for the Pan Am Games were to similarly escalate, the Ontario Government has agreed to cover additional costs.

Toronto's Bid Book reveals some details of the security plan for 2015:

• Security will be directed by an Integrated Security Unit (ISU), led by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), incorporating at least nine other police forces, including the RCMP and Toronto Police;

• A Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) will be established to “proactively detect and prevent criminal activity, including acts of terrorism and violent or destructive activist behaviour;”

• 2,000 security volunteers will be recruited;

• “State-of-the-art security and monitoring technology” will be acquired to “protect Games venues, participants and spectators;”

• “Approximately 1,000 highly-trained professional police and law enforcement [officers]” will be deployed at “peak days during the 2015 Games,” as well as “1,500 private security personnel.” The Bid Book also states, “While not anticipated, resources from the Canadian Forces could be utilized if necessary.”

“They are hallucinating; they are lying to you through their teeth,” said Shaw upon hearing the number of officers to be deployed. He compares these figures to the 15,000 police officers, military and private security being deployed to the Vancouver Olympics, questioning why a similar event would require much less security.

“It is a different kind of an event,” says Pike. “You don't get the same level of participation from heads of state, so you don't end up with the complexity and the cost of securing for that kind of attendance.”

Pike said she could not comment on the details of the security measures, and referred all questions to the OPP. The OPP did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.

The initial price tag on security in Vancouver was $175 million, but by current estimates that will increase to over $900 million. Shaw believes the cost of security for the Pan Am Games will similarly escalate.

Pike also refused to disclose the cost of securing the Games, saying, “It is a confidential number.”

However, she did confirm the cost of security was within the $1.4 billion budget. While The Dominion was unable to determine the exact cost of security in the Pan Am budget, most security expenses will be paid for from the $167 million allocated to Essential Services. Private security will be paid for from the $55.7 million allocated for Games services. These figures do not include the money being spent on “monitoring technology,” which will likely be part of the $707 million being spent on capital expenditures.

“This is great news,” said a post on the blog Private Security Guy. “The guarding industry is not the only sector that will benefit from the [Toronto] hosting win. Security integrators and monitoring companies in the region should find a healthy increase in RFP's [contracts to bid on] as the Games approach.”

“I think engaging in any event that has benefits will at the same time have some cost. That is always the case; nothing comes without a price,” says Pike. “However, within my view, an event of this kind ... is going to be an incredibly good event for the city.”

“The city will very rapidly get itself in a deficit position as things get more costly and/or fail,” says Shaw. “These things tend to widely escalate—not because suddenly it becomes more expensive but because they low-ball the numbers in the first place.”

Tim Groves is an investigative researcher based in Toronto.

security pan am

The Business of Intelligence

dawn — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:43:15 +0000

Corporate intelligence-gathering harkens back to COINTELPRO

TORONTO—In the US, a new model of law enforcement has emerged in which police, military, security contractors and large corporations are collaborating on intelligence gathering. Are the 2010 Olympics ushering this new paradigm into Canada?

The security committee for the 2010 Olympics Task Force, based in Washington State, is at the forefront of planning US security efforts for the games. According to The Globe and Mail this group brings together government agencies from both sides of the border, more than 100 from the US and 17 from Canada.

Documents acquired by The Dominion reveal that this committee consists of not only the US Military, Canadian Forces, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but also “Pacific Northwest Private Sector Company Volunteers.” The amount the US will spend on Olympic security has not been disclosed.

“The safety and security of the 2010 Olympics and the United States is at risk if we do not take direct action,” testified Jeffery Slotnick, a member of the committee, at a Congressional hearing on Olympics security in March 2008.

Video of the hearing showed Slotnick wearing a dark blue suit and glasses. His bald head and black moustache hinted at the decades he spent in the military. He is president of Setracon Inc., a Tacoma, Washington-based company that contracts out security personnel and trains private security, military and police.

Slotnick explained some of the reasons the US should be involved in Olympic security, including the potential for attacks or natural disasters that could impact US businesses and have significant economic costs to the region. He called for increased funding to prepare for securing the games, plans to expedite border crossings, and a greater role for the private sector in information sharing.

“[The] private sector has tremendous awareness of what is going on... the opportunity to share in both directions is key and critical,” said Slotnick, emphasizing the need for corporate involvement in intelligence gathering for the Vancouver Olympics.

“Boeing, Microsoft, [and] Starbucks ... possess significant intelligence assets. In many cases, individuals from these organizations have higher security clearances than law enforcement officials. It would be unfortunate not to capitalize on these assets...”

It is perhaps not surprising that Boeing, a defence contractor, and Microsoft, a computer technology corporation, have large intelligence and security operations. Starbucks, on the other hand, runs a global chain of coffee shops. Yet they too have a program to identify and mitigate risks to the company.

During a 2007 security conference in Colorado Springs, Starbucks revealed part of their security operation includes monitoring retail stores, roasting plants and container loading sites from a “central security facility.” Press releases from the Industrial Workers of the World, the union representing some Starbucks workers, claim the company conducts surveillance of union activities.

“Are we trying to deputize every private company to be minor league James Bonds against citizens of our own countries?” asked Mike German, reached by phone from Washington, DC.

German is a former FBI agent who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “From a security perspective this is a nightmare; I mean, you are actually giving private companies, who operate on profit margins, access to extremely valuable information.”

“I am sure the data [US] companies collect on Canadian citizens is routinely shared with their headquarters in the United States,” he said. “Is consumer information being collected in Canada that is shared across the border and [then] being brought back to [Canadian] law enforcement in violation of privacy regulations? If the answer is 'we don't know', that's a problem, and if the answer is 'we don't think so', that is still a problem. Because nobody is overseeing these intelligence activities it makes it very difficult to know the extent of the abuse.”

When asked about their involvement in 2010 security, Starbucks responded with a statement reading “...we cannot discuss specific security measures Starbucks is taking for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.” They explained that they are prioritizing “the safety and security of our [employees] and customers,” and are “working with and will rely on the direction of local authorities and other official sources.”

Boeing and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

The efforts to integrate multinational corporations into Olympic security have broad implications. The US has done much to involve the private sector in their security infrastructure. Washington State is at the forefront of blurring the lines between private and public security.

Slotnick informed the Congressional hearing that a “fusion centre” called the Washington Joint Analytical Center plays a role in coordinating intelligence with Canadian authorities. This organization has since been renamed the Washington State Fusion Center (WSFC).

Fusion centres emerged after September 11, 2001, as places for the FBI, Homeland Security, CIA, military, local and state police, and in some cases private sector companies, to jointly gather and respond to intelligence on terrorism and other criminal activities. Currently over 40 fusion centres exist in the US.

While fusion centres are generally not well known, criticism of them has started to emerge.

An ACLU report entitled What's Wrong with Fusion Centers? compares them to COINTELPRO, a controversial domestic intelligence program run by the FBI between 1956 and 1971.

The report outlines problems with fusion centres including: excessive secrecy, military involvement in law enforcement, corporations sharing private information on their customers and employees, and “policy shopping.”

Policy shopping is the practice of manipulating the differences between laws regulating various agencies and jurisdictions, in order to find loopholes in privacy legislation.

According to an article by the Center for Investigative Reporting, at the 2008 Republican National Convention a Minnesota fusion centre undertook data mining on protesters and requested their police partners conduct preemptive intelligence gathering.

Police then infiltrated groups, tapped information exchanges and conducted questionable searches. To justify these activities, some protesters were equated with terrorists.

The private sector is involved in the WSFC. Internal documents made available through Wikileaks show several of their intelligence analysts are contracted from security firms.

An article published at securitymanagement.com said the head of WSFC was "'adamant' about getting Washington State’s major private sector entities involved." It also revealed that Alaska Airlines, Amazon.com and Starbucks have shown interest in working with WSFC and that efforts have been made to give Boeing clearance to place a full-time analyst inside the organization.

A 2007 Washington State Preparedness Report revealed that the WSFC “...is integrated into the planning and intelligence gathering structure pertaining to... the 2010 Winter Olympics.” However, this is not the only area where the WSFC is involved in Canadian security matters.

WSFC plays a role in the Northwest Warning Alert and Response Network (NWWARN), a “regional information fusion centre” which shares intelligence between the public and private sectors, and rapidly disseminates alerts during disasters.

NWWARN originally operated exclusively in Washington State. The Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) was instrumental in expanding NWWARN into BC, Alberta, the Yukon and Saskatchewan in Canada, and Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Alaska in the US. PNWER is a forum that brings together business leaders and elected officials from these western provinces and states to impact policy decisions. Atlantica is a similar organization on the east coast, and there is talk of creating such organizations all along the Canada-US border.

These “cross-border regions” build upon free-trade agreements such as NAFTA, finding ways to harmonize policies to fit the needs of business interests without high profile changes to treaties.

NWWARN's benevolent-sounding mission to rapidly disseminate information during disasters is giving the private sector a growing role in policing, not only in the US but also in Canada. This permanent intelligence network works in a wide range of areas, but in his testimony Slotnick explained it would play an important role in Olympics intelligence gathering.

Canada has welcomed US involvement in Olympic security. In practical terms, this seems to include preemptive intelligence gathering. It is unclear to what extent multinational corporations will be involved in this, but it is undeniable that the Olympics are seeing an increased use of the fusion centre model of law enforcement in Canada.

“Obviously the Olympics are political," said German. "You have to expect that people are going to want to engage in the debate and discuss the issues that are important to them, and to treat those people as if they are criminals or terrorists is inappropriate.”

Tim Groves is a Toronto-based investigative researcher and trainer.