Ever since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s been a remarkable shift in attitudes toward the police: more than half of Canadians now support the idea of defunding them, and re-allocating spending to life-affirming services like housing or mental health.
Yet with no public input into decision-making over police institutions, budgets for policing are still increasing—and, as
a new investigation from Martin Lukacs reveals, police across the country are also ramping up their digital surveillance powers.
According to government documents, municipal police have been setting up digital surveillance centres under the radar to provide around-the-clock “virtual backup” to cops.
That means street cops in real-time are being sent information drawn from deep social media monitoring, CCTVs, open-ended data collection and algorithmic mining—without any debate about their impact.
They can now collect info in minutes that would usually take days to gather—and that information can be drawn from databases filled with discontinued practices like carding that targeted Black and racialized communities.
Experts warn this risks “supercharging” racist patterns of policing, especially when delivered to police on the scene in already tense situations.
These surveillance centres are also keeping tabs on political demonstrations (and mysteriously, at one point monitored the musician Drake’s entourage).
U.S. corporations like Motorola, IBM, and Palantir, many with controversial ties to military and spy agencies, are lending a hand. They’re involved not just in providing tech but in helping design the very mission of these centres.
As the documents show, they’re modelled in part on U.S. fusion centres that were created post-9/11, and which have been widely criticized for spying on Muslims, Black people, and others in “virtually complete secrecy.”
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Sara Wylie, Senior Video Producer
Reading: I’ve been reading so much sci-fi during the pandemic, I think because imagining other worlds and ways of living shakes me out of that "there is no alternative" mindset that fossil-fueled late capitalism encourages. I re-read Black sci-fi writer Octavia Butler’s prophetic book
The Parable of the Sower (and its sequel The Parable of the Talents), written in the 1990s. Her protagonist Lauren Olamina guides us through an apocalypse that is eerily familiar, as she develops a philosophy for the new world: “all that you touch you change, all that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”
Watching: I recently re-watched Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, and can’t recommend it enough. Tailfeathers takes a look at how the opioid crisis has affected her community of the Kainai First Nation, and follows her mom, Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, as she advocates a harm reduction approach. It’s such a moving film, portraying the devastating impact of fentanyl and the results of treating addiction through abstinence. It’s still in theatres, but
coming soon to the NFB website!
Listening: The Future Ecologies podcast is hosted by two west coasters, Adam and Mendel, as they explore the unexpected and expansive relationships between us and our more-than-human kin: trees, fungi, kelp, deer, you name it. The sound design is also just exceptional, making it a pleasure to listen to. Highly recommend the
episodes on the ‘Goat Walker’, Jim Corbett, and the surprising ecological connection to the sanctuary movement.
