Written by: "Anti-Racist" Agitator, Spy and  Informant Matt Lauder

TORONTO POLICE TO GET CCTV

The Toronto police department will soon be using closed circuit television as a method of deterring criminal activity in the downtown core. Citing examples of CCTV use in other major cities, the Toronto police chief said that the cameras are to be placed in strategic places such as Yonge Street and Dundas Street.

Cameras are already in use in the United States, the United Kingdom, and some cities in Canada including Sudbury and London, Ontario.

A police report indicates that CCTV use has dramatically reduced crime in the downtown cores. In Baltimore, Md, crime dropped by 50% while Sudbury has seen a reduction in crime of 40%.

The purpose of the downtown cameras, according to police chief Fantino, will be to monitor pedestrians. Businesses have been complaining that there is a lack of police presence in the downtown core.

However, despite the effectiveness of the cameras in reducing crime, libertarian critics maintain that CCTV is an infringement on the rights of the individual by being an intrusive measure of surveillance.

There seems to be a systemic approach to a reduction of the rights of the individual in the province of Ontario in the last few years. The Conservative government at one time suggested a computer-based finger-print identification that would cover all aspects of services for the government, including driver’s permits, as well as a recent attempt to have replica guns fully registered. The use of CCTV in downtown areas is merely another attempt by the government to fully control the individual. In a period of credit cards, electronic banking, and now fully video-monitored city centres, the government knows exactly who you are and what you are doing. Concepts such as individual liberty or personal privacy no longer exist.

I’m not much for one of conspiracy theories and New World Order paranoia, but a recent move by the Ontario government to develop a privatized super-prison system, in addition to the WTO protests and the Multi-lateral Agreement of Investment, allows me to believe that BIG BUSINESS is taking over. Certainly, in my mind, big business is the New World Order, a system of world government ruled by a small, elite, and very rich group built on the backs on the individual worker.

Regarding the development of new prisons, the Ontario government intends on a 1200 bed super jail in Penetanguishene as a model for future privatized prisons in the province. Super prisons will also be built in Milton and Lindsay at the expense of closing 20 smaller prisons across the province. In the new prisons, guards will not be Corrections Canada employees, rather they would be privately hired at a fraction of the cost.

However, critics charge that while costs savings may be realized, prison employees will be improperly trained and services for rehabilitation and education of inmates.

But, concerns go beyond mere cost savings. At a recent demonstration against the super jails, over 500 protestors demanded that the government review its policy on the jails in order to ensure that new prisons are “committed to the community.” In other words, the people want the big international businesses to act like smaller, locally owned businesses, showing an interest in the wellbeing of the community.

On a larger scale, what we have here is an attempt by big business to buy into the support structures of society, its goal to be to run every service as a business. The fear is not that we would be charges obnoxious user fees, but rather that the new business-government superstructure will be keeping track of its citizens and, quite possibly, steering the people into specific consumer habits.

The government is selling the people out under the guise of cost savings. The Ontario government has always been inherently linked to big business, and while the concept of free consumer society is the economic version of a democratic society, the underlying approach of selling the superstructure of government services to a specific group of international businesses creates economic totalitarianism. We will have no choice but to follow the will of economic tyrants, the World Trade Organization, aka the New World Order.