Letters

Mea Culpa  

Dear Republic:

Re: Province newspaper ditches negative stadium poll results, issue 139

You can tell the writer to blame me and not some Whitecaps-Province conspiracy. I sent an e-mail to the Province illustrating the fact that the poll did a complete flip in an hour. Needless to say, there had been tampering; “hacked” is not the correct word, flooded is more accurate. The poll relies on cookies instead of IP address-recording to keep track of who has voted, which means anyone could delete said cookie and vote continuously.

—Andrew Chobaniuk, online

Always faith based  

Dear Republic:

Re: Harper brings ill omens to the Canada we love, Republic issue 139

Dan Adleman is obviously unaware that the Canadian government has never had a problem providing social programming through funding faith-based organizations. This is not limited to Christian organizations, like the Salvation Army and North Shore Shelter, but also Jewish and Muslim organizations.

While the Americans have an obsessive separation of church and state doctrine, this has never been a Canadian doctrine, nor a Canadian approach. While Trudeau’s Charter of Rights made us more like the Americans (a litigious, rights-based society), perhaps Bush’s funding of faith-based services made the US a little more like Canada.

—Janet Epp Buckingham, Director, Law and Public Policy, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada

Police State  

Dear Republic:

Re: Police State looms as Vancouver engages in the War on Terror, Republic issue 139

Vancouver, tread carefully, this is no idle threat. In the City of Worcester, England, as in almost every city, town and village in Great Britain, a sophisticated network of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) monitors the population 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is no terrorist-inspired strategy of self defense. As it happens, the surveillance apparatus was being installed at a time when the likes of Mr Bin Laden was little more than a common nuisance, fresh out of friends at the CIA.

Worcester is a small county town, once famous for its fine china, the English civil war and, of course, Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce (the original). It is one of the safest towns in England. Today, state funded CCTV is fanning outwards away from the city center and increasingly toward neighborhoods where private citizens go about life in their yards, gardens and side streets. Every year a local paper rejoices at packaged news fed from above that more government money is being forwarded to install yet another layer of surveillance cameras for our benefit.

The original justification for this network was sold to a sleeping public as a “crime prevention revolution.” The “Secret Eye” would render criminals impotent and our streets would be cleansed of a menace. The perpetual war on crime has given way to the Long War on Terror, or rather the Fear of Terror. And the populace still does not bat an eyelid. I once asked a colleague if she had an opinion about the amount of surveillance we were under just walking from our place of work to a sandwich bar for lunch. “Don’t really think about it, nothing to do with me,” she replied. Sadly, this was the response of a majority of people to whom I posed the question, leading me to question myself about whether I was indeed sliding into paranoia.

However, this is no end of any thin wedge. In fact, it is half way up a very fat wedge that just got even fatter in Britain. With camera surveillance permanently embedded nationwide, the British government has moved on to the next level of this Orwellian nightmare by passing a mind-numbing piece of legislation that will introduce compulsory National Identity Cards into the country by 2010. This is no photo ID like, say, a BC drivers license or passport, for example.

The ID Card will be a different animal from anything ever known. It will be connected to a database called the NIR (National Identity Register), where personal details will be stored. This will include a unique number issued to the person, fingerprints, a scan of the back of the eye, and of course, photographs, name, address and date of birth will be stored there. There will be almost infinite space for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you on a database, which can be expanded (and traded) by Government with or without further Acts of Parliament. In Britain, Government is close to recording the complete movements of each and every one of its citizens. And still they sleep on.

By itself, one might think that this register is harmless, but one would be wrong to come to such a conclusion. This new card will be used to check identity against a person’s entry in the register in real time, whenever they present it to “prove who they are.”

Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal, into which the card can be swiped to check a holders identity. Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the Card was presented. This means for example, that there will be a government record of every time one withdraws more than £99 at a bank. Restaurants and liquor stores will demand that the card be swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license, you will have to present an ID Card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account.

So Vancouver and Canada, be on your guard. The unthinkable has already been well thought through, and is not too far from home.

—Andrew Marks, Nanaimo, BC