So says Turkish social media analyst Zeynep Tufekci in the online magazine Matter.
Photo: Nurphoto
“It’s time to rethink our nightmares about surveillance.”
Writing from Istanbul’s huge Gezi Park protests, and from his investigations in social media, Tufekci looks provocatively at the paradox of Twitter as a medium for connection and resistance, but also a powerful tool for state-corporate surveillance and control.
In 2012, you may have joined a national campaign to block their highly invasive online spying legislation, Bill C-30. The government claimed it would “help police combat child pornography.” But many critics, including the federal privacy commissioner, noticed the sweeping legislation would force internet service providers to maintain systems allowing police to intercept and track online communications without a warrant, effectively wiping out fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of speech. The intent was clear: Increased powers for a surveillance-obsessed regime.
OpenMedia.ca led a national campaign to kill the Bill. In February 2013, the federal Minister of Justice announced that the government “would not proceed” with Bill C-30. “We’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this.” Nor, he added, would the government pursue any other measures for “the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability within their systems.”
Turns out they lied.
Now known as Bill C-13, the undead spy bill is back. Now they claim it’s to fight cyberbullying. A good thing to fight. But it’s a cover. Bill C-13 consists of just 2.5 pages aimed at cyberbullying, and 65 pages aimed at making it easier for the government to spy on the online activities of all Canadians. These provisions are lifted straight from Bill C-30. Micheal Vonn, BC Civil Liberties Association: “This is not a bill about cyberbullying. It’s a bill essentially to reintroduce most of the components of Bill C-30, despite the government’s assurances that they would not do so.”
It’s not too late to join the resistance. Here’s how.
(Follow this story in What next? Doing science in dangerous times. Coming in 2014 from Between the Lines.)
As residents of Prince Edward-Hastings riding, we call on you to exercise your influence and responsibility in the following matter of urgent concern to all of us.
As of October 3, Canadian citizens Dr Tarek Loubani and John Greyson have already been imprisoned for 48 days by the military government in Egypt. Recently their imprisonment was extended once again, for an additional 45 days. They have not been charged with any offence.
In contravention of international law, the Egyptian military regime claims the right to hold them without charge for as long as two years.
We are encouraged to hear that Prime Minister Harper told Canadian media on September 29, “In the absence of charges, Dr. Loubani and Mr. Greyson should be released immediately.” This is a step in the right direction, but given the degree of injustice and life-threatening circumstances it’s not enough. The Prime Minister should be speaking directly to his counterpart in Egypt, demanding that these two Canadian citizens be released immediately and allowed to return safely to Canada.
Dr Tarek Loubani is an emergency room physician in London, Ontario; John Greyson is an award-winning film and video maker. Both of them teach at universities in Toronto and London. Each is highly respected in his field.
On the night of their detention, Dr Loubani was doing what his professional oath as an MD requires of him, providing emergency medical care to people who’d been attacked by soldiers in a public protest. John Greyson was doing what he intended to do on this trip, documenting Dr Loubani’s work.
Amnesty International has called for their immediate release. More than 145,000 people have signed an international petition demanding their immediate release. Their release has also been demanded by the Ontario & Canadian Medical Associations, the United Church of Canada, the Presidents of York, Ryerson, Queen’s and Wilfred Laurier Universities, and many other organizations and individuals.
We call on the Prime Minister of Canada to make the same demand, immediately and directly to the appropriate Egyptian authorities.
Bruce Levine works as a psychologist in Cincinnati, Ohio. By the time he got his PhD, he told me, he felt so alienated from the profession’s dominant goals and practices that he hesitated to tell strangers how he made his living. Eventually he encountered other dissidents, both within the profession and among people who have survived its abuses. As a therapist, activist and writer, Bruce Levine strives to help people, especially adolescents, to find their own way through a society that packages conformity as freedom, and non-conformity as illness.
“Over and over,” he says, “we’re told that mental illness is caused by a biochemical imbalance in the brain, or it’s genetic. I’ve learned to distrust claims like these, especially when it’s going to make someone a ton of money or be used to manipulate and control people. The whole area of biochemical cause and cure is a giant money-maker for the drug companies. And who decides these things? Committees of psychiatrists basically decree what gets listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the diagnostic bible of the American Psychiatric Association. If you have any common sense, it’s not hard to see how unscientific that is.
“For example, in the 1970s when I was a psychology undergrad, homosexuality was in the DSM as a mental disorder. Gay activists finally managed to get rid of that, but now we have things in there like ADHD (‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’), and ODD (‘oppositional defiant disorder’). If you look at the so-called symptoms, what you find are kids – huge numbers of them – who are bored, or who question, or argue, or refuse to cooperate with illegitimate authority. So what do you do? You call these kids sick and you drug them. In the Soviet Union, the psychiatrist’s job was to ‘treat’ political dissidents as sick, to hospitalize and drug them. Here we don’t even wait until they’re adults speaking out against injustice, instead we get ’em when they’re twelve and speaking out against some pointless school assignment.
“Given how often the mental health authorities have been wrong, and how much harm they’ve done, people like me have a clear responsibility to question their decisions, their power. In a strange way, the fact that the abuses are so clear actually makes it easier to speak out.”
Bruce Levine speaks out in his blog. And in his books. And other places too, eg:
Photo: Nurphoto
Michael Riordon 