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Read about the Tories incredibly stupid, fascistically dangerous legislation all over the place today, but here’s one to start with, I liked the title, calling it a “creepy valentine from Vic Toews”  http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/02/14/lawful-access-a-creepy-valentine-from-vic-toews/

Here’s a petition to sign against it:

http://openmedia.ca/StopSpying

My article “Hidden Surveillance”, which investigates the RCMP and Victoria Police Department’s Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) program, has been released in the February issue of Focus magazine and is now available online here. My thanks to Kevin McArthur of Stormtide and Unrest.ca, Christopher Parsons, along with Kris Constable of PrivaSecTech and everyone at IdeasMeetings for their help, interest, perspectives and encouragement along the way. As a supplement to the article, below are documents attained so far from my provincial Freedom of Information and federal Access to Information requests. (In the U.K., such programs are often called Automatic Number Plate Recognition, or ANPR.)

The RCMP Privacy Impact Assessment (October 2009) for its Automatic Licence Plate Recognition program. (A new PIA is apparently at the draft stage as of January 2012).

Victoria Police Department correspondence and other records on its ALPR program: Pages 1-31. Pages 32-55. Pages 56-101.

The 2011 Letter of Agreement, Terms and Conditions for ALPR use between the RCMP and other police agencies (two pages).

A one-page spreadsheet from the RCMP summarizing police actions taken in response to ALPR hits throughout BC from 2007-2011.

For serious researchers, here are the detailed ALPR hit logs from the Victoria Police Department: June-July 2010. July-October 2010. November-December 2010. January-February 2011. February-May 2011. May-September 2011.

My heartfelt congratulations to the BC Civil Liberties Association for finally updating their mental health policy after 30 years!

I’ve criticized them publicly in the past for their lack of activism on the civil rights of patients, and I want to be the first one to congratulate them now. Here’s the position, written by member of the BCCLA board Dr. Muriel Groves and apparently adopted by BCCLA February, 2011, though not posted on their website until this week:
http://www.bccla.org/positions/patients/12BC-Mental-Health-System.pdf

I wish they’d reviewed the Yukon’s mental health legislation as a comparison instead of Ontario’s, because the Yukon’s is even better, but this position strikes at most of the key issues: BC needs laws that more clearly articulate when you can and cannot be stripped of your rights, and allow you to refuse psychosurgery (like lobotomies), write an Advance Directive, designate a substitute decision maker, and accept incarceration without forced drugging if you so desire.

How can you put your savings into environmentally and socially responsible companies in Victoria? I’ve been helping organize a community investment forum to discuss exactly that issue. You can read my article about it here, or come on out to the event!

I now have a Blog separate from my published Articles. Many thanks to Paul Cooper of Blink Design and Web Services for putting together this new functionality and look. (I’ve already started mucking around with it just for my own fun, though, so don’t blame him for any bad stuff you run across!)