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An update on Mia following her narrow escape from involuntary electroshock therapy

Eight months after an independent tribunal ordered her released from hospital, the Vancouver Island Health Authority is still pursuing a Saanich woman. Focus previously reported on 82-year-old Mia (“The Case for Electroshocking Mia,” November 2012), whom VIHA senior geriatric psychiatrist Dr Michael Cooper had slotted for electro-convulsive shock therapy against the wishes of her and her family. Last July, an official inquiry determined Mia needn’t be forcibly treated for depression nor even hospitalized; however, almost immediately VIHA representatives began calling, coming by the family home, and demanding that Mia check in with them. Mia, her granddaughter Michelle and grandson-in-law Russel and their children fled the city.

They’d hoped they could have quietly returned to their normal lives by now, but in March, VIHA sent a letter to Mia’s lawyer demanding “evidence” of Mia’s exact current location and that she’s undergoing “treatment of her medical conditions.” Otherwise, continues the letter, “VIHA will need access to [Mia].” Read the rest at Focus online.

Former federal Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page exhorts Canadians to “wake up.”

Parliamentary institutions that bolster Canadian democracy “are under attack right now like I’ve never seen them before in my 35 years of public service.” The warning had a particularly sharp sting coming from recently departed federal Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. Brought to UVic by the Green Party, Page was speaking to a packed lecture hall in April. No partisan firebrand, Page is just a lifelong bureaucrat and self-described “numbers guy” who became increasingly frustrated, then appalled, and then positively worried witnessing important national financial decisions being made “based on ideology alone” and without accountability to anyone. Read the rest at Focus online.

Even when you already know them, sometimes it’s shocking to hear facts confirmed. In February, BC Ombudsperson Kim Carter released her 186-page investigation into BC’s processes for determining people to be “incapable” of controlling their own legal or financial affairs, “No Longer Your Decision.” Focus has reported extensively on the arbitrary, draconian, often self-serving ways by which citizens are being stripped of these basic rights by long-term care providers, health authorities, and the public guardian. Carter concluded the process has indeed been “failing to meet the requirements of a fair and reasonable procedure.”

Indeed, on nearly every key issue, the Ombudsperson’s findings disturbingly reflected many people’s worst experiences and reinforced the worst fears of the rest of us. For starters, there’s no definition of “incapability,” even though authorities are using the concept daily to take away people’s rights to make their own decisions. BC law, Carter clarified, “does not define what it means for an adult to be incapable or establish any criteria or test for this determination. Neither the Public Guardian and Trustee nor the health authorities have defined what incapable means.”

As for the assessment process through which authorities can declare you to be incapable, that’s a free-for-all, too. BC law “does not set out a process to be followed…does not require that an assessment or opinion from a physician be obtained…does [not] establish any standards for such an assessment…does not require that the [assessor] knows the adult and has examined the adult recently…” And to top it off, most health authority staff admitted to Carter that they had no special training in conducting incapability assessments, and the health authorities admitted they provide no such training.

Carter further found that there are no requirements for health care providers or the public guardian to even notify you or your family that your ...

Victoria Police Department (VicPD) media rep Cst. Mike Russell dismissed critics of the automatic licence plate recognition (ALPR) program on CFAX in January. Russell said, “There’s conspiracy theorists out there saying we’re creating a massive surveillance database on people…”

“You mean you’re not?” said fill-in host Rosa Harris-Adler, as both she and Russell chuckled.

“Funny enough we’re not doing that,” said Russell. He described it as merely a “technicality” that VicPD had been recording and passing data about all drivers to the RCMP “for deletion.”

We’re not sure who those wacky conspiracy theorists are, but we understand how they became, er, “confused.” There are already millions of records in the police’s ALPR database. And while Russell may have meant to simply suggest that the database doesn’t include records of the movements of most innocent drivers, well, the BC government and RCMP admitted the ALPR program was indeed collecting such records from 2006-2009 until the federal privacy commissioner complained to parliament. And since then, both RCMP reps and Russell’s boss, VicPD Chief Jamie Graham, have gone on the record numerous times saying their hope was to start building exactly such a mass surveillance database of the movements of all vehicles again, as soon as they’d gathered publicly-persuasive arguments for the policing value of keeping such records.

Nevertheless, Russell’s misleading mocking may be moot. VicPD, with the help of the RCMP who administer BC’s ALPR program, has finally agreed to implement our provincial Privacy Commissioner’s recommendations and stop performing that illegal “technicality.” However, as Focus noted in a January 2013 report, there’s been a concerning silence amongst BC’s federal RCMP detachments and RCMP-managed Integrated Road Safety Units as to whether they would voluntarily comply with provincial privacy law. In a recent email to Focus, RCMP Spt. Denis Boucher cleared up the matter. We asked if the ...

After a lot of effort, I’ve managed to get some statistics from the British Columbia Ministry of Health, and want to share them with researchers, activists and journalists.

Here are the numbers of British Columbians certified (usually meaning they were incarcerated and forcibly treated with drugs or electroshock) under the Mental Health Act in BC from 2002 to 2011, broken down by health regions: BC Forced Treatment Stats. Note that the real numbers are undoubtedly much higher, because certifying someone is a simple procedure of filling out a one-page form, and psychiatrists often need simply threaten to certify someone in order to gain the person’s compliance with confinement and treatment.

And here are the numbers of British Columbians subjected to electro-convulsive therapy (ECT, or electroshock) covering the years 1992-2012: BC ECT rates 1992-2012.

And here are the numbers for ECT in the Vancouver Island Health Authority region, including breakdowns by age and gender: VIHA Summary of ECT Stats by Site.

I recently investigated two sister groups, the BC Association of Municipal Chiefs of Police and the BC Association of Chiefs of Police. I found that both groups are playing a shellgame with the law: On the one hand, they’re claiming they are “private groups” whose activities are not subject to BC’s freedom of information laws covering public bodies. On the other hand, they are operating these “private groups” out of their police departments using police staff and public police resources. (Read the article to see how much more complicated and dubious their shellgames become when I try to obtain even basic documentation about their groups.) And even though they spend a lot of time meeting with politicians and bureaucrats and helping craft legislation and lobby for laws, they also think they don’t need to be legally registered as a lobby group because they’re just doing all this as part of their normal day to day policing duties.

At the end of that article, I explained that I had submitted complaints to both the Lobbyist Registry and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, arguing that these police chief groups were either public bodies subject to laws covering public bodies, or private groups subject to laws covering private groups — they could not escape being either. One way or another, I argued, our police chiefs have to be subject to at least some laws of transparency and accountability like the rest of our society.

The OIPC is investigating. And now, in a recent email to me, the Lobbyist Registrar has deemed these concerns to be valid enough to warrant an investigation as well. Here is the full text of the email from the Lobbyist Registrar:

Dear Rob Wipond:

This is to acknowledge receipt of your complaint under the BC Lobbyists Registration Act (“LRA”) ...

For Immediate Release
November 15, 2012

Researchers Encouraged by BC Privacy Commissioner’s Investigation Report

The three researchers whose report prompted the BC Privacy Commissioner’s investigation into Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) are very encouraged by the findings of Elizabeth Denham’s report, released today.

Since 2006, the RCMP and a growing number of BC police forces have used cruiser-mounted automated camera systems to ubiquitously take pictures of BC vehicles’ licence plates. Ostensibly used for catching stolen vehicles and unlicensed drivers, the researchers found that the ALPR system had “function creeped” into many more, highly questionable uses. As a result of concerns raised by the researchers, the Commissioner investigated how Victoria Police have been using ALPR. Her findings validate the concerns that the researchers’ have raised to the Commissioner, to police, and to the public, especially in relation to the technology functioning as a massive public surveillance system.

Amongst other findings, the Privacy Commissioner determined that Victoria Police were:

• improperly collecting personal information in many circumstances
• compiling information about the movements of too wide a range of people, many innocent of any crimes, including parents with legal custody of children, individuals who have attempted suicide in the past, and individuals prohibited from operating a boat
• improperly disclosing and sharing personal information with the RCMP
• misleading to the public when suggesting that any Canadian privacy commissioner has approved an ALPR system in Canada

She recommended that the Victoria Police Department immediately modify their ALPR program to bring it into compliance with BC’s privacy legislation. For example, the department must:

• amend the composition of their surveillance categories to include only information that is related to a legitimate law enforcement purpose
• work with the Ministry of Justice to inform the public of the full scope of the ALPR program
• configure the program so that innocent individuals’ personal information is deleted automatically

Not all the researchers concerns have been ...

I’m thrilled that the BC Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner has decided to launch a full investigation into the use of Automatic Licence Plate Recognition by police in British Columbia. Here are links to all my published writings on the topic, plus my media release, and the OIPC’s press release.

Hidden Surveillance (article)
RCMP and VicPD ALPR Documents Released (documents)
Privacy Commissioner Slams Provincial Surveillance Program (Article)
What the Privacy Commissioner Really Said (Documents)
RCMP: We’ve Never Spoken About ALPR Program (Blog update)

***********************************************************

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

July 30, 2012

RESEARCHERS PRAISE PRIVACY COMMISSIONER’S DECISION TO INVESTIGATE VEHICLE  SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM

Three independent researchers are praising the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia (OIPC) for today’s announcement that it is launching a review into the use of Automatic Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) in the province. (See the full text of the OIPC announcement below.) For the past year, the researchers have been using access to information laws to investigate BC police ALPR programs, and have shared their findings through articles, presentations, and blogs.

“The Commissioner’s decision to investigate and issue a public report is an important validation of the concerns we’ve been raising,” said freelance journalist Rob Wipond. “Authorities have frequently represented the ALPR program to the public as having been ‘reviewed and approved’ by Canada’s privacy commissioners, but that’s not true.”

Since 2005, the RCMP and a growing number of municipal and regional police forces in BC have been using cruiser-mounted automated camera systems to take snapshots of thousands of vehicle licence plates per hour. Ostensibly used mainly for catching stolen vehicles and unlicensed drivers, the researchers found that much of the ALPR data is being saved and stored for undisclosed purposes.

“Tracking the movements of innocent drivers represents a serious threat to Canadian privacy rights – rights ...

Someone blows up a bus or a building or a bunch of people, and then everywhere, every time, a universal, almost archetypal cry goes up asking, “Why? Why?! How could anyone do such a thing? What kind of a person would do this? Why?!” And the question is always repeated everywhere in the media, too, even as they splash the blood and guts across every screen and page: “Why?!”

And it’s an understandable question. You might ask it yourself sometime.

When soldiers in airplanes blast your neighbourhood into the stone age and everyone you know and love is mangled or killed, you might ask, “Why?”

When your child is caught under the bombed rubble, unreachable, screaming to her death, you could ask, “Why?”

When you’re stumbling alone through the burning city with your skin dripping off your charred bones, you probably will ask, “Why?”

Why.

Well, I can tell you why.

Let me tell you why.

Because we glorify killing. Around the world, humans have glorified killing. We build monuments to warriors and honour them on anniversaries of battles.

And we teach our children to kill. We tell them that war can be important, noble and beautiful. We tell them killing can bring peace. Killing can be a moral, righteous act, and sometimes it’s the best way to protect yourself, your loved ones and your country — even the only way. Killing can be an expression of the deepest love. Killing can be God’s work. We tell them war has toppled evil, godless tyrants and liberated legions of the enslaved and downtrodden. We tell them that often through history the real, final solution has not been widespread changes of heart, not insight, not creative cures, not concession, not diplomacy, surrender or compromise; we say killing was the cure. Killing ...

For interested researchers, here is the City of Vancouver’s Privacy Impact Assessment for its Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance camera systems, written in 2009. And here’s the City of Vancouver REM CCTV Policy, active as of 2012, but written in 2005. I obtained these through freedom of information requests. For more background on these documents and the contradictions they expose, see my article in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight, which also discusses the 2009 report to Vancouver Council about the CCTV project.

After eleven months of asking for “all documents of all types” about their Automatic Licence Plate Recognition vehicle surveilliance program, and four months with my complaint in process with the federal Information Commissioner, this week the RCMP Access to Information and Privacy staff finally sent me documents!!!

A handful of documents that is… Well, the RCMP had managed to get my request limited to a small number of requests for specific documents. And here’s what I finally got:

• A copy of a report about ALPR written by several professors and already available on the internet.
• Several letters to and from the federal Privacy Commissioner’s office, which the Privacy Commissioner’s office gave to me two months ago.
• A 2-page “terms and conditions” document for use of ALPR which RCMP staff had already given me four months ago.
• One redacted print-out of one ALPR database record, along with a statement that to get the rest of the data records from Victoria alone would cost me $8,660 in search fees.

That’s it. That’s all.

And to top it off, according to RCMP Access to Information staff, do you know how many emails about ALPR have been sent to or received by Sgt. Warren Nelson, the head of the ALPR program in BC, over the last 7 years as the program has expanded from a few cars to 42 cars? ZERO.

That’s right. Apparently, Nelson hasn’t even written those emails about ALPR to me that I seem to have copies of. Or else, RCMP ATIP staff have determined that emails to journalists are not public information…

And guess how many meetings the RCMP have had at which ALPR was discussed in the past seven years? You guessed it: ZERO. Or else, they’ve simply never taken any minutes, even once.

Finally, there is, according to the RCMP, no up-to-date operational manual for the RCMP’s ALPR ...

My article last month on police automatic licence plate recognition programs in BC has been read online by over 17,000 people after being featured in slashdot and elsewhere. This month I follow up with an article that recaps what happened at the Reboot Privacy and Security Conference when my co-researcher Christopher Parsons sat on a panel with Victoria Chief of Police Jamie Graham, and then I went to ask Graham a question and… It also recounts our stunning new findings: What the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada really said about the program. Indeed, you can read the full text of the OPC’s letters to the RCMP about the ALPR program yourself right here.

My new educational video.

Climate scientist Andrew Weaver is fond of (rightly) lambasting the media for generally poor coverage of climate science. For the coverage of his most recent report about the oil sands, though, he has only himself to blame. I had to spend two hours studying and engaging in a back and forth with his co-author Neil Swart to figure out the real facts behind Weaver’s own sensationalist and misleading public claims about his findings.

Let’s get one thing straight, first: Climate change is clearly occurring, and Andrew Weaver is a better climate scientist than I am. He’s also a lot more famous. However, Weaver keeps wading with his opinions into areas of communications, media and politics where, in my estimation, he’s consistently doing a bad job. This latest media storm he’s caused is a perfect example.

Here’s the headline from Weaver’s own February 21, 2012 article on Huffington post: “My New Study: Coal is 1500 Times Worse for the Environment than Oil Sands“. I probably don’t need to tell very many people how much international airplay this has gotten. ‘Gosh, if that’s true, the oil sands suddenly seem squeaky clean!’ Guess who’s loving and promoting that message?

Just a few problems with Weaver’s “science” and “facts” here.

The report he wrote with student Neil Swart, which Swart was kind enough to forward to me in its entirety along with supplemental analyses they’d done, actually only focuses on carbon emissions, not “environment” impacts — they admit that themselves right up front in the report. “It is important to recognize that our estimates do not include greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide and do not address other potentially deleterious environmental, health and social side effects of oil-sand production.” So that means, Weaver has included that word “environment” in his Huffington blog headline merely for sensationalist ...

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.

mehdi

paulina2

paulina1

grace

krystal

I’ve seen two types of judges while covering courts. Which one bore judgment on the recent teachers’ strike?

One judge checks her ego outside the courtroom. She puts all her energy into absorbing affidavits, thoughtfully probing lawyers and clients, meticulously weighing evidence, and rendering judgments sensitively and creatively. If challenged in her authority, she politely explains she’s only trying to help resolve the conflict.

An experienced judge of this type is impressive to witness.

The other judge’s robes are puffed up with self-importance, and his overpowering sense of moral rectitude make him curt and dismissive of complex arguments. He shows disdain for anything particularly time-consuming, and delivers decisions packaged inside paternalistic lectures and salted with insults. If challenged, he menacingly warns about maintaining “respect for the court”.

During the strike, I for one saw too much of that second judge.

Though the government had simply invented a law declaring the teachers’ strike illegal, for example, many people instantly launched into insulting tirades. The next day “respect for the law” became the dominant public refrain, as if the huffy phrase had some universally-trumping moral rank, like a meta-political gavel hammering the final sentence.

“The law is the very foundation of a civil society,” our Premier proclaimed.

“The very day the union respects the court and returns to work, we will sit down and talk,” insisted Labour Minister Mike de Jong. Ad nauseam.

A lawyer’s op-ed, even while criticizing government, stated “rule of law is critical to a democratic society; without law, there would be anarchy.”

One letter-writer among many affirmed “respect for the law as the fundamental principle of democracy”.

And the presiding judge, stripping the now “outlaw” teachers of many of their basic rights to control their own money or even communicate with each other, parroted this view: “Each and every one of us derives the security and freedom which ...