20/02/2023
People should have a say as to whether the police should get to incorporate new technologies like this. There was a time not long ago where the police needed just cause to conduct surveillance upon you.
You don't need to be suspected of wrong doing to prompt an investigation, Canadian police are actively gathering intelligence on everybody, as if we are all suspects to a major crime.
There is no oversight to police procurement of new and invasive technologies. Free of information requests are stonewalled. Our politicians at the highest levels of the federal government are lied to by RCMP officials who turn around and claim that revealing anything could hinder ongoing and future investigations.
4 years ago the RCMP were already operating more than 200 drones in the country. These drones are equipped with infrared heat sensors, and can spot you even if you are inside your house. They have nightvision. The ability to zoom in 100's of times in high definition. 2 years ago, in violation of the law and the rules governing aviation, RCMP spy drones accidentally crashed into a plane and almost killed the passengers while it was hanging out in restricted air space it was forbidden from going into. They failed to notify aviation authorities because their investigation was considered time sensitive.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/mounties-put-more-eyes-in-the-sky-with-expanding-drone-fleet-1.4482161
Just for writing this, I myself am likely being flagged as the RCMP does extensive surveillance of all social media activity of Canadian citizens as part of a dystopian sounding Operation Wide Awake. They actually borrow that name for an X-Men storyline that took place in the future where all people were subjected to intense surveillance so that the 'mutants' could all be labeled, and if needed, rounded up quickly to be exploited as a natural resource with no basic rights. Police are showing up at peoples doors to harrass them for comments made on facebook. Literally.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-social-media-review-1.5346741
https://techstartups.com/2022/02/11/canadian-police-now-monitoring-citizens-social-media-activities-ontario-police-visited-womans-home-commented-anti-mandate-protest-facebook/
Even worse, RCMP can hack your phone and do anything they want with it. Have access to every file, every screen you see. Location information and history. Worse, they can even remotely turn on your camera without you being able to detect it, as well as the microphone, and spy on you to their hears desire.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/08/07/parliamentary-committee-rcmp-spyware/
When news broke that the RCMP used malware to remotely hack peoples phones, they told government officials that it had only been done at least 10 times. Which means somewhere between 10 and infinite. Then a month later, further investigation revealed that number to be at least 49 times over a short period.
https://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en_US/privacyhub/canadian-police-spyware/
A university of Toronto group tracks the use of this type of technology, and have consistently proven that isn't used exclusively to investigate criminals. It's used to target and harass journalists critical of governments. It's used to go after human rights activists. It's used to spy on opposition politicians so that incumbent governments can get a leg up in the next elections. It's used to go after citizens critical of governments or police violations. The group, Citizens Lab that conducts these investigations have themselves been targeted multiple times for the work they do.
There was a time where Canadian used to have rights, and a reasonable expectation of privacy as long as they were conducting themselves in such a way that didn't warrant police suspicion. Kind of vague and subjective, but it was at least something. But today, police are actively engaging in multiple intelligence gathering operations against you, me, everybody.
#1984
The RCMP used the software to steal people’s conversations and media, and remotely turn on people’s cameras and microphones to record them in real-time.
