In Canada (and the USA), according to the highest laws of the land, the people own the government. We created them and we hire and fund them. Officially, anyway.
If the people are really in charge, why is the state putting up millions of cameras all over our cities, aimed at our people's faces, connected to advanced facial recognition and tracking software? And why do the people not have access to that data, except after long delays and great inconvenience via court mandate?
If information is power in this new age, then why is our government sucking up all the data for themselves? Government is already more powerful here (relative to the people) than ever before. Why are they bent on seizing even more control?
They say it's to keep us safe. Anyone who's got half a brain knows that's not true. (And anyone with a full brain knows the highest laws of the land do NOT mandate government to micromanage our safety.)
But under the guise of increasing our safety even more, Canada is rolling out wearable cameras for all their agents (including the violent gang called RCMP). Disturbingly, they claim these cameras are to protect us from them.
But in other places where this is already being done, we've seen that such cameras almost always benefit the wearer (and the organization who controls the data being created), not the people, who are supposedly the owners of these agents and equipment. The HD footage will be analyzed and stored by the state. The people will have very little or no access to the data, and it will be used relentlessly against them.
As agents become more like Robocop, they'll remove the human officers from harm's way completely, putting those cameras and all that technology onto an upcoming version of the robots being developed over the past decade in Boston.
Those highest laws of the land I mentioned before, which say we own the government, also say we (the people) can dissolve them if they no longer serve our best interests, and form a new system that suits us better.
But the past few decades have clearly shown that the powers-that-be don't abide by the highest laws of the land anymore, and are increasingly ruling by violence and fear of violence.
Soft tyranny is giving way to hard tyranny in North America. Those who have not been able (or willing) to see it will soon have no option.
No matter how dark it gets, I'm always for Liberty. Power to the people.
DRutter