Security/In-Security a National Threat to Democracy
February 17, 2012 1 Comment
By: Krobel2011
Notwithstanding Canada’s latent entrenchment of liberties, freedoms and rights, (The Canada Act 1982), Canada has purported to be a Western nation based on democratic ideologies of equal treatment, fair representation, and respect for individual freedoms, rights and liberties. With the influx of what is politically perceived as threats to Canada’s national, social, corporate and domestic security, mechanisms of increased surveillance and the creation of legislation has been imported as Canada’s new democratic ideology. As Richard Ericson argues in his book, “Crime in an Insecure World” (2007), there has been a trend in Western countries to intensify security measures as a result of neo-liberal political ideologies of uncertainty and possible harm to our nation. This trend according to Ericson has resulted in criminalizing all possible, conceivable suspected harms from individuals or other nations (Ericson, 2007).
Historically Canada has been faced within these areas of security threats that required governmental intervention and counter measures. In 1918 an influenza epidemic claimed 50,000 lives Canada wide, and twenty one million worldwide. In World War ll Japanese immigrants were forced into internment camps, not only attributable to racism, but in large part as a perceived threat to national security. In the 1950’s Canada feared possible threats and aggression from the former Soviet Union, and agreed to a continental defence with the United States against this threat, today this alliance is known as the North American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) agreement. In the 1960’s through to 1970 a radical separatist group, known as the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) engaged in acts of terrorism, bombings, (over 200 since 1963), and in 1970 the kidnapping and murder of a Canadian and British parliamentary members in what became known as the October Crisis. This incident forced former Premier, Elliot Trudeau, to invoke the War Measures Act (1918). The Act not only suspended basic civil rights and liberties it allowed police searches and arrests without warrants, prolonged detentions without charges and denied the right to see a lawyer. The Air India bombing in 1985 killed 329 people and was reported by CBC News as Canada’s worst mass murder (The Bombing of Air India Flight 182, 2006).
Global relations, transnational expansion of corporations, technological advancements and a neo–liberal agenda along with historical events have been contributory to an escalation in securitization. The government response in justifying their actions is to claim that they are taking precautions for potential or imagined harms. Ericson (2007) notes that there is an intensification of security measures which has been justified by the governmental social imaginaries of the increased risk of harm. From cyber threats to governmental propaganda of the wars on, terrorism, crime and drugs, the state has created what Ericson refers to as social imaginaries, “a shared understanding among people about their existence relationships, expectations and commitments to one another and provide a capacity for government to act and legitimize their actions” (Ericson, 2007, p.3). Mark Neocleous (2008) notes “the contemporary social and political imagination is similarly dominated by the lexicon of security and the related idea that we are living in an increasingly insecure world. Everywhere we look a ‘need’ for security is being articulated as in the UK a group of farmers aiming to halt what it sees as a perceived decline in UK food production calls itself “Food Security ltd.” Potential extinction of tigers sees the Wildlife Conservation Society, Fund and Smithsonian National Zoological Park demand that tigers need “homeland security” (Neocleous, 2008,p.2-3). Neocleous further states that “Security consciousness is the new dominate ideology, and every day is Security Awareness Day” (Neocleous, 2008, p.3).
In 2006 the Institute of Population Health, Ottawa, Canada conducted a national survey of terrorism-related risk perceptions. A total of 1,502 adult Canadians were interviewed by telephone on their perception of terrorism threats both to Canada and as a threat to themselves. The findings of the institute revealed that the respondents “reported that terrorism was a low to moderate threat to the Canadian population, with 13.3% indicating that terrorism posed a high risk, the percentage was even lower as a threat to themselves” (Lemyre, Turner, Lee & Krewski, 2006, p. 755/757). The authors also reported that this perception was much higher in the United States post 9/11. Canadian perception of threats was often due to media reports foremost as being credible, “whereas elected politicians and government officials were referred to least” (Lemyre, Turner, Lee & Krewski, 2006,p. 755). These findings not only have implications for risk management assessment, and mechanisms of securitization implemented by the state, it also brings into question the legitimacy of governmental actions as this would imply that state capacity to act is limited and questions the states reliance on social imaginaries that are postulated to the public.
Still, intensified security is justified through governmental claims of social and global uncertainty of harm that leads them to take precautionary measures in, what Ericson claims is nothing more than criminalizing those who are both suspected and those who have actually engaged in harms (Ericson, 2007). This measure of criminalization occurs by the government engaging in two distinct but cohabitating measures. First is by either by creating “new legislation or where new uses of existing law are reinvented to erode or eliminate any principles, standards and procedures of criminal law that get in the way pre-empting imagined sources of harm Ericson (2007) refers to this as counter law I”(Ericson, 2007, p.24). As a form of counter law I Britain legislated the Anti Social Behaviour Act (or Order) in 2003 giving police unlimited powers to “clean up the streets” with issues of vandalism, prostitution, graffiti, dispersing of groups of more than two, landlord evictions and parental control over children. Those opposed to the legislation claimed it would result in criminalizing the young. (BBC News, 2004). As Ericson (2007) notes this “form of counter law would criminalize without the formalities of criminal law principles, standards, and procedures (Ericson, 2007, p.160).
The G20 summit also created legislation on the pretence of the risk of harm by reinstating the Public Works Protection Act, under which regulation 233/10 was passed in the Ontario legislature without debate, and immediately made the perimeter fence surrounding the G20 summit site “public work”, falling under the Public Works Protection Act. (Ontario refuses to apologize for secret G20 law, 2011). The Star reported that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association had learned that streets and sidewalks within the perimeter of security zone have been designated under the Public Works Protection Act and allowed police to use the 1939 Act to enforce security. Importantly, this Act gives dire powers to the “guards” of the public work: power to search without warrants, obligation of visitors to state name and purpose of the visit, power to deny entry. Most of these powers contradict current constitutional safeguards. (Ontario refuses to apologize for secret G20 law, 2011).
The second measure is what Ericson (2007) refers to as counter law II or surveillance appendages, and takes the form of observational infrastructures, such as surveillance cameras, private policing, monitoring and “facilitate direct behavioural control and self-policing without recourse to legal regulation” (Ericson, 2007, p.24). Ericson uses the image of “Big Brother” who is always watching and references George Orwell’s film “1984” to “make the point that citizens are monitored as a means of social order and conformity” (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000, p.606). Technological devices, the increase in private policing has been an aid to principles of counter law I is justified by the state as a necessity in risk management.
Observational monitoring has become the norm in today’s society. It can hardly be argued that in the course of our daily activities that we are not being watched by the cameras in shopping centers, private establishments, while driving and with the advent of hand held devices our actions can be captured at any given time. New laws or reinventing existing laws are facilitated by surveillance appendages which are justified as part of the tools to get the job done. But in getting the job done there is an erosion of our liberties, freedoms and due process rights. As Bigo and Guild (2007) maintain “there has been widespread discussion of the relationship between security and human rights which has been accompanied by the rapid development of technologies of surveillance and increasing control of large groups of people who are under suspicion with no direct proof” (Bigo & Guild, 2007, p.99).
Through these measures there has been a gradual destruction of our privacy and our democratic rights. We have become a nation of In-Security in two respects. First we have been immersed into surveillance and security measures that threaten the democracy that Canada was built upon, and secondly extensive involvement in security has left us feeling “Insecure” as the government has garnered its own brand of threats to our due process rights and freedoms.
References
Bigo, D. And Guild, E. (2007). “The Worst-case Scenario and the Man on the Clapham Omnibus”, Bigo, D. And Guild ,E. (Eds). Security and Human Rights. Portland: Hart Publishing. p.99-121. +
Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an insecure world. Cambridge. Polity Press.
Haggerty, K.D. and Ericson,R.V. (December 2000). The Surveillant assemblage. British
Journal of Sociology. Vol. 51, No. 4. P. 605-622.
Lemyre, L., Turner, M., Lee, J.E.C., & Krewski, D. (October 2006). Public Perception of Terrorism Threats and Related Information Sources in Canada: Implications for the Management
of Terrorism Risks. Journal of Risk Research. Vol.9 No. 7, p. 755-774. DOI: 10.1080/13669870600924477. Retreived from:
Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Montreal & Kingston*Ithaca. McGill-Queen’s
University Press.
The Bombing of Air India Flight 182. 2006, September 25. CBC News. Retrieved from:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/airindia/bombing.html
Ontario Refuses to apologize for secret G20 law. 2011, April, 29. The Star. Retrieved from:
red file 
This is a comprehensive post!
A few comments and questions:
First, what is meant by the term ‘neo-liberal political ideology’ in this context?
In thinking about this, I find the work of Henry Giroux and David Harvey to be useful. Here’s an interview with Harvey: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/lilley190606.html. And here’s an article by Giroux: http://dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Giroux0807.htm . Both have written in-depth books on the subject.
With regards to your review of the history of national security in Canada, I wonder about your invocation of a language of necessity. For example, you say that the October Crisis “forced former Premier, Elliot Trudeau, to invoke the War Measures Act (1918)”. Was this indeed a forced decision (implying that there was no alternative), or was the decision informed by a particular form of security politics?
With regards to Counter-law II, note that Ericson (alongside Haggerty) was one of the first surveillance theorists to call for a shift away from an exclusive focus on top-down state-controlled unified forms of surveillance and towards an analysis of disparate but integrated (rhizomatic) surveillant assemblages. Examples of ‘Big Brother’ certainly exist, but a great deal of contemporary surveillance is multilateral and quasi-consensual.
I am interested in your general argument about the ways in which the politics of (in)security threaten democracy. This is an important theme. I wonder if you could expand on what you mean by this. How do the developments that you have noted erode democracy? Ericson, Neocleous, and Giroux would be good resources for thinking about this. You may also want to look into academic writing on the ‘Anti-politics of security’.