Public Video Surveillance by the State: Policy, Privacy Legislation, and the Charter

Lai, Derek

doi:10.29173/alr379

Cited by 1 publication

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“…However, this standard has also proven futile in protecting privacy rights in what are normally seen as public spaces. Whereas some commentators have noted that Canadian courts seem more willing to protect some forms of privacy in public (Lai, 2007, p. 67; Paton‐Simpson, 2000, p. 318), overall, matters are much the same. In United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401 v. Alberta (2011), the Supreme Court of Canada decided whether a picketing union had the right to record individuals crossing the picket line.…”

Section: Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…55However, the court was not so quick to admit that the people lose their privacy rights once in public (Lai, 2007, p. 66).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…66In Ward , the Ontario Court of Appeals read the Supreme Court case law as securing a right to privacy even when in public (2012). However, it is worth noticing this standard has been built in the context of criminal investigations and evidence collection (Lai, 2007, p. 70).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Protesting without a face: Privacy in public demonstrations

Parmo

2022

Constellations

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Regimes of all stripes feel deep discomfort at being exposed to citizen scrutiny. While the democratic environment makes direct persecution of critics difficult although not impossible, governments seek more surreptitious ways to control and stifle criticism. Citizens, for their part, seek to keep open the communicative channels of expression. Thus, faced with forms of control of public discourse they devise new forms of communication or design mechanisms to either circumvent or frustrate these more surreptitious forms of control (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2015, p. 1).Protests are, precisely, in this situation. Through their intense regulation, states have sought ways to contour the once disruptive character of public appearances to the point of transforming them in some cases-as protests have not been deprived of all their political significance-into allegorical events (King, 2013). Protests, some have claimed, have been institutionalized in terms of their form, and of where and at what the time of day they can take place (McCarthy & McPhail, 1998). Since legal doctrine, in general, is satisfied that these regulations are neutral in their content, it loses sight of other less obvious forms of control. One of these has been the mass surveillance of streets, either through cameras installed on them or those worn by police officers, as a means of threatening those who protest with the possibility of being identified. How has the citizenry responded? By resorting to elements, such as masks, hoods, and balaclavas, or more recently umbrellas, to avoid identification and to safeguard their right to protest by fending off this threat (Kwok, 2021, p. 6).States, however, have increasingly criminalized this citizen strategy. Whereas antimask legislation is far from being new-criminalization in some places is possible thanks to statutes passed as far back as the 1840s (Doherty, 2020, p. 276)-there is a renewed trend toward their use. What is more troubling is that experience shows that regimes come in all forms and shapes when it comes to criminally banning the use of masks in protests. I briefly mention just a few examples in section 2.The right to protest is regularly built upon a cluster of foundational rights, most notably freedom of expression and of assembly-without them, there can be no right to protest. This work proposes to include the right to privacy in the cluster of constitutional rights and freedoms that lie at the foundation of the right to protest. 1 The matters discussed in this work expand that cluster in a twofold sense. First, because they oblige us to consider situations that normally would go unnoticed or at least are not necessarily related to protection of the right to protest. Second, because their consideration would strengthen the constitutional protection of protests. Therefore, it is not just that general

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Section: Surveillancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…55However, the court was not so quick to admit that the people lose their privacy rights once in public (Lai, 2007, p. 66).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%