Oversight
Though we are increasingly aware of how carding and street checks disproportionately impact Black and Indigenous communities, we are decreasingly aware of the myriad of ways in which we are constantly surveilled.
Oumar talks to Harsha Walia (BC Civil Liberties Association) about algorithmic policing, WIST, and the insidious nature of technological surveillance. Harsha also shares her thoughts on the hopelessness of reform, and how calls for the defunding of police are rooted in community safety.
Harsha Walia (BCCLA)
But policing all around the world really was started as an enforcement institution in order to build empire. It's a tool of colonization on these lands, a tool of enslavement, and a tool of repressing legitimate rebellion amongst people all around the world.
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Oumar Salifou (Host)
Years ago, growing up in Edmonton, I worked a few summer jobs downtown in public areas where police presence was a fact of life most days at work. Interactions with people and police around the neighbourhood were common going as far as seeing multiple people being asked for their identity, or me getting asked by police if I’d seen someone that fit a certain profile.
It wasn’t until 2017 that I understood what the process of carding, was when activists with Black Lives Matter Edmonton released data on carding — also known as street checks —which is the practice of stopping someone who isn’t suspected of a crime by police and asking for their identification information, and later placing that information into police databases that aren’t publicly accessible.
It’s clear that this practice of carding has disproportionately targeted Black people in Edmonton. Data released in 2017 found that Black people are 3.6 times more likely to be street checked than white people, Indigenous Edmontonians are 4 times more likely to be street checked, and Indigenous women faced the highest rates of carding at 6.5 times the rate of white women.
The call for banning carting was loud and clear four years ago and, in November 2020, Alberta Justice Minister Kaycee Madu “banned” carding in Alberta. And while this may seem like a win, police are still allowed to use “street checks,” which essentially are the same practice as carding. It’s important to know that police still have a mandate to stop people who aren’t accused or suspected of a crime, but now have to follow guidelines for stopping people.
Carding, street checks… what’s the difference? (Black Lives Matter).
The topic of carding also fits in within the larger scope of policing and how policing has infringed upon many areas of our lives, including wellness checks — which is the practice of police showing up to mental health distress calls, and often inflicting more damage than they do help.
With that being said, today’s interview is with Harsha Walia, the voice you heard at the beginning of the show and the Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, a legal organization working to advance human rights across Canada.
In my interview with Harsha, we talked about the disturbing future of police surveillance, and also about why the idea of continued reforms to policing, such as changes like “carding” into “street checks” really are futile in the face of an organization that has clearly shown that it’s unable to reform itself.
I also want to mention that in our interview, Harsha mentioned an RCMP report that she said was released last month. Since the interview was recorded in December, that month would have been November when the RCMP report was released.
The audio quality for this interview isn't the best since I was in the middle of a move in December and didn't have access to all my audio gear. But I promise future interviews will be easier on your ears. So with that being said, here's my interview with Harsha.
Oumar
For anyone who hasn't heard of the BC Civil Liberties Association, or I guess any civil liberties association, what kind of work do you do on a day-to-day basis?
Harsha
The BC Civil Liberties Association, we’re the oldest and most active civil liberties organization in the country. And though our name has BC in it and we’re BC based, our scope is actually across the country. And what we do is mainly use the law in order to advance civil liberties and human rights. So that means we show up in the courts, it means that we do law and policy reform, advocacy with governments, we do public legal education. We assist in many instances when people have legal questions.
And civil liberties basically are those fundamental aspects of our lives where we don’t want the state and the government to intervene. For example, the right to be free of state surveillance is increasingly an issue, to not have the governments creeping up on our privacy rights, to have the freedom to associate — so for unions to form, for us to be able to take to the streets when there’s an injustice that we’re upset about.
That’s really what civil liberties is about, it’s to be free of unjustifiable and unreasonable state intrusion. And then of course we have a human rights mandate, because we recognize those communities who are most likely to be impacted by the violation of their rights are of course oppressed communities. So people who are oppressed by race, class, gender, sexuality, and more. So our priority is to ensure that the civil liberties and human rights of communities who have been marginalized by state and social power are able to advance those rights and to support them in doing that.
Oumar
And so when it comes to some of your recent campaigns, I saw that you’re doing a campaign in Vancouver currently around carding. Do you want to talk about the situation regarding carding generally in Canada?
Harsha
Carding, it has so many different names in different kinds of places and provinces and jurisdictions. And those different names really just point to the fact that it’s such an arbitrary process that there’s not even a consistent name. In Ontario for example, it’s more commonly referred to as “carding,” in Vancouver and BC, it’s more commonly referred to as “street checks.” And elsewhere you have the same kind of differences.
I’ll talk about the BC context, but it can be applied with some variation to everywhere. In BC, street checks are the practice of stopping somebody outside of a police investigation. So it’s not linked to an arrest or an investigative detention, which is also problematic, but for the sake of this conversation it’s the stopping by police of people outside of an investigative or arrest context. They can be asked for their private information, asked for their identification, and that information is often then recorded into a police database.
The other thing that’s important to know about street checks — and again in BC, but also elsewhere — is that you can actually be street checked without being stopped, or even knowing that the police are doing it. So for example, they could be parked on the corner of a street, particularly communities that they target. You know, what they call “problem neighbourhoods,” which we know really are neighbourhoods that are marked by race and class based profiling. They can just be parked on that corner, writing people up. They could say “spotted so-and-so on the corner of 1st and 2nd avenue.” So you might not even know that you’re actually being street checked. You’ve now been entered into a police database without even your knowledge.
But most street checks of course are the ones that people experience where the police stopped them. And across the country, year after year, we continue to see the people who are most targeted by police street checks are Indigenous and Black people and also people who are low income. Communities where police have a constant presence because they’re low-income neighbourhoods that may be marked by, for example, substance use or sex work.
And so it is indisputable that street checks are a form of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, that they are essentially a pipeline to ongoing criminalization. So once you’re street checked or in this police database, you may or may not know about it. The next time you’re picked up, that escalates, it eventually leads to an arrest. And then we know all the way through the criminal legal system, Black and Indigenous and homeless and low-income people continue to face that compounding criminalization of incarceration, arrest, detention, sentencing, and more.
So street checks can really become the kind of front end of an entire experience in the criminal legal system. And it’s a clearly racist tool. And also it's illegal! So in BC, there is no statute or common law that authorizes the police to conduct street checks. So this year, they started to say street checks are “voluntary,”which means you may be street checked, but you can voluntarily walk away, you don’t have to provide information.
Now of course that’s absurd. Most people who are being stopped by the police, and even more so if you come from an experience where you know that experiences with the police can escalate very quickly, you feel like you need to comply. Then that sense of voluntariness completely evaporates. You don’t actually feel like you can walk away from a cop asking you a question.
It’s kind of this legal grey zone where they’re saying it’s not required that you have to provide information, but you can voluntarily give it. In our view, that makes no sense because someone, even if they’re not legally detained, will psychologically feel detained.
Our position is that we don’t need to continue to kind of reform street checks. We don’t need more of these kinds of processes where they say, don’t worry, it’s voluntary. We need to just completely ban it. It’s a racist practice and it’s a completely illegal practice.
Oumar
I’ve read a few things about how police technology is expanding to include things like remote cell phone surveillance, just based on cars on the street. People obviously being carded and that being an invasion of privacy, if their information gets into a database. But what issues have you been working on recently, and how is technology evolving to potentially put more power into policing and surveilling citizens?
Harsha
Yeah, absolutely the use of digital technologies and algorithmic policing by law enforcement, is something we need to be incredibly aware of. And just like the example of when you might be getting street checked and you don’t even know about it because the cops are watching you on a street and then you get entered into a database. Even though we don’t experience it as a kind of an immediate bodily experience, what is so insidious about technological surveillance is that it’s happening all the time and we don't even know it. Like we’re not even aware cause we’re not coming face to face with that officer.
There’s a number of issues that are of concern. There’s been at least two controversies this year, significant major ones and many more that we don’t even likely know about. The first was the use of Clearview AI technologies, the really controversial facial recognition technologies, by law enforcement across Canada. Like so many departments were using it, and in some instances have been using it for up to 18 years. Which is a very long time! And at first they denied it. It was only until the media investigated — and you know, the New York Times did that huge bombshell investigation that revealed that Canada was also contracting Clearview AI — that that information came forward.
There’s so much that was problematic about law enforcement’s use of Clearview AI, in terms of people’s privacy rights, the fact that facial recognition is an inherently anti-Black technology. Facial recognition technology works in such a way that Black people are more likely to be impacted by false positives. So that essentially means that law enforcement is falsely adding to anti-Black racism and policing through this technology. So we know Black people are criminalized through the criminal legal system, and then you have a facial recognition technology whose entire algorithm is anti-Black.
So what ended up happening is that there was an unprecedented investigation initiated by several federal and provincial privacy commissioners into RCMP’s use of Clearview AI. But then Clearview AI pulled out of Canada, so that investigation was never concluded because they just said that they were withdrawing their services. Which is important. And now we have this massive knowledge gap.
Amazing stance here from the RCMP before Clearview AI pulled out of Canada (CBC).
Our organization and many others, in light of that, have been calling for a complete moratorium and ban. That needs to be instituted at the federal and provincial level on the use of any facial recognition technology or surveillance based technology by policing forces across Canada.
Then just last week, it was unearthed that the RCMP in Nova Scotia have been using a technology called WIST (Web Identity Search Tool). It’s basically a technology and software to “unlock” people’s private friend lists on Facebook in order to generate social maps of people whom the RCMP in Nova Scotia wanted to surveillance and target. We just called for an investigation into the use of this technology.
These are also private contractors who are now making a killing. So it’s also privacy concerns, it’s concerns around criminalization, it’s concerns around this kind of public private partnership that generates profit for private companies. So we’re calling for a moratorium on the use of that surveillance and a full investigation into how these contracts are even procured.
Those are just two examples, but for anyone who’s interested, The Citizen Lab did a fantastic report this summer detailing the whole landscape of algorithmic policing in Canada, with examples from literally every province in this country. CCTV cameras, just so many aspects of algorithmic policing and surveillance. And I would really encourage people to look at it, because it’s quite harrowing. I mean, it’s overwhelming because it's so seemingly intangible, right? You’re like, what do I do with this? How do I stop this? But there are important recommendations about the kind of systemic solutions that we need in light of this. And really it comes down to just a ban on all of these technologies. Like there has to be bands that are implemented at the government level.
Algorithmic policing in Canada at a glance (The Citizen Lab). X’s just indicate that there wasn’t evidence found of the organization using the technology, not that they definitely are not using it.
Oumar
When it comes to things like that, that would potentially alleviate the problems that we have with policing in Canada. Provincial policy and provincial laws like in the Police Act in Alberta are just very antiquated. So what kind of changes do you see are necessary in legislation — in BC, in Canada, and generally?
Harsha
I’ll have to say, some of the work that we’re doing right now is trying to figure out, like, what are the things that we can tweak in ways that are substantive? You also see all these reforms year after year reforms. Like body-worn cameras, where it just means the police ended up getting more money and then they either turn off the cameras or it doesn’t prevent them from doing anything. Like what happened with Chief Allen Adam in Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, where he was assaulted and it was caught on not a body-worn camera, but a dash cam.
We are very aware of what kind of reforms we can call on that don't increase the scale and scope of policing. So the kinds of legislative reforms that we’re interested in are ones that work towards reducing the scale and scope of policing.
Some of them are things like a ban on street checks, things like a ban on the use of any kind of surveillance and algorithmic policing by law enforcement. And law enforcement includes border enforcement, municipal police forces, bylaw officers, etc.
The third is really revamping a number of laws that increase criminalization. So for example, such a big part of street checks and surveillance and kind of race-based profiling and class-based profiling is the criminalization of drugs and sex work. So decriminalizing simple drug possession, decriminalizing sex work, for example — those are important legislative changes. That means that people are taken out of criminalized economies.
Another piece of that is truly genuine and enforceable and independent civilian oversight. There was a study that came out this year that showed, on average, over 80% of officers who are tasked with civilian independent oversight over various provincial law enforcement bodies are actually former police officers (66% according to this article).
Smile, you’re on camera! (CBC)
The fact that we have “independent oversight” that’s not independent, that’s not civilian, is abhorrent. So we do need more robust oversight, but ones that we can genuinely have faith in right now. Not like these examples that I gave earlier of the police board. But bodies that are truly independent from the police and have no past or current affiliation with officers. I think that is very important — anyone who’s ever worked for a police force should not be able to have oversight over the police, that’s ridiculous. And enforceable, like you said. So if there is misconduct, then nothing actually happens. There’s just a report that sits on a shelf. So it has to be enforceable mechanisms, not people getting promoted.
It was really shocking, the report that just came out on sexual assault in the RCMP. This is an unprecedented report that came out last month. And this is sexual assault, the systemic sexual assault of women officers in the RCMP. You can imagine what that looks like on the ground for marginalized communities. And there’s a historic settlement, because there was such a large number of RCMP female officers who reported being sexually assaulted. And in that final report, which was independent, the authors basically called the RCMP a “hierarchical paramilitary organization that has no chance of reforming.” That is a damning indictment based on testimony after testimony after testimony.
A hierarchical para-military police organization (Michel Bastarache).
Another thing that they found that I thought was appalling, was that they said that there were instances of significant sexual violence, where those officers were shifted to a new detachment and promoted. That there was a culture of promotion when dealing with sexual assaults in the force.
These kinds of things are disgusting. They’re completely disgusting, and again they’re just the tip of the iceberg. These are the cases and the incidents that are actually making it to an investigative stage. We know so many don’t even make it there. So this is the kind of deeply entrenched racist and misogynist culture of policing, which is why I don’t think that it can be reformed. We need to look at radically reducing the scale and scope of policing.
Another thing that comes to mind is banning police from doing wellness checks. This is the year where people in Canada became aware that police attend when there’s a mental health crisis. Most people didn’t know that when people are going through a mental health crisis and you call 911, you might end up with a cop at your door who's armed and who’s not at all trained to deal with a mental health crisis.
We have to call for a ban on police being involved in issues. Not only are they armed agents of the state who will only escalate a situation, but no one is going to feel more deescalated and calm when they’re going through a crisis when they see an armed officer. And they have no skill set! I wish I could just go out on the street and suddenly become a firefighter, you know? Like that makes no sense, you have no skillset to do this.
We actually have to completely take the cops out of institutions like health care, like schools. The fact that there are cops in schools who are filling the gaps of counselors and afterschool programming, or police who are collaborating with border and immigration enforcement. We’ve got to take them out of all of those social spaces where they’re blurring the line and saying that they’re kind of de facto social workers. They’re not.
Oumar
Is there anything else about the work that you do, or that your organization does that you think listeners should know about, or any aspect of policing right now in Canada that you think needs to have a larger reach to people?
Harsha
I’d say two things. One is that I think it’s really important that people in Canada not assume that what happens in Canada is somehow different than the rest of the world. Policing is a global phenomenon. This isn’t just about the United States. If we look historically — I’m not going to go through a history lesson — but policing all around the world really was started as an enforcement institution in order to build empire. It’s a tool of colonization on these lands, a tool of enslavement, and a tool of repressing legitimate rebellion amongst people all around the world.
So policing tactics we really have to view in the long view of history. Not just the kind of “friendly cop on the street who you think is waving to your kid on Canada Day” kind of stuff, like that’s not what it is. We have to understand policing in a historical and global lens and what it’s function has been. And that it hasn't changed since then, right? The names have stayed the same, the functions have stayed the same.
That's the first thing is that that's so important, and not to have an a-historic and a kind of “oh, but Canada's better than the US” kind of lens on these issues. The second thing is for people to really know that when there are radical demands, for example, to abolish the police or to defund the police, those are actually quite reasonable. Because there’s nothing more unreasonable than continuing to demand a reform in an institution that cannot be reformed.
And that’s not just me saying that. I again talked about this very high level institutionally important report that came out about the RCMP where former justices, Supreme Court justices, and judges are seeing this as a hierarchical paramilitary organization. That this is a structural problem.
So it’s so important that it is not radical to say “hey, let's start from scratch.” Like if we really truly want safety, what do we need to build in order to have safety? None of the kinds of conversations that are cast as anti-police are anti-safety. They are, in fact, very pro-safety. They are, in fact, very pro-community. And it comes from a deep commitment to safety and community and care that criticisms of the police emerge. It’s very important to de-link police from safety, because those who are advocating against expansion of police power are very committed to safety.
Oumar
One of the big takeaways from this episode for me is the need to limit the scope and scale of policing. As powerful institutions with millions of dollars at their disposal, police departments can create justifications, not only to acquire surveillance technology like cameras and AI, but also to expand their scope into things like wellness checks, which go into the sector of mental health and wellbeing. Since we know that years and years and years of reform still haven’t delivered the results that we need in policing, I think it’s clear that defunding the police is the alternative that people need to look for.
Thank you for listening to this month's episode of Is This For Real? A special thank you to Harsha for joining me for an interview for today’s show, and thank you to listeners who have supported the show so far through Patreon. We’ll be back with another episode in February.
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