Quotulatiousness

August 9, 2011

“Mobs rule as police surrender streets”

Filed under: Britain, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

The rioting in London has gotten worse, and more widespread. The media are having trouble coming up with ways to explain why it’s happening, with the most common being pent-up anger at the police:

The politicians are lucky, though, for the greater share of anger is being directed at the Metropolitan Police. The accusation, also voiced after the riots (ostensibly against public spending cuts) that took place in central London in the spring, is that the Met’s approach to civil disorder amounts to standing by for fear of provoking even more vicious rioting, with a view to catching culprits afterwards through the use of CCTV footage. The front-page headline in today’s Times, “Mobs rule as police surrender streets”, captures the mood, though the Met, alternately accused of brutality and laxity in recent years, are in an invidious position.

[. . .]

Second, policing will become a much hotter topic of political discourse. It is curious that it is not already. The theology of academic selection and university funding obsesses the political and media classes but the polling evidence is clear: crime is a bigger worry for voters than education. So expect much tardy reflection among politicians about the police. They will grapple, in particular, with the question of whether successive, well-intentioned efforts to check and soften the Met (such as the Scarman report in the 1980s, the McPherson report in the 1990s, the rebranding of the force as a “service”, the proliferation of “community support officers” and the like) have resulted in an unduly tentative approach to policing the streets. Whatever the answer, the debate will no longer take place at the margins of politics.

I’m sure it’s not the only reason, but if the way opinions about the police soured after the bungled response to the G20 protests in Toronto are a guide, it’s going to be an awful August for the Metropolitan Police. Being a cop on the street can be a tough job, but if you lose the support of the people, you’re more like a soldier in an occupied zone than an ordinary police officer. Toronto’s police lost a lot of respect — and a lot of quiet support — for their schizophrenic actions during the G20. London’s police may lose more than that.

Update: When I wrote that the rioting had become more widespread, I wasn’t exaggerating:

July 12, 2011

An amusing copyright tale (for a change)

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:06

Jesse Brown has the most entertaining copyright story I’ve read in quite a while:

But some of the hooligans exposed on Youtube found a clever way to get the video removed—copyright claims. Under Youtube’s “Notice and Takedown” policy, all you need to do is claim you own the rights to a video and demand that it be removed, and Youtube will remove it. The video’s uploader will be informed of the allegation and then have a chance to challenge it.

But here’s the rub: in order to claim ownership of a video’s copyright, you have to identify yourself. And when Youtube informs the uploader that they’re being accused of a copyright violation, they have to tell them who their accuser is. So rioters are indirectly handing their names over to the very people who were trying to identify them.

June 23, 2011

Your social media reputation and your future employment prospects

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

Chris Greaves posted this link, which should be a warning to everyone to be (even more) careful about your online reputation:

Camille Cacnio, a part-time receptionist at a car dealership, was caught in a 3-second video clip, stealing clothing from a looted store during the Stanley Cup riots.

She was fired.

Professional mountain biker Alex Prochazka posed in front of a burning car, while wearing a T-shirt from his sponsor Oakley.

The sunglass company promptly dropped him.

Carpenter Connor Mcilvenna declared the riots “awesome” on his Facebook page, and posted several pro-riot status updates, such as “atta boy vancity!!! show em how we do it!!!” and “vancouver needed remodeling anyway….”

RiteTech Construction was listed as his employer on his Facebook profile, and the next morning, Mcilvenna was fired.

His boss said he was flooded with emails and didn’t want the company’s reputation linked to the man.

“I think this will be a turning point in how employers look at social media,” said Peter Eastwood, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais in Vancouver. “This is an extremely powerful tool that has potentially enormous and immediate consequences for a business.”

This is something the early bloggers had to face, that what you post online (or what is posted about you) will be there forever. No rational employer is going to offer you a job in future without at the very least running a Google search on you, and there’s already a niche market for employers to explore (doing a deeper search on prospective employees). Background check and personal references? I’m starting to wonder why employers even bother going through the motions any more.

June 18, 2011

Is it right to name and shame the Vancouver “fans”?

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Ken at Popehat discusses the charges that outing the misbehaving fans on Facebook is somehow “vigilantism”:

Vigilantism: Exposing people to the social consequences of their misbehavior is not vigilantism. Subjecting them to physical danger is. That’s why decent people involved in this process don’t post home addresses or phone numbers, and delete them when they are posted.

Proportionality: The proportionality argument is at least somewhat misguided. First of all, bad behavior doesn’t go viral on the internet unless it’s really notable. Garden-variety assholes don’t get top Google ranking. You’ve got to be somewhat epic to draw this modern infamy — by, say, being a water polo star on a scholarship trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost. Second, lack of proportionality is self-correcting. If conduct is actually just not that bad, then future readers who Google a bad actor’s name will review the evidence and say “meh, that’s not so bad. Everyone acts up now and then.” Saying that bad behavior should not be easily accessible on the internet is an appeal for enforced ignorance, a request for a news blackout. It’s saying, in effect, I’m more wise and measured than all the future people who might read about this; they can’t be trusted to evaluate this person’s actions in the right light, like I can.

“They Just Made A Mistake”: The argument that bad actors shouldn’t become infamous because they “just made a mistake” is a riff on proportionality. The same criticisms apply: it takes a hell of a mistake to go viral, and future viewers can make up their own minds. Plus, this argument is often sheer bullshit. Trying to torch a cop car because your hockey team lost is not a mere faux pas; normal and decent people don’t do it.

June 16, 2011

QotD: The tendency to riot among Canadians

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:44

Just as cities have to anticipate trouble, ordinary law-abiding folks who think a trip downtown to watch the fun have to accept that they won’t necessarily be protected from it, or from the police response. Ontario courts are still dealing with cases of people claiming their rights were trampeled when police reacted to the G20 violence by abandoning their own duties and discipline, and lashing out at anything that stumbled into their path. Hearings are being held to sort out what went wrong, and the force is struggling to retain some respect after doing its best to avoid being held accountable for its own indefensible actions. In other words, once the trouble starts, all bets are off, and anyone who thinks they’ll take the kiddies down for a peak, and will somehow be protected when things get out of hand, is deluding themselves.

There is something bizarre going on just beneath the surface of our supposedly decent and civilized society. Canada is prosperous and peaceful, and does as much or more than any country to preserve and protect the rights and opportunities of people fortunate enough to live here. There are certainly inequalities and injustices, but anyone who thinks they’ll find a society that tries harder to eliminate them, or is more concerned with trying to spread the benefits equally among all citizens, will have a lengthy search on their hands. It’s doubtful in any case that the dolts who ignited the trouble in Vancouver think that deeply, or have any purpose other than mindless mayhem. They deserve no sympathy, and should be treated by the law as harshly as allowed.

Kelly McParland, “Lessons to learn from dolts at a hockey game”, National Post, 2011-06-16

Welcome to Vancouver. Please ignore the rioters

Filed under: Cancon, Sports — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:02

Lord Stanley’s Cup won’t be coming back to Canada this year, but as Brian Hutchison points out, that’s only one of the losses sustained by Vancouver last night:

The season ends, and the worst does come to pass. Vancouver, you have lost. Twice. But the game hardly matters now, does it? The score? Who cares? As I write this, my eyes are stinging, my is throat sore, having breathed in some sort of dispersal chemical that police deployed — in desperation, and perhaps too late. There could be some residual effect from having inhaled acrid, toxic smoke from burning cars, exploding cars, destroyed by lunatics still running crazy on the city’s downtown streets.

Blood in our streets. I saw people on the ground, bleeding. Shattered glass everywhere. Police cars set alight. Major bridges are now closed, preventing public access into the downtown core. Transit is plugged up, there’s no way out. More police and fire crews are arriving, from the suburbs, but again, it seems too late.

And as I write this, the sun has just set. Vancouver, what a disgrace.

Update: A Tumblr page posting photos of the rioters and looters:

The National Post has more photos of the aftermath.

Update: Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla points out that one of these riots is not like the others. Oh, and a commentary on the most famous photo of the riots (so far).

February 3, 2011

Tools for protest marchers: anti-kettling app

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Patrick Kingsley talks to the developers of “Sukey”, a new mobile phone app intended to help protesters avoid being kettled by police:

Cairo, it wasn’t. But at about a quarter to four last Saturday afternoon, on a crowded backstreet in central London, something happened outside the Egyptian embassy that deserves at least a footnote in the annals of protest history. A crowd of students weren’t kettled.

In the context of recent British protests, this was a near-miracle. At each of the previous four major student protests in London since the Millbank riot on 10 November, police have kettled — or, in their terminology, “contained” — thousands of protesters, preventing them from leaving an area for several hours, and often from accessing basic amenities such as food, water and toilets.

Police kettle protesters supposedly to quell violence, but protesters arguably only turn to violence out of frustration at being kettled. Most notoriously, police trapped hundreds of teenage schoolchildren inside a tight grid on Whitehall on 24 November — and only subsequently did a few of them smash up a police van abandoned in their midst.

Saturday’s non-kettle, then, was a victory in itself. But the real excitement wasn’t that it didn’t happen — but how it didn’t happen. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why police and protesters behave in a certain way at a certain time, but one explanation for the kettle’s failure to form lies with a new communications network, which launched that afternoon: Sukey.

December 11, 2010

“They came close to drawing their guns on protesters, who were heard to chant ‘off with their heads'”

Filed under: Britain, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:39

The close call reported earlier now seems to have been even closer:

Officers guarding the royal couple were using radios on a different channel from those patrolling Thursday’s student riots, meaning they received no warning that protesters were blocking their route.

As a result, dozens of thugs subjected the convoy to an attack in which the Duchess was jabbed in the ribs with a stick through an open car window as the couple were being driven to the Royal Variety Performance.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, praised armed protection officers for showing “very real restraint”, suggesting that they came close to drawing their guns on protesters, who were heard to chant “off with their heads”.

I’m pretty far from being a staunch royalist, but this incident was an “own goal” on the part of the protesters. There are many ways to express your concern and anger, but attacking innocent bystanders will usually lose you the public support you might otherwise be able to depend on. Attacking members of the royal family — who don’t have a constitutional role in setting government policy — is just plain stupid.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link.

Update: Chris followed up with this observation.

[. . .] just between you and me I was struck by the parallels between the accounts of Charles & Camel, and the minute-by-minute goof-ups of Archduke Wossit and his morgantic wife; the chauffeur taking a wrong turn on the way back from the town hall, the poor security in place, etc.

Any would-be republicans should be blessing their luck that this turned out to be less harmful than the Sarajevo incident in 1914. Had any harm come to the Prince of Wales, British public opinion would (based on past events) have swung heavily in favour of the royal family. Prince Charles is perhaps the least well-liked royal at the moment, but if he’d been “martyred” by the mob, do you think there’d be any hope for getting rid of the monarchy for at least another generation?

July 29, 2010

Symbols matter, but not as much as reality

Filed under: Education, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 20:49

Ace puts his finger on one of the key differences between “the masses” and the “governing class”:

That’s why the “Political Class” — the Gee Aren’t I Terribly Enlightened? crowd — opposes this. They talk about that a lot — the symbolism of the thing.

[. . .]

I’m noting this because a few weeks ago I saw a guy at the riots in Toronto who complained that the police barricades were a symbol representing a division between the protesters and the G-20 representatives.

And I thought, “Gee, no, actually it’s not a symbol of a division; it really is, in fact, a physical division.” Because, see, you’re rioting. (And not symbolically in riot, either.) You can tell it’s a real-world division because now you can’t get to the G-20 conference center and throw rock-metaphors through the window-symbols.

I think there is a type of person — well-represented in the “Political Class” and in progressive politics — that has learned, from college, that the Abstract is everything, that Real Smart People are always focused on the Abstract, on metaphors, on symbols.

And they seem to disregard the concrete, the real, almost as a dirty thing, something of concern to the plebians, who cannot of course grasp the subtleties of high representational thinking like they can. You know, with their “symbolic” barricades and all.

July 9, 2010

Poll numbers understate unhappiness with police over G20

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 18:11

Publius makes a very good point here:

The Greater Toronto Area holds a population of about 5.6 million, stretching from Burlington in the west to Oshawa in the East. The City of Toronto comprises less than half the total population, and less than one-tenth of the total land area. The summit, protests and general mayhem occurred in the downtown core, itself a small area of the City of Toronto. In the lands north of Bloor, west of Bathurst and East of the Don River, the summit meant traffic delays, not riot cops.

Travelling on the 400 series highways that weekend entailed some delays — much of the Gardiner Expressway was closed — and the most notable police presence was at highway interchanges and on / off ramps. Even for those who live in the City of Toronto itself, the vast majority saw the violence of the summit weekend on television. A large number of Torontonians had simply evacuated the City altogether, either to the suburbs to stay with relatives, or to cottage country. As a result, the images fixed in most Torontonians minds are of police cruisers burning — played again and again — and not of officers dragging middle aged men with prosthetic legs across city streets. As the stories of that weekend seep out, expect those poll numbers to change.

I was one of those who chose not to hang around in the city for the entire week leading up to the summit: I didn’t see the point in putting up with the delay and hassle. I still think it was a remarkably stupid idea to hold the G20 meetings in downtown Toronto, and that the police were handed a duff hand to play. But even given that, the police played their hand very badly.

There may or may not be a serious inquiry into the affair, but the police lost a lot of support between Friday night and Saturday night: letting the geeky nihilists get away with dramatic street theatre on national TV, then turning around and arresting innocent bystanders. It took remarkable effort to squander public support, but the police or the politicians directing the police managed to do it. Bureaucratic bipolar disorder isn’t pretty.

June 30, 2010

Questionable police tactics at the G20 protests

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me a link to this video, saying “My support for the police evaporates with [this] video. What the hell were the police thinking?”:

He then suggested that this is a Toronto Police Services training video:

Update: Even better than the ragged charge shown in the first video, now the police are showing off some of the “weapons” they collected during the G20, including LARP (Live Action Role Playing) gear confiscated from a gamer:

Toronto Police are on the defensive this week as they attempt to defend their heavy-handed tactics during the G20. To prove the seriousness of the threat to public security, they took police on a tour of weapons confiscated from activists.

Only there’s a problem: some of these weapons were taken from people who weren’t demonstrators. And some of them weren’t weapons — the police proudly displayed the blunt arrows and chainmail they confiscated from a live-action role-player who was taking the train to a game

If they’d found a random SCA heavy fighter to take the armour and weapons from, they might have a slightly better case: SCA heavy combat gear would be comparable to (in many cases better than) police riot gear. SCA weapons are solid rattan covered with silver duct tape to make them appear to be metal — LARP weapons are non-functional foam or other light material (similar “weapons” are called “boffers” and are used as safe toys for kids). SCA shields are fully functional as protection — LARPers generally carry lightweight shields that just look like protection but would not do much in a real confrontation.

I liked this comment to the BoingBoing post:

I remember seeing this same police press conference, only it was in Miami in 2004 during the FTAA summit. Among the items they presented as having seized from activists:

– Tire iron
– Gas can
– A map of Miami (see, they could use it to plan out their terrorist strike!)

It took me a minute to realize they had just pulled all this stuff out of the trunk of some unfortunate activists’ car, where you’d totally expect to find it.

This kind of press conference is a standard component in the “new model” of protest suppression. It gives the police the hilarious task of taking a whole bunch of mostly innocuous stuff they seized and making up stories about how it could be used to maim, kill, and generally cause mass destruction.

I mean srsly – an empty water bottle could be used to fill with gasoline and throw at cops?

Bruce Schneier would be proud.

June 28, 2010

Running with the nihilists

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Tony Keller walked with the main union-led protest marchers on Saturday, pointing out that there was no single, unifying principle — it was a “grievance smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat buffet of complaints, and apparently anyone protesting anything — anything — was invited”. What interested him the most, however, were the “hobbits”:

Standing in front of Cafe Lettieri, which was still open and doing a booming business even as protesters were packed so tightly outside that they pressed up against its windows, I heard someone to my right say, “Black Bloc, meet up on Queen!”

I turned to see six hobbits in black hoodies shuffling past me. It was on. Whatever “it” was going to be.

[. . .]

And then the non-peaceful part of our program started. The crowd suddenly began to surge away from the police lines at Spadina and Richmond, and back onto Queen Street. We were now heading east, violently following the route the non-violent march had just taken. A mass of maybe 100 people in black hoodies and balaclavas was moving at almost a run, accompanied by several hundred journalists and riot tourists. Occasionally someone would dart out from the group to smash a window or spray paint a slogan: “Against Police Against Prisons,” “F– the Police,” “F- Corporate Rule.”

[. . .]

The hoodie people weren’t just small in number, they were also small in stature. A lot of skinny white boys. And white women. (Some skinny, some really not). They looked like the kind of people who spend a lot of time playing video games in their parents’ basements. Or the graduating class of an art college. They were not marauding toughs. More like marauding geeks. Geeks marauding in a spontaneous yet carefully choreographed manner.

There’s a point in most peoples’ lives when getting out and protesting seems like such a good idea. And then you graduate and get a job . . .

June 27, 2010

The stars were aligned for ugliness

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

Peter Kuitenbrouwer enumerates the reasons why the violence this weekend was pretty much inevitable:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has something to answer for tonight. It is hard for this writer to escape the feeling that this summit was designed with every possible star aligned for ugliness to occur. The summit is held on a summer weekend, after university and high school exams are over; all the students are out and free and have time on their hands. Summer weather is perfect for a march. The summit takes place in the heart of Toronto: everybody in Canada has a friend in Toronto where they can stay during a protest.

And can we not say that assembling the greatest number of police in one spot in the history of Canada, and spending more on fences and security than Canada has ever spent before, has a provocative effect?

Why didn’t they keep both summits in Huntsville? Or, as several people have pointed out, at a remote Canadian Forces base where air transport and physical security are already in place?

Update: Jonathan Kay thinks the media and the echo chamber of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and instant messaging combine to make a few incidents appear far bigger and more scary than they really are:

This is one of those stories the social media has gotten wrong: a million tweeters all tweeting up the same three burning police cruisers and few dozen wrecked storefronts. The number of protestors wasn’t even that big (even if the media insists on calling the protests “massive.”) The estimate I’ve seen thrown around is about 10,000. To put that figure in perspective, the number of protestors who swarmed Quebec City at the Summit of the Americas in 2001 was approximately 100,000 — tens times as large.

[. . .]

As I approached the intersection of Queen and Spadina, I could see a rowdy crowd of several thousand gathered. There were a few earnest placards in evidence (“Mother earth convenes the G-6billion. Fuck the G20″). But mostly, it was just excited-looking teenagers surrounding the cop car, like hyenas around their kill. In that moment, it looked like things were about to get truly ugly. I began eying the stores lining Queen, trying to predict which one would get trashed first.

But then came the sirens, and the atmosphere changed very quickly. From down Queen Street, headed eastbound, a speeding convoy of unmarked white busses stopped outside the Silver Snail comic store, and out poured police in full riot gear — helmets, batons, body armor. From an accompanying black suburban came a few even more serious-looking fellows, including at least one with a military-style assault rifle. They never said a word, never issued a threat, never fired any of their crowd-control weapons. They just advanced, in a line, several officers deep, toward the heart of Spadina and Queen. There wasn’t any violence — at least none that I saw. The worst I witnessed was a single protestor who threw a bottle from amidst the anonymity of the crowd, which gained a few oohs and ahs after it fell harmlessly on the concrete.

June 26, 2010

The smell of burning police cars

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 21:34

Just when you think the anarchists have decided to let the government look like fools, they pull stuff like this, allowing the security forces to justify the billion+ they’ve spent on the G8/G20 summit meetings:

Pic from Eric Squair.

Pic from Pete Forde. The second police car in this photo also gets the warm treatment from the anarchists.

For those not familiar with Toronto, this is approximately here:

Update: Michael Coren has a suggestion to get the police more involved in deterring the rioters:

An idea. Tell the cops that these anarchist criminals are actually confused, gentle Polish visitors trying to find help at an airport. Not only will deadly force ensue but the police will lie about it all after the fact.

Update, the second: Another burning police car, further east at (I assume) Queen King St. and Bay St.

Pic by Marissa Nelson.

Update, the third: In spite of all the images available of burning or burnt-out police vehicles, the three above were the only ones. Rarely have so many twittered so much about so few . . .

May 20, 2010

The root of the Greek economic crisis

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

No, it’s not the evil banks, the evil insurance companies, the evil oil companies, or even the evil manufacturing sector (take it as read that most media types think every corporation is, by definition, evil). No, in this case the reports are starting to identify the real culprit: the civil service. Mark Steyn summarizes handily:

They were not an “anti-government” mob, but a government mob, a mob comprised largely of civil servants. That they are highly uncivil and disinclined to serve should come as no surprise: they’re paid more and they retire earlier, and that’s how they want to keep it. So they’re objecting to austerity measures that would end, for example, the tradition of 14 monthly paycheques per annum. You read that right: the Greek public sector cannot be bound by anything so humdrum as temporal reality. So, when it was mooted that the “workers” might henceforth receive a mere 12 monthly paycheques per annum, they rioted. Their hapless victims — a man and two women — were a trio of clerks trapped in a bank when the mob set it alight and then obstructed emergency crews attempting to rescue them.

Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a pampered overclass, rioting in defence of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.

We’ve already seen that employees in the public sector have been outpacing their private sector equivalents handsomely, but the Greek civil service has it even better than most:

Greek public sector employees are entitled not only to 14 monthly paycheques per annum during their “working” lives, but also 14 monthly retirement cheques per annum till death.

Nice. I wonder how they got into that interesting arrangement? No matter, the private sector will ride to the rescue, right? Not likely:

According to the World Bank, when it comes to the ease of doing business, Greece ranks 109th out of 183 countries. If they were dramatically to liberate their business-killing economy, they might overtake Lebanon at big hit position 108, and Ethiopia at 107, and maybe Papua New Guinea at 102. And who knows? With even more radical reform, they might crack the Hot One Hundred and be bubbling under such favourable business environments as Yemen (99) and Moldova (94). Greece ranks 140th when it comes to starting a business, and 154th when it comes to protecting investors.

If it’s that difficult to start a new business, is it any wonder that so much of the Greek economy is in the underground/unreported/untaxed sector? Many media reports say that anywhere from 10% to 25% of Greek economic activity is “off the books”. A quick Google search will show a much higher range of estimates going up to 60% . . . and that might be an optimistic under-estimate.

If more than half of the nation’s economic activity is in the black market, it will take much more than adding a few auditors and inspectors to the tax department to fix the problem: an absolute majority of Greeks are actively hiding their business from the government, and any serious attempt to crack down on them will bring down the government. And that’s not even the biggest danger — the Greek government isn’t the most stable entity to start with. The government falling might be a safety valve, because the other alternative is literally revolution.

Talk about your destabilization!

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