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Lately I’ve been thinking about the role of technology in changing the relationship Canadians have with all levels of government. The potential for open data to create transparency and direct citizen engagement in deciding how their city is run, and how an MP can now speak directly with the Canadian public across the country to address concerns and respond to criticisms about recently introduced legislation, are two recent examples of how technology is creating opportunities to reshape the way the public interacts with government.

Particularly fascinating is the potential for the proliferation of low cost digital cameras to exponentially increase the opportunities to hold accountable authorities who break the rules.  Two weeks ago, the Braidwood inquiry concluded that the RCMP (in CBC’s words) were “not justified in using a Taser against the Polish immigrant and that the officers later deliberately misrepresented their actions to investigators.” The basis for these damning conclusions is the now infamous bystander video of Robert Dziekanski’s taser-induced death at the Vancouver airport in 2007, which lead me to tweet the following:

Rhetorical question of the day: Would there have been a #Braidwood inquiry without the video?

Only several days later, I watched the crowdsourced panopticon that was the G20 vandalism, and the resulting overreaction from police, via photos uploaded in realtime to Twitter (and on television).  In a few of the photos I saw, it looked like much of the crowd was there to gawk and photograph everything that moved. Listening to a podcast from The Globe’s @IvorTossell, who was live-tweeting and sharing photos of the protest, my suspicions were confirmed. The 4 minute piece called “All the world’s a cellphone-equipped stage” noted the same observation: that much of the crowd was there to take pictures and shot video; a change that signified a new era accountability and scrutiny towards both the vandals that broke windows and set fire to police cars and the riot-gear-clad cops who stormed peaceful protesters singing the national anthem.  The resulting images and footage were pretty incredible, even mesmerizing.

But even more astounding is this report from The Globe: the man shot the video of the death of Robert Dziekanski was at the G20 capturing more examples of the police behaving badly with the very same camera.

“I saw two different people get surrounded by police and beat down pretty bad,” [Paul Pritchard] said. “They didn’t get released until the crowd chanted for their release.”

He realized his cellphone camera was not adequate for what he expected was about to happen. He raced home on his bicycle to retrieve a trusty Sony Cyber-shot camera.

It was with that camera that Mr. Pritchard once captured the shocking images of a man’s death.

At 1:21 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2007, Mr. Pritchard, who had been teaching English in China, was at Vancouver International Airport on his way home to Victoria to see his father, who was dying of cancer. A ruckus in the arrivals area led him to train his camera on a distraught passenger. Four minutes later, police arrived and, in a stunning sequence later aired for millions of viewers, the traveller was zapped by a taser, his anguished cries the last sound he would make before dying. Mr. Pritchard continued shooting over the objections of a security guard.

This man personifies the new era we’re only just beginning to understand.

While size of these already-powerful devices continues to shrink – the power of the smartphone in your pocket now exceeds that of the computer you bought in 2001 – the quality and storage capacity, and the digital distribution network transmitting the media they create, only continue to expand exponentially.

This expansion is predictable. It follows along a smooth exponential curve when graphed, representing the rapid doubling of the speed and price performance of all information technology. But while the continued acceleration and ubiquity of technological expansion are assured, the resulting social and political consequences are still very much up in the air.

What will this future mean for Canadians and our democracy? I’m anxious to find out.

Max Blumenthal on NPR’s Fresh Air on what the crazy, racist wingnuts are doing to paint Obama as the boogeyman:

The goal is to paint Obama as a totalitarian, secret communist, fascist, terrorist, Muslim, whatever they can do, a basic pastiche of right-wing hobgoblins, a multicolored pinata of every evildoer they want to smash in order to de-legitimize him and mobilize as much opposition as possible.

Sadly and unsurprisingly, the epicentre for these schizophrenic anti-government, anti-fascist, pro-theocracy anger-fests are gun shows:

And the crowd you see at gun shows, I mean, some people are just basic, apolitical gun enthusiasts, but it’s a very political gathering. There are Confederate flags. There are even Nazi flags being displayed throughout the conference because it brings in elements that are even considered extreme within the right-wing grassroots, like neo-Nazis.

And it’s a gathering place. Gun shows have become a gathering place for people who are the most extreme opponents of Barack Obama’s agenda, and they’re energized again by the battle over health care. And we’re seeing it across the board; it’s not just with the extreme, militia-oriented elements. We’re seeing it within the Christian right.

A recent poll showed that seven out of 10 white evangelicals are extremely opposed to Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reforms. And the Christian right is raising a lot of money, organizing against health care. So it’s across the board. The right is growing again. And those who pronounced the death of conservatism, or the death of the Christian right, were premature.

In related stories, Barack Obama is now receiving 30 death threats a day according to the Secret Service – a 400% increase over last year with President Bush – and in Canada our national newspaper of record is openly opining about whether Obama can even survive.

*SIGH*

Clay Shirky on these newfangled interwebs and how they are changing the world.

When Dwight Eisenhower warned the world of the United States’ “military industrial complex” and their permanent armaments industry in his farewell address on Jan 17th 1961, he spoke of “the potential of the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

This morning I watched with disgust as CNN’s John King lobbed typical softball questions at former US Vice President Dick Cheney. I listened to Cheney defend the use of torture and  assert the ridiculous claim that Obama’s foreign policy shift is making the US “less safe.” At one point in the interview, CNN cut to a commercial similar to this one, and part of the same “How” ad campaign:

As I watch this ad promoting Cold War era weapons and the virtue of “America’s Air Dominance” in the age of asymmetric, low-intensity warfare that characterize the Iraq and Afghanistan imperial misadventures, what becomes crystal clear is that Cheney, his band of neoconservative ideologues, and even CNN, are the very threats President Eisenhower warned about.

Absurd Comic-Book-Style Villainy

Aside from being a dungeon master, secretive oil baron, elusive media manipulator and avid gun enthusiast, this week Seymore Hersh revealed that Cheney was also the leader of a secret CIA assassination squad.  This, of course, comes as no surprise for those familiar with Cheney’s quest to centralize power in the executive branch where this sad comedy reached its pinnacle as he invoked executive privilege while simultaneously claiming not to be a member of the executive branch.

Here is the hilarious lead from the Boston Globe article related to his fight with the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office’s attempts to get him to disclose information:

Dick Cheney, who has wielded extraordinary executive power as he transformed the image of the vice presidency, is asserting that his office is not actually part of the executive branch.

The Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at George W. Bush was sentenced to 3 years in prison this week. When will we see the key players in the Bush administration pay for their crimes? Or am I a fool for still believing the illusion that the rule of law exists in the United States?

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

I’m about half-way through reading Barton Gellman‘s “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” a book based on his series of Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in The Washington Post.  It is a gripping portrayal of one man’s ability to navigate the bureaucratic structure of the American government with skill and precision mimicking that of a veteran sniper’s ability to select a target and pull the trigger. No one said that running a secret assassination squad was easy.

Late Update: The supervillain highlight reel from TPMTV

And this great screen capture image from Crooks and Liars, tells the whole story better than my 1000 words: