Gideon Hallett ([info]gmh) wrote,
@ 2009-04-16 11:19:00
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The Panopticon Strikes Back.
More and more videos of excessive use of force by the police at the G20 are emerging.

This could be very interesting, especially given the implications for future policing of such demoes; the entire world is now able to watch the watchmen.

I hope that media coverage of such events will no longer consist of the top cop saying how proud he is of his officers' exemplary conduct interspersed with footage of dreadlocked soapdodgers smashing up private property - what we can see from the footage is that many of the people who were assaulted by the police were themselves 'normal'; and that they got belted simply because they didn't get out of the way of the police in time.

This clip is a particularly clear demonstration of elements of the police engaging in the use of force against a group of people who were (for the most part) not even trying to defend themselves!

Operation Glencoe was intended to be a test case for policing the 2012 Olympics. It may yet be - but not, I think, in the way the police may have originally intended.


(Of course, this only applies in First World countries at the moment; and only in crowds where the density of cameras among the demonstrators is sufficient to challenge the official record; for every such protest in globally-recognisable places like the City, there are many that go unrecorded simply because the people protesting are not of interest to the world's media.)

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[info]_nicolai_
2009-04-16 11:15 am UTC (link)
My thinking goes like:
Video record the police. You win.
The police seize the video recording devices later. You lose.
You upload the video before they seize the devices. You win.
The police seize the video recordings sooner. You lose.
You upload the video in realtime via mobile datalink. You win.
The police shut down mobile datalink in the area. You lose.
You upload the video in realtime via satellites not under police, or even national, control. You win.

You can do the last right now if you have the money; Iridium data (slow) or INMARSAT BGAN (fast, costly). Also I'm confident if you swallow a micro SD data card it will come out the other end still operational once you wash it. So as long as the citizens put in the tech effort, the police will be filmed. Then maybe someone will do something about it.

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[info]vatine
2009-04-16 11:56 am UTC (link)
I wonder if Bluetooth may be fast enouhg to transfer at least short video snippets in acceptable time. If so, it ought to be possible to get any given clip to be distributed to suffiently many storage devices to make it hard (though not impossible) to seize them all. There's also the possibility of ejecting an SD card and slip it into a pre-addressed, stamped envelope and have it shipped by mail and there ought to be a fast way of duplicating SD cards or the like.

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[info]fanf
2009-04-17 09:39 am UTC (link)
Mobile ad-hoc networks are the answer. Spread pictures via bluetooth and wifi through the crowd to any and all available uplinks. Instant samizdat.

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[info]silly_swordsman
2009-04-16 11:55 am UTC (link)
Something I hadn't realised is that the TSG, the police toughies, were issued with balaclavas. That's beyond scary. If some of them had put a balaclava on to hide their face, that would be scary. That they were issued them, and thus more or less encouraged to hide their faces, is the stuff of nightmares.

The police aren't supposed to see themselves as masked thugs.

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[info]gmh
2009-04-16 12:23 pm UTC (link)
The rationale is that a face might be recognisable outside the uniform; exposing an off-duty TSG officer to potential reprisals.

However, an officer is required to display their number at all times, even in riot gear; and there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that officers of the TSG deliberately obscured their numbers during the G20 demonstration.

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[info]silly_swordsman
2009-04-16 12:35 pm UTC (link)
Aren't non-TSG officers risking potential off-duty reprisals? Are TSG more expected to do things in the line of duty that are likely to generate off-duty reprisals?

Are the "violent anarchists" (yes, I know) expected to seek out officers who have thwarted their stone-throwing and take their frustration out on the off-duty officers?

Seriously, what is the threat projection, what is the risk odds justification for having masked representatives of justice, people who by hiding their faces tell everybody watching that what they are doing isn't just or justifiable.

As for numbers, I'd wish they were larger, as many phone-cams have too low resolution (esp in video mode) to make them clear.

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[info]gmh
2009-04-16 01:07 pm UTC (link)
TSG are the police tasked with the control of violent situations; so yes, they're far more likely to get involved in fights than Constable Plod.

As to whether this is proportional or justified caution is another matter entirely; I certainly don't know the answer - and the practice of wearing balaclavas is a definite psychological threat - as witnessed by the fact that police single out protestors wearing masks or balaclavas and compel them to remove them.

Essentially, it's a dehumanising anonymity; on the receiving end, you're facing the mask and/or uniform; and on the giving end, your identity is concealed.

Something of more personal concern to me is the reported presence of plainclothes police agents provocateurs at G20, as reported in the New York Times:

"There was another guy baiting the police and whipping up the crowd to rush the police, he got a hundred or so protesters to follow him and then sneaked off as they reached police lines.” He also writes that the second photographer, who is a reliable reporter, “saw a bunch of protesters trying to stop a guy in black throwing bottles at the police, the protesters had an argument him and then accused him of being a policeman, whereupon he ran to the police cordon, showed some I.D. and was let through!”

Finally, my friend says: “I should point out that the only reason that we were able to spot these guys so easily was because the protest at that point was so peaceful, they really stuck out, so we followed them from one police line to another as they tried to start trouble."


I would normally be inclined to dismiss such reports without hard evidence; I've heard rumours from similar demos I was on like J18.

Except that I witnessed this sort of thing happening at N30 first-hand - an apparently aggressive and violent protestor dragged off by the TSG, taken behind a van, dusted down and let go without a caution.

If the practice is happening, I suspect that the aim is to incite potentially violent protestors to become violent ones; at which point they can be arrested and identified for future events - which is so far over the line of acceptable police conduct that there will be seven kinds of hell to pay if someone can get hard evidence of this happening.

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[info]unblinkered
2009-04-16 02:27 pm UTC (link)
A friend of mine just linked me to this really interesting page, on the "This is not a riot" tactic.

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[info]strawberryfrog
2009-04-16 03:13 pm UTC (link)
this only applies in First World countries at the moment

Not quite. The protests in Burma in 2007 were such big news largely becuase citizens had cameraphones. Expect this trend to continue. Police action in London at G20 shows that they have not realised what's happening in this regard.

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[info]gmh
2009-04-16 03:38 pm UTC (link)
They know now.

As I've said elsewhere, carrying a camera at events like the 1994 CJB demos was a risky business; especially if it was an SLR - the minute anything looked like getting dodgy, photographers became prime targets.

This may no longer be the case; and if so, it has profound (and possibly positive!) implications for peaceful protest.

(P.S. Have just run out of 'P's.)

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[info]strawberryfrog
2009-04-16 04:04 pm UTC (link)
Photographers are still targets, more so than before. Making it illegal to photograph a police officer in public - WTF?

But it's no longer as enforcable, simply because of the sheeer number of cameras and camera-like devices present at such events.

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[info]thomaszahr
2009-04-17 07:15 am UTC (link)
Coupled with cameras getting ever cheaper, you'll soon get to the point where it will be feasible to "issue" hundreds of cameras, maybe even sponsored, before an event.

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