UBERSNOOPS ARE YOUR FRIENDS

Liberty. It's a word you don't often hear, unless you're south of the
border, where it's a common element of speech, right up there with
"God." Here, we'd rather talk about rights and, although one of the
rights occasionally defended is "freedom of expression," in polite
Canadian circles the idea of personal liberty has acquired an
unpleasant odour, like Rush Limbaugh's after-shave.

Even Americans are wringing their hands over liberty these days, as
they are faced with trading off a significant portion of their
personal liberties for protection from terrorists, real or perceived.
And although the guys in charge, the Republicans, are fond of
demonizing big government when big government is run by Democrats, no
Democrat ever dreamed up a Department of Homeland Security with its
ubersnoop connotations.

Back home, meanwhile, the task of eradicating personal liberty and
making the streets safe for the kind of people who warn the world that
they have a "baby on board" is moving along nicely, especially in Vancouver.

The local police have experienced a rebirth of vigilance. Maybe
they're embarrassed because the summer edition of High Times ranked
Vancouver the No. 1 pot-smoking haven on Earth, higher than Amsterdam,
where marijuana is actually legal.

Or maybe they're still smarting over the notorious missing-women case,
where the evidence indicates that the correct word is "murdered," not
"missing." Whatever, by the time they're finished, you won't be able
to sneeze without a cop handing you a hanky and a ticket for failing
to cover your nose.

Last week, for example, while passengers sailed from West Vancouver to
Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, the police and their dogs were down on
the car deck in force, looking for drugs. It was an impressive
operation -- 17 officers and five drug-sniffing dogs from five
jurisdictions seized seven kilograms of pot and arrested eight people,
three of whom are facing serious trafficking charges.

No one except the ferry corporation was warned in advance. While the
B.C. Civil Liberties Association has complained that the search was a
violation of civil rights because the police did not have a warrant to
search the ferry, the police's position is that the ferry is an
extension of the public highway system, where, apparently, they rule.

To demonstrate the lengths they're prepared to go to rule the road,
Burnaby police have launched Operation Squeegee Kid, where officers go
undercover as those annoying, green-haired youths who streak your
windshields for a donation. In one four-hour period recently, they
issued 90 tickets for seat-belt violations. "Frankly," Burnaby's mayor
cheerfully told one local reporter, "since this story's happened, I'm
snapping mine on all the time."

To be really effective, the police are eager to buttress their
creative ingenuity with technology. Police in Vancouver want to set up
surveillance cameras to spot rowdies at public events such as the
Celebration of Light fireworks festival, and city council, in the
spirit of peace, order and good government, has voted to grant the
request for four new cameras. At this year's event, police managed to
arrest 17 people for fighting and public drunkenness without the extra
lenspower, but you can't be too cautious.

What effect all this activity is having on crime is unclear. Burnaby
police said they couldn't keep up with all the seat-belt violators and
had to, regrettably, let some go. The ferry raid clipped only a couple
of buds from the estimated 15,000 illegal marijuana cultivation
operations in B.C.

And for the first time in a decade, Statistics Canada reports an
increase in crime. There were 2.7 million Criminal Code violations
last year. If you're the police, it must look as if everyone's a
crook, and anything you suggest is a mere finger in the dike against a
tsunami of crime.

But how many of those violations are worth the extra surveillance and
the invariable loss of personal liberty? Only 13 per cent of the
crimes reported were in the violent category. The biggest increase was
in bail violations, which, along with prostitution, makes up 35 per
cent of reported crimes.

No matter, because most citizens are with the woman who wrote her
local newspaper calling for "more cameras, and the sooner, the better."

So liberty increasingly becomes the exclusive preserve of people with
cameras and government-issued squeegees. Who also carry handcuffs,
nightsticks and guns. And the rest of us, who can no longer fly from
one part of the country to the other without photo ID, never mind stop
at a red light without being scrutinized by a mock squeegee kid,
should just relax. The police, after all, are our friends.

Aren't they?