Is COVID-19 Causing Us To Become A Snitching Culture?
Voluntary "snitch lines" can escalate fear, anxiety and panic at a time of crisis, according to Michael Bryant, the executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. "It brings out the worst in us. It differs from someone calling 911 to report a crime because 911 calls come with more accountability and an ability to track down the caller as a potential witness. It doesn't bring us together, which is what some governments are trying to do. It, in fact, divides us."
Few of us want
to live in a "surveillance society" where people are informing on their
neighbours but that may be what is happening and has the force of emergency
edict. It would be cruelly ironic if the pandemic came and went, but left in
its wake a society that was more intolerant, authoritarian and dangerous to
public safety.