Is COVID-19 Causing Us To Become A Snitching Culture?

05/07/2020

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.