This past week has seen two very significant victories in the long battle against Canadian exports of asbestos. There is only one mine in Canada -- in Quebec -- that still exports the deadly substance but trying to halt the trade has proved extremely difficult, despite the fact that asbestos kills 107,000 people a year world-wide. As an industrial killer in Canada, more people die from its effects than all the industrial killers combined.

This morning, in a relatively brief post, I commented on the illusion of security provided by closed-circuit TV (CCTVs) cameras, the proliferation of these surveillance devices in Toronto's downtown core in the lead up to the G20, and the promise by Toronto police to remove the cameras after the summit.

A friend of mine who works in privacy and security thought I should provide more evidence on how CCTVs do very little other than chip away at privacy and civil liberties. I agree with him. Here's some additional evidence, hopefully buttressing my previous argument.

A breach of civil liberties and privacy

Professor Andrew Clement is providing Torontonians with a vital service and opening up a discussion on public space, surveillance, illusions of security, and whether the Toronto Police Service will keep its word. Clement is part of a project called G20 Surveillance, which is posting pictures of closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras proliferating around Toronto in the lead up to the G20 meeting.

When Scott Roeder shot Dr. George Tiller in church last year, media accounts described him as a lone wolf. Roeder acted alone on the day of the assassination, but he was part of a community of career anti-choice terrorists, as Amanda Robb reports in Ms. Magazine.

A community of radical, anti-abortion activists