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The Obama administration is using “national security” as an excuse to keep a lid on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Somehow I’m not surprised.

Here’s what happened. Six weeks ago, an American nonprofit filed a Freedom of Information request asking for copies of various documents related to ACTA. Now, in its reply denying the request (PDF), Obama’s foreign trade office is claiming that the documents are “classified in the interest of national security.”

It’s a preposterous claim. ACTA has nothing whatsoever to do with national security. It is a copyright treaty — one that would make penalties for copyright infringement even more severe, and quite possibly invade your privacy and violate your rights in the process. That makes it bad policy, but it’s not even remotely a national security matter. “National security” is simply, and blatantly, being invoked as a quick and easy way to keep a lid on another draconian, unnecessary, and unpopular multilateral trade agreement.

Not that excessive secrecy is anything new when it comes to ACTA. Other parties to the negotations, including Canada and the European Union, have been criticized for refusing to share information about the treaty with their citizens. Last fall, over 100 public interest groups from around the world signed a letter sharply criticizing the secrecy surrounding the treaty process. The EFF is even suing the US government over its refusal to release ACTA-related documents.

Sadly, this sort of closed-door policy development is a growing trend. In the face of several high-profile failures at supposedly “representative” organizations like WIPO and the WTO, not to mention more than fifteen years of broad public opposition, trade negotiations have increasingly been conducted in ways that prevent most of the world’s population from having any real voice. Check out this excellent article on “counterfeit policy-making” for an in-depth analysis of the problem and its consequences. When the White House invokes “national security” to keep ACTA secret, it’s deliberately making international policy development even less democratic than it already was — all for the benefit of the corporate interests that shape government policy in the US and other liberal democracies. Keep that in mind the next time you see a bunch of crazy anarchists marching through the streets: it’s the protesters, not the government policy-makers, who are standing up for your interests.

Ironically, the day after he took office, Obama signed a memorandum committing his administration to “accountability through transparency” and ordering that FOI requests “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” But when it comes to defending the profits of big business — and make no mistake, that’s what the copyright battle is really all about: protecting outmoded business models that benefit large corporations at our expense — Obama’s White House isn’t going to let a little thing like the public interest stand in its way.

BC is planning to change the police complaints process. In theory, this is good news: the complaints process in this province is widely criticized. It’s so bad that the Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association have been boycotting the existing process because they know it doesn’t work.

Some of the proposed changes are major improvements that civil liberties advocates have been demanding for a long time:

External investigations will be mandatory when a person has died or been seriously injured while in police custody.

Under the bill, officers being investigated will have to provide statements within five days of a request or risk being charged. The legislation will also require complaint investigators to report any possible misconduct by officers who are not the focus of a particular investigation.

Unfortunately, though, there are also some very serious problems with the proposals. For example, groups like Pivot and BCCLA, which play a big role in keeping the cops accountable, would be sidelined:

David Eby, spokesman for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said the changes target watchdog groups.

He said such organizations can no longer file a third-party complaint with the commission if a witness or someone directly affected by an incident has already filed one.

Mr. Eby said that means his association could no longer file complaints about in-custody deaths, for example, to ensure an investigation is done.

He said the commissioner’s office now discloses information to the group about an investigation and its outcome, but that will no longer happen under the proposed changes.

And then there’s this:

Mr. Eby also criticized the new mediation process that requires a complainant to participate in an information process with the police officer against whom the complaint was filed.

In other words, the cops will be given an opportunity to intimidate their victims into withdrawing their complaint. I was at a conference a couple of years ago where the Vancouver Police Department’s complaints commissioner talked about how he’d moved the complaints office out of VPD headquarters precisely to avoid this sort of problem.

So, we’ve got a few good changes, a few bad changes that will make things worse — and nothing at all to change the sick institutional culture of our police departments, where harassing the poor is a matter of official policy; where cops are taught to stand up for one another even when they do horrible things; where misdeeds are defended and covered up at the highest levels; where police brutality is treated as less serious than violence committed by ordinary citizens, rather than as more serious (since it’s an abuse of power).

Here’s some CCTV footage from a Seattle holding cell last November:

For once, the guilty cop is facing assault charges. Does that mean the system works? No, it means that this time, the bad cop got caught. When 15-year-old girls are grabbed by the hair, smashed against a wall, and punched in the head while being pinned to the ground — all for the grave offence of being rude to a cop — the system is most definitely not working.