BACKGROUND

Joanna Berry is a Canadian immigration and refugee lawyer in Ontario, Canada. On October 2, two Niagara Police Officers, one of them a sergeant detective, paid her a visit to her home. They told her they were there on behalf of the Ottawa Police Department because of her “personal social media.” They begin to tell her that “10 lawyers who are of the Jewish faith” have filed a complaint with the police about her social media. As you can tell from the video, Joanna Berry, is outraged by the visit and clearly distraught. I reached out to the Niagara Regional Police for comment but they did not respond to my inquiry. I spoke with Joanna Berry also and she gave OTL Media permission to publish the video. She told us that she wants Canadians to see it and for the video to be a warning.

“This is very Orwellian”

On The Line Media is run by Samira Mohyeddin, a multi-award-winning journalist, documentary maker, and producer at CBC Radio One’s The Current.

    • IninewCrowOP
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      6 hours ago

      We’re the frog in the pot of water … they just turned up the heat and we don’t care … we won’t do anything until we’re boiled alive, but by then, it’ll be too late.

  • NeuronautML@lemmy.ml
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    8 hours ago

    US, Germany, France, Australia and now Canada. With every new country i hear suppressing legitimate Israeli criticism it makes me want to criticize Israel even further.

    I am extremely apalled at the actions of Israel and at the identity of Israel itself.

  • IninewCrowOP
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    10 hours ago

    For everyone’s information, I support our Liberal government and I do support any of our current governments (even if I disagree with them politically) because I still believe in the rule of law everywhere. I don’t subscribe to wild conspiracy theories about any democratically elected government.

    However, I still hold that we should always be ready to question and hold our government, police and those in power accountable for everything they say, do or on how they direct those under them.

    The actions of these police is a step too far in intimidating someone with personal views. As she explained, those who disagree with her views should speak to their company, talk to the social media company or speak to other authorities … you don’t go straight to the police to ask them to intimidate a political opponent.

    We have to stand up to this level of bullying and intimidation. This isn’t Canada. This isn’t what I support. This isn’t our government and this is not representative of our country.

    • GreyEyedGhost
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      3 hours ago

      I personally found the part where they tell her to not contact certain people. Which people? It’s never mentioned in the video. Is she just not supposed to say anything on social media again? How is that a reasonable response?

      Now, if she was being blocked and creating new accounts to harass people, that would be more reasonable. Or if she was actually convicted of a crime. But until then, the police should just have to learn the difficult fact of life that people may not agree without any laws being broken.

  • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz
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    6 hours ago

    This sounds bizarre and I need more context and information. Why is your only link a yt video? That shit takes forever to load.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      7 hours ago

      The police regularly dismiss unfounded reports without additional action, it’s how they’re supposed to respond. They’re not supposed to tell people “this thing you’re doing is neither illegal or harmful and the people who got upset had to search for it to find it, but they did get upset so you should stop”

    • IninewCrowOP
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      9 hours ago

      Police are meant to inform people about breaking serious laws. We don’t send the police to intimidate someone because they said something bad about a different country.

      Plus … if someone has a disagreement about a political opponent … then debate online … if that doesn’t work, complain to the business, complain to their company, complain to the social media company that is hosting the messages.

      We don’t jump to the nuclear option and ask the local police to go knocking on people’s doors.

      If that were the case, I’d like to ask the local police to a visit a few people that made me feel bad.

    • kbal@fedia.io
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      9 hours ago

      Thing is, they didn’t seem to have brought anything to inform her of. If they want to come out of it looking like anything but witless fascist goons trying to intimidate someone, they’re going to need to be a lot more specific than “unwanted messages” to unspecified persons.

      She seems to think it was someone she replied to on twitter. I reply to random people on here all the time, just like I’m doing now. If it’s unwanted, by all means send the netiquette cops to my house I guess, we’ll see if I’m able to suppress my derisive laughter long enough to get a video half as good as this one out of it.

      • ag10n@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Facist goons are the ones pulling the strings. You can hate all you want but it’s clear who the enemy is.

        She was notified that there was a complaint against her, unfortunately we still believe in informing people in person for this. Imagine she got an email instead.

        • kbal@fedia.io
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          8 hours ago

          Except it wasn’t just a notification that there’s been a complaint. It was “no more unwanted messages, please.”

          Aside from that it could be somewhat reasonable if there really is sufficient evidence to suggest that a criminal complaint is warranted. That seems unlikely, but I suppose we should keep an open mind. In the absence of someone digging up some really damning stuff from social media it looks a whole lot more like a lawyerly — and presumably therefore less illegal — attempt at something like “swatting”, albeit a less violent version. The police should know better than to let themselves be used like that, but a lifetime of experience leads me to suspect that maybe they do not.