Dear friends,

Many of us have experienced unwelcome visits from cops over the past few years, or are aware that our activities (including our hang out sessions, meetings, apartments, community spaces and so on) have, at some point or another, been infiltrated by (thought) police.

Asking for your personal police records will likely not achieve anything at all in terms of dismantling the state, but it might give you an idea what kinds of notes they were scrawling about you, your friends, your use of your leisure time, and even your haircut.

There are various ways to request your personal files from the police, CBSA, CSIS, the army, and other nefarious componants of the repressive Canadian state.

At this link you can find a PDF about some of the details of how to request your files. This document was developed by Infil00p, who posts regularly about his access to information requests on the VMC and on his excellent blog, Paroxysms of moral outrage (some name, huh). Below are links to four stories he's posted on VMC about his files. Further below is the inspiration for the blog name, I know, you're on the edge of your seats...

A group of us did a request recently related to the Privacy Act (which is free) and I wanted to post this info in case others are interested in doing so.

The link for the form to make Provincial requests is here.

The link for Federal requests is here.

Previous VMC blog posts on file requests:

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/infil00p/5635
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/infil00p/5650
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/infil00p/6226
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/infil00p/6893

He observed that the images would no doubt trigger “knee-jerk anti-Americanism” and “paroxysms of moral outrage, a Canadian specialty,” Excerpt from the US State Dept. Cable “08OTTAWA918″