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.
Yeah, I share your feeling that it feels thought-policey and troubling. But my guard is just a little bit up in the other direction too, maybe because I saw this right after this thread, where a guy was in an online argument with a woman and essentially threatened her family by driving to another city, finding her dad in the hospital, and taking a selfie next to him… Then he posted it in a public comment thread where she would see it.
With that information, it’s clear that he’s the bad guy… But I can see how if we just heard his side, with all of the condemning details omitted, it could be super easy to get baited into reacting like “Wtf, you can’t even take a selfie in this country anymore?”
His defense was “I was merely trying to win an online argument,” which thankfully, the judge thought was nonsense. I don’t think it was dystopian for the cops to show up at his house and say “You’ve done some harmful things online, and here are some consequences.” (I actually don’t know if cops showed up or he just got a court date or what, but you know what I mean)
So there are many ways that this story isn’t equivalent to that story, but I was already primed to be like… “Oh okay well what were the posts?” The window of potential reactions is pretty wide based on the answer to that.