As the Toronto G20 approaches, even a casual look at previous events show a bizarre mix of Orwellian tactics and cyberpunk technology used to disperse and conquer protesters.

The concept of the G20 itself is mildly unsettling. From the G20 website:

The Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 to bring together systemically important industrialized and developing economies to discuss key issues in the global economy.

Look between the lines of that statement. It is a meeting of major banks with politicians to find ways to make money for both the banks and for the ruling political parties. One just has to look into history’s banana republics to see how this could be an issue. Add in the wall of secrecy around the event and it’s not surprising that protestors show up in droves.

In true keeping with the “evil empire” image, stormtroopers are dispatched to keep the protestors at bay. A mix of police officers, military and rent-a-cops, the G20 spares no expense in their outfitting of these guards. Almost $2 billion is being spent for a two day event, the equivalent of ¼ of Canada’s yearly international aid budget. 

This is where things get futuristic. The latest technologies in crowd control are dispatched and used. In the last couple of years, the G20 has become a showcase of groundbreaking technology for “non-lethal” crowd control. Keep an eye out for these “toys” at work on the 6:00 news:

Internet surveillance – When CSIS (The Canadian version of the CIA) shows up at protest organizers’ doors before the G20 summit, you know they have their bases covered. Reports are coming in of intimidation and surveillance before protests even start, and G20 protesters say their phone calls, e-mails and texts are being monitored by CSIS agents.CSIS neither confirms or denies, but with NORAD watching the skies you can bet that something as basic as a little e-mail and Facebook trolling wouldn’t be a big surprise. Tracking protest site visitors IP addresses would also be a piece of cake. 

The legal murkiness of intimidating and invading the privacy of people who want to voice an opinion seems to have fallen by the wayside.

CCTV Cameras – 77 new marked CCTV cameras are installed in Toronto in preparation for the G20. That isn’t counting the unmarked ones. The newspapers are reporting on the ones installed by police because it is “taxpayer money.”

But what about the private ones installed by the private companies hired or coerced into installing them?

And while police are promising to take the marked ones down after the weekend, what are the odds? They can make the case that it would be easier and cheaper to just leave them up and "deactivate" them.

Wireless Signal Jammers - Think you’ll be able to get that video of G20 security beating the teenage girl uploaded to Youtube from your Iphone before they confiscate it? Think again.

The “government” has told wireless providers that they can expect service jamming for “security reasons.”   Information lock-down.  Wireless signal jammers can block bluetooth, wireless and even video cameras.  Pity the poor person trying to dial 911 for a heart attack when that happens.

The excuse is simple:  Security forces don't want information relayed about where security-sensitive delegates are while being transported through the city.  But there's always the chance that any inappropriate behavior by security forces as they arrest protestors could be covered up when the protestors can't communicate with the outside world.

The information age has a villain, and its face is the G20 Integrated Security Unit (ISU).

Tasers – While not really a new thing as of the turn of the millennium, tasers really are the stuff of 1950s science fiction. It’s a gun that throws lightning bolts to incapacitate people!

These days, police carry them as a matter of routine and use them without fear of reprisal. Think about how much that would blow the minds of people living even thirty years ago.

With the G20 crowd control in effect, see if you can spot the Taser Shockwave, a wall of indiscriminate lightning bolts that fire out into a crowd.

"With the push of a button at a stand-off distance of up to 100 meters, the Shockwave unit deploys multiple standard TASER® cartridges that are oriented across an area arc. Full area coverage is provided to instantaneously incapacitate multiple personnel within that region."

A wall of lightning that shoots 100 meters to hit whatever is standing in its way.  Hardcore.

Sound cannons – Remember old episodes of Star Trek where Captain Kirk flailed about in agony because of an alien sound weapon? Here and now.

Called LRADs, or Long Range Acoustic Devices, they were used in Pittsburg at last year’s G20. At the Toronto G20 military-grade sound weapons will be carted around by police to disperse crowds.

From the Toronto Star:

Of Toronto’s newly-acquired LRADs, three are handheld devices that can broadcast noise heard from 600 metres away. Their volume can reach 135 decibels, which surpasses the pain threshold of 110 to 120. The fourth device is a larger model that can be mounted on vehicles or marine vessels and can generate noise reaching 143 decibels, audible from as far as 1500 metres.

Just to put that into context:

Decibel levels and results

133 – Gunshot at ear level

135 – The air begins to cool from expansion

137 – The entire human body vibrates

140 – Extreme damage to hearing no matter how short the exposure

141 – The human body experiences nausea

142 – Chest pounding is intense

143 – Human body feels as if “someone just football tackled your chest”

145 – Human vision begins to vibrate 

A single exposure to loud noise is all that is needed to permanently damage hearing. Loud noise damages the hair cells in the inner ear and can cause hearing loss, ear ringing and distortion of sounds. The damage from sound cannons is entirely internal, and it is almost impossible to prove or preserve the evidence of misuse.

Police say they will only be using these as a public announcement system.  Riiiiiiight.

Bring your earplugs.

Unmanned Flying Drones – They Live. Terminator. The Running Man. Pakistan. Afghanistan.

These fascist bits of science fiction have become a frightening reality. Robotic drones have been deployed in war situations in the last couple of years to mixed results and murky morality and rumors are starting to fly about them being used in the G20.

Before you dismiss this as pure fiction: They were already used in May for surveillance at Stonehenge in Britain for the Summer Solstice festivities.

These bad boys often have a camera mounted to them, and the really fun ones would have flash guns or tasers attached.  

Keep your eyes and cameras peeled for them. They haven’t been mentioned in the media as part of the G20 security plans…yet.

Microwave Guns – Touted as the next level in “harmless” crowd control, these weapons shoot microwaves that make it feel as if your skin is instantly on fire.

They supposedly don’t leave a mark, but don’t microwaves work by cooking things from the inside out?

The chances of this making an appearance is highly unlikely. The United States military flat-out refused to use them in 2008 as part of their weapons in Afghanistan. But one never knows.

With all this, one has to question exactly what is going on in the G20.

It’s obvious that those on the inside are scared of protestors, but why? What dark secrets and deals are happening? Nobody outside the wall knows…