Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Over the past seven days I’ve seen the city where I’ve spent most of my life transform into a police state, to the point where I am honestly scared of the roving gangs of riot cops wandering around downtown, looking for trouble. Think I’m overreacting? Police yesterday were given sweeping powers of arrest for the duration of the G-20 Toronto Summit — with no public debate, no prior notice.

One of the early arrests was a computer security professional and member of the hacklab.to community. His crime? Penetration-testing the “security theatre” around the event.

Having purchased a hacker-related book or two myself over the weekend I’m expecting my door to be knocked down and my cat and I to be dragged off any minute now.

Even if I’m lucky enough to escape such a fate, G-20 panic has still made it all the way north to my sleepy condo, where additional security has been hired (I haven’t verified their powers of arrest or if they’re armed) and the following memo distributed:

A recommendation was made to have residents of townhouses on the street sides remove any items that my be used as potential weapons from the patios. This may include seasonal furniture, barbeques, propane tanks, gardening tools or ornaments, bicycles, etc.

Who knew that airborne garden gnomes were public enemy number one?

As for the benefits to be reaped by our fair city I certainly can’t see any, at least beyond the overtime for police and the financial windfall for chain link fence moguls. I’ve heard the theory that our government deliberately chose the downtown core as the G-20 site to show off our robust financial sector — too bad the hard-working folks who have actually made our economy so robust have been relocated or otherwise inconvenienced by the summit.

But what do I know? You can watch this televised debate and hear people who are smarter than me weigh in on the subject.

As a potential terror threat ordinary citizen the message to me has been made quite clear: Keep your head down, do what you’re told and stay away from the security perimeter.

Culture of Fear, anyone?