Many critics fear the 2010 Games will smother free speech. But a rapid proliferation of cell-phone cameras and open-source websites could make potential restrictions hard to enforce, a UBC journalism professor said Thursday evening.

“We’ve had this weird thing happen where the eyes of big brother are sort of turned around,” Daniel W. Burnett told a forum on the 2010 Games and civil liberties.

As the Tyee reported earlier this year, Vancouver’s Olympics could mark a new era for social media.

Many proponents believe crowd-sourced reporting will undermine efforts by organizers to control the look and feel of the Games for TV audiences around the world.

It’s a potent possibility in Vancouver, where critics have decried recent city bylaws they say restrict free speech. The so-called signage bylaws were the subject of much debate at the UBC forum.

Vancouver officials argue the legislation aims to prohibit ambush marketing. But anti-Games critics Chris Shaw and Alissa Westergard-Thorpe have sued the city over what they see as flagrant free speech violations.

An amendment to the bylaws is coming soon, city officials say. But if people aren’t happy with results, they still have recourse to a powerful tool, Burnett said.

“You might be able to put up a sign law and control what signs can be put up,” he said. “But you sure can’t control what’s on the hundreds of thousands of computer modules all over town or all over the world.”

Judging by new poll results, February 2010 could see crowd-sourced coverage critical of the Olympics.

Twenty-eight per-cent of B.C. residents think the 2010 Games will produce negative impacts on their province, an Angus Reid survey suggests. Only nine per-cent of Canadian respondents feel the same.

“British Columbians are more likely than other Canadians to question the benefits of the games, and to side with the demonstrators who have taken to the streets to oppose the Olympics,” the survey analysis reads.

Geoff Dembicki reports for the Tyee.