Legal Beagle by Graeme Edgeler

About an hour. I'm reasonably happy with that. But now work out how long it would take to do this over all the other aspects of the bill (about which I'm less certain about the current law) :-)

Edit: least popular thread ever :-)

That's because it seems like a definitive argument. I'm not a lawyer, so it's a bit above my head. And I'm not AFAIK covered by the journalism exemption anyway, so it doesn't affect me (the detail isn't important, I can't afford a lawyer to make the argument).

It does seem to set journalists up for some exciting times when the plod are executing search warrants. Specifically of the "on the ground, lie still shut up or I'll shoot you" type of exciting. Challenging anything plod do during the execution of a warrant is AFAIK best done in the presence of both a high-end lawyer and a video camera. Doing it if you're an indymedia journalist being raided by a terror squad at 6am seems unwise.

I mean, sure, if you're a big part of the local bought media this may help a little if your commercial premises are subject to a warrant being executed during business hours. Or at a staged press event. But if there's any reason for the plod to think that you might try to exercise this right I can see them executing the warrant in circumstances that would make it very risky to attempt to exercise the exemption.

So it's just more law to protect the already privileged.

I would like to see your focus on the alleged journalist rights move to the S&S law itself.

Surely you can see the problems and the conflicts with existing laws and how about the repeal on the privacy act before Collins "reputation" was "exposed" .
Do you like the idea of private individuals with police power committing crimes that the crown has granted immunity for.Question .

Doing it if you're an indymedia journalist being raided by a terror squad at 6am seems unwise.

I think I'll be looking seriously at wireless video surveillance at multiple points inside my house for just this situation, streaming directly to a server housed nearby but not on the property. Not that I'm that much of a threat to the gummint (I think) but because once these things start, you never know where it will end.

I think I’ll be looking seriously at wireless video surveillance at multiple points inside my house for just this situation, streaming directly to a server housed nearby but not on the property.

Apologies if Graeme was saving this for a later post, but the Act also allows warrants to be granted for a “remote access search”, meaning “a search of a thing such as an Internet data storage facility that does not have a physical address that a person can enter and search.”

Hosting your content off-site does not exempt it from the warrant.

Eep! Missed that. Still, the point is not so much to be excluded from search as removing surveillance footage from easy access for destruction. So putting it on an Internet server would be a good idea, depending on how paranoid I'm feeling.