Posts by Idiot Savant
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The actions of the Police in using the GCSB as an end-run around laws we have put in place deliberately limiting police powers are of much greater concern.
So, is this actually going to be part of Neazor's inquiry? Or is the wider problem going to be quietly swept under the rug?
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Hard News: Media3: Standards Showdown, in reply to Tom Beard,
It's an important and complex problem. There's so much possibility of misinterpretation or hyperbolic reporting
The possibility of misinterpretation has never been a reason for withholding under the OIA.
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You might also want to look at Section 216C, which makes it an offence to disclose a private communication intercepted in violation of 216B. "Poison fruit of a poison tree" may actually have teeth here.
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Ouch.
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Sent mine in last night.
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How the heck did Alec Ross come to tweet me? I have no idea.
You invoked his name. The internet has a long history of people who appear when you do that.
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Hard News: Media3: Where harm might fall, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Not in those terms, but there are clearly laws you might think should apply to the Internet which do not, for example, the offence of "misuse of a telephone device". Why should something be illegal if sent as a phone or text message but not in an email?
Though as the Law Commisison points out, it probably shouldn't be an offence at all. Which rather undermines the rest of their argument.
(Oh, as for what happens when you apply such laws to the internet, you get people prosecuted for criticising the war in Afghanistan because doing so is "grossly offensive" or annoying to those who want it to continue. I'll tolerate inconsistency to avoid such abuses, thanks)
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They're pretty much setting things up for vexatious use of the Tribunal by the looks of this.
And that's what I'm primarily concerned about. Complaints, even vexatious ones, are hassle. They require time, attention, and possibly money and lawyers, to defend. And that applies regardless of the merits. We've already seen a bullying culture emerge among the sewer commenters; they may see this as a weapon to shut down dissenting voices.
On top of that, we have the troubling precedent from the UK of a man prosecuted under similar "offense on the internet" laws for criticising that country's involvement in Afghanistan, which was deemed "grossly offensive" to The Powers That Be (and Right-Thinking Britons). In theory, the UK has free speech protections as strong as ours, through their Human Rights Act. But the cost of High Court judicial review to correct a poor Tribunal decision is prohibitive, which makes those protections effectively a nullity.
Basically, the Law Commission is proposing establishing a heckler's veto here. And that's just not a good idea.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Once information informs negative actions against the people involved, it isn't suitable for publication.
Many Ministers believe this too. It is, of course, not a good reason to withhold anything.
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Hard News: And so it begins, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
It isn't legitimately public information*. It's the private information of the community of students that form the school.
Do you think medical records should all be shoved up on an open website, so we can analyse how doctors and patients are doing, with pretty graphics and that?
Straw man. We're not talking individual records, but aggregate data. And we have no problem whatsoever when hospitals are forced under the OIA to reveal e.g. their comparative rates of various illnesses, or of medical misadventure.
(I don't like education league tables for exactly the reasons Russell describes. But the information is collected, it is official information and thus subject to the OIA. And that's the end of it)