Freedom of Speech

As you may now know today is the 5th birthday of the blog and of the character Whaleoil.

Tonight at 10:52pm two Police constables pounded on my bedroom window demanding entry.  They said that they couldn’t find the front door. I told them to try harder.

When they eventually made the front door I was presented with a summons to appear in court on the 16th of June charged with my 10th case of breaching name suppression. Amazingly these two constables are the first people in 6 years to ever mistake our bedroom window, through the garden, behind a gate, with no path or lights as the front door. Shit if they can’t find a front door how are they going to find a dead chinese girl in a suitcase in the boot of her car? Note that they have sat on this summons for over a week, the constable said they had been busy and hadn’t had time.

Unsurprisingly it is the case of the big-wig cop who likes to punch his on in the back of the head for the purposes of parental correction. So naming 32 other crooks, rugby players, teachers, doctors, accountants, pedos, rapists and various other low-life not a peep from the police but name a big-wig cop and look out, they come stumbling through your bedroom window.

The Solicitor-General really must be mad as a meat-axe, along with the idiot lawyer Mike Antunovic who agitated for this. Meanwhile FIGJAM power just sits on his hands.

They can change the law in a heartbeat to stop people using cellphones, they can pass a law under urgency to remove the defense of provocation because two fools unsuccessfully use it, but drag the chain to remove a law protecting the judges, teachers, lawyers, rugby players, cops, doctors, accountants and others in the gray old men establishment brigade.

Tell me again that New Zealand isn’t corrupt.

Whaleoil's 10th summons

Mike Antunovic doesn’t believe in freedom of speech. He wants to ignore what has already been said, hide like his chicken-shit client behind the veil of name suppression and now wants someone to shut my site down.

Defence lawyer Mike Antunovic today called for action against the “renegade” who named his client.

“The whole situation is just totally outrageous and I can’t understand why nothing has been done about it,” he told NZPA.

“When judges make suppression orders, they mean what they say. I would’ve thought that anyone who deliberately breaches a judge’s order … (would) be dealt with swiftly.”

Mr Antunovic questioned why the website had not been shut down.

“Why is he allowed to get away with this?

“It really goes right to the heart of the criminal justice system, doesn’t it. What faith can anyone have, in whose favour an order is made suppressing their name, when some renegade like this man in Auckland can choose to deliberately release the name on his website?”

Mr Antunovic said Judge Harding had been made aware of the website.

Listen up Mike Antunovic, because you seem to be very dim-witted. You can’t shut my site down. I’d like to see anyone try. Furthermore I’ll tell you what cuts to the heart of the justice system, dodgy deals done under the guise of name suppression. Mates covering mates, the mere appearance of corruption. That is what destroys a justice system not naming someone in court. Pull you head out of your arse and realise that this law is rooted, that I am challenging it and I intend to not stop.

Nothing fills me with more than contempt than people playing the system. I will not stop, even if I am behind bars.

I love the Onion, and some days they just come out with a post that blows you away with its sublime commentary on real life.

Take this post on Freedom of Speech.

WASHINGTON—In a decisive and vulgar 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld the constitution’s First Amendment this week, calling the freedom of expression among the most “inalienable and important rights that a motherfucker can have.”

“It is the opinion of this court that the right to speak without censorship or fear of intimidation is fundamental to a healthy democracy,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. “Furthermore, the court finds that the right to say whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want, is not only a founding tenet, but remains essential to the continued success of this nation.”

Added Ginsburg, “In short, freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers.”

That is just the start of one of The Onion’s most outstanding posts ever.

The decision came Monday in response to the case of a Charleston, WV theater troupe that had been sued by city officials for staging a sexually explicit play with public funds. Reversing the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the theater, an outcome free-speech advocates are calling a victory and Justice Ginsburg called “a bitch-slap in the face of all those uptight limp-dicks.”

The ruling in City of Charleston v. The Kanawha Players marks the first time in 220 years that the nation’s highest court has taken such a fiercely profane stance.

During oral arguments, Charleston’s chief counsel Dan Roy said his clients could restrict any public speech they deemed offensive, an argument quickly dismissed by Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, who turned to his colleagues and made a repeated up-and-down hand motion intended to simulate masturbation.

Fucking side-splitting. The image they use is even better (below). I’m thinking I might use this article as part of defense of my Name Suppression charges.

Justice Ginsburg wrote that those who dispute her interpretation of the Constitution can "shove a fat one so far up their ass they choke."

“I’m beginning to wonder if you really understand what ‘abridging the freedom of speech’ means at all,” said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. “I’m also wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression fucked into your empty hick skulls.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted with the majority, wrote a concurring opinion in which he made little mention of established court precedents but emphasized that he himself had viewed materials “way, way nastier than this stupid play.”

“I don’t know what kind of bullshit passes for jurisprudence down in the 4th Circuit these days,” Thomas wrote. “But those pricks can take their arguments about speech that ‘appeals only to prurient interests’ and go suck a dog’s asshole.”

Added Thomas, “Just suck it. Get in there and seriously suck it.”

Sorry, I just can’t stop laughing.

Conservative constitutional scholars have criticized the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it not only a license to provoke, but also an act of provocation in itself, one that saw several justices repeatedly refer to the plaintiffs as “fuckwits,” “asshats,” and “cumsacks” before informing them that with their appeals exhausted, their only remaining legal recourse would be to “piss up a rope or take two fists in the mommy slot.”

More than 18 months after the suit was first brought against the theater group, defense lawyers said the road to the Supreme Court was “hard as shit,” but well worth it.

“This is a historic victory for free speech, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, a hundred years from now, the hallowed walls of this court bear an inscription taken from the eloquent decision handed down today,” lead defense attorney Carl Huddleston said. “Particularly the phrase ‘That which erodes human rights serves to erode humanity, fuckface.’”

Ok I have to stop, fucking asthma attack coming on here.

… first they blocked the child porn, but i did nothing for I am not a pedophile…
… then they blocked the small breasted women, but i did nothing for fear of being called a pedophile…
… then they blocked all adult sites, but I did nothing as they were “protecting the children”………
…. then they blocked all objectionable writing, but I did nothing as it was in the “general publics best interests”…
…. then they blocked all free music, but I did nothing as it might be copyright infringement….
…. then they blocked my writing, because i was not sanctioned by the government. and no one did anything because it was too late…

It has started, we now have un-elected officials deciding what we can and cannot see on the internet. Except we don’t know what they are filtering. They won’t tell us that. The Department of Internal Affairs calls it filtering, suck a nice unobtrusive name for C E N S O R S H I P.

But hang on a minute, in the Dirty Doctor of Palmerston North case a judge said that if the child porn is from overseas it is not really the same as if it was here in NZ so not that big on the scale of offending. Welcome to the end of freedom of expression and the start of Net Censorship. Welcome to the true avbent of the Nanny State. Now they are deciding for us, without reference to us what we can and cannot look at on the internet.

My tolerance for this government is fast expiring, ok it is nearly in need of resuscitation. Now, I’m no kiddie fiddler or child-porn advocate, anyone who knows me knows I despise them. In fact I personally dobbed a creepy Scout Leader and got him chucked out. He subsequently moved to Auckland and last I heard was trying to become a Teacher. Lovely. But having a big filtering filtering god knows what on the internet, because they won’t tell us needs to be knocked on the head.

To make matters worse, read this story of how the Iranian Government shut down dissent. For all those people who had a little green box on their Twitter accounts, read this and be afraid.

“Collecting interception data is a process which takes place in the ‘background’, assuring that the intercepted target (end user) is never aware of a possible interception,” the manual describes. “The maximum number of simultaneous active interception sessions is 50,000.”

This manual has been read by police officers in Tehran. It ended up in my hands through the back door.

“Nokia Lawful Interception Gateway”, reads the cover page. This has been rumoured for a long while. Nokia Siemens Networks has supplied Iran with telesurveillance equipment, the details of which I have tried to track down since last summer. Now, one of the products that NSN supplied to Iran has been leaked to Fifi. This system enables just the type of surveillance that NSN has denied participating in.

It looks bad. The package gives users extensive power to monitor citizen mobile phone as well as mobile internet usage.

But it isn’t illegal. Similar systems monitor our own telecommunications. The question isn’t about Iran, but more broadly about what kind of surveillance is permitted – or mandated – in the networks we use. Who controls them?

So what? I hear you say. Well it just so happens our biggest Mobile player and also a rather large ISP has exactly the same gear as the Iranian mobile networks. I know this because I asked Paul Brislen.

Nokia Lawful Interception Gateway (LIG), Has the Government?

So, I sent the article to Paul Brislen and he confirms that they have the gear mentioned in the article, in fact their entire network is provided by Nokia. He thinks it is funny. Well read on;

Nokia Siemens Networks refused to reveal what they had sold to Iran. “Just this small add-on”, the company’s media relations office replied again and again when I questioned them about it. “I don’t recall its name right now”, said Communications Manager Riitta Mård. “It has nothing to do with internet surveillance.”

In fact, at least three separate systems were exported to Iran. Nokia built a GSM network; the GSM network was provided with the LIG system that I acquired; and the LIG has been upgraded with the “add-on” that Mård described. Mård remembers the name of the system now: Monitoring Centre (PDF). It’s a test platform that, according to Mård, only is only suitable for monitoring telephone calls.

The commotion caused by the NSN trading with Iran has been mostly about the Monitoring Centre. The actual problem now seems to be the more extensive LIG.

And this is where it gets interesting, even for the ordinary Western mobile phone user normally untouched by Iran’s political storms. LIG, with its extensive monitoring capabilities, or a comparable system by a different manufacturer, is monitoring all mobile voice and data networks around the world, including here in Finland.

And that dear friends is how a government can shut down dissent overnight. Now you know how the Iranian government managed to shut-up the freedom movement.

In fact, it is precisely because of us Europeans that these extensive monitoring systems first became legal and then mandatory worldwide. Europe has spearheaded the transition from more restricted surveillance methods to extensive systems like the LIG: systems that store all of the target’s communications data during surveillance for future investigation.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who indeed? Now do you all see why we need a constitution like this. This sort of nonesense is why we need the protection of a constitution especially the First and second amendments. Now watch then implement a more draconian s92a that that which we think there should be. The hugley ironic thing for me is the penalties for breaching copyright is 12 times higher than a “serious breach of the foundation of our law”, that being name suppression. Name Suppression is just one affront to our rights as citizens. Little by little they are being eroded away.

With the Name Suppression issue I have been thinking about New Zealander’s access to freedom of speech. I guess also that this follows on from my contribution to ridding us of the Electoral Finance Act.

It seems in actuality that our politicians and meritocracy of doctors, lawyers and judges are not for increased access to freedom of speech. They wish that our Name Suppression law were tighter, tougher, with greater penalties.

They make a mockery almost daily of our Bill of Rights Act. Even the author of the Act, Sir Geoffrey Palmer doesn’t even believe in Freedom of Speech because he was the author of the Law Commission report that recommended tougher penalties for name suppression breaches.

This is where I came to think about our democracy and started to compare it to other democracies around the world and thought to myself, did we really go to war against totalitarian regimes, regimes that controlled and monitored and regulated their people only to take a step closer to that which we fought against with enactment of a new law.

Surely as a democracy we should be trying to increase freedoms of the population not increasingly confine and restrict them under a morass of legislation.

Enter Iceland. It has just been announced that;

The Icelandic Government has been working alongside anonymous mass document leaking website Wikileaks to create a safe haven for offshore journalists and whistle-blowers.  Dubbed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, the proposal aims to;

…task the government with finding ways to strengthen freedom of expression around world and in Iceland, as well as providing strong protections for sources and whistleblowers. To this end the legal environment should be explored in such a way that the goals can be defined, and changes to law or new law proposals can be prepared. The legal environments of other countries should be considered, with the purpose of assembling the best laws to make Iceland a leader of freedoms of expression and information. We also feel it is high time to establish the first Icelandic international prize: The Icelandic Freedom of Expression Award.

This is massive news and massive for the likes of Simon “FIGJAM” Power and the judiciary to consider as they pontificate about trying to control the internet. The reality that they and the meddling judiciary seem not to realise is that no matter what they do they can’t control it, and thus they may as well help to move our country closer to more openness rather than try to shut down freedom of speech and increasingly close our courts to all but elite when it comes to open justice.

Instead of carping that a certain blogger might take credit for a law change just get on and do it Simon, help become a truly great Justice Minister and actually increase our freedoms, remove barriers to openness in our judicial system. Only a true believer in democracy and a true liberal could do this, are you the man?

Unfortunately for us he sits on the SCOTUS. Still, perhaps “FIGJAM” Power read and understand. Here’s a thought, why don’t we adopt the US Constitution?

“Today, 30-second television ads may be the most effective way to convey a political message. Soon, however, it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues. Yet, §441b would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds. The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech,” – Justice Anthony Kennedy, marking the first time “blog” has been used in a Supreme Court opinion.

Hat tip Andrew Sullivan

Christine Caughey will regret ever making a submission to Parilament’s traditional enqiry on local boby elections after her incredibly naive and silly statements have bounced all around the blogosphere.

In particular her silly statements about controlling sites such as Wikipedia were bound to have been noticed and indeed they have. Her Wikipedia page was edited last night to reflect her embarrassment.

I doubt it will be edited out either as the addition is entirely factual.

Cr. Aaron Bhatnagar has blogged about card carrying Labour lap-dog and former Councillor Christine Caughey’s parliamentary submission on the 2007 local body elections.

There is some pretty scary stuff from her submission that gives an insight into how Labour supporters think, in particular about blogs and other new media.

She isn’t particularly enamoured with blogs;

“Advertising by way of blogging, use of Wikipedia or similar, are two examples where abuse may occur. Wikipedia does not appear to have adequate structures in place to monitor and control abuse of the system. Regulation to control the type of use of the internet for political/campaigning purposes should be put in place and made explicit in candidate information booklets.”

Riiiight!, so because I bashed her mercilessly in the election for her numpty ideas and lack of intellectual depth plus drew attention to her flip-flops and hypocrisies I ust now be controlled and monitored!!!! I laugh at her ignorance about trying to control the internet. A certain fool and her numpty lawyer found out all about that recently.

She must be channelling Hugo Chavez with the next pronouncement from her;

“There is inadequate monitoring of media and its role to provide balanced reporting and equity in coverage. Complaints to the media by candidates or parties who may be disaffected, can lead to further imbalance in reporting.
There is need for an independent monitoring body to assess and to report on the balance of the media during the lead up to elections.”

Scary stuff…..note how socialists like those two words “control” and “monitoring”. Good riddance to her and her ilk.

The pity is that labour have appointed such a fool with these bizarre ideas to the new Transport Funding Board. Oh well another to add to the list for chopping after the election.

Key vows to scrap bail law changes – National leader John Key says if elected to government he will repeal changes to the Bail Act in 2007 that he says have put the public at risk.
Mr Key wrapped up his caucus's planning retreat with a return to a traditional policy… [NZ Politics]

National has vowed to scrap Labour's cost saving changes to bail laws. This is good but doesn't go far enough.

National should be calling for "Time Sentenced = Time Served" and the removal of concurrent sentencing. 

A good start though, perhaps Rodney could pick up the bits tha National left off. 

Thousands spent on high-tech TV sets for prisoners – 03 Jan 2008 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news

One wonders what it takes for a Corrections Minister or at the very least Barry Matthew to get the sack.

The Department is clearly out of control.

[quote]Opposition law and order spokesman Simon Power yesterday blasted the department for spending almost $41,000 on the 32 LCD televisions.

The sets – at an average $1270 each – were delivered to prisons across the country during 2007, for the use of both inmates and staff.[/quote]

The fact that they have televisions at all is appalling but to spend $41,000 on them is scandalous.

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