Tech Liberty confirms that it is legal in New Zealand to photograph or video the police at work.

We wrote to both the Police Commissioner and the Minister of Police and asked them "Is it against the law in New Zealand to take photos of video of the police at work?" The Police responded first: "No, not if the photos of video of police at work are taken in a public place, or with the landowner's consent if on private property."

Read the full article.

The group opposing the Search & Surveillance Bill have called for a public protest against the government's plans to retrospectively permit the police to use illegal video surveillance.

We would like to invite you to a protest march next Saturday 1 October at 2pm starting from Cuba Mall in Wellington. Please bring banners, placards, friends and whanau - and pass this message along to any likeminded folks - and help spread the word via Facebook and email lists.

See http://stopthebillnow.blogspot.com/ for more information.

George Barton recently died in Wellington. He was a long time member and supporter of the Council over many years.

The following obituary is as it appeared in the Dominion Post on 28 May 2011 and is used with permission from Peter Kitchin.

Lawyer Steven Price writes strongly in defence of freedom of speech in the Dominion Post (also on his blog). He was one of the laywers representing Valerie Morse in the Supreme Court when she successfully appealed her conviction for burning a New Zealand flag as a protest at an ANZAC Day dawn ceremony.

He points out that the protest at an ANZAC Day memorial was relevant:

Their banner that day called on the government to pull our troops out of Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. They pointed up the irony that, while we were solemnly gathering to commemorate the war dead, the government was sending more soldiers to die overseas.

He goes on to point out that our society needs people to challenge our beliefs, paraphrasing Cass Sunstein:

The evidence shows we have a strong tendency to conform to prevailing ideas. ... But the good news is that society can be rattled out of narrow mindsets, and sometimes change direction altogether. All it takes is a handful of dissenting voices. They provide the opening for the rest of us to start considering different approaches.

Finally, he sums up the findings of the Supreme Court:

The court unanimously laid down a principle that we can’t punish behaviour as offensive unless it’s disturbing public order. And when protesters are exercising speech rights, we must be extra tolerant of their views and their methods – even if we despise both – before we can call their conduct criminal. That seems right to me. That’s what freedom looks like.

The SIS Amendment Bill has been introduced along with its Regulatory Impact Statement. 

The authors of the Bill describe it as an update to support new technology and clarify existing provisions. The main changes the Bill makes are:

1. Adds support for the use electronic tracking devices.
2. Clarifies that the SIS aren't affected by the anti-hacking laws if they are working with computers.
3. Allows specifying of the targets of warrants by nom-de-internets, mobile numbers or IP addresses.
4. Clarifying that SIS agents are free from liability when breaking and entering.
5. Establishing that SIS agents are free from liability when executing a warrant whether the target is domestic or foreign.
6. Allows the SIS to have more say in who they use to exercise warrants without having to specify them in the warrant application.

How much does this extend the powers of the SIS to spy on people?

Existing SIS Powers

The current SIS legislation is already incredibly broad:

The Minister and the Commissioner may jointly issue a domestic|foreign interception warrant, authorising a person to intercept or seize any communication, document, or thing not otherwise lawfully obtainable by the person,...

The law goes on to specify that they can break in to places to install bugs, modify any equipment, etc, etc. There is very little limit on what they can do once they have been granted a warrant.

In 2008/2009 the SIS had 24 warrants issued with an average duration of 158 days.

Effect of Law Change

It is my opinion that the impact of the law change on civil liberties will be minimal. The SIS already have very wide powers with little oversight and nothing really changes.

• The changes around freedom from liability and from the anti-hacking laws really are just clean ups of the existing law. 
• When the SIS can "install or modify any device or equipment" to watch someone, explicitly adding the use of tracking devices does not seem like a big extension of powers.
• It makes sense for the SIS to be able to apply for warrants to track a particular alias or facility, in the same way they would bug a telephone line.
• The final administrative change of allowing them to make changes to the personnel who are executing the warrant seems like an administrative change without any threat to civil liberties.

Conclusion

The SIS Amendment Bill is not any more of a threat to civil liberties than the current Act. Of course, this brings into question whether the current Act is too broad, an issue that will apparently be covered in a promised more wide-ranging review.

This is my personal account of the NZCCL AGM and the talk by Andrew Butler that followed. It is not intended to be official minutes.

The government has announced plans to implement the recommendations of the Law Commission to change the laws around name suppression. In summary:

• Name suppression will be harder to get, with applicants having to prove extreme hardship to qualify.
• There will be more protection for the identities of child witnesses and victims.
• Penalties for breaches will increase.
• Rules will be applied more consistently across the court system.
• Internet service providers will be obliged to take down or block access to material breaching an order that is hosted on their systems. (Tech Liberty describes this as another attempt by government to force ISPs to censor the internet.)

A bill is expected to be submitted to Parliament before the end of the year.

A group of constitutional lawyers and law professors have expressed their concerns about the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act in an open letter to NZ and Parliament.

Over and over again history demonstrates that unconstrained power is subject to misuse, and that even well-intentioned measures can result in unintended consequences if there are not clear, formal measures of oversight applied to them.

While they claim to understand the pressures that led to the Act being passed, they now say it's time for cooler heads to wind it back.

But we feel their action was a mistake, and they too quickly and readily abandoned basic constitutional principles in the name of expediency. We hope that with a period to reflect on their action and the consequences this might have that they now will revisit this issue in a more appropriate manner.

Andrew Geddis at Pundit has pointed out a serious flaw in the amendments proposed by the Law and Order to the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill.

They wish to change the law so that all prisoners (not just ones sentence to longer then three years) lose the right to vote. But the way they've drafted the bill means it will only apply to people convicted after the amendment is passed - thereby giving the vote back to any prisoners who are in jail for longer than three years! He suspects that this is not what they intended.

Geddis's post also makes a scathing attack on the Bill as an offence to democracy and civil liberties:

This proposal is downright wrong in its intent, outright stupid in its design and (if finally enacted) would be such an indelible stain on the parliamentary lawmaking process as to call into question that institution's legitimacy to act as supreme lawmaker for our society.

Further followup from Andrew Geddis.

Blogger Cameron Slater has been convicted in the District Court for 9 breaches of name suppression orders. He has been fined $750 on each charge plus $130 court costs. Read the full decision.

• Andrew Geddis has a good discussion of Slater's defence in the context of dissent and deliberate breaching of bad law (written before the conviction).
• Guy Burgess talks about how suppression orders may be futile and then has a more in-depth article about the lessons for bloggers.
• Lawyer Steven Price says that Slater's defence was doomed.
• Lance Wiggs writes that Justice Harvey has given a few pointers on how to breach suppression in the future.
• David Farrar has a good analysis of what the judgement means for bloggers.
• And finally, Cameron Slater's own thoughts on the conviction.