Round-up of civil liberty news for October 2011.

Cynthia Laberge was the 2008-2009 InternetNZ Senior Research Fellow in Cyberlaw at Victoria University of Wellington. 

Round-up of civil liberty news for September 2011.

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.

Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill

It seems strange that in this society that values so much the rule of law, and one where other government departments must keep stringently to their legal mandate, the New Zealand Police are able to stretch the law to suit themselves, and then require retrospective legislation to legalise their actions.

The police may state that they believed they were working inside the law. However they must have known that that was not the case – papers produced in 2010 to clarify the Search and Surveillance legislation indicated then that in part the Bill was to mandate actions the police had assumed without legal support.

As discussed on the telephone a short time ago, this is a request from the New Zealand Police to close down the website greencross.org.nz which is hosted by your company.

Why are the NZ Police calling a web-hosting company in order to try to get a website closed down? The email continues:

When the government in its efficiency drive gets around to reorganising the Charities Commission, we hope that it will adopt a definition of charity that is more contemporary than the purpose currently in our 2005 New Zealand Charities Act, namely: “every charitable purpose, whether it relates to the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or religion, or any other matter beneficial to the community.” This purpose was derived from the English 1601 Charitable Purposes Act, in a society where poverty was regarded as a crime, there was no public schooling, and no health or welfare system.

Round-up of civil liberty news for May 2011.

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:

Prior to 16 December 2010 prisoners who had been sentenced to preventative detention or imprisoned for a term of 3 years of more were disqualified from voting, or enrolling to vote.  After this date the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act 2010 disqualified people sentenced to any term of imprisonment after the Act's commencement from enrolling or voting.  Prisoners on remand were still entitled to vote, as were those sentenced to home detention.

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:

Chairperson's Report To Members At The Annual General Meeting Of The New Zealand Council For Civil Liberties Inc Held On 10 November 2010

Another year has passed and it is time to report once again to members.  This has been a busy and generally productive year for the Council.  The Executive continues to meet on a monthly basis, and all 4 members have attended virtually every meeting.