* A ban on using material from "official" parliamentary telecasts to "satirise, ridicule or denigrate" the denizens of parliament is expected to be voted in this afternoon.
* Meanwhile, the police want the power to fingerprint people without the need to arrest or lay charges against them [hat tip KG].
And there are people who laugh at what's happening in Fiji!
NB: You don't need to look to Fiji to get outraged at heavy-handed authoritarianism; but Stephen Franks suggests you might look for better law to a recent decision by the US Supreme Court, which "has just held unconstitutional aspects of campaign finance laws restricting third party-funded television ads close to elections." Do you think we could learn something from both?
UPDATE: Whale Oil quotes barrister and media law lecturer Steven Price saying it was difficult to see how the proposed restrictions on election advertising "can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society [a reference from the Bill of Rights Act] ... I'm also astonished to see that it doesn't permit the use of material for election campaigning." Says Oil,
So, for example, if the Prime Minister could be shown to have lied in the House, and there is sure to be plenty of that footage available, the Opposition couldn't use footage of that in its election campaign.
Yep, this is supression of freedom of expression for sure. Bloggers must unite and show the pollies what a bunch of cocks they are.
2 comments:
The first tiem I heard trhe news about fingerprinting I missed the intro placing it in New Zealand. Given the Levithan nature of the data collection I thought it applied to Fiji at the time. I wasn't suprised when I later heard it applied to us.
They're fingerprinting and scanning our kids at school without parental consent, and have been doing so for some time. It's causing an outrage in Britain, but the only people who have mentioned it here have been myself and Bomber of Tumeke...
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