I heard the name suppression debate was back on the agenda. Apparently, Simon Power wants to make bloggers ensure they respect the law and remain silent on who is facing jail for heinous crimes, just in case the truth does not serve justice.
The media are promising to abide by name suppression laws as long as it is clear that they can see who is on the register of "don't ask, don't tell"
So, for the people that want to get tough on enforcing name suppression, how do they feel about wiki-leaks? Seems the media are making a feeding frenzy of information that was, by default, under suppression at this time. Do the same people who laud Assange, consider WhaleOil as a treasonous blogger? And vice-versa?
I'd like to see a more open government, and I'd like to see a more open justice system. The name suppression rules have certainly been proven in need of an overhaul, and somewhere along the way, it got a little bit easier for famous people to use their fame as a "get out of jail free" card. On the other hand, cracking the lid on US Government Military information hasn't been the smoking gun many thought it would be. I think destruction of source data in ClimateGate the bigger scandal.
In the final analysis, I'm not sure though that democracy or justice is served by simply dishing out private information without the context. such actions often fail to properly weigh up the consequences.
However, I think it would be useful to talk about both topics together. We may be more inclined to work from principles rather than emotion.
The media are promising to abide by name suppression laws as long as it is clear that they can see who is on the register of "don't ask, don't tell"
So, for the people that want to get tough on enforcing name suppression, how do they feel about wiki-leaks? Seems the media are making a feeding frenzy of information that was, by default, under suppression at this time. Do the same people who laud Assange, consider WhaleOil as a treasonous blogger? And vice-versa?
I'd like to see a more open government, and I'd like to see a more open justice system. The name suppression rules have certainly been proven in need of an overhaul, and somewhere along the way, it got a little bit easier for famous people to use their fame as a "get out of jail free" card. On the other hand, cracking the lid on US Government Military information hasn't been the smoking gun many thought it would be. I think destruction of source data in ClimateGate the bigger scandal.
In the final analysis, I'm not sure though that democracy or justice is served by simply dishing out private information without the context. such actions often fail to properly weigh up the consequences.
However, I think it would be useful to talk about both topics together. We may be more inclined to work from principles rather than emotion.
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