Name suppression, among other things, allows the police to be lazy and simply file charges without proper investigation or consideration knowing that they won’t get sued if the charges are not supported by the evidence because the accused had name suppression.

Oh if only that were true!! I’d be writing this from a beach chair in the Bahamas, not on a coffee break between deadlines.

Alas “public officers” including the Police are indemnified from being sued for incompetence, malice or malfeasance in the performance of their duties. Sure you can sue the Crown and, depending on where you live, you might get some money. New Zealand has been reasonable about paying out, other jurisdictions (most states in Australia, for instance) pay little or nothing.

I believe there is some UN covenant (which Western governments just love signing, of course) which actually obliges governments to compensate the wrongfully accused and imprisoned, but most choose to “overlook” that clause.

Turning around your suggestion, however, I’d strongly support Police and prosecutors being personally liable where gross incompetence or any hint of malice was detected in their pursuit of a prosecution. It’s called accountability. The rest of the world lives with it, why shouldn’t they?

Clearly neither have you, DPF, or you could see what’s wrong with a proposal that offers less, not more, protection to such people. Accusations leading to arrest can be made for all sorts of reasons – from incompetence to malice to mistaken identity – and until tested in a court we give lip service to the idea that the accused is still innocent.

But the media have long since abandoned whatever belief they might once have had in that tradition. Now they skirt defamation by ensuring the use of words like “alleged” and “claimed” while the story itself is subliminally (but not subtley) screaming “nudge, nudge, we both know he done it or he wouldn’t have been arrested”. Why else do they often approach neighbours, family members, high school sweethearts and postmen of the accused, who all express surprise that “he done what he did”?

Trouble is, in some cases, he didn’t. As one man accused of a particularly despicable crime, who had the charges dropped by prosecutors once their whole house of cards collapsed, asked the judge who formally acquitted him – “Thanks. Now where do I line up to get my reputation back?”

Well, one offence, and a rare and fairly creative one at that (“performing an indecent act with intent to insult”), for a momentary action at 3.30am in an alley, where he seems to have had cause to believe he was getting a consensual blow job from the complainant’s companions. And of which he was discharged without conviction.

Seedy and drunken, certainly, but I’m not surprised the judge was persuaded not to ruin a career over it.

I gather that an original, more serious, charge was withdrawn upon presentation of security camera evidence that showed the offence could not have taken place.

Kiwiblog traceroutes to inspire.net.nz, so maybe DPF’s got something to lose, but many will be hosted on google or another overseas server. In the case of the “famous” “musician”, I think Facebook status updates helped spread the word how our 30-something superstar stuck his P in some 16 year old’s cheek. As noted here previously, his Wikipedia page had been altered (although reverted because of the “unverifiable” nature of the claim.) Those changes are still present in the article history.

They state “…fail to block access to it…” – so they want all ISPs to block Facebook and Wikipedia? They’re getting the voluntary “child porn” blocker set up, so it won’t be hard to add whaleoil, kiwiblog, gpforums, punkas, vorb, trademe, googlegroups, wikipedia, facebook, bebo and blogspot to the list. I guess all those pedos arguing ’slippery slope’ about the nationwide filter were right.

They need legislation stating that blogs and webforums are not news publishers. Blogs and webforums should be treated as private conversation in a public place. News websites can stick to the suppression orders, but it’s unfair to block all avenues of conversation amongst our country’s citizens. We don’t want to become like China (or PC, fundie, trashy Australia).

Besides, those sites could be accessed anyway by using a proxy server overseas. Unless of course the government monitors the content of all internet traffic for signs of illegal activity, which is about the time we should all jump ship for a country with a greater respect for freedom.

But, then they chose to be a high profile person, and should be aware that this is the case.

I found out the name of the entertainer on Facebook, Kiwiblog, and Twitter. I wasn’t even looking for it. You can also find details of the offence in the edit history of a certain page on Wikipedia.

It’s technically impossible to block information of that sort on the Internet (for a start you’d have to disable access to every user-generated content site in the world). We’re just going to have to get over it.

[DPF: Heh that is one of the issues. Either you restrict access to it, or you write up the supression orders in the register without naming the person they apply to]

It also allows the slime to do their usual trick of sensationalising the initial charges then dropping all reporting if charges are dropped or the accused ids found not guilty.

Drop ALL name suppression, make it compulsory for media outlets reporting charges to give not guilty or dropped charges the same level of publicity and allow, in exceptional cases only, judges to order total suppression of ALL facts.

The name of the “kiss my balls” sex offender with name suppression is in the history page of his Wikipedia page. The Law Commission thinks it should be an offense for an ISP to fail to block Wikipedia.

The Internet that we’ll be able to access in NZ is going to be significantly smaller than the one everyone else (‘cept Chinese and Saudis) get to access. Even so, it probably won’t be enough to stop us finding out the names of musicians who rub their penises on the faces of 16 year old girls, doctors who fail to use gloves when doing cervical smears, or retired MPs out to defraud.

Or what about paying me money to attend? …normally when Collins is working (trying to convince 12 ordinary folk the Police fitup is genuine) they receive lunch and payment.

http://www.nightcitytrader.blogspot.com

I agree the delay between charge and trial is often too long, but that is a different debate to this one.