Quotulatiousness

July 27, 2010

Photography is legal in Britain . . . unless they catch you at it

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:22

The continuing story of police harassment of peaceful photographers has still not come to a middle:

The Metropolitan Police Force cannot be guaranteed to abide by the law when it comes to allowing the public their right to take photographs.

That was the startling admission made last week by Met Police Commissioner John Stephenson under sharp questioning from Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Dee Doocey during a Police Authority Meeting on 22 July in City Hall. Video footage of the exchange is available on the Metropolitan Police Authority site, with relevant footage from around the 68 minute mark.

[. . .]

He admitted that he was aware of a recent disturbing incident that took place in Romford, which according to Doocey represented “eight minutes of two of your officers intimidating somebody”.

She continued: “At one stage they say that they don’t need a law to stop them photographing, but much more worrying, they don’t need a law to take them away. It’s not a question in my view of . . . It’s so serious that it don’t think it should be somebody giving them words of advice and I don’t also agree with you that it is a question of officers using their discretion.

“This was very black and white: Two of your officers who, despite the fact that I know you have given them guidelines because I have a copy of it, who totally disregarded them and were either so completely ignorant of the law, or decided to ignore the law — they were just going to say they knew the law better than the person they were talking to — they were very seriously intimidating. I find it quite worrying that I don’t think you are taking this quite as seriously as I think you should be.”

In short, the powers-that-be have grudgingly acknowledged that photographers do indeed have the right to take photos unmolested by PC Plod, but admitted that it’s still not actually been properly communicated to Plod and the other coppers on the beat.

We asked the Met for official comment as to why, despite the numerous efforts made by Assistant Commissioner John Yates and other serving officers to get the message about photography across, such incidents kept occurring. They suggested that these incidents were a very small part of the whole story of London policing, that to expect zero incidents was unrealistic, and that when such incidents occurred, they tended to be blown up out of all proportion by the press.

An alternative explanation, suggested to us by current and recently serving police officers with whom we have spoken, is that such incidents represent a far more disturbing aspect of police culture. They suggest that a small minority of officers see the law as being “what they say it is”, and these officers are quite prepared to take their chances, on the basis that the number of times they will be caught out by being recorded is likely to be few and far between.

It’s almost as if the police are sublimating their frustrations with the out-of-control but politically favoured members of certain religious groups and instead victimizing members of the public who don’t have political favour.

July 20, 2010

Welcome back to the draft era

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:11

. . . at least, if Representative Charles Rangel gets this piece of dreck through the legislative process:

HR 5741 IH

111th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 5741

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.

If this passes, I’ll be happy to welcome the next generation of draft dodgers into Canada. In spite of their sometimes loopy politics, we managed to absorb the last bunch reasonably well.

July 16, 2010

Another round of anti-drug hysteria?

Filed under: Food, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

In times of economic uncertainty, we seem to get more off-the-wall panics about other things. Things like kids trying to find legal ways to get high. Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link saying “. . .this is not The Onion! But it is hard to tell. I think I’ll try it when I get home.”

It’s not even news. Nutmeg’s (very mild) hallucinogenic qualities have been known for centuries. As they allude to in the video, the required dosage is so high that it’s the equivalent of smoking a rope: there may be a benefit, but it’s not worth the effort.

Stock up on nutmeg for your ordinary cooking needs, as this inevitably will lead to hysteric calls to ban the substance, or to have it only sold in registered outlets with a log kept.

July 13, 2010

Lacrosse team caught in international issue over passports

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

This is a confusing situation, as Aboriginal tribes/nations are sometimes considered separate political entities from the country within which they live and other times are not. The Iroquois nation apparently has been issuing their own passports, but now the British and US governments don’t want to honour them as they have in the recent past:

The Iroquois team, known as the Nationals, represents the six Indian nations that comprise the Iroquois Confederacy, which the Federation of International Lacrosse considers to be a full member nation, just like the United States or Canada. The Nationals enter this year’s tournament ranked fourth in the world.

The Nationals’ 50-person delegation had planned to travel to Manchester, England, on Sunday on their own tribal passports, as they have done for previous international competitions, team officials said.

But on Friday, the British consulate informed the team that it would only issue visas to the team upon receiving written assurance from the United States government that the Iroquois had been granted clearance to travel on their own documents and would be allowed back into the United States. Neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security would offer any such promise.

If the US government has allowed the use of Iroquois travel documents before, why are they now pretending they’ve never encountered them before? Is it a formal change in policy or just a bureaucrat flexing his or her ability to cause inconvenience and delay on a whim?

Update, 14 July: The New York Times reports that the team has been allowed to travel on their Iroquois passports:

The State Department’s blessing ends a five-day standoff between the Iroquois team and the federal government over whether the players could travel on their own documents instead of United States passports, as they have done in past international competitions.

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally intervened in the case on Wednesday morning and that the team would be able to depart on Wednesday afternoon.

“I am extremely grateful to Secretary of State Clinton, who responded to this glitch promptly and efficiently,” Ms. Slaughter said. “Going forward, we must find a way to balance homeland security concerns with some common sense and a border policy that does not create unintended consequences.”

Part of the reason appears to have been technical: “The Iroquois passports are partly hand-written and do not include any of the security features that make United States passports resistant to counterfeiting.”

July 10, 2010

More hidden legal changes in Ontario

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

Kelly McParland finds yet another sneaky change to Ontario law the government tried to slip in un-noticed:

Here’s a great story about the absurdity that ensues when a government tries to force-feed an impractical policy to the population for the sake of environmental posturing.

If you don’t want to read the original, here’s a capsule version:

Ontario sponsors a program to encourage small users of solar power by giving them subsidies. Except it has proved so popular, especially in rural areas, the province quietly slashed the subsidy late last Friday. (You remember Friday, right — quiet sleepy day between Canada Day and the weekend? If you really really wanted to release something at a time no one would notice, you couldn’t pick a better day. Not that the McGuinty government would deliberately try to hide what it was doing, of course. Oh no). The result is that people who bought into the program won’t get nearly the amount they expected. Now they’re upset — having discovered the ruse despite the government’s effort to hide it — and are bombarding MPPs with complaints.

Great eh? That’s good old Dalton McGuinty — absolutely, totally dedicated to energy conservation and environmental improvement, as long as it’s costing someone else money and not him.

This is yet another example of how the McGuinty government loves to sneak in unpopular changes and hope nobody notices for a while. Stealth nanny state tactics? Ladies and gentlemen, I present your Ontario government.

Update, 12 February 2011: The poor folks who took up the McGuinty government’s solar power subsidy are being shafted again:

Added to McGuinty’s problems with wind are similar signs of trouble on the solar front. After strongly encouraging individual solar projects, and offering outrageously generous pricing on solar-generated power, the province unexpectedly announced last summer it was slashing the rate it would pay on some projects. On Friday, hundreds more Ontarians were told that installations they’d erected at the behest of the government can’t be connected to the provincial grid because of technical problems. Rural residents, some of whom have invested large amounts in solar generating operations, will be left high and dry.

[. . .]

Angering rural voters, and battering your credibility with the environmental crowd, aren’t great ideas if you run a government that faces an election in eight months. So it’s no wonder that Ontario’s Liberals sought to hide the bad news by releasing it when (they hoped) no one was watching. But the excitement in Egypt won’t last forever, and eventually people will notice that Ontario’s government, once again, has been forced into a humiliating retreat at considerable trouble and cost to individual Ontarians.

July 9, 2010

Brewing up a real stimulus package

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 20:35

I find it hard to believe that such luminaries as Senator Kerry and Senator Snowe are the moving forces behind this tax reduction scheme:

Can microbreweries revive the economy? That’s the hope of Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and a bipartisan group of senators who are pushing a plan to cut taxes on the nation’s legion of small brewers in hopes of stimulating hiring among craft brewers.

The plan, which was introduced by Sen. Kerry, would lower the per-barrel excise taxes on small breweries’ first two million barrels of beer per year (that’s 62 million gallons) and would triple the size of what the government classifies as a small brewer — to breweries that produce six million barrels a year from two million currently. Some co-sponsors include Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), whose states, not surprisingly, rank high on the list of states with the most breweries per capita.

So-called craft brewers are one of the few industries to thrive through the recession. The segment grew from 7.2% by volume last year and 5.9% in 2008. The segment has even become a haven for budding entrepreneurs that have been let go from corporate jobs. “There’s not that many success stories in American manufacturing today and craft beer is one of them,” says Jim Koch, founder of The Boston Beer Co. which makes the various Samuel Adams beers. Mr. Koch — whose company is in Mr. Kerry’s home state — has been leading the charge for a lowering of the excise tax on small brewers.

Admittedly I’m in favour of most tax reductions, but this one in particular seems to be a good idea.

Poll numbers understate unhappiness with police over G20

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 18:11

Publius makes a very good point here:

The Greater Toronto Area holds a population of about 5.6 million, stretching from Burlington in the west to Oshawa in the East. The City of Toronto comprises less than half the total population, and less than one-tenth of the total land area. The summit, protests and general mayhem occurred in the downtown core, itself a small area of the City of Toronto. In the lands north of Bloor, west of Bathurst and East of the Don River, the summit meant traffic delays, not riot cops.

Travelling on the 400 series highways that weekend entailed some delays — much of the Gardiner Expressway was closed — and the most notable police presence was at highway interchanges and on / off ramps. Even for those who live in the City of Toronto itself, the vast majority saw the violence of the summit weekend on television. A large number of Torontonians had simply evacuated the City altogether, either to the suburbs to stay with relatives, or to cottage country. As a result, the images fixed in most Torontonians minds are of police cruisers burning — played again and again — and not of officers dragging middle aged men with prosthetic legs across city streets. As the stories of that weekend seep out, expect those poll numbers to change.

I was one of those who chose not to hang around in the city for the entire week leading up to the summit: I didn’t see the point in putting up with the delay and hassle. I still think it was a remarkably stupid idea to hold the G20 meetings in downtown Toronto, and that the police were handed a duff hand to play. But even given that, the police played their hand very badly.

There may or may not be a serious inquiry into the affair, but the police lost a lot of support between Friday night and Saturday night: letting the geeky nihilists get away with dramatic street theatre on national TV, then turning around and arresting innocent bystanders. It took remarkable effort to squander public support, but the police or the politicians directing the police managed to do it. Bureaucratic bipolar disorder isn’t pretty.

July 7, 2010

Delineating the “bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority”

Filed under: Books, Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

Art Carden reviews a new book by Thomas E. Woods:

In Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, Professor Woods offers a thorough-but-compact discussion of the doctrine of nullification. As he writes, “(n)ullification begins with the axiomatic point that a federal law that violates the Constitution is no law at all” (p. 3). It is, according to the framework established by the Founders, an essential part of the system of checks and balances that defined the federal union. Even though they established federal-level checks and balances, the founders were troubled by the notion that the Federal government should be its own judge.

Nullification was formalized in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and it essentially says that the states are not bound to enforce federal laws that step outside the bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority. That raises two obvious questions. First, what are “the bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority”? Second, what is the Constitutional relationship between the states and the central government? Woods discusses the three provisions that have been used to justify expansion of federal power — the “general welfare” clause, the commerce clause, and the “necessary and proper” clause — and argues convincingly that these were largely clauses of convenience that empowered the government to do the things necessary to fulfill their constitutional mandate. In Woods’s interpretation, this meant that the government had the constitutional authority to do mundane tasks in pursuit of their constitutional goals. They could buy lumber to build “needful buildings” and paper on which to print government documents without explicit permission, for example (p. 29). As Woods interprets it, the interstate commerce clause establishes the United States as a free trade zone. It does not give the government carte blanche to do as it pleases as long as it can cook up an “interstate commerce” rationale. Citing James Madison, Woods asks an important question: if the general welfare clause is sufficient to justify pretty much anything the Federal government wants to do, why bother with enumerated powers? Indeed, why even bother with a constitution?

Unfortunately, sympathy for nullification and states’ rights has been smeared by the association of these ideas with slavery. This is most unfortunate because it conflates a question of unambiguous moral evil (slavery) with a legitimate and difficult constitutional question.

July 6, 2010

Men at Work to pay 5% for infringement

Filed under: Australia, Law, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:37

Following up from a post earlier this year, an Australian judge has avoided penalizing Men At Work the maximum for using a riff from another song:

A judge in Sydney has ordered the Australian band Men at Work to hand over a portion of the royalties from their 1980s hit Down Under, after previously ruling its distinctive flute riff was copied from a children’s campfire song.

But the penalty he imposed of 5% of the song’s royalties was far less than the 60% sought by publishing company Larrikin Music, which holds the copyright for the song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.

Kookaburra was written more than 70 years ago by Australian teacher Marion Sinclair for a Guides competition, and the song about the native Australian bird has been a favourite around campfires from New Zealand to Canada.

That seems like a remarkably sensible judgement: the song clearly does infringe, but only for a small portion of the entire recording: it’s not critical to the success of the song, but it does contribute to its overall atmosphere.

June 30, 2010

The CCLA weighs in

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

Clive sent me an email this morning, with a link to the preliminary report from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, saying:

The fourth paragraph of the Executive summary ends with a cautionary note about the police chasing after 100-150 protester and in the process disregarding the rights of thousands.

My thought was, what do you expect. In Ontario we let the police do this ALL the time. We encourage it. We even applaud it. It is called RIDE.

This is just the next logical step.

The police demonstrated a bipolar attitude to the disturbances, with the “good cop” sitting back on Saturday and letting the nihilists get away with all sorts of property damage (including three police cruisers), while the “bad cop” showed up later on, like the punchline to a Monty Python skit, to arrest the bystanders (“Society is to blame.” “Right, we’ll arrest them instead!”).

Questionable police tactics at the G20 protests

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:07

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me a link to this video, saying “My support for the police evaporates with [this] video. What the hell were the police thinking?”:

He then suggested that this is a Toronto Police Services training video:

Update: Even better than the ragged charge shown in the first video, now the police are showing off some of the “weapons” they collected during the G20, including LARP (Live Action Role Playing) gear confiscated from a gamer:

Toronto Police are on the defensive this week as they attempt to defend their heavy-handed tactics during the G20. To prove the seriousness of the threat to public security, they took police on a tour of weapons confiscated from activists.

Only there’s a problem: some of these weapons were taken from people who weren’t demonstrators. And some of them weren’t weapons — the police proudly displayed the blunt arrows and chainmail they confiscated from a live-action role-player who was taking the train to a game

If they’d found a random SCA heavy fighter to take the armour and weapons from, they might have a slightly better case: SCA heavy combat gear would be comparable to (in many cases better than) police riot gear. SCA weapons are solid rattan covered with silver duct tape to make them appear to be metal — LARP weapons are non-functional foam or other light material (similar “weapons” are called “boffers” and are used as safe toys for kids). SCA shields are fully functional as protection — LARPers generally carry lightweight shields that just look like protection but would not do much in a real confrontation.

I liked this comment to the BoingBoing post:

I remember seeing this same police press conference, only it was in Miami in 2004 during the FTAA summit. Among the items they presented as having seized from activists:

– Tire iron
– Gas can
– A map of Miami (see, they could use it to plan out their terrorist strike!)

It took me a minute to realize they had just pulled all this stuff out of the trunk of some unfortunate activists’ car, where you’d totally expect to find it.

This kind of press conference is a standard component in the “new model” of protest suppression. It gives the police the hilarious task of taking a whole bunch of mostly innocuous stuff they seized and making up stories about how it could be used to maim, kill, and generally cause mass destruction.

I mean srsly – an empty water bottle could be used to fill with gasoline and throw at cops?

Bruce Schneier would be proud.

June 29, 2010

QotD: Canada’s ongoing self-esteem binge

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:48

In light of Thursday’s Canada Day celebrations, pointing out that efforts to outlaw hurt feelings is now a regular part of this country’s modus operandi may make me a party-pooper. But waiting for another time won’t make the truth any easier to bear: From human rights commissions to hate crime laws to civil law suits, Canada has made an art of punishing otherwise perfectly legal behaviour simply because it happens to make someone feel bad. We’ve become a nation of petty grievance-hoarders and tip-toers terrified of offending.

The big problem with this state of affairs (besides how generally unbecoming it is)? It’s slowly making us a spiritless, brittle people. The ability to navigate the ups and downs of life — with a particular emphasis on the downs — is what fosters resilience and flexibility.

If you never have to face the consequences of getting cut from a team, or turned down for a job, or insulted by a heartless idiot, you never develop the sense of perspective (or sense of humour) that it takes to be a well-rounded and capable individual who has the confidence to handle defeat. That’s something parents have to teach their kids, and countries have to teach their citizens. Losing hurts, but you can’t expect mom and dad or a human rights commission to shield you from everything but sunshine and roses.

Marni Soupcoff, “Hockey dads need to grow up”, National Post, 2010-06-29

Even though the G20 is over, the atmosphere remains

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:42

Mike Brock discovers that the hostile environment on the street hasn’t dissipated with the end of the formal protests:

I was sitting down on University Avenue, when a group of police officers approached me and said they wanted to talk to me. Stunned, I opened my mouth getting ready to reply to the request, when one of the officers at the top of his lungs yelled: “I DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK!”

Another officer said they didn’t want to hear about my rights.

They then proceeded to demand I remove the earphones from my ears, forcing me to get off the phone with my colleague. I told them I was on the phone to which another officer responded, “we don’t care.”

Then they said they wanted to search my bag, because I was “wearing a black shirt”. To which I replied, that I did not consent to any searches. I told them that I would not resist them, and that any search they conducted was under protest. They simply said, “we don’t care. We want to make sure you don’t have any bombs to kill us with.”

The protests may be over, but the malady lingers on. If this is the way the police are now treating members of the public, they appear to be letting off steam after the events of the weekend. If they were trying to prove the point of all the overwrought “OMFG!! We’re living in a POLICE STATE!!” posts on various blogs over the weekend, this is a pretty good way of doing it.

Update: StageLeft suspects that a complaint about police behaviour will get the standard boilerplate response:

Our investigation of our behaviour and conduct in case #xxxxx found that the police officers involved acted properly and in accordance with the law and standard police procedure… next case please.

June 26, 2010

G20 arrests not considered “major enough” to release details

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Siri Agrell notes the inconsistency of Toronto police over the (32 at time of writing) arrests made around the G20 area:

When asked for details of the arrest of a deaf man at Friday night’s demonstration, Burrows [of the Integrated Security Unit] said he had neither a name or the charges.

“Very rarely do we ever release information unless it’s a major arrest, major charges, big investigation or something like that,” he said. “That’s our standard practice. This guy was arrested last night, there’s nothing major about it. we’d never put a release out about that.”

And yet, the police regularly release information about minor incidents, ranging from lost property to suspicious behaviour. Surely, the arrest of Toronto citizens exercising their right to protest during a major international event warrents some transparency?

Yet another example of the police taking advantage of the situation to expand their practical reach?

So teenagers sending sext messages, a lost urn and some guy trying to pick up Toronto women are worthy of police updates, but details of arrests made during the G20, when police have been given huge powers, aren’t worth releasing?

In a nutshell, yes.

What other “secret laws” did they pass?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:37

Much noise and confusion over the discovery of a recently passed law allowing police to arrest anyone who fails to show ID within 5 metres of a “public work”. The law itself isn’t new, but the secret was the silent addition of the area of the G20 meetings as a “public work” for the definition of that law. Hijinks ensue:

Police are now able to jail anyone who refuses to furnish identification and submit to a search while within five metres of a designated security zone in downtown Toronto.

Critics reacted furiously to the new rules, which remained unpublicized until Thursday when a 32 year-old man was arrested in Toronto for refusing to show ID to police.

New Democrat MPP Peter Kormos said Friday the provincial Liberals created a “Kafka-esque” situation where people could be arrested for violating rules they didn’t know existed.

“This is very very repugnant stuff and should be troubling to everybody,” he said.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) said it was “extremely concerned” that the new measures violate constitutional safeguards.

I’m not a fan of violent protests, but I don’t believe the police need this additional tool in order to arrest people who attempt to breach the barricades or attack other people: this is granting too much arbitrary power to police officers. The way the power was granted is even more disturbing . . . it shows that the government knew there’d be an outcry if they did it in the public view, so they arranged it so that nobody would know about it in time to do anything about it. Nice work, Ontario, got any other nasty legal surprises you want to spring on us?

Update, 29 June: According to a report in the National Post, the Ontario government denies that there was any such regulatory change and that no arrests were made using the authority of this act.

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