Good submission

A good submission from the NZ Council For Civil Liberties on Labour’s Internet censorship bill. An extract:

a. The Bill fails to define the problem that it addresses.
b. We do not believe the provisions of the Bill will be effective at resolving what we
understand the problems to be.
c. The implementation has been left undefined to be left for later regulation.
d. Neither oversight nor transparency are defined.
e. That the creation of a government mandated internet censorship filter is a threat to
our civil liberties which far exceeds the benefits mistakenly claimed by this Bill’s
proponents.

A badly defined problem, a lack of detail, no oversight, no transparency and a law to allow mandatory filtering of the Internet – this bill should not pass.

The proposed internet censorship system is a very significant change to how New
Zealanders use the internet. It implements a system where government officials can
unilaterally block access to any content, while only making vague promises about oversight
and governance. This seems like a unwarranted over-reaction in a free and democratic
society like New Zealand.

It’s almost a blank cheque because there are no safeguards detailed in the bill.

And the summary:

The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties believes that this Bill is badly conceived and
dangerous to a free and democratic society. While we understand the motivations that led
to this Bill, we think that it has failed to properly address the issues raised and its proposed
solutions will be ineffective as well as creating harmful side effects.

The Internet filtering provisions are, off memory, opposed by every party in Parliament except Labour. I hope Labour see sense and drop them.