   speechThe little Sympatico police car above is linked to a site containing information Sympatico has previously pulled the plug on. injusticebusters offer a series of links to controversial and thought-provoking items on the importance of free speech and why it is important not only to speak it but to hear it!  |
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This U.S. story from last summer shows pursuit of kiddiporn bounty can bring out the perv side of a reporter! Child porn ruling is the real scandal By Charles Cooper, ZDNN July 9, 1998 Should a press pass be license to break the law -- even if the reporter's in pursuit of a legitimate story? And while you're cogitating over that one, here's something else to chew on: What if the felony in question is something as abhorrent as child pornography? That's the question du jour among cyber libertarians and free-speech advocates, following a ruling by a U.S. District court judge that a radio reporter can't use the First Amendment as a defense. The reporter, Larry Matthews, a freelancer for National Public Radio, was charged with 15 felony counts of receiving and sending child pornography= over the Internet. As you might imagine, the usual suspects lined up on both sides of the issue. But there were some surprises -- most notably the chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee -- who said reporters should never break the law to get a story, no matter how important the issue. Matthews, who recently copped a plea (more about that later), maintains that he was working on a story. In 1996, Matthews said he used his home computer to download and send child pornography as part of a story on childporn and the Internet. NPR says it never assigned Matthews to the story. As part of his research, Matthews entered private online chat rooms frequented by the expected lowlifes who get their jollies looking at naked pictures of kids. Risky business But after he identified himself as a reporter looking to interview participants, Matthews said, he got nowhere. So, in what he called a bid to gain the trust of child-porn enthusiasts, Matthews transmitted images to people with whom he was chatting online. But federal prosecutors litigating the case believed otherwise. They cont= ended that Matthews was interested in dirty pictures, not a story about h= ow people go online to exchange dirty pictures. Their case became that much stronger after U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. ruled that the "law is clear that a press pass is not a license to break the law." One week later, Matthews decided to cop a conditional guilty plea to one count of transmitting and one count of receiving child pornography. But this is more of a legal maneuver than an admission. If the Williams ruling is reversed by the appeals court, Matthews will be able to use the First Amendment defense and he'll have a chance to withdraw the plea and get his day in court. Bad precedent This is all part of an old, increasingly stale debate. Still unable to agree upon a standard definition of what constitutes pornography, Uncle Sam is playing a dangerous game. Only Matthews really knows whether he was pursuing a prurient interest= or legitimately gathering information for a story. I suppose, as Judge Williams wrote in his ruling, the reporter could have interviewed law enforcement officials and report on child pornography prosecutions. But what kind of cockamamie precedent are we setting if reporters' jobs are confined to reprinting officially approved information, using techniques that meet the government's seal of approval? The prosecution's interpretation
of the law -- that intent is irrelevant under the child pornography
statute -- may be correct from a legal perspective. But that
doesn't mean the powers that be are right. This one deserves
another look. |
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| Use our website to speak out! injusticebusters wants to publish your stories, firstly as an exercise in free speech, secondly so that people who feel isolated can learn of others who have suffered similar experiences, and thirdly so we can bust the injustices! |
| injusticebusters will publish lawyers' bills. Send them to us! The exhorbitant (extortionist?) rates that lawyers charge puts/keeps many of us in poverty and places us at a great disadvantage for fighting back. Most judges in Canada are lawyers! |
| The next time you write a complaint to any part of the Justice System, send a copy to injusticebusters! e-mail injusticebusters! their reply! |
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 it's hard to put a fence
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Subject: inJustice Busters' Website Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 07:58:47 -0600 From:Brent.Munro@sasktel.sk.ca> To: steels@sk.sympatico.ca. I am replying to your note in reply to the note sent to SaskTel regarding some of the content on your site. SaskTel has no quarrel whatsover with your desire to advocate free speech. Our concern arises only when the content goes beyond free speech and may be defamatory. As our previous note to you made very clear, SaskTel will not be associated with material which may be defamatory. In reply to your question, SaskTel will not indicate from whom or where the complaint with repsect your site that we received originated. Our policy is not to do so. I note that your site still contains the same material that we requested you remove. Altering a poster, changing the title of one site and moving the content from one of the sites we asked you to remove to another is clearly not what our request was. Either the content noted in our previous note to you must be completely removed as requested by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow or we will take the steps indicated in our previous note to you. I trust our position is now clear. |
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The e-mail from Sask-Tel (Thursday, July 23) alleges changes were not done in good faith and ends with the line "I trust our position is now clear." About as clear as the mud a bully might smear on your face when it has you in a half nelson. The changes were significant. We blurred Michael's identity entirely and changed the words "bad" to "corrupt" and "killer" to "dangerous criminal." These changes were made in good faith and were a reasonable interpretation of Sympatico's request. We stand in contempt of bullying. injusticebusters! stand for justice and fair play. injusticebusters! stand by our right to inform the public of information which other media have been bullied into suppressing. The information which SaskTel would seem to want us to remove is information which alerts the public to dangerous people who have hurt children in the past, and a policeman who has refused to acknowledge his own culpability and therefore cannot be trusted to not make the same mistake again. SaskTel and its lawyers are running scared from imagined litigation from people they choose not to name. SaskTel finds itself in the position of making legal decisions regarding free speech which it is not SaskTel's job to make. We repeat: injusticebusters! are responsible citizens who do not defame anyone. To name a policeman and accurately report what he has done is not to defame him. What about revealing the name of an undercover cop? Would he or she be defamed if we did that? No. He/she would be put back in uniform because he/she didn't do her job. To inform the public of dangerous sex offenders amongst us, whom the police have refused to arrest and charge for reasons to do with their own "policy" is not to defame anyone, either. For a couple hours inJustice Busters' site has had certain names blocked out. After careful reflection we have decided that to continue to do so would be to give in to the playground bullies, just as local media has done before us. So we're back. SaskTel should stop playing Big Daddy and stand up for inJustice Busters' right to tell the truth in a shameful story. The truth is not defamatory. A reputation is worthless if it is based on lies! injusticebusters! believe that SaskTel has violated our section 2(b) freedoms in ordering us to make changes to our website. We intend to take whatever civil action is necessary to receive a remedy for this violation of our constitutional rights. |
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StarPhoenix, Sat. July 25, 1998 carries a small report on page 4 about Darrel Keith Kaye who was held for a week in a Regina jail on murder charges before the Crown decided they had the wrong man. "You just feel helpless," Kaye is quoted as saying. It brought up the David Milgaard case and the Marshall case." Kaye is the most recent in a string of people falsely held on serious charges and then released with little fanfare. See May 10, 1999 settlement story |
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Richard Quinney says: ". . .if you are acquitted or the charge is stayed or withdrawn, you are deemed innocent. You should go right back to the same position you were in prior to the charges being laid. . ." What are 23 years of a person's life worth? What is a week worth? Is Darrel Keith Kaye right back in the same position he was in before the police charged him with murder on false evidence that they didn't even bother to check out? Is David Milgaard? |
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injusticebusters! ask: Who is going to stop the cops in Saskatchewan from routinely arresting innocent people and holding them on serious charges? When is the StarPhoenix going to recognize a front page story and write it? |
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* List: freespeech-interest@freespeech.com The person below had his ISP shut down his site and kick him
off their service for good. No porn, My ISP shut the site down for political reasons...they also
cancelled my account without http://freeweb.pdq.net/danno the link above is the new home of the Boycott P.S. It was located at: http://web.wt.net/~stidham/, And they do have an e-mail address on the main |
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also check out the forums on freespeech.com They are set up for more interactice communication.
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