Thursday 2 August 2007

outrageous

This is just outrageous. Making the police accountable to the judiciary and to the law itself is an important element of a free democracy. If as the article suggests the government is claiming, there is a problem with the judiciary leaking information about operations, then surely that is criminal activity and needs to be dealt with as such. The checks and balances in the system have to be respected and maintained. The solution is not, however, to remove those checks and balances. We covered all this 60 years ago, for goodness' sake.

3 comments:

krowwolf said...

Unbelievable! I feel somewhat better having vented to my local member (Michael Johnson, Lib for Ryan)

Keith Duddy said...

To act as devil's advocate for a minute: The checks and balances are still there in so far as the warrants for these kinds of searches still have to be issued by a magistrate, and police still need to provide grounds for the search. It's not that they can just break in and search with no justification and no warrant.

On the other hand... the bot about "which also give federal police the right to monitor communications equipment without an interceptions warrant" is clearly without an appropriate check.

|<

Jim said...

Is that true? The article claims:

"The warrant is to be issued by the head of a police service or security agency without the approval of a judicial officer."