‘Amnesty slams ‘shocking’ Indigenous conditions’

Key Excerpt:

(Amnesty International) Secretary-general Salil Shetty on Saturday toured remote towns in the Northern Territory, including Utopian communities north-east of Alice Springs.

He described the plight of locals as “devastating”, saying people there are living in inhumane conditions that are almost third-world.

“I’ve been to many places in bad shape in Africa, Asia and Latin America, but what makes it stark here is when you remind yourself you’re actually in one of the richest countries in the world,” he said.

“I can’t believe I’m actually in one the richest countries in the world and you have people, Aboriginal communities here who are living in conditions which are really almost inhumane,” he said.

A two-bedroom house he saw had 15 people living in it; others had no toilets or showers. Some had been without electricity and water for months.

Mr Shetty says the Federal Government is contravening its human rights obligations.

He says the community has been stripped of funds that provide basic services, including running water, electricity, and hygiene services.

‘Think Again: War’ (Foreign Policy, 7 October 2011)

The author of the article is Joshua Goldstein.  He is an professor emeritus of international relations at American University and author of Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.  In the article, he goes through six commonly held assumptions about global conflicts, and critically re-evaluates.  Students are encouraged to go through the flow of argument, and use them to challenge what you might have learnt in textbooks and from teachers.  Alternatively, you may set out to argue some of the relevant points by Goldstein.

But remember, develop a critical approach to legal studies essays is the key to exam performance.

“Cyber Harassment and Women’s Rights“

[Excerpt]

My life has not quite been the same since 2nd Nov 2010. A person whom I helped in real life decided to destroy my life by posting my personal details bearing my name, age, ethnic group, work and mobile phone numbers, workplace and home address in an online ad as a teacher in Singapore advertising for sexual services.

This person (for the sake of convenience, I shall call him the impersonator) also stole pictures of me from a friend’s Facebook photo album and posted it along with my personal particulars these online ads which were placed in local classified online ad websites as well as on international pornographic sites. He also created a fake Facebook profile on me bearing my name.

He impersonated me online and chatted with men and had them to call and visit my school where I teach and my residence to “indulge in rape fantasies in my school toilets.” He also incited men “catch me by surprise at my home and school.”

What has been rather shocking is the attitude of the Singaporean law enforcement authorities to her complaints.

From my experience with cyber harassment, it is very frustrating when ever I articulated my fears to the authorities about me (or my female pupils) being sexually attacked as these fears were dismissed as “just talk by cowards hiding behind the cloak of the internet” , or when they dismissed the perpetrator as “ a juvenile delinquent or mischief-maker”. I was made to feel that I was making a mountain out of a molehill despite receiving numerous rape threats bordering on the hundreds and visitation by men at my home for “sexual services’ who wanted to “catch me by surprise” by either “hid[ing] in my school toilet to rape me and my female students as instructed by [me]” or “wait[ing] at my flat’s void deck to rape me.”

So the cavalier attitude adopted by the law enforcement agencies in regards to my case of cyber harassment only demonstrated to me this: Cyber harassment is gender discrimination as women in my country need to tolerate these cyber “pranks”. Despite the identity of the perpetrator known to the authorities and the fact that he admitted to creating the ad and impersonating me, he is still out there and free to send even more men to my home and workplace to “indulge in [my] rape fantasies.”

I get the impression that the authorities will only take action when I do eventually get raped by one of these men sent by the perpetrator or when one of my female pupils gets raped. Even then, the perpetrator might walk free as the rape might be committed by the “minions of sexually frustrated men or perverts” whom he incited to visit me.

The law enforcement officer in charge of cybercrime have also advised her that “law in Singapore has not evolved to deal with cases like this.”  This turns out to be a rather strange statement, because as my friend found out, there are actually quite a few laws in Singapore that appear to deal with cyber-sexual harassment, such as the Indian Penal Code and the Computer Misuse Act.  Infringement of the latter legislation in Singapore carries a maximum of two years imprisonment.

Perhaps it is closer to the truth to suggest that law enforcement authorities in Singapore have not quite caught up with the law.  Not an unusual situation in many developing countries, but one would have expected better from Singapore.  If this has happened in Australia, the media would have pounced on it, and the relevant minster would front out to the camera and face some tough questions.  I am not familiar with the role of the Singaporean media in Singaporean society, but this is where a robust media can play a vital role in a civil society.

I will comment further about this, because this might not be easy to comprehend for senior Legal Studies students.  I will also post a paragraph illustrating how to integrate this kind of media report discussion into a crime essay.

One of the beauty of studying ‘Individual and Technology’ is the regular occurrence of potential legal landmark cases.  This is one of them.

More later …

‘Calls for law reform after girl sold for sex’ (ABC News, 29 September 2010)

The case involved the girl whose mother and a man named Gary Devine advertised her in the local paper as being an 18-year-old prostitute.

They have been jailed for 10 years for their crimes.

More than 100 people raped the girl in Hobart last year but the Director of Public Prosecutions has told police he does not have enough admissible evidence to take all of the men to court.

Convicting the two adult guardians is straight forward.  But there are also more than 100 people who could be convicted of statutory rape of this under-aged girl.  Convicting them has proven to be a lot harder.  This is because many of them proclaimed ignorance of the girl’s actual age and the prosecution has found it hard to prove otherwise.  This has lead to calls for legal reform whereby in statutory rape case, the onus would be on the defendants to show that they are ignorant of the victim’s actual age.  Professor Caroline Taylor from Edith Cowan University is one of those who call for reform.

Professor Taylor says in underage sex cases the onus of proof must be identified by the Crown.  This means that in rape cases in which age is an issue, perpetrators can claim ignorance…

“What it means is we have unworkable laws that fail to protect children. We have a legal system that acknowledges that it traumatises children and therefore the loser in every case is children.”

Professor Taylor says the law should be reformed so the onus is on the defendant to prove he or she believed the child was older.

‘Defamation by algorithm: Google found guilty of libel through ‘suggest’ search function’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2010)

Internet giant Google and its chief executive Eric Schmidt have been convicted of defaming a Frenchman through its “suggest” search function.

The man, who was not identified for legal reasons, sued Google, claiming the words “rapist”, “rape”, “prison” and “satanist” were suggested when his name was typed into the company’s web search portal, a French legal website revealed…

Google argued it was not liable for the defamation, as it used algorithms that reflected the most common terms used in the past with words that were entered, and so did not involve Google making the suggestions itself.

First of all, you should note that the journalist here has confused legal terminologies.  Since this is a civil lawsuit, words like ‘convicted’ should not have been used.  Really, it should be ‘Google has been found liable for defamation’.  A minor point, but perhaps it is helpful that note that even journalists can make simple mistakes more commonly seen among senior legal studies students.

Back to the main point of this blog, which is all about legal history.  A particular Frenchman’s name was unfortunately linked with incriminating words like ‘rape’ and ‘satanists’.  Google claimed that this is the result of their search engine algorithm.  I.e. they never set out to associate his name with those words in the search result.  The French court has ruled in the plaintiff’s favour.  First of all, how did this happen in the first place?

How does Google work?

Google became leader in the search engine market through its patented search engine algorithm.  It is done by clusters of computers checking and ranking search results.  The search engine algorithm does this with no sense of commercial, political or personal bias and the company is not in the business of producing search results that show such biases.  However, there have been exceptions in the past.

In January, Google agreed to take down links to a website that promoted racist views of indigenous Australians.  (Google) took the decision to remove the link from its search engine after an indigenous Australian man took legal action against the company and an official complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission was filed.

Since the parties to this case reached an out of court settlement, it did not set any legal precedent. In the case of this Frenchman, he actually was found guilty of rape, but he is appealing against the verdict, and in French law that means he is still considered innocent until proven guilty by a court of appeal.  However, this case was already discussed on the online media and chatroom.  Therefore it is no surprise that the plaintiff’s name was associated by Google search engine with words like ‘rapists’.  Despite the fact that the French court found the case in favour of the plaintiff, the damages imposed on Google is not all that substantial.

But a Paris court found this month that the technology company was guilty of the “public slandering of a private individual”.

It ordered Google to pay a symbolic amount of 1 euro ($1.40) in damages and to make sure the offence would not be repeated.

The court also found Google did not show good faith in the matter and ordered it to pay 5000 euros towards the plaintiff’s costs.

5001 euros is of no financial significance to one of the largest companies in the world.  However, it is of legal and operational significance, since this could affect how Google uses its patented technology to produce accurate search results.  Unsurprisingly, Google is appealing this verdict.  The E-commerce world is no doubt watching this case’s development with keen interests.

Brainstorm:

• The past … one paragraph … very general
• Divide the essay into areas where excellent progress has been made and areas where progress still needs to be made …
• Marriage … Family Law Act 1975
• Right to vote …
• Right to teritary and equal education …
• Jury duty …
• Right to own property …
• Domestic violence
• Discrimination in workplace  – article about pregnancy discrimination
• Make the point about lack of access for migrant women
• Promotion – problem of glass ceiling

Costa looks at new law to stop inmates having Facebook profiles (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 September 2010)

The state government has refused to rule out introducing legislation that would ban Facebook profiles being created on behalf of NSW prisoners.  The Corrective Services Minister, Phil Costa, said he would seek to have prisoners’ profiles removed from Facebook after revelations in the Herald that inmates of SuperMax, where the worst criminals are kept, have a presence on the social media website.

Family and friends are believed to manage the profiles, helping inmates to stay in touch with the outside world.

However, this is perhaps where legal means of addressing legal issues arising from cyberspace might falter.  A more effective approach might be non-legal, involving establishing a cooperative relationship between facebook and governmental authorities.

David Vaile, the executive director of the cyberspace law and policy centre at the University of NSW, said the government should establish a working relationship with online services such as Facebook.

Such relationships would be more effective than a new law in removing offensive or inappropriate material. ”The way you put pressure on companies that you don’t have direct legal power over is by having a good relationship … and by being seen as measured and reasonable and only asking them to deal with the most extreme matters,” he said.