Goodbye, Nanny State! Hello, Big Brother…
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The governments proposed amendments to the Criminal Investigations Act are, quite simply, chilling.
The police already have powers to store your DNA but under very strict circumstances – under Judicial allowance or after being convicted of serious offences (rape, murder and some other). The Government wishes to change that so the police will have the authority to extract and store your DNA for simply being suspected of a crime.
This idea is at ends with the New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act (BORA). The governments Attorney General, Chris Finlayson, has reported back to the government this fact and it’s looking like it’s going to be ignored, and National will ram through more legislation under urgency totally bypassing the select committee submission process once again.
This is ridiculously scary stuff. Especially since similar movements to allow police fishing expedition in the UK are now under investigation for breaching the European Bill of Rights.
3 Comments
Adam Evans
February 12th, 2009
at 10:22pm
Yeah, the power of the Attorney General to declare that a piece of legislation is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act is essentially a hollow power. They can make the declaration, but there is nothing stopping parliament from still passing the law. (Note that this is slightly different to the UK – it is my understanding that the European Convention on Human Rights is superior to and overrides UK national laws.)
This is one of the reasons why I’m in favour of a written constitution superior to regular legislation – i.e. parliament cannot override it, or at least can’t do so unless they have a 75% majority or something along those lines. I.e. similar to the United States Constitution. It will provide a basic set of inalienable rights that can’t be modified by parliament.
Brett Dale
February 14th, 2009
at 5:26pm
Personally I have no problem with the police being able to get DNA samples, if it helps to fight crime, the better.
Chris
February 15th, 2009
at 10:23am
Hi Brett, I see you made it over here from The Standard…
You personally have no problem with it because, from I’ve seen from your other comments and blog, you’re a right-wing partisan who will cheerfully eat as much bullshit as is fed to you, provided the spoon is small enough.
I’m not going to argue the actual policy with you as it’s likely to be pointless, but let me just say that if Labour had introduced this type of authoritarian, Orwellian policy we would be drowning in your (not to mention mine and most other leftie/librals) moral outrage.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Ben Franklin