1. Fuck.  I am not really angry so much as just really, really irritated at how inconvenient this is.
2. It took me a whole day to do the soldering to get that God-damned Mitsubishi wiring (which was devised by a Japanese mad scientist in the dying days of World War II as a way of exacting revenge against America) to match up with the wiring on that CD player.
3. Actually on some sick consumerist level I am secretly enjoying the silver lining of having a totally legitimate reason to purchase new consumer electronics products… maybe something which plays MP3s and has blue lights this time, probably not another Sony due to their worldwide campaign of pure evil.  What is wrong with me?  Am I happy my car got broken into?
4. Fuck! They forced the passenger lock with a screwdriver or something.  I am not happy that my car got broken into.  20 year old Mitsubishi car locks are not a fun consumerist item which I am gagging to purchase.  How the hell do you even get something like that fixed?  I am having unpleasant visions of arguing with some authorised Mitsubishi representative about the cost of official Mitsubishi parts carved from a single piece of whale ivory using ancient and secret techniques and then shipped by carrier pigeon from Hokkaido to Adelaide.
5. I realise criminals target older (and therefore cheaper) cars because they are easier to break into, but don’t they realise that by doing this instead of breaking into BMWs they are effectively balkanising their own side in the Great Class War by attacking those who are more likely to sympathise with their plight (if any) (on the possibly flawed assumptions that poverty->crime and owning a cheap car->more sympathy for the downtrodden and poverty stricken).
6. Whoever has my stereo now probably needs it more than me.
7. Re #6, fuck that, that’s why I pay half my wages in tax, people who probably need my stereo more than me already get a sizeable chunk of my money because they probably need it more than me.
8. My stereo should at least be tax deductible if they’re going to have that too.
9. Actually they probably don’t get my tax because John Howard and Chairman Rudd have decided that middle class idiots who have too many children need my money more than the poor and needy or me.  Really, Howard and Rudd stole my stereo with their blatant vote-buying and flawed middle class welfare state policies.  Plus Howard would probably steal it anyway
10. I hope that family with a better house than me and two incomes and a four wheel drive and five snot nosed kids living in Rose Park are enjoying my tax money while I use my remaining take home pay to replace my stolen stereo.
    

    Farewell, CDX-L280, may you and the new Muse album you carry within you bring joy to a bona fide puchaser without notice somewhere.

11. I can’t believe they had the poor taste to leave some of these albums behind.  Look, they didn’t even steal London Calling, fucking idiots.  Fuck, they did take my new Muse album which was in the player.  This is just like the time all my old REM tapes were stolen from my Gemini.  I miss my Gemini.
12. Let’s check… yes, despite prising open every other container/drawer/door in the vehicle, the genius individual who did this failed to open the one drawer which actually did contain real money.  Joke’s on you, this $5.75 in loose change is testament to your life of failure and poor decision making.  You could have bought a discount packet of donuts and an iced coffee at Coles with this change instead of risking your life down at the docks hawking my CD player to the triads.
13. Who the hell actually buys a stolen 4 year old car stereo in this country anyway?  A new one is like, $100, why would you buy an old one?  If I wanted to buy one, where would I even go?  Is my stereo going to be shipped to the Ukraine and sold there?
14. Does the fact that when I visualise the person who did this (let’s call him Phil) I see Phil as either a drug-addicted, 35 year old white guy or a somali teenager wearing a Fubu shirt mean that The Advertiser has succeeded in its mission to turn me into fearful, xenophobic white trash after all, or am I just being realistic about demographics and crime?
15. Do many upper class, non-drug-addicted Scottish females break into cars in their spare time?  Probably not.  Or they just don’t get caught.
16. Does my car smell?  No (well, no more than it used to).  That’s good.
17. Actually Phil was pretty neat and tidy when I look at it.  He even moved the section of the dashboard holding the stereo to the back seat and appears to have been reasonably careful in unscrewing it to get the CD player out.  Who the hell is nice enough to not totally fuck up the interior of your car but nasty enough to break into it in the first place?  Is this some kind of weird car stereo thieves’ honour code?  Is Phil the Scarlet Pimpernel of car vandals?
18. Do I even bother to call the cops?  Will they be able to take the time out from issuing huge fines to people driving 2km/h over the speed limit and harassing innocent people in the CBD to deal with an actual crime?  Will they, instead of doing anything productive, merely lecture me about how I should have taken the faceplate off my stereo/not parked my car where it was/[some other variant where it's all my fault that someone stole my stuff]?  Yes, yes they will.
19. Is my decision not to have comprehensive insurance now looking stupid?
20. Re #19, no, not really, considering that would cost me $1000/year or something ridiculous, this is the first such incident in 5 years, and this is highly unlikely to cost me more than $5000 given that my car is probably only worth $5000 total.
21. Re #18, what does it say about my levels of cynicism and mistrust of the police (or about the police themselves) that my instinct when robbed is not to call the police?
22. Am I zen/Jesus enough to wish Phil all the best despite his crime?  After all I can afford a new stereo and Phil probably has a pretty fucked up life.
23. No, I am not.  I still hope Phil slips over on the way to Cash Converters and breaks his arm.  But cleanly, and only in one place.  If he does it again we’ll move to compound fractures.
24. I find that despite this experience I am not driven to demand “tougher sentences” or harsh new laws to deal with criminals or mandatory brain monitoring chips to weed out the potential car stereo thieves lurking in our midst.  My respect for suburban conservative windbags has dropped another notch as a result.

Despite the fact that (a) the laws have nothing to do with bikies per se and can be applied to virtually any organisation in an unreviewable and arbitrary manner and (b) the fact that there is no evidence so far that they actually work at all, and indeed evidence that laws like this don’t work, it seems the South Australian government now well and truly has the bit between its teeth.

Today the SA Police Commissioner has indicated that there are more laws on the way which assume guilt and require the accused witch and/or bikie to prove his or her innocence. It sounds like these ones will be based on prior convictions, whereby a person who has “unexplained” assets and has previously been convicted of a criminal offence will be liable to have those assets seized unless they can prove how they came by them.

You need to look at seizing their assets; we’re looking at new laws, one of them is about unexplained wealth, where you don’t have to prove the connection with committing crime, where you’ve got somebody with a criminal history and they have a certain amount of assets and no known income,

Commissioner Mal Hyde tells us.  He goes on to explain that:

…it should be up to them to show that it has been legitimately acquired and, if not, then it should be able to be seized, so that’s one of the new pieces of legislation being considered

Now, based on Mal’s offhand remarks, I’m guessing that Magna Carta and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aren’t part of the SA Police basic training program, but here are some tips, Mal:

• Article 17 of the Universal Declaration states that “(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others” and “(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”  If you are wondering, Mal, the Universal Declaration is an international document setting out the commonly agreed basic rights to which all humans are entitled.  For the avoidance of doubt, people who ride motorbikes, criminals, and Commissioners of Police are all examples of “humans”.
• Magna Carta, Mal, although of mostly symbolic relevance today in that it underpins the common law and many of the basic premises of liberal democracy, clearly pointed out in its 1297 iteration that it’s not ok for the police to roll around seizing stuff from people they don’t like the looks of: “No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take the corn or other chattels of any one except he straightway give money for them, or can be allowed a respite in that regard by the will of the seller. “
• Magna Carta also pointed out a few home truths about the problems which arise when arbitrary executive decisions replace due process: “No bailiff, on his own simple assertion, shall henceforth any one to his law, without producing faithful witnesses in evidence. “
• And of course, Magna Carta 1297 (did I mention that it is “widely regarded as one of the most important documents in the history of democracy” according to the UK National Archives, Mal?) stated more fundamentally that “NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs…”

So, to summarize, because we don’t like organised crime (and despite what various members of the SA Government would say in light of the foregoing, I don’t like it either), we propose to abandon wholesale:

• the presumption of innocence (again);
• the notion that no-one will be deprived of property without due process of law;
• the crazy idea that the state actually prove that someone acquired something illegally before it is taken from them by force of law; and
• the notion that it should not be within the power of law enforcement to arbitrarily seize and retain assets.

This goes along with those things we have already abandoned:

• freedom of association;
• presumption of innocence more generally and the notion that actual evidence is generally required before personal freedoms are interfered with;
• the idea that if rights and freedoms should ever be interfered with by a law, it should be with maximum oversight and to the smallest extent possible to achieve the objective of the law in question.

Greg Barns helpfully summarises the effect of SA’s current anti-association laws as follows:

The new law gives the Attorney-General the right to call an organisation, which could be anything from an informal group of people who meet at the local pub for a weekly drink through to a football club or a business, a declared organisation. The Attorney-General just has to be satisfied that he thinks that members of the organisation associate for the purpose of planning, organising, facilitating or engaging in serious criminal activity-which is basically anything except traffic offences-and that the organisation represents a risk to public safety and order. The Attorney-General can use secret and untested evidence in making that declaration, and his decision can’t be challenged in the courts.

The Commissioner of Police can ask a court to make a Control Order against a person if that person is a member of a declared organisation, or regularly associates with members of the declared organisation. A Control Order may be issued by a court without giving any notice to the person affected and the Order can stop people from even speaking with members of a declared organisation or going anywhere near where members might happen to be. Once again, these Orders can be made on secret evidence that the person affected cannot see.

And if a friend of yours is subject to a Control Order or is a member of a Declared Organisation and you meet with them six times or more in one year you can go to jail for up to five years.

And finally, the icing on the cake. The SA police have the power to make a Public Safety Order if they are satisfied that a person or a group of people pose a serious risk to public safety or security.

Even if a person or a group is gathered somewhere for a protest rally or a strike action, the police can still make a Public Safety Order and have them removed from the area. These Orders can even be made on the spot, verbally, by the police.

I looked at the Act back in early 2008 when it was still a bill.  And of course I’ve mentioned before that this same benevolent SA Government is the one which is spying on random ‘citizens of interest’ for no known reason.

No doubt these new laws will be tailored to address the particular problem with the same level of care and attention to detail as the current SA “bikie” laws, i.e. none.  Although of course, by some strange quirk the legislation will be inapplicable to current and former politicians and high profile business people.

In essence, it can be said that:

• no superior or appellate court has expressly accepted the existence of a tort of invasion of privacy in Australia;
• it is nevertheless at least arguable that such a tort exists, and claims based on a freestanding tort have already met with some success in inferior courts; and
• if such a tort does exist, its elements insofar as they may be discerned appear to be:
  • that there be an intentional or (perhaps) reckless act by a defendant;
  • that the defendant in some way interferes with matters which would ordinarily be regarded as “private” to the plaintiff (although an enumeration of those matters is not at all simple);
  • that the effect of the conduct, or the conduct itself, be such that a reasonable person would consider it highly offensive (or, alternatively, that the conduct be “serious”); and
  • (possibly) that the plaintiff has suffered harm (including mental harm) as a result.

The High Court’s ‘Invitation’

In Australian Broadcasting Corporation v Lenah Game Meats Pty Ltd (2001) 208 CLR 199 the High Court invited speculation about whether a specific tort of invasion of privacy was emerging in Australia.  At present, the great weight of authority suggests that there is no such tort – in principle, if the observation, recording or publication of things said or done in private is not caught by defamation, breach of confidence, or legislation such as section 5 of the Listening Devices Act 1992 (Cth).

In Lenah Game Meats Chief Justice Gleeson felt that breach of confidence was sufficient to control the publication of film of private matters obtained by the use of hidden cameras (at [39]):

If the activities filmed were private, then the law of breach of confidence is adequate to cover the case. I would regard images and sounds of private activities, recorded by the methods employed in the present case, as confidential. There would be an obligation of confidence upon the persons who obtained them, and upon those into whose possession they came, if they knew, or ought to have known, the manner in which they were obtained.

In Lenah Game Meats the Chief Justice observed that there is a danger in establishing a “right” to privacy in a country like Australia where we lack any positive right to free speech, and that there is great difficulty in drawing a line between what it “private” and what is not (at [42]):

There is no bright line which can be drawn between what is private and what is not. Use of the term “public” is often a convenient method of contrast, but there is a large area in between what is necessarily public and what is necessarily private. An activity is not private simply because it is not done in public. It does not suffice to make an act private that, because it occurs on private property, it has such measure of protection from the public gaze as the characteristics of the property, the nature of the activity, the locality, and the disposition of the property owner combine to afford. Certain kinds of information about a person, such as information relating to health, personal relationships, or finances, may be easy to identify as private; as may certain kinds of activity, which a reasonable person, applying contemporary standards of morals and behaviour, would understand to be meant to be unobserved. The requirement that disclosure or observation of information or conduct would be highly offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities is in many circumstances a useful practical test of what is private.

The “practical test” suggested by his Honour appears to be an element of the proposed tort of privacy, that is, whether the disclosure of observation in question would be “highly offensive” to a reasonable person.

Justices Gummow and Hayne made much more encouraging noises with respect to the development of a tort of invasion of privacy insofar as it would be actionable by a natural person (rather than a corporation) (at [132]):

Whatever development may take place in that field will be to the benefit of natural, not artificial, persons. It may be that development is best achieved by looking across the range of already established legal and equitable wrongs. On the other hand, in some respects these may be seen as representing species of a genus, being a principle protecting the interests of the individual in leading, to some reasonable extent, a secluded and private life, in the words of the Restatement, “free from the prying eyes, ears and publications of others.” Nothing said in these reasons should be understood as foreclosing any such debate or as indicating any particular outcome.

Justices Callinan and Kirby also appeared to countenance the possibility that a private tort exists.  More recently, in Batistatos v  Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales (2006) 226 CLR 256 Callinan J remarked on the effect of Lenah Game Meats on the development of a tort of privacy, suggesting that the case had not positively established any new cause of action (although again leaving that possibility open) (at [216]):

I took the view in Australian Broadcasting Corporation v Lenah Game Meats Pty Ltd that the time was ripe for the consideration at least of the recognition by the law of a cause of action for invasion of privacy. In view of the fact that my opinion was only a dissenting one, it is difficult to see how an advocate in New South Wales could seek to bring this matter before the courts now even though the law is moving in that direction in the United Kingdom

The Limited Scope of Breach of Confidence

It must be doubted whether the law of breach of confidence can adequately protect what is normally regarded as “privacy”.  Breach of confidence is founded in equity, and relies on the following elements before an action may be brought:

• there must be specific information identified which is said to be subject to an obligation of confidence;
• the information must not be common or public knowledge;
• the information must be received in circumstances which import an ‘obligation of confidence’; and
• there must be actual or threatened ‘misuse’ of the information without consent.

(see Smith Kline & French Laboratories (Australia) Ltd v Secretary, Department of Community Services and Health (1990) 17 IPR 545).

The equitable nature of the action also potentially limits the remedies which is provides: “[t]he plaintiff comes to equity to vindicate his right to observance of the obligation, not necessarily to recover loss or to restrain infliction of apprehended loss”, as Gummow J explained in Smith Kline & French Laboratories.  In other words, equity will more readily restrain a breach of an obligation than it will provide damages as a result of such a breach.

It can be seen that breach of confidence may not be sufficient to protect a private litigant from everything which might be called an ‘invasion of privacy’: the action may be too narrow and focused on specific obligations arising out of a relationship,and the remedies available may be weak by common law standards (although see the discussion of Giller, below).

Subsequent Consideration

Other cases have since considered whether there is, indeed, a tort of privacy in Australia.

In Giller v Procopets [2008] VSCA the Victorian Court of Appeal appeared to the possibility of a claim based on a specific tort of privacy, and instead considered that a claim founded on breach of confidence provided an adequate remedy.  In that case a husband had threatened to publish to third parties a video recording of sexual activity between himself and his wife.

By restricting the plaintiff to breach of confidence, the Court of Appeal was forced to grapple with significant questions of the scope of equitable compensation for purely mental harm:

No Australian authority was cited at trial or on appeal to support the proposition that, in the context now under discussion, equitable compensation or equitable damages [...] can be awarded for mental distress alone. It was submitted at trial, however, and reiterated in this Court, that English authorities support the view that a monetary remedy is available for distress occasioned by breach of the equitable obligation of confidence.

Ashley JA felt that the case fell within the principles set out in Lenah Game Meats:

In the present case, a claim founded in breach of confidence was, as I have concluded, available to the appellant. It conferred upon her an entitlement to equitable compensation. This case, like Lenah, is therefore one in which it is unnecessary to consider whether a generalised tort of invasion of privacy should be recognised. It is also an instance of the way in which the law has otherwise developed to address a particular situation. That may provide a good reason why, if a tort of invasion of privacy did come to be recognised, it would not extend to a case of the present kind.

Ultimately, the Court appeared to favour the expansion of the remedies available in respect of a breach of confidence over any specific tort of privacy (per Neave JA at [423]):

Equitable remedies such as injunctions are available to prevent publication of confidential material because of its private nature. It is unnecessary in such applications to show that, if unrestrained, the breach of confidence will cause financial loss or psychiatric injury. By parity of reasoning there should be no barrier to the making of an order for equitable compensation to compensate a claimant for the embarrassment or distress she has suffered as the result of a breach of an equitable duty of confidence which has already occurred.

Neave JA indicated (at [423]-[424]) that this conclusion should follow, if for no other reason than that “to refuse would indicate that something was wrong with the law.”

In Kalaba v Commonwealth of Australia [2004] FCA 763 Heerey J also felt that the law had not developed to a point where it could validly be said that there was a freestanding tort of invasion of privacy: at [6].

In contrast to the foregoing, in Grosse v Purvis [2003] QDC 151 the District Court of Queensland held that there is a tort of privacy, and upheld the plaintiff’s claim on that basis.  The elements of the tort were said by Senior Judge Skoien to be:

(a) a willed act by the defendant,

(b) which intrudes upon the privacy or seclusion of the plaintiff,

(c) in a manner which would be considered highly offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities,

(d) and which causes the plaintiff detriment in the form of mental psychological or emotional harm or distress or which prevents or hinders the plaintiff from doing an act which she is lawfully entitled to do.

It can be seen that element (c) above picks up on Gleeson CJ’s test as to the distinction between an act which is “private” and that which is not.  Element (d) addresses the difficulties grappled with by the Victorian Court of Appeal with respect to the remedies available for breach of confidence.

In Doe v ABC [2007] VCC 281, Judge Hampel found that there was an actionable tort of invasion of privacy in Australia.  Her Honour was of the view that the tort had already been established, even if it had not yet been applied:

If the mere fact that a court has not yet applied the developing jurisprudence to the facts of a particular case operates as a bar to its recognition, the capacity of the common law to develop new causes of action, or to adapt existing ones to contemporary values or circumstances is stultified. Lenah Game Meats, and the UK cases … in particular those decided since Lenah Game Meats, demonstrate a rapidly growing trend towards recognition of privacy as a right in itself deserving of protection.

Judge Hampel found the defendant liable both for a breach of the tort of invasion of privacy and breach of confidence.  Rather than enumerating the elements of the tort, she chose to explain the conclusion that the defendant was liable thus (at [163]-[164]):

The wrong that was done here was the publication of personal information, in circumstances where there was no public interest in publishing it, and where there was a prohibition on its publication. In publishing the information, the defendants failed to exercise the care which could be reasonably required of them to protect the plaintiff’s privacy and comply with the prohibition on publication imposed by s.4(1A). This, coupled with the absence of public interest, the clearly private nature of the information, and the prohibition on publication, all point to the publication being unjustified. In my view, a formulation of unjustified, rather than wilful, in these circumstances provides a fair balance between freedom of speech and the protection of privacy. For the reasons I have already canvassed when considering breach of confidence, the information is personal or confidential information which the plaintiff had a reasonable expectation would remain private, and clearly private. Its disclosure was plainly something which an individual was entitled to decide for herself.

I find therefore the defendants breached the plaintiff’s privacy by the unjustified publication of personal information, and are liable in damages as a result.

This explanation clearly invites the conclusion that there may be a defence of “public interest” or, more broadly, justification, available to a defendant to a claim based on invasion of privacy.

The ALRC’s Recommendation for a Statutory Cause of Action

The Australian Law Reform Commission in 2008 recommended that a statutory cause of action be established to protect personal privacy from serious invasion.  The ALRC appeared to emphasise that any invasion should be “serious” before it becomes actionable.  In summary, the Commission recommended that:

Federal legislation should provide for a statutory cause of action for a serious invasion of privacy. The Act should contain a non-exhaustive list of the types of invasion that fall within the cause of action. For example, a serious invasion of privacy may occur where:

(a) there has been an interference with an individual’s home or family life;

(b) an individual has been subjected to unauthorised surveillance;

(c) an individual’s correspondence or private written, oral or electronic communication has been interfered with, misused or disclosed; or

(d) sensitive facts relating to an individual’s private life have been disclosed.

In addition, the Commission recommended that a plaintiff be required to show that:

(a) there is a reasonable expectation of privacy; and

(b) the act or conduct complained of is highly offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities

before a claim can succeed.

So why do we persist in calling trade agreements with countries that lack basic labour and environmental standards “free” trade agreements?

Prediction 1: in 20 years we will look back and wonder why the hell we didn’t realise that we were trading the basic modern standards we have fought for for and developed over the last century or so for cheaper goods and services in the short term.

Things are only “cheaper” to make in these countries in instant dollar terms – the actual costs are borne by the workers there who suffer extraordinarily poor conditions, the workers here who lose their jobs or have their conditions eroded in the name of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’, and by all of us who live in a degraded and polluted environment thanks to outsourcing our productive industries to countries with poor environmental standards.

Prediction 2: at some point in the future, the notion of ‘protectionism’ will be revised to permit the imposition of tariffs on countries whose standards fall significantly below our own in order to defend those standards in our own country and remove the economic incentive to exploit labour and destroy the environment.  It will be recognised that there is a distinction between using trade barriers to protect inefficient industries and using trade barriers to protect legitimate human rights and environmental standards.

As Robert A Heinlein put it, TANSTAAFL (“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”, a theme in Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

EULAs are somewhat obnoxious from a consumer perspective in that they are non-negotiable, usually highly technical and long, and leave a consumer who does not agree to the terms in a difficult position as to whether or not they can return the software for a refund (assuming they’ve paid for it) – most retailers won’t accept software which has been opened due to piracy concerns.  In the U.S. shrink/click-wrap agreements have been upheld as being valid, although some caution has been expressed as to whether such agreements are enforceable if there is no opportunity to obtain a refund by returning the software.

In Australia there has been minimal consideration of these types of agreements, although there appears to be no reason why they would not be enforceable.  It seems likely that the same reasoning that was applied in the ‘ticket cases’ would apply to click-wrap licences – if a reasonable effort is made to draw the terms to your attention (or at lesat the fact of the existence of the terms) and you proceed, you are likely to be bound by those terms – see e.g. Parker v South Eastern Railway (1877) 2 CPD 416 and Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Ltd [1971] 2 QB 163 (the ticket cases involve terms and conditions printed on train tickets, parking tickets etc).

But what happens if you get your cat to execute a ‘click-through’ licence agreement?  One woman, Anne Loucks, decided to find out.  She has constructed an excellent cat-contract-acceptance machine whereby her cat can accept contracts by wandering onto a device placed on her keyboard.  She then arranges the device and tempts the cat into the general area with food.

Anne’s device is humorous, but it demonstrates an interesting point.  When the “meeting of the minds” (which is what a contract really is) is embodied in an action as simple as clicking a mouse, there is much greater scope for one party to argue that it did not accept the agreement.  What if an infant accepts it?  What if you are drunk when you click?  Or what if your cat accepts it for you?  If the software company wishes to enforce the agreement, it may also face difficulties in proving that you, and not some other person, clicked the magic “I Agree” box (which is, of course, one of the benefits of signatures and witnesses).  In addition, I think there are serious questions of unconscionability – if you cannot return the software no matter what, does this amount to a special disadvantage of which the software maker is taking advantage?

In this case I suspect Anne’s cat is sufficiently under her control that she would still be bound (especially as the cat will only produce one result when it walks on the keyboard, and Anne is deliberately tempting it there with food).  The ticket cases suggest that it is not strictly necessary that she read the terms, and I think that if she was aware of the fact of the existence of the terms and decided to use the software anyway, she would likely be bound by them.

Still, I’d love to see it go to court…

Corporations are hell bent on managing their own “digital rights”, so as a user you might as well stay informed so you can manage your own.  Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to take all my photos down from Facebook…

I find it very disturbing to read words put forward by Telstra which closely mirror my own views.  I wonder if I have woken up in some kind of parallel universe, or perhaps I have become a being of pure evil myself and suddenly Telstra’s views and my own coincide for that reason.  There are also odd overtones of A Christmas Carol – has the Ghost of Christmas Present touched Telstra’s cold, corporate heart by showing it the sight of Australian families weeping around their Internet bills for $12,323 in excess use charges for December?  Anyway, Telstra says, for example, that the common law alone is too ‘soft’ to support human rights and:

The more responsive but equally unsatisfactory notion of responsibility to parliaments – the slim convention of ministerial responsibility – is also no substitute for clearly articulated, enshrined, human rights protections.

The notion of ‘speaking truth to power’ usually gets applied to the courageous little guy fighting for what is right, not the hive-mind megacorporation fighting for… well, something:

The available data suggests that Australia’s human rights record does not compare overwhelmingly favourably with other countries.

There is a hint in the article linked above to Telstra’s true motivation: corporate self-interest, of course:

However, Telstra says in its submission that apart from a general concern for human rights, the company is particularly interested in values such as due process and free speech, “given the highly regulated nature of much of its business”.

In other words, Telstra realises that it is in the difficult position of being a private company which, despite privatisation, is almost entirely controlled by the political whims of the Federal Government, and it wants to have stronger positive rights to throw back at its former masters when things don’t go to suit it.  No doubt it finds the idea that every ministerial decision be subject to a raft of reviewable rights which it can then unleash its extremely high powered legal resources on is very appealing.

Realising that strong systems of due process and accountability are an effective way to achieve independence shows an unusually high degree of insight and creative thinking for such a big, slow moving organisation.  I still loathe many aspects of Telstra – case in point, the guy I saw on TV in a story about the Victorian bushfires who had just returned to his destroyed home to find nothing but his mailbox with a Telstra bill in it (one assumes that Telstra’s billing department has some manner of robotic, fire-proof suit to deliver bills in firestorms and make sure that no-one can shirk their obligations through wussy excuses like “my entire home was razed to the ground”).

But if the push for a serious set of human rights in this country gets a boost from Telstra’s considerable financial and propaganda resources that’s absolutely fine by me.  I just hope no-one mentions to it that it’s not actually human, and therefore may find it hard to take advantage of human rights…

When someone is sent to a detention centre, the company running the facility receives money from the county government to defray the cost of incarceration.

So as more children were sentenced to the detention centre, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.

Teenagers who came before Ciavarella in juvenile court often were sentenced to detention centres for minor offences that would typically have been classified as misdemeanours, according to the Juvenile Law Centre, a Philadelphia non-profit group.

This may have some connection with the fact that the U.S. has over 2.3 million of its citizens behind bars (and one in nine black men), more as a percentage than countries like Russia and China.  The fact that prosecutors and judges in some states are elected by popular vote may also contribute to that startling figure by creating an incentive for both to “vigorously” pursue and punish “wrongdoers” (i.e. put as many bad guys behind bars as possible to appease the mob without asking too many questions about the way in which it’s done).

I did like the frankness of one of the judges having been caught, however:

Your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true,” Ciavarella wrote in a letter to the court. “My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.

Perhaps he’s banking on the judge who sentences him being prepared to take his expression of remorse in giving a more lenient sentence…

And it’s the best form of discrimination too – the kind by private citizens and businesses against other private citizens, so that we can all agree that they are “free” to refuse to accept business from anyone they want in the wonderful “free” market.  Of course if they did that because a person was, say, Catholic, they’d be hauled over the coals for weeks, Inquisition-style.