CYFSwatch

Blogger in court over suppression
NZPA

A blogger says his arrest on charges of breaching court suppression orders has seen a huge increase on hits on his site.

Cameron Slater , who writes the Whale Oil blog, reappeared in Auckland District Court today facing five charges relating to allegations he published information which could lead to the identification of two people with name suppression.

They related to his posting of pictorial clues identifying the individuals in two sex offence cases. One involved an Olympic Games competitor and another a well-known entertainer.

Slater said he would defend the charges.

The public wanted an ending to most name suppressions, he said.

“I’d say about one percent of cases deserve name suppression, and that’s those involving sex crimes against minors, so that the victims are not identified,” he said.

Slater said the charges had made his blog popular at a time when internet traffic normally slowed.

“Until police charged me my traffic would have been lower than a provincial newspaper on a Sunday,” he said outside court.

“But on Christmas Day, which is normally the quietest day of the year, I had about 20,000 hits, which was about five times the traffic of (fellow blogger) David Farrar.”

Slater said his legal team had about 16 potential defences to the charge.

He said one was potentially that his blog was hosted in the United States, not New Zealand.

In the past newspapers published overseas have been able to publish the names of people who had name suppression granted in New Zealand.

Slater will next appear in the Auckland District Court on Janaury 19.

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Hey Slater…. you’re going down sucker… why? Because even though your site is hosted in the USA… YOU are NOT… and YOU published the stories so YOU are liable… SUCKER.

Why do you think this site has a person based in PERTH, Australia to send stories we want published if the legal need ever arises?

And Slater, 20,000 hits? They went to the site to see if the stories where you broke the law could still be seen… they couldn’t care about a twat like you, they couldn’t even care less about your site…. they just went to see if they could find out the names of the people you published and in so doing, broke the law.

So its NOT because your site is popular, or that you are popular, its not that at all, its human nature to learn things decent people wont tell them… if we had broken the law then this site, or one of the many other sites out there could also have had the hits.

But when it comes to suppression orders, we play ball because we do not presume to determine guilt or innocence… these people have only been CHARGED with a crime, they may well be innocent, and that is a situation where YOU cannot play Judge or Jury even if you DO want to play executioner.

Lets say in the unlikely event that a Judge agreed with you and you got off this charge, and you posted whatever to identify these people… and then they were found innocent… YOU could be sued for millions…..

This is why we have Courts of law, Cameron, so Judges and Juries who hear ALL the evidence can determine innocence or guilt…. a jerkoff like you who only cares about the number of hits his site has is NOT the place to decide that…

This is why the Judge will throw the book at you, Cameron, you have placed yourself ABOVE the law… and guess what… the Judge will take a very dim view of that.

I reckon there’s a 99.9% chance of you being found guilty… and a 10% chance that you are sentenced to prison time for contempt or Court….

I wonder if you will apply for name suppression???? HA HA HA HA!