All of the defenders of the policy reminds me of when Google's CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009(!) famously defended mass surveillance:
> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
If what the gov is censoring is so important then they should publicly post a list of everything they censored (Google's public DMCA list is a good example). They have nothing to hide right? If it's for the public good then the public should have the option to see what they were being protected from.
Well, we have some knowledge; we know for a fact NZ has censored the manifesto and recorded video stream of Brenton Tarrant, the guy who elaborately planned and carried out a massacre of 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch. I believe they've done the same for stuff like ISIS and other terrorist materials, but I don't know the specific details of that.
In the Tarrant case we do know: the manifesto (not too hard to find) is about equal parts polemic and roadmap/planning document. The video recording is from a helmet-mounter camera and basically looks like a first person shooter video, except that all the targets are fleeing civilians. It's not impossible for people in NZ to see these materials; academics, journalists and so on can apply for permits to obtain and possess the material. Absent that, possession is, as I understand it, a crime, but one with a very low chance of being caught. The primary intent of the law is to have a strong sanction to prevent people distributing it and inciting similar incidents in the future.
I'm not convinced that forcing the materials fully out of circulation is a foolproof preventive strategy, but it certainly creates barriers to the acquisition/ collection of such material by wannabes, and collecting this sort of material is definitely A Thing among other mass shooters, who are quite a bit more social than most people imagine and have an online community of sorts.
So the free speech argument generally goes along the lines of 'we don't know what we don't know, allowing the free flow of ideas is the only rational way to ensure freedom of life and the discovery of new ideas without inhibition.' But from NZ's point of view, they definitely don't care for a repeat or innovation in the practice of massacres, and the surviving relatives and neighbors of the dead presumably don't care to see the murder of family and friends become a an entertainment commodity or be weaponized by trolls who use the material to traumatize them further (please, let's not pretend that this doesn't happen). And they've balanced their prohibition with exceptions for serious analysis and study with a straightforward application process, albeit a subjective one that is administered by bureaucrats rather than a mechanical system.
So there's a concrete example, with come added context (sorry, it's late and I'm not at my main machine so I'm not going to dig up a pile of links/documents to flesh it out to article quality). So, should we accord any weight to those considerations, including the exceptions, and if not why not?
> It's not impossible for people in NZ to see these materials; academics, journalists and so on can apply for permits to obtain and possess the material. Absent that, possession is, as I understand it, a crime, but one with a very low chance of being caught. The primary intent of the law is to have a strong sanction to prevent people distributing it and inciting similar incidents in the future.
This is not accurate. After the incident the NZ police were demanding that websites turn over IP logs for people accessing the manifesto or video, using that to get subscriber info from ISPs, and then attempting to imprison people for up to 14 years just for mere possession of illegal information [0].
And the idea that someone would have to get a license to see that material is just fundamentally offensive to the idea of free expression and access to information. For one, anyone who does journalism is a journalist, whether they have a Twitter account or a CNN primetime show. The NZ government should butt right out of attempting to gatekeep the profession that holds them to account. There is an overwhelming public interest in the populace being able to access that material, despite its extremely horrific and offensive nature. For one, it is evidence used to convict a man for multiple murders. A fundamental principle of a fair justice system is an open court system, and that means allowing people to access and examine the court transcripts and exhibits, including the videos and documents. It was also just an extremely newsworthy event that affected millions of people in New Zealand (public policy changes) and at least hundreds of millions worldwide [1]. It's quite Orwellian to cite this as the inciting incident for restricting the right of free expression and seizing firearms, while not even letting citizens examine the evidence first-hand! That's how we end up with crazy conspiracy theories about crisis actors.
I think we should consider such arguments — but we must consider their inverse: what happens when they’re wrong or abusive?
And we’ve seen that answer during COVID: those tools will be used to silence qualified scientists engaged in civil debate by bureaucrats enforcing their preferred choice — an act of totalitarianism. That will lead to loss of life as QALY negative treatments are enforced with the might of the state.
There’s around 7,000 deaths per year in NZ (based on a quick Google) and the non-COVID death spike has averaged 10% for two years — so about 1,400 people.
Censorship then comes down to a question:
Do we prevent 28 Christchurch shootings for every COVID-style bureaucratic fuckup?
I’m against NZ’s censorship because I decide what I get to read and hear, not the government. That such laws are rarely enforced is worse, not better. It means the authorities are engaging in favoritism and possibly going after their political opponents.
> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Well great! Let's find out all the judgements of the secret courts, all the top secret info, where our money is going, etc. Government works for us right? I don't want to be nannied, I want the truth. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.
Why should the government have privacy but the individual not? Very asymmetric no? Whenever the government does something wrong, we likely don't find out at all, but if we do we have to go to its courts or legal system to get it addressed. It, on the other hand, can fine us for vices where no one is harmed.
> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
If what the gov is censoring is so important then they should publicly post a list of everything they censored (Google's public DMCA list is a good example). They have nothing to hide right? If it's for the public good then the public should have the option to see what they were being protected from.