Cameron Slater was "charged with five counts of breaching name suppression orders. The charges relate to two blog posts that contained pictures which revealed the identities of a prominent New Zealand entertainer and a former New Zealand Olympian who were each charged with sexual offenses."
In addition to these charges he also blogged about the "identity of a former Member of Parliament charged with indecent assault on a 13 year old girl."
He is using his blog and his political power (being the son of former National Party president, John Slater) to make a stance. He feels the name suppression laws in New Zealand are in need of reform. Critics worry that his actions will lead to the identification of the victims. Slater comments on that in the link above...
He is well known as an Internet Warrior...
"He sees his blog as a continuation of his old-school, placard-defacing politics of abuse and ridicule, albeit in a digital format. It's a way to participate, to peddle some influence in the political process, without sitting through meetings or kowtowing to anyone."
Says Slater, "We most demonstrably are media," he says. It just happens to be new media. And it's immediate"
Ultimately Cameron is using his blog as a way to participate in politics and institute change in laws he himself sees un-fit. This is admirable to a point, but anyone willing to take a stance must be willing to pay the consequenses. He himself broke the law in order to change the law. It will be interesting to see how these web 2.0 tactics pan out for Cameron and others filling the same role.
I do believe that Internet Warrior is the best title for this guy. I think it is important to have people questioning the way things are done to prevent more corruption than is already present. I don't know how different New Zealand is from the US, but it seems like many of the people in the government there will watch what they say a little more carefully, if only because their words may be taken out of context by this guy. (crazy pic btw)
ReplyDeleteWow. Internet warrior for sure. I do think that somehow there should be some sort of code of conduct for people (bloggers) to follow, though I'm not really sure how that can be implemented online. I think it would be really hard to do something like that, especially in such a global community that the Internet is!
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. I have heard of a similar "Internet Warriors." there are a lot of Internet/blog collectives who's sole purpose is to rally around one idea. I saw something on Dateline not too long ago that in Florida there was a group (I cannot remember the name), who formed an online mob by outing current and former child molesters that moved into their neighborhood. Not only would they post their addresses and photos, but they went so far as to have personal stats and even provide relatives contact info. I think that might be stepping over boundaries about what should and should not be posted online. That picture screams WWE wrestler!
ReplyDelete