What can the UK learn from New Zealand's approach to sex workers? Quite a lot, actually. On Wednesday June 25, sex workers and brothel operators mingled in parliament with a range of people – Catholic nuns, public health experts, and politicians – to mark the 5th anniversary of the decriminalisation of prostitution. Even the prime minister, Helen Clark, dropped in to pass comment on the success of giving rights to sex workers.

Throughout the day, participants heard from researchers who had been commissioned by the ministry of justice – included in the legislation was a requirement that a committee, appointed by the justice minister, be established to review the law and to assess its impact on the sex industry within five years. It was no surprise to me that these researchers found overwhelming evidence to contradict the wild claims of opponents to the Prostitution Reform Act. Opponents had claimed that, as a consequence of liberalising the law, brothels would create havoc in every neighbourhood, with thugs moving in to traffic women and children. Yet none of these claims came true.

The overwhelming response to the legislation has been positive. Police have moved from clogging courts with prosecutions for soliciting to preventing violence against sex workers. As one said: Now, if I have any trouble, I can pull out my phone and call the cops, and they will come.

We may be a small country, but we are part of the Asia-Pacific rim with its dynamic migration patterns. Motivated by claims of trafficking, immigration officials have raided brothels, seeking victims. They haven't found any.

The chair of the prostitution law review committee – a retired Police commissioner and one time vice cop – said that people were gobsmacked when he told them the committee had found that many sex workers enjoy their work. Researchers confirmed that many sex workers don't want rescuing – they want rights.

The committee concluded that the act has had a marked effect in safeguarding the human rights of sex workers and improving their occupational safety and health.

I believe the UK could reorient its laws to achieve this reality. And the sky won't fall in.

People who sponsor visits to the UK by relatives from overseas under new visa rules will be required to undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks, and will be liable for penalties of up to £5,000 or even a prison sentence if the relative goes AWOL, immigration minister Liam Byrne announced this week.

It will still be possible to visit the UK using a standard tourist visa, but those sponsored by a relative will receive preferential visa treatment, and in order to sponsor, the relative will need to be licensed.

According to the UK Borders Agency: Sponsors will need to accept and sign up to a liability to a sanction as part of the process of sponsoring a relative to visit the UK. Before accepting a sponsor we will make thorough checks as to who they are, including financial, criminal record and immigration checks [Do we hear 'ID card'?]... and we will link the issue of sponsor licences with the roll-out of national identity cards [yes, we do] for British citizens and ID cards for foreign nationals.

In cases where the relative doesn't go home when they should, the sponsor will be liable for a civil penalty of up to £5,000, and could also be prosecuted for assisting unlawful immigration, which may lead to an unlimited fine or even a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

One concession has been included in the new rules. Plans to reduce the maximum visa period from six months to three have been abandoned, although entry clearance officers will still have discretion to limit the visa to three months.

During the fifth anniversary of the legalization of prostitution in New Zealand, what has come to light are the positive feelings of sex workers who feel protected and safe under the new law.

The Prostitution Reform Act has put health and safety guidelines for prostitutes in place and according to the act, prostitutes must practice safe sex. They are also covered under employment law.

A follow up of the benefits of such an act conducted by the Justice Ministry found that 90% of sex workers were happy with the legislation. More importantly prostitutes were in a better position to bring violence and abuse to notice.

People in this business are now out in the light, there are many people and agencies who are able to help, committee chairman Paul Fitzharris said.

Prostitutes were happy that the law had enhanced their working conditions. A prostitute said: One of the biggest advantages of the law is having legal back-up. From time to time you get clients who want to have sex without protection. Generally they accept [having to wear a condom] but if they try and keep on arguing, you have some basis to tell them to leave.

New Labour More equal than YOU!

Equality minister Harriet Harman has set out plans to allow firms to discriminate in favour of female and ethnic minority job candidates.

The new Equalities Bill will also force public sector employers to disclose the gender pay gap in their organisation.

The plans, which will be adopted in England, Wales and Scotland, will also ban all age discrimination.

Setting out the plans in a Commons statement, Harman said the proposed bill - due later this year - would "address the serious inequalities that still exist" in the UK.

Allowing "positive action" would help organisations such as the police better reflect the communities they serve by recruiting more female and ethnic minority officers, said Harman. But if, for example, a headmistress wanted to discriminate in favour of a male teacher to balance an all female team that would be allowed too.

See also Harriet Harman Unruffled from the Times

She is known as Harriet Harperson and she was the happiest that I have ever seen her as she unveiled her beloved Equality Bill. She’s on her white horse (make that a mare) and she’s going to shake things up. Young and old, black and white, female and male. We’ll all be better off in Harriet’s brave new world.

Fiona Mackintosh, the Labour MP, was exasperated. The Daily Express describes this as ‘White Men to Face Jobs Ban’. she said: I would think they would have welcomed it given the age of their readers. But will you give some articulation that this is not a proposal to ban white men from jobs?

Harriet nodded: I absolutely can. I share your frustration at the deliberate misunderstanding. This is about promoting fairness! As she said this, Harriet Harperson looked ferociously earnest. For her, this is as close to Heaven as it gets.

See also This equality for women is an injustice for men from the Times by Minette Marrin

White men are no longer to be equal to everyone else; they will lose their rights in employment tribunals (unless they are beyond retirement age, when they may possibly regain them); they are to pay for the sins of their fathers (or rather for the sins of their fathers’ bosses) against working women and against ethnic minorities by being unjustly treated in their turn. And Harman is prepared to do this terrible thing on the basis, merely, of unexamined assumptions about the facts.

A quarter of the adult population faces vetting in an escalation of child protection policies, according to a report.

The launch of a new Government agency will see 11.3million people vetted for any criminal past before they are approved to have contact with children aged under 16.

But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is "poisoning" relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.
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In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded "potential child abusers".

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light.

From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.

But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted. In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were "CRB checked" when their children played together. In a third example, a father was given "filthy looks" by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own.

Prof Furedi details how one woman was made to feel like a "second class mother" because she was barred from a school disco because she did not have a CRB check.

Prof Furedi, a sociology professor from Kent University, said that adults are no longer trusted or expected to engage with children on their own initiative. When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home.

Figures show that volunteering is on the decline with 13 per cent of men saying they would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers, according to a survey last year. The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.

Vile New Labour Trafficking in miserable lives

When the UK government travelled to Amsterdam to 'study' the Dutch approach to legislation they were somewhat selective and biased about who they spoke to.

During the visit, Ministers met:

• The Minister for Justice
• The Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam and officials from the Local Government
• The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings
• The National Prosecutor on Human Trafficking
• Amsterdam Police
• Representatives from Scharlaken Koord — a religious support service telling prostitutes about Jesus
• Representatives from the National Crime Squad and the Human Trafficking Expertise Centre.

The sexworker.at has made a list of what they did NOT visit in the Netherlands:

• Prostitute Information Center (PIC)
• De Rode Draat
• De Rode Lantaarn
• VAK Werk
• SOA AIDS Helpline
• Brothels
• Window Owner
• Coalitieprojekts 1012
• Protected Zones
• CoMensHa
• BLinN
• La Strada International

And of course:

• Sex Workers
• Customers

It was meant to be a gently embarrassing centrepiece for her son's 21st birthday.

But when Gail Jordan asked bakery staff at Asda to print a photograph of him as a baby on to a cake they didn't see the funny side.

After one look at the photograph – which featured her son David at about five months and lying on his front – they declared that putting it on the cake would constitute pornography because his bare bottom could be seen.

And when the supermarket censors finally agreed to use the picture they insisted it had to have a strategically-placed star.

Yesterday Miss Jordan said It's ridiculous – I understand they have rules, but there ought to be a place for common sense as well.

A spokesman for Asda confirmed its blanket ban on bare flesh: We have a policy, as do many other retailers, of no nudity, whatever the age of the subject. In this case we offered a number of alternatives including enlarging and cropping the photo, increasing the border size or applying a strategically placed star to save his blushes.

A celebration is being held at Parliament today to mark the fifth anniversary of the decriminalisation of prostitution.

The day-long programme in the Beehive has been dubbed as Going all the way: an event to reflect on decriminalisation. It will involve panel discussions and will focus on the issues still affecting sex workers.

New Zealand became one of the first countries to decriminalise prostitution on this day in 2003. The new law only just passed through Parliament by 60 votes to 59, with Labour's Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary angering many by abstaining from the final vote.

Which of these countries has the most prisoners per head of population? Sudan, Syria, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, or England and Wales? We win, or rather lose: I have ranked these countries in reverse order. On this measure, England and Wales have a more punitive judicial system than most of the world's dictatorships.

On Friday, the government released new figures for the prison population. It broke all records, yet again. It has risen by 38% since Labour came to power, and now stands at 83,181. What does the government intend to do about it? Lock more people up. It is building enough new cells to jail 96,000 people by 2014. At the beginning of this month it laid out its plans for titan prisons: vast broiler units, which will each house 2,500 people. But they'll be only just big enough: the government expects the number of cons to rise to 95,600 in six years.

...Read full article

The machine needs to be fed. When you have 650 members of parliament elected to make laws, and an army of 500,000 civil servants whose job is to make sure that those laws work, and more legions in Brussels making more laws, there is never going to be any respite. The machine can never rest until absolutely everything is illegal.

...

Today the machine is running out of people wearing high-visibility jackets to enforce its avalanche of new laws and so it is dispensing with the courts system and locking up people who may be innocent. And still it whirrs, announcing last week that it is going to ban people from becoming sexually aroused.

At the moment lap-dancing clubs are classified in the same category as coffee shops and karaoke bars. Quite why coffee shops or karaoke bars need to be “classified” by a government agent in a high-visibility jacket we are not told.

Nor is there much evidence that this classification system is working because, so far as I can tell, every single town in Britain these days is equally terrible - a vomit-stained centre full of estate agents, charity shops and building societies, ringed with a prefabricated, fluorescent sprawl of people in purple shirts trying to sell you Pentium processors and button-backed leatherette sofas.

At least a lap-dancing club brings a bit of individuality to a town, a bit of a respite from the endless chain stores and horrible pound shops. Sadly, though, the machine disagrees. It says that such places provide “visual sexual stimulation” and as a result councils must be allowed to prevent new ones from opening and perhaps must even close existing venues.

...Read full article

Carl has just made the 15-minute journey across the Öresund bridge to buy sex in Denmark.

I can feel free here, he says, stretching his arms out wide at the bar of the Spunk Club in central Copenhagen on a Saturday night. I can breathe.

In Sweden paying for sex is a crime punishable with a possible six-month jail sentence or a hefty income-linked fine. Perhaps the worst penalty for errant Swedish males is the official court summons addressed to the family home; an embarrassment that has ruptured many marriages.

In Denmark, by contrast, prostitution has been decriminalised. Nigerian and Romanian women competed for Carl’s attentions when he staggered out of the Spunk Club, while a brothel next door bore a sign saying: Here Only Danish Girls.

The builders of the Öresund bridge linking Malmö with Copenhagen has brought two dissimilar and often competing societies into an uneasy proximity.

Denmark, proud of its tolerant traditions, has allowed the hippy colony of Christiania to flourish in the heart of Copenhagen since the 1970s. Now Swedish teenagers are taking taxis over the bridge, stopping off at the settlement, stocking up on marijuana, and driving back home. The Swedes are irritated; the Danes sensitive - police occasionally raid Christiania’s Pusher Street to show that they have not lost control – but ultimately they are not that bothered.

The true flashpoint is prostitution. Nothing better highlights how the model Scandinavian societies are now at odds over the correct road to Utopia. The Swedish law, punishing clients but keeping prostitution legal, is based on the premise that prostitution is a form of violence against women.

Inspector Wahlberg estimates that the number of prostitutes in Sweden fell from 2,500 in 1998 to 1,500 in 2003, and the trend is still downwards.

But there are two problems with this law. The first is that it has taken Sweden even closer to the Big Brother state. Customers are secretly filmed going in and out of brothels. The police then confront them with the evidence. Phone tapping landed a senior judge in trouble with the police after he contacted a young male prostitute; the judge - who had always given mild verdicts in prostitution cases - resigned. But the main problem is that prostitution has gone underground in Sweden.

Thanks to the bridge across the Öresund Strait frustrated clients such as Carl can now travel to Denmark, despite the toll charge of €30 (£24). The bridge was opened the year after the Swedish law came into effect. Since then the number of prostitutes in Copenhagen has doubled to 6,000.

Vile New Labour Trafficking in miserable lives

The Dutch approach to prostitution was observed today by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker during a visit to the Netherlands, as part of the Government's review into tackling the demand for prostitution.

The Government's six-month review began in January with a visit to Sweden to explore the impact of legislation which criminalises the purchase or attempted purchase of sex and decriminalises its sale. The Netherlands takes a different approach and currently has a licensing scheme for brothels, meaning the organisation of prostitution by consenting adults is not a criminal offence.

Ministers, including the Solicitor General Vera Baird and the Deputy Minister for Women and Equality Barbara Follett, used the visit to look at the impact of the Dutch Government's legislation and the effect this has had in terms of the size and nature of the market. The visit will also be used to find out more about the current debate in the Netherlands about whether they should be doing more to tackle demand.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: We have already made considerable progress in terms of shining the light on those who pay for sex, particularly in relation to on-street prostitution. We are now looking at how the problem is being tackled internationally to see what lessons we can all learn from each other.

Solicitor General Vera Baird said: In the course of this review we have seen amongst our European and world neighbours very different solutions to the same problem. We are starting to develop more fully our ideas as to what can work effectively for us.

Deputy Minister for Women and Equalities Barbara Follett said: Men who pay for sex fuel the evil trade of sex trafficking. We support and protect victims, as well as catch and prosecute traffickers; but now we must step up our efforts to tackle the demand side. By visiting other countries, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, we can learn from how they are responding to this growing international problem, and make sure that we are doing all we possibly can to stop this vile trade.

During the visit, Ministers met:

• The Minister for Justice
• The Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam and officials from the Local Government
• The National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings
• The National Prosecutor on Human Trafficking
• Amsterdam Police
• Representatives from Scharlaken Koord — a support service working with those involved in prostitution
• Representatives from the National Crime Squad and the Human Trafficking Expertise Centre.

Comment: Consulting with Nutters

Thanks to Donald

Just reading about Coaker in Netherlands on his study tour

But why did they meet Scarlet Cord, that is a christian organisation, why didn't they meet the Dutch prossie organisation instead...

Scarlet Cord was founded in 1987. Moved by the fate of the ever increasing number of prostitutes, a few volunteers visited the Amsterdam red-light district every week to reach out to the women behind the windows - not only to have a talk with them, but also to tell them about Jesus, who changes the lives of people.

And for that matter why didn't they talk to any customers either..

Obsessive internet use is a public health problem which is so serious it should be officially recognised as a clinical disorder, according to a leading psychiatrist.

British psychiatrists have previously reported that between five and 10% of online users are internet addicts

Sufferers spend unhealthy amounts of time playing online games, viewing pornography or emailing. They suffer four symptoms:

• They forget to eat and sleep
• they need more advanced technology or more hours online as they develop 'resistance' to the pleasure given by their current system
• if they are deprived of their computer, they experience genuine withdrawal symptoms
• in common with other addictions, the victims also begin to have more arguments, to suffer fatigue, to get lower marks in tests and to feel isolated from society.

Early research into the subject found highly educated, socially awkward men were the most likely sufferers but more recent work suggests it is now more of a problem for middle-aged women who are spending hours at home on their computers.

Psychiatrist Dr Jerald Block said some sufferers were so addicted to the internet that they required medication or even hospital treatment to curb the time they spent on the web.

He said: It's much more acceptable for kids to talk about game use, whereas adults keep it a secret. Rather than having sex, or arguing with their wife or husband, or feeding their children, these adults are playing games.

Dr Block, of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, in the USA, first made the claims in an editorial for the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Scots sending sexually explicit e-mails were warned last night that they could be accused of being a sex offender.

As part of the biggest overhaul of sex offences in Scotland, a new statutory offence of "communicating indecently" will criminalise those who send malicious and unwanted sexually offensive e-mails and texts, as well as other verbal and written messages.

A new bill unveiled contains proposals for a raft of other new offences, covering areas such as indecent exposure and spiking drinks for the purpose of having sex.

The proposals are based on recommendations in a report published last December by the Scottish Law Commission. It had been commissioned in 2004 to examine the law on rape and other sexual offences.

Age of Consent

However, ministers have turned down a commission proposal to decriminalise all consenting sex between youngsters aged 13 to 15.

BDSM

The new legislation rejected a proposal to decriminalise consensual adult sexual violence. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but when both parties are willing, where's the harm? For the government, it was the fear that such a move might offer some form of legal escape to rapists and those who commit domestic violence. It's a powerful argument, but a misguided one. These are instances in which the state simply should not meddle.

Sex tourism

Anyone from Scotland who travels abroad and has sex with someone under the age of 16 can currently only be prosecuted on their return if the intercourse was also illegal in the foreign country.

Indecent communication

THE bill defines the new offence of indecent communication as occurring when a person intentionally delivers a sexual message to another person.

The offence requires that the person sends the communication to obtain sexual gratification, or to humiliate, distress or alarm the recipient. The communication can be a word in someone's ear, a page from a pornographic magazine, or an e-mail or text.

Someone who sends an offensive e-mail to a group of colleagues, friends and other people could be breaking this new law.

However, the Crown would have to prove that the purpose of sending the e-mail had been malicious, or that the sender had done it for a sexual "thrill".

Anyone found guilty of indecent communication faces a maximum ten-year jail sentence.

Public indecency

THE offence of public indecency, which can include "flashing", streaking and urinating in public, already exists. But the government explicitly wants to criminalise anyone who intentionally exposes their genitals in a sexual manner to another person with the intention of causing alarm or distress, or being "reckless" as to whether alarm or distress may be caused.

The new offence also criminalises sexual exposure in someone's home. The aim is to make it clear such behaviour is a sex crime completely separate to someone causing offence by, for example, sunbathing naked in a public park. The Scottish Law Commission, which first proposed the move, reasoned that indecent exposure was in many ways similar to a sexual assault.

Sweden voted in favour of its controversial snoop law, after the proposal was amended.

Under the new law, all communication across Swedish borders will be tapped, and information can also be traded with international security agencies, such as America's National Security Agency.

A total of 143 members of parliament voted to pass the bill into law, with 138 delegates opposed.

Earlier , prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt failed to win the backing of his four-party coalition: the draft was sent back to the committee for revision. Key members of parliament who were likely to vote against the proposition were put under pressure by their parties, according to some reports.

Despite receiving copies of George Orwell's book 1984 from protesters earlier this week, MPs from Sweden's ruling party believe the law does not constitute the final nail in the coffin of democracy.

The amended law includes the creation of an agency to control the granting of permissions. The Swedish Data Inspection Board is to monitor the surveillance activities of the National Defence Radio Establishment. An external group comprising members appointed by the government will monitor privacy and integrity issues.

Pirates are the Good Guys vs the State Villains

Thanks to Donald
See Pirate Party to take Sweden to EU court from The Local

Sweden's Pirate Party has said it will take the country to the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to overturn a far-reaching eavesdropping law passed by the Riksdag on Wednesday evening.

• 'Yes' to surveillance law(18 Jun 08)
• Snoop law vote to go ahead(18 Jun 08)
• 'Orwellian law must be stopped'(18 Jun 08)

Deputy leader Christian Engström told The Local that the Pirate Party believed the new law was in clear breach of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The minimum age for a prostitute is the subject of a parliamentary debate in the Netherlands with parties divided on whether it should be raised to 21 years, says the Telegraaf.

Labour (PvdA) is not convinced it should be raised from 18 years and the right-wing liberals VVD and socialist SP are against the move.

Raising the minimum age is part of a package of possible measures to deal with illegal prostitution and abuses in the sex industry. Among them is criminalising punters who use illegal prostitutes.

Escorts say TheEroticReview.com founder's arrest could change paid-sex industry.

Private sex-industry message boards are buzzing with stories of how Dave Elms, the now-jailed founder of TheEroticReview.com, removed reviews of escorts who refused to offer him free sex in exchange for maintaining their good standing on his influential site.

In an interview with Valleywag, Nancy, an escort in California who says she relies on TheEroticReview for the bulk of her clientele, says she continues to use Elms's site even though she has "seen his 'work' of persuading girls to come and service him" to maintain the presence of the reviews critical to their business.

Independent traveling escort Ashley is one of the thousands of providers whose services have been reviewed on TheEroticReview. She had a run-in with Elms two months ago, when she asked that he change her name on the website to throw off a stalker. Elms took this opportunity to make his own pitch and that meant sleeping with him. She declined, and later found her reviews removed from TER.

Last week, after she heard that Elms had been jailed, she attempted to post a warning to escorts and clients on the board, but it was blocked by administrators and her account was disabled.

Elms is unlikely to face charges over these allegations of abuse. He is versed in what the law says, Nancy explains: He knew exactly what he could get away with and did it for a long time. In fact he could have continued getting girls to service him, had he not been jailed.

And the fate of TER? TER is the industry standard for men seeking providers, says Nancy. There is no other that comes close. Reviews are what fuel the industry.

Danish newspapers ran an article today that Denmark has rejected the Swedish model banning the buying of sex after considering it for the past few months.

Update: Campaigners

Thanks to Donald

From article (in Danish) in Berlingske

"DF will not support a ban on paying for sex"

That means that a ban is out of the question since not any of the major political parties in Denmark will support it either

This was not the result of a review of prostitution laws, feminazis launched a campaign in March and obviously the fems didn't get enough support.

Danish sex workers did launch a high profile campaign against it with press conferences declaring we're not victims we're women.

Under 21s will be banned from buying alcohol at supermarkets and off licences under a rights abusing plan to shake-up Scotland's drink laws.

Ministers want to stop teenagers buying cheap alcohol and believe a three-year increase in the age limit will reduce the nation's chronic drink-related violence and health problems.

A major action plan on alcohol will be unveiled by Injustice Secretary Kenny MacAskill who has waged a campaign against Scotland's drinkers since taking over the job last year.

Over-18s will still be allowed to drink in pubs and bars but ministers are said to be insistent on the need for radical reform of off-sales, arguing that "enough is enough" in the battle to bring an end to Scotland's "booze culture".

Along with the increase in the age limit, MacAskill will also propose setting minimum prices for alcohol and banning three-for-two and buy-one-get-one-free deals.

Last night, the drinks industry reacted angrily to the proposals, claiming they will "demonise and mystify" alcohol for teenagers.

The increase in the age limit to 21 for off-sales follows a pilot in the West Lothian town of Armadale where the restrictions were enforced recently.

Sources say MacAskill has also been influenced by the example of Sweden where the age limit for off-sales is 20, two years more than the bars and pubs limit.

But retailers and drinks bosses accuse him of having railroaded his plans through with no consideration for their own trade, or for household pockets, at a time when the cost of fuel and food are increasing.

Two groups have asked the courts to review a decision that allows border-patrol agents to search U.S. citizens' laptops without suspicion of crime.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives claim that the laptop searches violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, which protect them from unreasonable search and seizures.

The case began in 2005, after U.S. citizen Michael Arnold returned to the U.S. from the Philippines and was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol agents who searched his laptop. A district court ruled in Arnold's favor. 

A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court's decision in April.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives now contend that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision essentially negated the Fourth Amendment and put citizens' privacy and identities at risk, since border patrols can confiscate laptops and make full copies of their contents.

The two groups argue that laptops often contain personal banking and identity information and the level of privacy invasion at a border search is "enormous."

The groups are asking the court to require border agents to have reasonable suspicion of a crime to search a laptop. A decision on whether the court will rehear the case is expected to come within the next few months.

Easton police have ticketed someone for going topless in public. Sean Cephus, 18, was cited June 4 when police say he was spotted without a shirt on South Street. He was also cited for failing to obey a lawful order to stop for police.

A town ordinance adopted in 1974 forbids anyone from going topless in public buildings or on public streets and sidewalks. Possible penalties are a fine of up to $100 and up to 10 days in jail.

Robert Hurt went to Washington and didn't like what he saw – nudity in the nation's capital.

Nude women, sculptured women, he told the state Republican platform committee, which sat in rapt attention. Of all the evils in Washington that the Texas Republican took aim at this week, removing art with naked people from public view was high on the list for Hurt, a delegate from Kerrville.

You don't have nude art on your front porch, he explained: You possibly don't have nude art in your living rooms. So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?

Hurt offered statistics: He'd heard that 20% of the art in the National Gallery of Art is of nudes. He offered detail: On Arlington Memorial Bridge overlooking the famed national cemetery, there are two Lady Godivas, two women on horses with no shirt on and long hair.

Actually, they are classical sculptures about war – one called Valor, depicting a male equestrian and a female with a shield, and Sacrifice, a female accompanying the rider Mars.

The Republican platform presented to rally the troops advocates prayer in school, getting out of the United Nations, teaching intelligent design with evolution in science classes, repealing of the minimum wage, declaring illegal immigrants criminals and outlawing abortion with no exceptions.

Hallelujah! said a delegate who had urged strong anti-abortion language.

The platform calls homosexuality contrary to the unchanging truths ordained by God. It opposes gay marriage, civil unions and the custody of children by gays.

Ridding Washington of naked art didn't make the cut though.

A man ended up being arrested and charged - after laughing too much at BBC TV's Have I Got News For You.

Chris Cocker from Blackburn, was chuckling so vigorously at a comment by comedy panellist Paul Merton that he fell off the sofa.

A concerned neighbour in the flat below heard the thud and called the police.

But when he refused to co-operate, Cocker was arrested. He admitted in court to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge.

A charge of assaulting a police officer was withdrawn when Cocker appeared before magistrates in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Cocker said: I fell off the settee in hysterics and hit the floor and got myself up and started carrying on watching the telly and the next thing I know there was a knock on the door.

The bit where I lost it the most was when I shut the door and the policeman had stuck his foot in the doorway and was refusing to let me shut my own front door.

After being sprayed with pepper spray, Cocker was put into a police van and taken to a police station where he said he was stripped naked and spent a night in the cells.

Authorities in Cairo have banned a 92-year-old Gulf Arab man from marrying a 17-year-old Egyptian girl, under laws brought in to counter the increasing number of wealthy Gulf men travelling to the impoverished Egyptian countryside to find much younger, temporary brides.

The ministry of justice invoked a law that says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years. The newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that 173 couples with more than 25 years between them wed last year, via a loophole in the law that allows a foreign man to take a much younger bride in exchange for depositing about $80,000 (£41,000) in the Egyptian national bank.

In Egypt, poverty is rife. Girls from rural Egyptian families might be sold to a wealthy Gulf man for between $500 and $1,500. Having returned to the Gulf state with her husband, most Egyptian girls find they are treated as servants in the family home and rejected by the man's existing wife or wives.

After a few months of such "marriage" the girl can be divorced and sent home, often with a settlement of up to $10,000, a sum it would take the average Egyptian 10 years or more to earn.

Does UEFA censor the images TV viewers see during the Euro 2008 championships ? TV channels around Europe use a centralized video feed provided by UEFA, the organizer of the games. But there’s been a bit of debate about what gets shown and what doesn’t.

The whole issue might not have come up if Federal Cabinet Minister Samuel Schmid hadn’t mentioned the “smoke bombs” to Swiss German television.

It just was after a Sunday match in Vienna. He said he preferred the match the day before, because fans hadn’t set off smoke bombs. In fact, a significant portion of the stadium in Vienna was covered with smoke.

But that would have been news to TV viewers. Only a few wisps made it onto the telecast.

Did UEFA censor the images of fans behaving badly?

Pascale Voegeli is a spokeswoman for UEFA and said: If there are riots from some few people in the stands, there is no reason to give those people a platform on TV. So that’s why the producers they decide not to show some images.

François Jeannet is head of sports at French-language public television, TSR says the producers are right not to focus on disturbances in the stadium. Jeannet says most TV sports producers, including TSR, follow similar policies: There are some guidelines when you produce a sport event that say that you try not to emphasize or to bring publicity to agitators because you don’t want to make publicity for those actions on the field.

Update: Offside

16th June 2008 See full article from Strangeglue

The Swiss national broadcasting authority is set to formally complain about UEFA’s censoring of TV images at the European Championships.

SRG Director General Armin Walpen is concerned that UEFA’s decision not to show the incidents in question were ‘more than problematic’ from a journalistic point of view.

Walpen is preparing an official letter of protest for the governing body about their handling of the matter.

The Ministry of Defence has launched a legal battle against a high street shopping chain because a duvet cover features the RAF's insignia.

The MoD's legal team has lodged a claim in the chancery division of the High Court against Next's use of the RAF's red, white, and blue roundel.

They are upset that the fashion store is using the image on a range of bedroom furnishings and decoration aimed at seven-year-old boys.

The offending material includes a £35 cotton and polyester duvet cover, rugs, curtains and wall stickers. The patriotic bedset design also includes Union Jacks with images of a car, a guitar and a scooter.

Defence Secretary Des Browne is the claimant and a writ has been issued, although it is not thought to have been served yet.

The incident began last September when the MoD first accused Leicester-based Next, the UK's third-biggest clothes retailer, of copyright infringement.

However, Next argues that the symbol is also the emblem of the 1960s 'Mod' movement, revived by Paul Weller's band The Jam in 1978 and forever associated with the Franc Roddam film Quadrophenia. The band Oasis and shirts by the firm Ben Sherman also use the roundel image as part of their branding.

The minister of injustice in Norway has proposed criminalizing the purchase of sexual services both at home and abroad.

The law proposes imposing fines and up to six months in jail for anyone convicted of paying a prostitute for sex. The law is in line with a “Sex Purchase Law” passed by neighboring Sweden in 1999, which has been the subject of intense interest in Europe and elsewhere.

Injustice Minister Knut Storberget said in presenting the proposed law: People are not a commodity and criminalizing the purchase of sex would make it less attractive for human traffickers to look to Norway.

I am not sure I like the law. I don’t really know how smart it is to criminalize people for buying sex. But at least that part of the law I respect. The part I have strong objections to, is the part that says that the law should apply to Norwegians visiting other countries as well. This is strange as a legal principle.

I mean, if a Norwegian drive a car at 160 km/hour on a German highway, this is legal in Germany but illegal in Norway. But people do not get punished for it when they return home to Norway. Same for smoking cannabis in Amsterdam. And so on. But now the government proposes that when a Norwegian does something in a foreign country that is legal in that country, he is to be punished when he returns home?

And, in addition to the very strange legal principle involved, there is also the almost impossible situation with respect to implementation. Are Dutch policemen supposed to look out for Norwegians buying sex, when that purchase is legal in the Netherlands?

CTwo Dutch cops stop a guy in the street because of his T-shirt. It features something resembling the police logo printed on top of the O in the word CORRUPT.

They give him a $265 fine for insulting a government worker in function (yes, there's actually a law that punishes such a horror), which he quite rightfully declines to pay, preferring to let the case go to trial.

The other day, he gets his summons, and discovers he is now charged with aanranding (molestation).

Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni, who orchestrated his country’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigration, has suggested that by August, prostitution should be legalized in Italy.

Maroni described his country’s current law as “repressive,” saying that prostitution has its “pros and cons.”

He claimed that thousands of people are currently serving jail sentences in Italy for infractions of those laws, and said that such punishment exemplifies an “adolescent reaction” to the sex trade.

Italian poll shows heavy support for legalized prostitution

Italy’s Donna Moderna magazine has published a survey showing that a substantial majority of Italians support the legalization of prostitution.

The survey respondents accepted the argument that legalizing brothels would protect prostitutes and move them off the streets.

The survey found substantial support for two different arguments in favor of legalization: 47% of those polled supported the legalization of prostitution as a means to “clean up the streets” while 38% said the measure would be useful to protect prostitutes from exploitation and violence.

Just 11% of respondents opposed legalized prostitution on the grounds that it would encourage the practice, and a mere 4% opposed the the idea on moral grounds.

Daniela Santaché of The Right Party supports the legalization of prostitution and has promised to collect 500,000 signatures in support of the proposal.

Most Italian political parties oppose legalized prostitution and the government’s undersecretary for the family, Carlo Giovanardi, has suggested heavy fines and the publication of the names of people who pick up prostitutes

Update: Postponed

18th June 2008

An amendment on prostitution presented by the president of the Senate Justice Commission, Filippo Berselli, and much discussed in the past days, is removed from the decree on security.

We have decided to remove all issues not strictly relevant for the measure from the decree explained Berselli.

Changes to prostitution law will now be tabled in a separate government bill on the topic.

A battle the very soul of Scotland will shortly erupt in Holyrood, when Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, lays the Sexual Offences Bill before parliament in the next week or so.

One area of contention which will cause some tittering is the proposal to decriminalise sadomasochism. The argument goes that consenting adults should not become criminals simply because they have a taste for whips and leather.

But Nigel Don, a justice committee member, has raised the fear that decriminalisation may open a loophole for domestic abuse. I understand his concerns have got civil servants looking at the proposal again.

The most headline-grabbing part of the bill will be the proposal from the Scottish Law Commission, partly supported the by Children's Commissioner, Kathleen Marshall, that teenagers under the age of 16 should be allowed to have sex with each other but not adults. Some fear this will push the age of consent down to 13, as it is in Spain. But with Scotland facing an increasing number of abortions and teenage pregnancies, there have been suggestions that legalising sex at 13 will be an invitation to Scottish youth to start copulating en masse. But many ask why should teenagers be turned into criminals for doing what comes naturally.

The mood in parliament is against the liberals. It has not been long since MSPs voted to turn kerb-crawlers into criminals, although it did not go as far as what community safety minister Fergus "Impound their Cars" Ewing wanted.

With drinking and smoking, Holyrood's new puritans took a morally conservative line telling people what is good for them rather than letting them decide for themselves. So be prepared for more of the same with sex.

The German government have passed an anti-terror law that would grant police the power to monitor private residences, telephones and computers.

Instead of tapping phones, they would be able to use video surveillance and even spy software to collect evidence. Physically tampering with suspects' computers would still not be allowed, but police could send anonymous e-mails containing trojans and hope the suspects infect their own computers.

Government cyberspying, the legislators point out, would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases.

The bill, called a building block for Germany's security architecture by interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble, still needs to be approved by the lower and upper chamber of the German parliament.

The federal law was passed after months of heated debate. The proposed plans would not only widen the anti-terror skills of police and the Federal Crime Office, better known as BKA, it would also reverse recent rulings by Germany's constitutional court and Federal Supreme Court. A law which permits authorities in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia to spy on computer users was rejected recently and last year the the Supreme Court ruled online police spying was unlawful.

Max Stadler, a security expert with the German Free Democratic Party, warned earlier the plan would weaken the trust of German citizens in government.

Russia has announced plans to ban foreign toys and Valentine’s Day in a bid to protect the country’s youth from moral corruption by the West.

Despite accusations of censorship and nationalism, the Russian Duma this week introduced a series of bills designed to uphold the spiritual values of children by protecting their morals.

The legislation envisages a ban on the sale of children’s toys that provoke aggression, model actions of a sexual nature, justify extremism and a criminal lifestyle, depict horror or unbearable pain or are created on the basis of the psychologically incongruous.

Under the new law, schools would also be forbidden from celebrating Halloween and St Valentine’s Day because they were inappropriate to ‘Russian cultural values.'

All school children would also be subject to a 10pm curfew, while minors would be banned from wearing tattoos and body-piercing. Mobile phone providers are to be instructed to block text messages sent by children than contain obscenities.

The authors of the policy paper, which has yet to be debated, were unable to provide a full list of the products to be sanctioned, but said that most came from the West.

Giving examples of the kind of merchandise that would be targeted, Yevgeny Yuryev, a sociologist who co-ordinated the draft legislation, identified a range of British made soft toys called the Bad Taste Bears: I can’t even describe what these bears do but they involve things of a sexual nature that might be traumatic for children.

Alongside a range of violent and criminal teddy bears, the company’s website advertises a line of “pornstar bears” featuring a character called Kenny Lingus and his friends.

Teenagers who model themselves on Western youth subcultures like Goths — who are accused of “cultivating bisexuality” — are to be regarded by the authorities as social nuisances in the same league as skinheads, football hooligans and anti-fascists.

The authors of the legislation, which mirrors other government measures to promote Russian nationalism, say urgent action is required to end a moral crisis inspired by the West that has seen a dramatic rise in alcoholism and addiction among teenagers.

Today we have a lost generation of wandering morons whose parents’ moral vision was robbed by perestroika, said Stanislav Govorukhin, a Duma deputy: We have taken the worst from the West because we failed to resist the encroachment of Western values. He denied accusations by liberal activists that the new laws represented an attack on freedom of expression: The essence of freedom is that there should be moral restrictions — that is what freedom is.