Most notable--other than the fact that Warman won another case--are the reservations expressed by CHRT board member Edward Peter Lustig re some of Warman's investigative techniques, which occasionally involved posting messages to sites like Stormfront. Specifically, two messages totaling about 50 words, if you don't count the quoted material. And curiously, not to any of the websites directly related to the Ouwendyk investigation. In any case:
[62] Mr. Warman stated that the communications quoted in the previous two paragraphs did not “cross the line” into hate messaging nor did they provoke hate messages by others. He stated that the inclusion in his postings of possible hate messages from others were inadvertent slips by him in sending messages over the Internet. He further stated that his postings were intended to assist him in his quest for information about persons using the Internet to communicate discriminatory hate messages.
[63] I do not see any acceptable reason for Mr. Warman to have participated on the Stormfront or Vanguard sites, since there appears to be ample easily obtained messages on these sites available without his involvement. Moreover, it is possible that his activity in this regard, could have precipitated further hate messages in response. His explanation for including other hate messages in his postings by mistake seems very weak to me.
It's not easy to determine from this whether or not Lustig is objecting to the notion of an investigator interacting with the possible targets of his investigation per se, or whether he is objecting to Warman's particular use of this method (or merely the fact that Warman quoted previously uttered hate speech in his messages). The news stories all assume the former, so lets make the same assumption.
If, going forward, HRC investigators can no longer avail themselves of this method, how big a handicap would that be?
Well, it is interesting that the decision refers to events about 5 years old, before the advent of sites like Facebook. And if you look at the work being done by Anti-Racist Canada , for example, which seems to rely on the more passive technique of simply "hanging out" at various online social networking venues related to white supremacist acitivity, and harvesting the (occasionally criminal) stupidity, including geographical details related to the poster, perhaps not such a great handicap.
Or, at least, there appear to be many more opportunities these days to collect information in a non-invasive fashion. So, since this is the one aspect of HRC procedures that seems to bother otherwise supportive people, perhaps disallowing the technique going forward might be a good thing.
(Although, come to think of it, one does sometimes need to establish a sock-puppet to get onto these various forums. How much interaction does that typically require?)
PS. A good overview of the issues surrounding S.13 and Canadian human rights laws can be found in Canadian Lawyer Magazine, though I think the article cuts Doug Christie too much slack.
11 comments:
People like Richard Warman deserve our praise. The scum on the internet today is shameful. His actions, even if one CHRT member thinks it was a bit too much, is nothing compared to what can be read on the racist blogs.
I only wish he or somone else would take these racists more to task. Im literally afraid to have my children explore the net for fear they will be exposed to people like Ezra Levant or Kathy Shaidle.
Off-topic: Have you seen this?
The little Conservashits are up to it again. From the press release:
LEAKED TAPE EXPOSES TORIES SPONSORING STUDENT GOVERNMENT TAKEOVERS AND ATTACKS ON NONPROFIT
ORGANIZATIONS AT CAMPUSES ACROSS ONTARIO
Audio files, photos and transcripts leaked to the website Wikileaks.org has exposed
the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) as hosting workshops dedicated to teaching Campus Conservatives how to take over student governments and defeat perceived enemies including the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) and the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
Ewps. Forgot the URL in the link.
wow Conservatives learning Community Organizing principals.
Talk about channeling Obama.
Gotta love it.
And gotta love government funded skanks like Warman being outed at the Tribunal. Perjury !! Time to review his membership in the Law Society.
That new asshole he got ripped means he'll be standing up for weeks until that pain is gone.
His taxpayer funded grievance hunter days are over, his $gravy $train has derailed.
And if they are smart they'll nuke his grievance mongering career at DND as well. Our soldiers deserve far better than useless snivel servants like Warman.
Where does it say in the decision that he committed perjury?
You have to ignore Fred's blatant lies or you'll never finish. Just seize on something that looks moderately factual and deal with that.
Or just ignore him. He's been trolling this blog for years.
Mitka,
Actually, if you can bear it, visit Lemire's "CHRC exposed" and check out the audio of Warman's testimony. He was asked about joining the NA forum, said he didn't, later checked his notes, and corrected the record.
(And he did not post to the NA forum in any case)
heheh
*Richard Warman and Douglas Christie were photographed separately for this article.
Canadian Lawyer
Thanks for the reference.
Interaction with the people we target varies. In some cases, such as the recent post on Winnicki's support for Shaidle, it is passive; just click your way to VNN and look at what's new in the Canada sub-section (which for some reason is in the Europe forum). Other times we need to be more creative. In general though we don't correspond with our targets on social networking sites though we do employ sock puppets. If someone invite us as a Friend on Facebook, for example, we'll accept but won't write to them unless they write to us first, and in that case we'll only usually say hello. Years ago we would set up a dummy email account to contact these individuals with the desire to elicit information, sometimes failing to get any information and other times gaining a wealth of data beyond which we ever could have dreamed of.
We are intimately aware of Mr. Warman's efforts and his techniques because we often need to employ similar strategies as he appears to employ. The only difference is that he continues to put his ass on the line and has willingly (and in our view nobly) placed himself in potential harm's way while we at ARC work in anonymity.
Thanks BCL -- Great update.
I *get* why Warman felt he had to make the posts that he did... and even though I applaud his efforts, I'm still on the fence right now about whether I'm on-side with that kind of interaction.
That being said -- I am still working my way through thinking about this argument with respect to how saying certain things (aside from threats, counselling violence against people and/or their property etc) constitutes a tort against them.
If it doesn't cross that line for me... it's not valid to use insitgatory force to stop it.
I also have all the admiration in the world for Warman at this point - despite the mistake he made in his techniques to go after the bigots.
Speaking of "Ransom Letter" attacks...the way the shriek-o-sphere is laying out this decision in their posts - is VERY similar to what BCL and others have been accused of when pointing out the bigotry.
One more thing... as I point out on my blog... The claim that Warman *perjured* himself is tendentious at best.
By making that claim - Warman can again add this to the file against the Warman libel-litigants -- as another example of libel, as well as helping to prove malice (for when it comes to damages).
The onus would be on the "Warman Libel-Litigants" to somehow prove that Warman did not simply forget about the 2 posts in question. Unless Warman confessed to such a thing to somebody or there is evidence that he did such a thing (like a video-tape of him confessing such a thing to somebody) THAT is going to be impossible to prove.
Post a Comment