Cells and Warrants Act

Preamble

An Act to amend relevant acts to codify the SDBI holding cell, make procedures to remove a person's access to the holding cell, allow attorneys to access the holding cell where necessary, to allow search warrants to be granted against non-person entities, to clarify proceedings where a person is arrested without a warrant, but a warrant is later granted, and to make consequential amendments.

Article 1: Title and Commencement

§1. This act may be cited as the “Cells and Warrants Act”.

§2. This act comes into effect immediately upon passage.

Article 2: Holding Cell

§1. A new §4.5 shall be created in the Executive Act 2023, Article 6 which shall read:

§4.5. “Arrests” in this Section shall mean a muting of a member from all channels of the SimDem Discord Server except for the holding cell specified in §8, judicial channels where the member has ongoing proceedings, and any other channel which the Director of the SDBI or the President may specify, and the removal of post and comment permissions on Reddit.

§2. There shall be a new §8 in the Executive Act 2023, Article 6, which shall read:

Ҥ8.1. The Director of the SDBI shall cause a channel named holding-cell to be set up and maintained in such a manner that only the staff of the Department of Justice, the President and Vice-President, and any other person who is legally required to have access to the channel are able to view the channel, read its history, and send messages within it.

§8.2. Any attorney or person purporting to represent an arrested client, and having relevant business within the holding cell, may be granted access by the Director of the SDBI, with the consent of the Attorney-General, for up to 24 hours per entry.

§8.2.1. Relevant business shall include, but not be limited to:

The investigation of whether a client has been mistreated within the holding cell. The reviewing of messages sent by a client, if such messages are related to a case against their client. Any other business which the Director of the SDBI considers relevant.

§8.2.2. Any attorney or person purporting to represent an arrested client who is requesting access to the holding cell must make a declaration, under penalty of perjury defined in article 18 of the Criminal Code, that they do represent a client presently arrested, and shall also provide the username(s) and user ID(s) of clients they purport to represent.

§8.2.3. In this Subsection and §8.4, “Access” shall mean the ability of a member to view a channel, send messages within it, react to messages and read its history.

§8.3. Any denial of access under §8.2 shall be amenable to Judicial Review.

§8.4. The Director of the SDBI, with the consent of the Attorney-General, may also, in his discretion, provide access for any person to the holding cell.”

§3. There shall be a new §9 in the Executive Act 2023, Article 6, which shall read:

“§9.1. Any person who has been arrested may be barred from accessing the holding cell established in §8, or any other channel which the person is able to access due to §4.5, on approval from a Judge, if they have committed a crime while arrested.

§9.2. The person’s access may be removed before a Judge approves such a request if the person continues to commit crimes after being told to stop. If a Judge denies such a request when a person has had their access removed, their access must be immediately restored.

§9.3. In this section, the word “Access” shall refer to the permissions to send messages, create threads and react to messages in the stated channels.”

Article 3: Warrants

§1. In Article 6, §4. of the Executive Act 2023, insert the word “the” after the word “and”.

§2. In Article 6, §4.4. of the Executive Act 2023, after the phrase “24 hours to press charges”, insert the text “unless a warrant is granted by a Judge before the 24 hours expire.”

§3. Executive Act 2023, Article 6, §4.2. shall be stricken and shall now read:

“In order to conduct a search, the SDBI must obtain a search warrant from a judge, unless the information being searched is available to the public, or logged in the message logs.”

§4. There shall be a new §4.6 in Article 6 of the Executive Act 2023 which shall read:

“The SDBI shall have the power to search non-person entities such as businesses and government agencies after obtaining a search warrant from a Judge specifying the relevant entity to be searched.”