While I’m overjoyed that Toby Manhire regards me as a prominent left wing blogger, his smug aesthetic left assertions that it’s me who is empowering John Key for calling his TV performance that of a psychopath sit alongside the rights exuberance at busily denigrating John Campbell; they all belie the fact that nothing the Prime Minister said was true.
The reality, as Dr Rodney Harrison QC spells out in todays Herald, is that this legislation allows for mass surveillance and in light of Russell Brown’s excellent interview autopsy, Key’s manufactured confidence becomes less the Muhammad Ali metaphor drenched boxing match of the year as some pundits have breathlessly brainfarted, but more the creepy dead eyed performance of a Machiavellian Overlord complete with submerged lair in the Hawaiian Islands.
I had always hoped that it was just blind ignorance that kept the PM explaining that this legislation provided oversight under a strict code of checks and balances. The much vaunted warrant system Key keeps holding up as the Patron Saint of Transparency actually amounts to Key and the Commissioner for Security Warrants Key appoints asking Key’s childhood school chum whom Key personally appointed to go spy upon someone. Do we really want a leader with a ‘I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong’ God complex being the ultimate decider of these types of civil rights intrusions?
Take the extraordinary lengths Parliamentary Services and the Police reacted when Key wanted something done. The Police didn’t even pause to grab Bradley Ambrose’s text messages between him and his lawyer and Parliamentary Services gave a half hearted attempt to protect journalist Andrea Vance’s rights as the fourth estate. If Journalistic and Legal privilege means nothing to the agencies tasked with protecting them when the Prime Minister comes a knocking, how the living Christ do you think we as Joe and Jody Public will fare when the Prime Minister’s digital witch-hunters come a cyber sniffing around our lives?
The facts are that this legislation DOES ALLOW for mass surveillance as the brilliant Thomas Beagle at Tech Liberty so devastatingly points out…
So what does all this mean?
Most importantly it clearly shows that the GCSB can spy on New Zealanders for its own purposes without doing it on behalf of another agency.
We see that this has been deliberately set up to allow mass surveillance either now or in the future. For example, the GCSB could apply for an access authorisation for access to “New Zealand’s mobile networks” and, after being signed off by the Prime Minister and the Commissioner for Security Warrants, they could then use that access authorisation to collect all phone calls, texts and data sent over the mobile networks.
This collected information could then be analysed and the resulting intelligence given to the Minister and any person, whether in New Zealand or overseas, authorised by the Minister (section 8A(c)).
In theory this activity would have to be done as part of their purpose to “protect the security and integrity of the communications and information infrastructures” but we see that this could be interpreted rather widely.
…the so called checks and balances Key assures NZers exist to prevent mass surveillance simply don’t exist and all the whooping and jeering from the sidelines at John Campbell doesn’t ignore this fact.
To allow admiration of Key’s slickness to become the focus rather than the horrifying reality of what his slickness is allowing to pass is a gross abdication of journalistic integrity far beneath any one minute of that interview by Campbell.
This. Bill. Will. Lead. To. Mass. Surveillance. Of. Our. Democracy. I just can’t explain it any more simple than that.
If you want to stop this, make sure you are there 7pm Monday at the Auckland Town Hall to hear Dr Rodney Harrison QC, Kim Dotcom, Jon Stephenson, Seeby Woodhouse, Helen Kelly, Professor Jane Kelsey, Marama Davidson, David Shearer, Russel Norman, Hone Harawira, Winston Peters and Nicky Hager provide the other side of the story.
We will stream it live here on The Daily Blog and post it up VoD straight afterwards.
Show history we were not so easily led and that we refused to go quietly into the darkness of a mass surveillance state.
Donations: The cost of hiring the Town Hall is astronomical – if you are in any position to donate, here is the Bank Account Number 38-9000-0099726-00, the account name is Global Peace and Justice Auckland.
Yes, we have to stop the GCSB bill as it stands as from the leakages and non disclosure of the PM and what we now know about the NSA that the bill has some serious implications like limiting our rights and freedom.
The bill exists and needs an overhaul, but while we could throw it out, that still leaves the door open to the NSA, CIA,ASIO and anyone else to eavesdrop and collect all our data.
It seems that most of the spying that is going on is commercial espionage between corporations and the corporations collecting personal data for their own marketing purposes like marketing and the targeting of opponents to unpopular products like GM foods.
The internet has opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities for commerce and to a lesser degree, law enforcement. It sounds like the GCSB bill is about having the law get more of a foot hold and take us down the path where people could be arrested and punished for crimes they have the potentiality to commit.
I think the bill needs to be put on hold and the public debate needs to be widened, but this can only happens when the full text and background details of the bill are made known.
New Zealanders are patriotic, we love our country, but so many are disheartened by what is being done to it for short term gain. The government needs to respect and trust us with all the facts including the five eyes relationship.
Most NZ politicians are not malicious, but they have been sucked in as at the end of the day, very few are in charge of their own minds and will follow the most convincing leader.
We need to be protected from the NSA and the US administration which is expanding its presence in the Philippines and Okinawa as well as building a base in Auz. I feel concerned about the increased numbers of US voices in our public offices and I think that we need to be distancing ourselves from the US and Britain (the partner in global crime), creating closer alliances with more neutral countries and looking toward our own sustainability as an independent nation which would entail regaining our sovereignty..
I’ll discuss this a bit more at http://wp.me/p3IRVb-hd
Key is either
a) correct and the law society et al are wrong
or
b) incorrect and the law society et al are correct
or
c) lying
Take your pick.
Is the PM just being so slickly patronizing that New Zealander’s want to believe what he’s saying because we just so ENJOY being lazy-and-she’ll-be-right-mate? Or, and I’m not sure which is worse, does he really not understand this legislation, what is and is not in it, and the implications of this law? In which case, will the real law-maker please stand up, please stand up?
Profoundly chilling either way.
What’s snapper’s favourite game.
Snap
What did the snapper say when he posted bail?
“I’m off the hook!”
What do snapper enjoy doing most on holidays.
Taking happy snaps
What do you get if you cross a quick teacher with a crab?
Snappy answers.
Not sure about the last one. But who cares, as we all love snapper.
How to explain what this will all mean to the average Snapper and property obsessed Auckland voter- the only people that really matter.
It might go something like this.
Step 1
Government decides that tax avoidance is a crime against the tax base of New Zealand and therefore an attack on the country- or something like that.
Step 2
Average snapper loving property owning couple file end of year tax return.But do not mention recent property transactions
Step 3
Government data matches all property transactions with all email text traffic over the past 5 years looking for key words, flipping, tax free, capital gains, easy money,
etc
Step 4
IRD calls couple in for a meeting and asks them to explain difference between return and emails that demonstrate intent to on sell property etc.
Step 5
Couple charged with conspiracy to defraud the tax system ( or whatever the actual law is)
Step 6. All assets owned by the couple or in trust are seized by the IRD.
Step 7. Couple are held in custody as a flight risk (they travel frequently to the islands and Australia)
Step 7 Children of the couple are placed in care
Step 8. Legal process grinds on over the next 2-3 years…
I dont think jk is going to use this bill to go after tax evaders. His primary target will be enviromentalists.
ShonKey won’t be PM for ever – his rodent senses will alert him before the ship of state goes down. Imagine; Crusher, or Joyce, with these powers! Once the sociopath has shorn the Shearer for them at the next election, before announcing his retirement (for family reasons/ because he can’t be bothered anymore).
But if there are still general elections in 2017, then these powers do have the potential to be used by a “devil-beast” Green/ Labour/ Mana government as Plan B outlines. I fully believe that the spy law powers will be used to disenfranchise large portions of our nation as “terroristic sympathisers” (or similar nonsense) before then though.
Key is not listening to anyone, he is an active proponent of 80’s Wall Street banking politics with absolutely no care or regard for New Zealand values.
If the world of politics is reduced to empty slogans then we are living in the age of low KEY politics. Let’s change the flag also to the Stars and Stripes while we are at it. John Key is intending to create a mini-me America, a future that only he can see with those dead-flat snapper eyes!
Let us vote in next time someone who can at least pronounce the word New Zealand, as well as understand what it stands for!
We truly are dealing with a soul-less sociopath. But new zealanders should really take a look at why they admire him so much.
This goes beyond of what may be called “Key’s manufactured confidence”, has nobody noticed the different behaviour by one John Campbell since that truly bizarre “coup d’etat style” interview on 14 August? Key seized the moment, was diverting, distracting, refusing to answer some core questions, misrepresented facts, and repeatedly challenged Campbell to let him speak and answer, on his terms.
Since then we have seen the GCSB topic been put into secondary or even lower priority on Campbell Live, and John Campbell and his team do not seem to be too fussed with it anymore. There came the jolts in Wellington, and so the show yesterday was almost exclusively on that.
Other media are presently not reporting on the GCSB bill anymore, either accepting it is a “done deal”, or not bothering for other reasons. And yes, this morning (17 August) it was the RMA bill (important, I admit) and SNAPPER that was discussed on TV3’s The Nation.
Talk back hosts, the vast majority of whom are these days sympathetic to the government, make a point of NOT discussing it anymore, and any other trivial or alternative topic has replaced the GCSB issues.
So “the (Key government) system is working”, and one must ask, how come? Is it because the people out there are suddenly all accepting what Key claims and said? Or is it not rather, that the ones, like Campbell, who sit in studios and press rooms, are told by their bosses, and leading editors, do not bother, move on, if you want to keep your job?
That is my impression, and it has happened before, with highly controversial topics, they never seem to be discussed for long, getting taken off the headlines, and instead we get some overseas news, reminding us of the “dangers” in places like Egypt, more crime incidents, naturally earth quakes and weather, lots of weather, and heaps of sports, intermingles with a bit of Prince Charming William and Kate.
All is well in Good Old New Zealand, do not worry, you are in good hands, leave the steering wheel to the captain, he looks after us.
Even listening to Focus on Politics on Radio NZ tonight, it was only on the National Party Conference, and it was like a party political broadcast too. Only at the very end were comments from Steve Maharey (amongst all), and from Winston Peters – as possible future support provider for National, to be heard as alternative voices.
The news on TVNZ One showed senior and not so senior National Party government ministers and local bosses on site at the town near Blenheim, where the earthquake struck, in full “rescue coordination” performance, Brownlee amongst them.
It should remind us, to make the effort, and to go to the meeting on Monday evening at the Auckland Town Hall, just to send a message, that we WILL NOT GO AWAY!
Thanks for the bank details. Im glad to help where i can.
I wonder if the legislation passed or not will have any impact at all on the gcsb…. it’s clear with dotcom they rode roughshod over the law anywayp ether that or they are completely incompetent.
Edward SNOWDEN, as NSA analyst able to ‘tap anyone’ he had the number or email address of-including the president of USA.con,
was outsourced by Booze Allen Hamilton, a private management technology and security services company.
Author Tim Shorrock writes that 70% of intelligence work is joint venture between government agencies and the private sector “doing government business.” Or the ‘digital Blackwater’ as described by ex NSA boss-knob Hayden. In fact private firms do security clearances on other contractors ‘doing everything the government does.’
Private corporations do seventy percent of national security work.
Waihopi is NSA.
Recent disclosures of TPP negotiations held in secret between governments and corporates involved in the ‘partnership’, reveal corporate intentions to override sovereign law protecting profits predominate, and this is very important in the GCSB conversation where jonKEY blithely suggests oversights jockeyed from recently barbecued peter DUNNE will protect the average Joe from any breach of trust.
For a start, the citizenry has no input into the TPP negotiation, and is ‘protected’ from seeing minutes of these secret negotiations for seven years from date of implementation. So our laws are already being traded by corporations and our present government without any democratic Input. Companies that will be involved in intelligence outsourcing, able to tap anyone anywhere anytime as revealed by SNOWDEN.
I don’t imagine PM ‘directors oversight’ to mean a tinkers cuss at the NSA/corporate interface where Less well known but equally important NSA W/blower Russell TICE explained to FBI W/blower Sibel EDMONDS, information gained thru the NSA surveillance program is ‘routinely-regularly-used’ for leveraging political agenda well outside any ‘legitimate use’ definition.
Makes me wonder what swings DUNNE, because it ain’t common sense.
My opinion;
Under the guise that GCSB and complimentary legislation is to protect the interests of NZ citizens and NZ interests, the reality is;
Current legislative changes are to protect the Government from the people. It is a dagger in the heart of democracy and intends to remove any and all competing narratives, should any arise that is.
It heartens me to learn of Al Jazeera setting up in USA, I would welcome such competing narratives here in NZ urgently!
Comments are closed.