Another savage blow to freedom and privacy

By
John Minto
-
12
0

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Submission on New Zealand Intelligence and Security Bill – 3 November 2016
We have been concerned year on year with the extension of powers and resources to our spy agencies the SIS and GCSB. This latest extension of power to spy on New Zealanders is another savage blow to freedom and privacy by an obsessive, intrusive, controlling state.

Submission re this bill:

The bill purports to keep New Zealanders safe and secure from the likes of ISIS. However we are potential targets for terrorist groups only because we are aligned with the United States and its foreign policy. We would be much safer and more secure at home and abroad were we to adopt an independent foreign policy.

The extension of power to the GCSB to legally spy on New Zealanders is unacceptable. The GCSB has already been caught out illegally spying on at least 88 New Zealanders under existing legislation. This occurred despite the public being explicitly told, and the legislation specifically prohibiting, such activity.

The so-called “triple-lock warrant” will become a triplicate rubber stamp. When decisions are made in secret, without public oversight or scrutiny then abuses are inevitable and civil rights and democracy are the losers.

We don’t accept the explanation that the current legislation is unclear or “confusing” as the Prime Minister claims. If that had been the case the GCSB would have sought clarification or requested amended legislation from the government. They did neither. The only logical conclusion is that they wanted to continue to illegally spy on New Zealanders alongside their critical role of assisting the US National Security Agency to take all New Zealanders’ electronic data for mass storage and retrospective spying.

It is unacceptable that the definition of threats to “national security” in this bill covers any form of civil disobedience protest action. Social progress has never been made without unlawful actions such as those undertaken by the suffragettes, anti-apartheid protestors, some animal welfare actions, anti-nuclear protests on our harbours etc. To include these activities as potential “threats to national security” is a chilling “big brother” approach to dissent which is unacceptable in a democracy.

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Likewise the limitation on collecting intelligence within New Zealand to exempt “lawful advocacy, protest or dissent” is close to meaningless because inclusion of the word lawful underlines that any civil disobedience protest action will not be exempt from the predations of the state on privacy and freedom of speech.

Recommendations

Our first recommendation is that New Zealand develops an independent foreign policy which would involve withdrawing from the so-called “five eyes” international spy network. At the moment we are tied into US global economic and security arrangements and are therefore seen as complicit with US imperialist ambitions and all that this entails. This puts New Zealanders at greater security risk at home and abroad.

An independent foreign policy would provide the best safeguard for the security and safety of New Zealanders.

Our second recommendation is that the GCSB and SIS be abolished and their genuine security functions be taken over by the police under strong parliamentary oversight.

We would like to be heard by the committee.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. Key said on the radio last night that Facebook and other social media was more of a threat to New Zealander’s privacy than our spy agencies

  2. The problem with all this is, the government has more power, money and spin doctors at work, and a mainstream media that is mostly too happy to comply in fueling suspicion and fear. Just look at the usual “prime time news”, where crime, hunts for suspects, court cases hearing horrific stories told by victims. Then there are the many regular drug raids and armed offender call outs and what else there is.

    So while the debate may continue, we get this, fed to the often gullible public, to not forget the threats:
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11741460

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/86059036/Domestic-terrorist-incident-threat-triggered-national-security-system

    The official report:
    http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/all/files/dpmc-nss-handbook-aug-2016.pdf

    More questions than answers now:
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/317285/where-are-nz-terror-threat-suspects-now

    Of course there are threats, and there will be risks and threats, but with every single change of the law, giving the government and its agencies ever more surveillance and spy powers, once too many raise concerns, in all regularity we get fed new fear and horror storied, without much evidence.

    We have also already now government services communicating with customers or clients without their staff putting their names to correspondence (e.g. emails from MSD in reply to their Online Service), thus staying anonymous, and at the same time those agency staff expect full disclosure of all our personal details and circumstances, when we ask for needed support.

    As I understand it, even MSD can now ask the GCSB to investigate on their behalf, if needed, or exchange information with police and other agencies, rather freely.

    Then we have the endless data gathering by other state agencies, which they do in some circumstances exchange with other agencies, without any affected person being informed, and we have of course many private service providers that use the internet, which gather their metadata and some more personal information.

    The future looks like we will have no effective privacy anymore, and we will not get access to anything without handing over all kinds of personal information, while the state and businesses can gather data and create profiles of us, knowing all too much about us.

    As most seem to not comprehend where the journey will go, they simply blindly trust the forces in power, or shrug any concerns off. Then we get the “nothing to hide, nothing to worry” idiots, who do not worry as long as it does not one day affect themselves very adversely.

  4. I find myself agreeing with everything John is saying. Yet I can’t help but admit that people like John and Nicky Hagar and Murray Horton of CAFCA and others have been saying essentially the same things since I first started to follow these issues about 20 years ago. In that time, both the allegiance to the same neo-con paranoia that dominates US foreign policy thinking (see Adam Curtis doco ‘The Trap), and the Stazi-style spying and loss of civil liberties, have only got worse. This has been the case regardless of which party is in government, which implies that voting is not a realistic solution.

    The question we need to ask, and find some really honest answers to, is why? Why does the NZ state seem to function as an unofficial state of the USA? Why does it follow their war criminal leaders into illegal wars of aggression? Why does it spy on our people on their behalf, and criminalize their dissent? Most importantly, can anything short of a (non-violent) democratic revolution, establishing new, deep democratic systems to run our country-scale affairs, really change our status of pawn in the US Empire?

    Note that although I’m saying these arguably seditious things under an activist alias, it’s the nickname I commonly use in everyday life, not a disposable pseudonym. The most effective enforcer of the status quo is the one who lives in your head, and silences you when you want to speak out. Defeating this internal enforcer, and regaining your freedom to speak without fear (regardless on what the consequences might or might not be), is step one to re-establishing an independent democracy in Aotearoa.

  5. But, but John! We’d be invisible if we went independent. And the Big Boys won’t let us pay/play.

    We’d be even worse off than post-Brexit Britain/England.

    It’s too hard.

    Shan’t. Won’t.

    We’ll scweam and cheat and pick on everyone who wants us to grow up – let alone develop a stand-alone spine.

    And, if you pick on us – you’ll be Sorry.

    Bratz4eva. The So Popular Party.

  6. I had to read this again, this is indeed CHILLING stuff:

    “It is unacceptable that the definition of threats to “national security” in this bill covers any form of civil disobedience protest action. Social progress has never been made without unlawful actions such as those undertaken by the suffragettes, anti-apartheid protestors, some animal welfare actions, anti-nuclear protests on our harbours etc. To include these activities as potential “threats to national security” is a chilling “big brother” approach to dissent which is unacceptable in a democracy.”

    As so many already walk around like blindly faithful zombies, staring at their 24/7 gadget companions, not even noticing who walks around them, we need something “shocking” to wake people up.

  7. Lying Key once again?

    No surprise he and Hillary Clinton will make great pals eh?

    They can even lie at each other playing golf and never realise it eh?

  10. It’s incredible what NZers will permit with a “popular” PM in charge of this country of sheep. Twenty years ago, if Bolger had tried to pull a stunt like this, they would have dragged his arse from the Beehive and tarred and feathered “old Spud’.

    Funny thing is that if a Labour-led government uses the new spy legislation, it’ll be the Righties screaming blue murder! And it was their prick-of-a-PM who led us to Big Brother and the Surveillance Society!!

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