10 years of Snowden, Assange on trial & NZ cops abuse of search and surveillance powers
I always find the hysteria over China and TickTok amusing, because Snowden revealed America had the power to hack everything 10 years ago…
‘No regrets,’ says Edward Snowden, after 10 years in exile
But whistleblower says 2013 surveillance ‘child’s play’ compared to technology today
Edward Snowden has warned that surveillance technology is so much more advanced and intrusive today it makes that used by US and British intelligence agencies he revealed in 2013 look like child’s play.
In an interview on the 10th anniversary of his revelations about the scale of surveillance – some of it illegal – by the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, he said he had no regrets about what he had done and cited positive changes.
But he is depressed about inroads into privacy both in the physical and digital world. “Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.”
…meanwhile Assange rots in prison for exposing American war crimes…
FPF statement on rejection of Julian Assange’s extradition appeal
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is highly disappointed by the UK High Court’s rejection of Julian Assange’s appeal of his extradition to the United States on Espionage Act charges.
While Assange may still have additional legal remedies available to avoid extradition, it seems increasingly likely that it will be up to President Joe Biden, who recently proclaimed that “journalism is not a crime,” to do the right thing and end this Trump-era prosecution.
“The idea of Assange or anyone being tried in a U.S. court for obtaining and publishing confidential documents the same way investigative reporters do every day should be terrifying to all Americans,” said FPF Director of Advocacy Seth Stern.
…while in NZ, Police are increasingly using the extraordinary powers from the Search and Surveillance Act that were always promised to only be used against the worst of the worst…
Revealed: Police increasingly laying charges for refusing access to digital devices
Newshub can reveal Police are increasingly charging people who refuse to give them access to their digital devices.
And because our phones contain such a lot of personal information, a criminal lawyer says it raises serious ethical concerns.
In 2018, Police laid 116 charges for refusing to give them access to digital devices. That increased to 187 in 2019, and then 336 in 2020. In 2021, there were 471 charges, compared to 512 last year.
…while new speed cameras that can enable face recognition spy network the NZ Police have been secretly building…
New smart speed cameras to measure average speed of vehicles
Transport Agency documents say law changes could allow them to be used against more offences including tailgating, and seeing inside a car to spot drivers using cellphones or not belted in.
…they are called ‘safety cameras’ so the public don’t know Police can enable them with face recognition software.
On top of the power the NZ State now has to spy on us comes the ‘new enemies’ list from the Disinformation Project!
Rise in disinformation prompts calls for election protections
Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.
He says the levels of vitriol and conspiratorial discourse this past week or two are worse than anything he’s seen during the past two years of the pandemic – including during the Parliament protest – but he’s not aware of any public work to counteract it.
So because people were shocked by the mob violence of the Trans activists at the Posie Parker clusterfuck riot, that shock makes you a Transphobic Nazi.
If you were taken aback by the comments made by the Young New Zealander of the Year…
…that surprise makes you a Transphobic Nazi.
If you rolled your eyes at Marama Davidson saying violence in the world is cause by White Cis Males, then you are a Transphobic Nazi.
Outrage Olympics is a feature of culture war dynamics.
I’m not saying there hasn’t been some ugly awful hateful shit said, but the context of this matters right?
The Academic Gatekeepers are attempting to convince the mainstream media to ignore these issues because the stupid masses can’t be trusted to make the right decision on these social engineering projects.
Woke activism is about censoring opinion and that censorship is what creates Anger Grifters like Posie Parker.
It’s a self feeding loop of fear, ignorance, distrust and woke Puritanism.
Comrades – Your enemy isn’t a woman who says stupid shit about Trans people in a public park, your enemy are the Banks, Oil Companies, Billionaires and Property Speculators who continue to pillage this country while we are bickering over the narcissism of petty difference!
We now have a new $300m spy base being quietly built in NZ…
Government has been secretly building a $300m data centre at an Auckland air force base
The Government has been secretly building a $300 million data centre at an air force base in Auckland since early last year, to house its most important information.
Defence and GCSB Minister Andrew Little said the first funding for data centre at the Whenuapai air force base in west Auckland was approved in 2019.
…as we have new domestic spy bases built, we have incredibly woke Academics like Professor Kidman appointed to the Academy of Extremism who helps the Intelligence Apparatus spot enemies of the State.
Professor Kidman attacked the Auckland University Politics Department for calling their Cat ‘Governor Grey’ because according to the good Professor, Governor Grey was a genocidal force for evil and the Auckland University Politics Department was celebrating that (I know, I know, I know – total bat shit crazy, but she actually that).
Professor Kidman then led a cancel campaign against Trellis Cooper for supposedly making a genocidal dress.
I’m not joking.
So the person with the most easily triggered woke thresholds is advising the Spy Nazgûl on who to go after.
The woke’s reliance on cancel culture and deplatforming has generated a movement incapable of persuasion and instead now justifies street violence as a means to an end.
The Ministry of Truth Disinformation Project now want to add anyone who thought the Mob Violence by the trans Activists at the Posie Parker event was not right onto the list of Nazis who need to be spied upon.
And the State is quietly building the assets to do that spying.
Snowden and Assange taught us nothing!
This is Valarie Morse….
Positive reforms for new media step in the right direction
Valerie Morse is a member of the Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism (Fair), an organisation that documents racial attacks and tracks Islamophobic discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand.
…she was charged with burning a NZ flag and was alleged to have attempted to buy a silencer for a gun during the Urewera Training Camp fiasco. She is in total support for the newly announced DIA ‘Ministry of Truth’ that will regulate free speech.
The Woke will cheer the Surveillance State they are building.
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It’s a data centre, not Langley.
As for facial recognition that’s more pause for thought. If you want to go through your windscreen because you don’t wear a seatbelt, be my guest ( though as a tax payer can you contribute to you treatment cost). On the other hand if you are an ar*ehole that uses their phone while driving a moving vehicle you should be fined at least a $1,000. Don’t risk other peoples safety with your self important f*ckwittery.
I thought Morse was an American anarchist immigrant using New Zealand the way John Key and Shaneel Lal and other immigrants come here to do. If money-grubbing hair obsessing Key got to be PM, and Micronesian LGBT leader Lal advises the NZ Dept of Education about enabling Kiwi children to be like him, and even Kiwi Bank sees Lal as an iconic young New Zealander, then I’m not all that comfortable about diversity the way it’s being done in New Zealand.
Key spent a fortune trying to change our New Zealand flag to suit himself. Morse burnt a flag in a public place, our place, which isn’t something that we do here, and Lal looks as if he’d like to make biological females faces the colour of flags. Be good if they could all bugger off and perform elsewhere.
The thing about a Ministry of Truth in a government which claims to be the sole source of truth, is that it’s all based on lies. All over the western world governments are clamping down on free speech to protect themselves, not anybody else. If the Labour government maintains it wants to silence hate speech, then it needs to show that hate speech has proliferated in any significant way. They have failed to do this. I don’t see why New Zealanders should be muzzled because of one sick little Australian runt who came to this country to perpetrate something terrible, and we’re paying the price, to suit self- interested politicians.
Kidman with her pathetic mean girl whinings is just a joke, but well done to the cops if they really are going to do something about tail gaters. About time.
We just trying to keep you safe.
It’s not clear exactly how a government could fully break away from the all-pervasive, Five Eyes surveillance machine.
It would probably require the national network of wire communications to be unbundled from the international wide-area networks. All storage and processing systems would have to be local and behind a strong firewall, with international transmissions reduced to a bare minimum.
The other issue is the submarine cables. The N.S.A. can hoover up nearly everything as it passes through Guam or Hawaii. The only other route is to send everything across the Nullibor and onward to Indonesia.
All this modern technology, online purchasing and social platforms enabling scams and surveillance of one another reminds us that we bought all this crap onto ourselves.
Disappointing to see this from Morse. Just shows you can never trust an anarchist, they all turn liberal in the end.
From recent news reports, it would seem that Trumps obtaining, storing, and hiding confidential documents, and then obfuscating and hindering the authorities from retreaving them, is on a par or worse than Assange. The motives of Assange were ostensibly to use confidential documents to blow the whistle on war crimes, for the betterment of everyone – and war crimes were by far the more serious crime. The prosecution of Assange, is really the American authority trying to stop people from divulging illegal activities conducted by American authority, which seems a major conflict of interest.
If first world countries only count war crimes as crimes, when they are done by the enemy and not by them, then they should do what’s proper and withdraw from the Hague convention and Geneva conventions. The powers that be, are supposed to set the standard, but if the public follow their standard, then the next time you stumble on a horrific crime, then should you turn a blind eye and cover it up, and even try to prosecute anyone else who knows of the crime, and tries to do the right thing.
Whatever Trumps motives were, they were for the betterment of Trump. If American justice is justice, you would expect whatever penalty Assange receives, to be lesser than Trumps. But we all know what the reality will be. Evil florishes when good people do nothing. If we were good people, we could offer Assange sanctuary, or at least his home country of Aus chould, but we all know what the reality will be.
Just something I’ve never been interested in really.