Isn’t it depressing that Labour are selling us out by voting for warrantless spying by an agency caught out smearing them?
Last night Labour do what they always do, over compensate on Security issues. So terrified are Labour at being perceived weak on National Security issues, they have folded and rolled over for Key’s mass surveillance state.
Because mass surveillance reminds the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind of Kim Dotcom, Labour aren’t interested in protecting us from State Spies and are more interested in putting as much distance between themselves and Snowden’s revelations as possible.
It’s the politics of cowardice.
The claim that the SIS won’t spy on activists with this new warrantless spying is a joke. The SIS can spy on people for terrorism purposes or if they threaten economic or commercial interests. The Government claim that by removing the commercial and economic interests from warrantless spying that’s a safe guard, but if those commercial and economic interests can claim what is happening to them is being done via ‘terrorism’, they can be used.
The other supposed safe guard is that the surveillance will need to gain a warrant to reach evidential thresholds, but that’s only true if the SIS wants to gain evidential thresholds, they could just be doing it for intelligence gathering, in which case they won’t need it for evidential thresholds.
This is the spy agency recently outed working with the PM’s Office to falsify information to smear the Leader of the Opposition months before an election on a far right hate speech blog. They have abused their power to the point of being a coup, and here we are giving them 24 hour fishing expeditions to break into our homes, plant spy cameras and film us.
The real shock is that these powers were already given to the bloody Police after they were caught illegally spying in the Urewera case. But because the Police feel squeamish about using those powers to spy on activists and religious groups, the SIS is being given these powers.
Labour have failed us to cuddle up to muddle Nu Zilind who are still all confused and frightened about mass surveillance and who instinctively cling to authority for reassurance.
Ramming warrantless spying through with no proof whatsoever of a real threat and telling us they are protecting us is a Police State, it is not a democracy.
May history damn us for our spinelessness, may history damn us for our apathy. If a Labour Party try and close a legal loophole where abusive parents were getting away with assaulting their children, that’s Nanny State gone mad and requires hundreds of thousands on the street. The National Party allow the spy agency they used to rig the 2011 election the power to break into our homes and film us, and not a fucking whimper.
This is what happens when Seven Sharp is the new standard for public debate.
These powers are a stain on our democracy.
