Today’s irony was brought to you courtesy of former ACT MP and Govt Minister, Rodney Hide

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big-brother-is-watching-you

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Either Rodney Hide is taking the piss, or Karma has well and truly caught up with one of the National Government’s previous political flunkies;

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NZ Herald - Rodney Hide - ACT - Why am I under investigation - SIS - GCSB - surveillance - police state - nothing to hide nothing to fear

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In case the story mysteriously disappears, here is the full text, from the NZ Herald;

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The state apparently has me under covert investigation.

It began two weeks ago. My Christchurch friends and colleagues were served, some at home, some at work. They were summonsed by a senior insolvency officer who explained they could be apprehended should they refuse. Such notices are a detention, an arrest without charge.

The guys are motor mechanics, engineers and motor engineers.

They turn up the following Wednesday as ordered, each at separate times. The deputy official assignee swears their oath.

They are interrogated by private investigators from a firm called InDepth Forensics, Hamilton.

I have the recordings.

On Thursday I email and ring the PI firm. “Why are you investigating me?” They hang up.

I email and leave messages for Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment manager Mandy McDonald.

She won’t return my calls.

On Friday I go to the MBIE office in Christchurch. The boss can’t answer my questions: she doesn’t know what’s happening. She says she will speak to her solicitor and get back to me. She doesn’t.

I ring Minister Steven Joyce’s office. I make no progress.

I return to MBIE’s office on Monday. I’m refused an appointment. I’m told the deputy official assignee “only administered the oath”. But the deputy official assignee signed the recording as “interviewer”. I’m asked to leave. I refuse.

I wait quietly in the foyer for 2 hours.

Joyce’s staffer emails: But because the “Official Assignee [is] an independent body, and also under Hon [Paul] Goldsmith’s responsibilities, I do not think I can assist you further.”

Goldsmith is in Paris explaining how he’s making “it easier for businesses to increase productivity and innovate”.

I ring the Institute of Private Investigators. Useless. I email the Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority. Ditto.

I complain to the Privacy Commissioner. I don’t hear back.

I provide a two-page summary for local MP Nicky Wagner. She rings. Finally someone is taking my complaint seriously.

On Tuesday I drop in a letter to the Christchurch MBIE. Now there’s security. The guard tells me he’s there to see his girlfriend. I tease him.

Keith’s still there an hour later. He admits he has been called because of me. He wants to know if I will be back.

Tuesday night. Wagner must have kicked butt. Mandy McDonald sends a clearly hurried email. She assures me I am not under investigation. It’s taken nearly a week.

But why the questioning under the detention powers?

The next day I get a letter from another MBIE staffer warning me that reporting the content of their examinations of my friends and colleagues would render me liable to a year in prison plus a $5000 fine. But, according to the email from McDonald, I’m reporting a non-investigation.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, Rodders. That’s what John Banks kept telling us. That’s what John Key kept telling us. So obviously, the extension to the powers of the GCSB, SIS, and other government departments – which was supported by ACT – should be a non-issue, right?

Really, Rodney, you’ve been part of the growth of the Surveillance State in this country and now you complain that you’re being surveilled?

Really?

Well, my little cherubic,  Right Wing mate, you oughtn’t. It was inevitable really. After all, in the early days of the USSR, the nascent totalitarian State’s security arm (Cheka/NKVD/KGB) devoured many of the high-ranking Communist Party officials. They fell foul to their own pernicious State power.

Welcome to reality.

When Dear Leader’s security thugs throw you in jail for whatever transgression you’ve incurred against the State, remember to remind your   cell-mates that you were partially responsible for the following laws increasing the power of the State;

Search and Surveillance Act 2012

Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013

Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act 2013

Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill

Eventually, it all catches up with those in power – an intimate lesson Rodney has learned.

I bet he never thought it would happen to him?

Karma. I love that gal.

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References

NZ Herald: Rodney Hide – Why am I under investigation?

Additional

Search and Surveillance Act 2012

Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013

Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act 2013

Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill

Parliament: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill

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Nigella Lawson, GCSB, Christchurch re-build, and Malcolm Burgess on Campbell Live

Dear Leader, GCSB, and Kiwis in Wonderland (Part Toru)

The “man ban”; animal testing; GCSB Bill; and compulsory miltary training

David Cunliffe announces Labour Govt will repeal GCSB Bill!! **Updated**

A letter to the Dominion Post on the GCSB

An Open Message to the GCSB, SIS, NSA, and Uncle Tom Cobbly

The Mendacities of Mr Key #1: The GCSB Bill

Campbell Live on the GCSB – latest revelations – TV3 – 20 May 2014

TV3 – Campbell Live’s GCSB Public Vote

The real reason for the GCSB Bill

The GCSB Act – Tracy Watkins gets it right

The GCSB Act – some history

The GCSB – when plain english simply won’t do

The GCSB law – vague or crystal clear?

A proposed Labour-Green-Mana(-NZ First?) agenda – part tahi

One Dunedinite’s response to the passing of the GCSB Bill

The GCSB law – Oh FFS!!!


 

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Yes, I read this in yesterday’s Sunday Herald. It’s a bit vague and thin on detail, so don’t know what to make out of it, despite reading it a few times, thinking I might have missed something.

    Either the old Hide is having a laugh at the rest of us ordinary working class folk, or else he’s in trouble. Big trouble maybe, with the movers and shakers, treading on a few toes perhaps! If it’s the latter, it means he’s done something or said something untoward!

    Been a very naughty boy?

    Gone against the status quo?

    Been a bit dodgy and shifty?

    Told a few tales?

    If what he infers in his article is true, then that very same status quo Rodney Hide worked so hard for to keep power, have turned feral on him!

    If he’s not kidding us, then all I can say is welcome to the real world Rodney. Now he knows how the rest of us feel about being betrayed and treated like scum!

    Karma, just desserts, coming back to bite him hard in the bum. Keep that in mind Rodney, when you start the hand wringing!

  2. If that is Hide’s full text, then it is an incoherent rant.

    He doesn’t establish any reason for his suspecting he is under investigation, it doesn’t even establish that he was “questioning[ed] under the detention powers”.

    [And who the hell is Keith?]

    but an interesting insight into how his mind works, I suspect he might have been drunk while writing..

    • On Tuesday I drop in a letter to the Christchurch MBIE. Now there’s security. The guard tells me he’s there to see his girlfriend. I tease him.

      Keith’s still there an hour later. He admits he has been called because of me. He wants to know if I will be back.

      I can only surmise Keith is the guard, on first-name terms after the banter.

      Either that or this Keith fellow only appears to Mr Hide.

  3. Funny, Karma has bit hard on Key’s arse also. The evil propaganda they used against Cunliffe for, where do I start, his tie, his New Zealand holiday, his speech on domestic violence. Karma totally shoulder tapped Key all without a black ops agenda, the falsified accusation of labours one hundred thousand dollar bottle of wine political donation now Key is involved in a bottle of wine scandal, wheras his was to apologise for his strange hair fetish, his wearing of “I’m not sorry for being a man” T-shirt is now followed up with the epic nail fail, and a admission that Key’s wife gets a real man in, that is karma. The universal consciousness is having a good laugh as it gets them all back. I was waiting for it. All picked up by international media, you couldn’t even conceive of a better karma event, he’s now an international idiot and it serves him bloody right.
    Now Key and Abbot (dumb and dumber) look stupid together both controlled by the same puppet master. P.s Pam Corkery on ‘ Pauly’ Henry ripped it up she tells it like it is, she deserves a bunch of flowers she was awesome.

  4. Thanks Frank for putting this all together – creative you are.
    Really – what has Rodney Hide done positively for New Zealand other than provide some grade D entertainment and then dropping his dance partner on the floor ? He thinks he is funny but maybe this resides only in his mind.

    This truly seems like Karma coming around to bite him after his contribution towards our loss of privacy and sovereignty.

    What goes around seems to often come back around. Sorry Rodney, you get very little sympathy here nor likely many other places.
    Some politicians are a bit more disappointing than others.

  5. Two things stand out from Mr Hide’s incoherent blathering. The first is that being under investigation by the Official Assignee is not exactly “state surveillance”. The OA investigates insolvent companies and bankrupts. The OA’s office is part of MoBIE, not the state spy apparatus.
    The second is that what we actually have in the article is a list of Important People Rodney can get hold of to get him out of trouble because, apparently, he is more special than lesser mortals.
    Whatever you’re putting on your toast, Rodney, you should probably quit it.

  6. Correspondents are being blinded by personal dislikes. Rodney Hide should be embraced for illustrating the outcome of encouraging a surveillance Society. Whatever you think of his politics, in this case you appear to be on the same side

    • How can I ever be on the same side as a right-wing muppets like Rodney Hide? I listened to him and Coddington on Radiolive when they appear as the ‘sensible’ voice of the right, and I want to throw the radiogram out the window.

      I’ve looked into the soulless, witless eyes of David Seymour and listened to the vapid cant coming out of Jamie Whyte and cheered when Don Brash chewed on manure thrown at him and when John Banks was found guilty and have nothing but contempt for them all.

      May ACT and all its members rot in jail, anti-social, callous bastards.

    • Three questions for you John.

      Why is it a case of being “blinded by personal dislikes” when one observes that Hide’s article, in terms of being a clearly written and coherent presentation of a case, is more akin to being a dog’s breakfast ?

      Perhaps you can tell us who Keith is? [Keith’s still there an hour later]

      Finally, do you not see any element of irony in Hide’s stand, given ACT’s position supporting measures that increase the “surveillance Society” and which erode individual privacy?

      • I’m not blinded by personal dislikes, I’m anti the blind ideology of trickle-down, neoliberal, self-serving bullshit economics that started in the 80’s with ACT infiltrating Lange’s Labour and has continued unabated in New Zealand ever since.

        Hide’s, Whyte’s, Brash’s, Banks’ and Douglas’s adherence to flat-tax rates, the ‘market will provide’, “trickle-down” and other sly ways to polish the turd of neoliberalism that has brought New Zealand close to its knees in terms of inequaity.

        New Zealand’s inequality

        Hide, ACT and the other ‘Hollow Men’ cabal that have taken control of New Zealand’s government and media won’t be happy until NZ is as unequal as the rest of the world.

        At least we aren’t as unequal as the rest of the world yet.

        There’s no forgiveness for the right-wing bullshit politics and policies that ACT and National are foisting on New Zealand. As I wrote previously, ‘diddums’ Hide can rot in jail for being part of the neoliberal oligarchy that have ruined New Zealand.

        BTW – Keith appears to be a security guard, known to Hide, if you read the article carefully.

        • BTW – Keith appears to be a security guard, known to Hide, if you read the article carefully.

          Carefully? The grammatical conventions I was taught to respect wouldn’t separate the clauses that identify a subject/object into different paragraphs. I accept that your deciphering of Hide’s intent is correct, however I offer no apologies for missing it.

          BTW, we can agree on your observations regarding ACT’s other philosophies but I hardly see it has bearing on the specifics of the irony that is the subject of the post.

    • A bit late for that now, John, considering Hide and his party voted for the growth of the surveillance society!

      • I’d rather see most right-wingers in jail for crimes against humanity in New Zealand, for their part in the neoliberal takeover of, and the inequality they have created.

        Falsifying donation records, aiding and abetting corporate fraud, or for tricophilia makes not a jot. One less neoliberal in the world, is a start.

        The sooner we get rid of them, whether by voting, or through jail, the better. BTW, the sooner we also get rid of comma pedants, the better.

  7. I am not sure the case makes a left – right political point.

    The section 165 of the Insolvency Act 2006 that enables arrest without charge and denies the right to silence was passed by a Labour-led government. Not that that matters.

    Attorney General Michael Cullen was advised it was contrary the Bill of Rights but made palatable because of its narrow objective (uncooperative bankrupts) and constrained focus (their “property, conduct and dealings”).

    Of course, it’s been used here way outside its lawful purpose and without the safeguards the Attorney General was advised the law provided, e.g. written record, plus it’s been contracted out to Private Investigators.

    The bigger point I would make is that very intrusive powers have been handed by Parliament quite routinely to some very obscure Departments, no doubt for good reason, but which are readily abused.

    I am in a privileged position. But i made sure I didn’t ring my political contacts but, rather, made an appointment with my local MP. I thought at first it was Ruth Dyson but her office advised there had been a boundary change and it’s Nicky Wagner.

    The privilege that I have is that I am known to the MPs who, from whatever side of the House they sit, suspect it’s nutty and to quote the phrase that someone on the Opposition Benches said, “Doesn’t sound right”.

    My interest in highlighting the case is that (a) I can, (b) I have done nothing wrong, and (c) I know there are others who have likewise been unlawfully treated but who lack the voice.

    I would like to tell you more but I really don’t know what it’s about either.

    I will be down at the MBIE office in the morning trying to find out more.

    I take Keith — the security guard (turns out, not his real name) — his morning coffee.

    Best

    Rodney

Comments are closed.