Beware a Government using big data to crack down on the ‘gangs’ plus a question to ask Judith Collins

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dalek

The Government have launched their latest PR campaign to smokescreen their next wave of new surveillance powers. It’s the gangs again folks. The new Stasi centre set put to test out real time surveillance and monitoring of a community is well under way with the Governments new multi-agency Gang Intelligence Centre.

I am always terribly suspicious whenever a politician declares new laws to fight ‘da gangs’. This Government in particular has been very effective in passing Orwellian mass surveillance powers all under the guise of fighting ‘da gangs’ and I suspect this latest announcement of getting tough on ‘da gangs’ is just another assault on our civil rights masquerading as get tough on crime rhetoric.

Last time the Government tried to spook NZers into believing Gangs were the new bogeyman, Anne Tolley used fake numbers to pretend it was a bigger issue than it was.

David Farrar stepped into continue with this lie by attacking Dr Jarrod Gilbert’s assertion that Tolley was factually incorrect…

My problem proved to be the dishonest Right Wing blogger David Farrar. I initially took Farrar’s challenge in good humour thinking it would be a healthy tussle to seek the truth. It wasn’t. As we know now, he and Cameron Slater are birds of a feather, but where Slater is dim-witted Farrar is marginally smarter and this makes him more insidious.

Farrar quickly leapt to the Minister’s Defence. He was able to gain the figures – presumably from the Minister’s office – and with them he attempted to ‘prove’ that I was wrong and discredit me. Sound familiar? It was my own little experience of Dirty Politics.

Farrar was resolute in saying that he expected the New Zealand Herald to cover the story of me eating carrots – the Heraldhaving republished my initial blog on their website.

When I retorted and pointed out that I wasn’t wrong he went on the attack again with a second blog, audaciously saying that I had ‘conceded’ the argument. It was an Orwellian fiction attacking my integrity, but the real nastiness came from Farrar’s followers on Kiwiblog where I was rounded on and vilified. Because my blog is read by a small number of people and his by a very large number, most people read his side. To the vast majority of people, then, I had conceded, was wrong and therefore ripe to be attacked. Farrar had done his job. The Minister was forgotten, I was now the one trying to mislead the people. I was being discredited by mischief and fiction, not by facts and reasoned argument.

I was reading this, hardly believing what was happening.

By this stage, of course, Farrar almost certainly knew he was wrong, but right and wrong is not his concern. His only concern is a political agenda – protect and promote the National party, no matter what the truth is. Deceive and mislead the public, shut up opponents, bury the truth, twist the facts. These are things my training deplores. In fact my last piece on the Minister was praising her work with the Department of Corrections, and I contract to do research for them – and I can’t imagine this helps me getting more – but my only concern is the truth.

Dirty Politics smearing in action.

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I think the trick of eroding our civil rights without us really noticing is the language. Put aside the fact that Tolley lied last year about the numbers to overstate the problem, look at the language of her spin…

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“We want to ensure that Police and other agencies have the tools they need to hold gangs to account, while breaking the cycle of offending by preventing young people from joining these organisations, and helping current members to exit gang life.

“As gangs continue to expand and adapt, law enforcement and legislation needs to be strengthened, while we also require a long-term plan to address what is a complex issue, to halt the intergenerational grip which gang life has on families, and to reduce the number of victims, both within these families and in the wider community.”

Known members of gangs comprise 0.1 per cent (4,000 people) of the population aged 17 and over, but in 2013 were responsible for 25 per cent of homicide related charges and in the first quarter of 2014 have been charged with:

  • 34 per cent of class A/B drug offences
  • 36 per cent of kidnapping and abduction offences
  • 25 per cent of aggravated robbery/robbery offences
  • 26 per cent of grievous assault offences

These gang members average 53 offences in their lifetime, and the 50 members with the highest number of charges average 229 charges each.

…you could be totally forgiven for believing that this was a justifiable and strong move against those awful gangs and this latest stats fest attacking gangs feels similar

Ministry of Social Development findings:
• 3960 gang members
• 77% Maori, 14% European, 8% Pacific
• Average age 40
• 38% Mongrel Mob, 29% Black Power
• 19% in Bay of Plenty, 17% in East Coast
• 92% have received welfare, for an average of 8.9 years
• 27% allegedly guilty of child abuse or neglect

…but as we now know, those gang stats from the first spin were false, but the perception is what the spin needs to win, not the accuracy.

First let’s point out the absurdity of passing more tough on crime laws when the crime rate is at a 35 year low.  God forbid what National would be suggesting if the crime rate was actually high. Summary execution for anyone caught breaking 8pm curfew in South Auckland?

Why people join gangs is far more effective way to counter Gangs than more surveillance powers.

There is the usual talk of seizing peoples assets. Let’s not get too excited about that. Firstly the promised millions never eventuate...

Not one cent of the millions of dollars worth of assets seized from criminals has been funnelled into drug treatment or resources to fight organised crime as promised when the enabling law came into force.

Nearly $150 million worth of homes, cars, boats, cash, jewellery and other valuables has been restrained since the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was passed in December 2009, of which $27 million has been forfeited to the Crown.

Of that, just $10.2 million has actually been placed in the Government coffers, according to figures released under the Official Information Act.

…and Secondly, the Police have managed all this asset grabbing by lowering the evidential threshold from beyond reasonable doubt to balance of probabilities. That allows the Police a frightening amount of power to seize your assets on bugger all evidence. Where are ACT and all our free-market-small- Government-property-ownership-trumps-all-zealots protesting about that remarkable upgrade of state powers over the individual?

The word ‘gangs’ conjures up images of the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, the Head Hunters, Triads, etc etc. That’s why it’s so terribly deceptive, because the definition of ‘a gang’ is the following…

“As per the “Gangs and Organised Crime Bill 10-2 (2009)” dictates: Every person commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years who participates in an organised criminal group—

“(a) knowing that 3 or more people share any 1 or more of the objectives (the particular objective or particular objectives) described in paragraphs (a) to (d) of subsection (2) (whether or not the person himself or herself shares the particular objective or particular objectives); and

“(b) either knowing that his or her conduct contributes, or being reckless as to whether his or her conduct may contribute, to the occurrence of any criminal activity; and

“(c) either knowing that the criminal activity contributes, or being reckless as to whether the criminal activity may contribute, to achieving the particular objective or particular objectives of the organised criminal group.”

…the definition of a ‘gang’ isn’t the Mongrel Mob or Black Power or Head Hunters, the definition is 3 people who know each other. We’ve handed vast unchecked search and surveillance powers to the Police  because we were all told they would be used against the bad people, the truth is that under the Police definition of who a gang is, it opens up almost everyone in NZ.

This is what the Police have now launched –

  • A multi-agency Gang Intelligence Centre led by Police to collect and combine intelligence on real-time gang activity to support investigation, prevention and enforcement, while also identifying vulnerable children and family members who may need social service support. It will also identify young people at risk of joining gangs, so that agencies can target interventions to help steer them away from gang life.

That sounds an awful lot like real time mass surveillance, and seeing as a gang is defined as 3 people who know each other, you could end up via social media friend networks being able to spy on a huge chunk of NZers. In real time.

For ‘investigation’ and ‘prevention’ with ‘enforcement’ coming up last. That’s a huge amount of probing and spying on people who haven’t in fact been found guilty of anything that we are just handing over to the Police and in light of them having 7 servers based in NZ from the Corporate Hacking company that specialise in mass surveillance for Police Departments, it seems plans have been laid in place for sometime.

A journalist should ask Judith Collins if  ‘Hacking Team’ are working for the new Gang Intelligence Centre. Their reputation in helping authoritarian regimes identify activists is appalling.

 

So let’s get all of this straight.

After the NZ Police blew $14million dollars on spying in the Urewera Terror raid‘, they had to find Maori-and-lefty-terrorists to justify that extraordinary budget blow out. Finding those ‘terrorists’ however required illegal spying. John Key responds to that illegal spying by ramming through retrospective legislation that removes all guilt by the cops for illegally spying AND it gives them vast new powers to break into people’s homes and spy on them with the barest of legal oversights. John Key does this again when the GCSB are caught illegally spying on over 80 NZers and rams through law that legalises mass surveillance by the GCSB which it now seems post-Snowden  is effectively being beamed live to the NSA.

In the shadow of that clusterfuck, we now get told that the Police will have more powers to spy on more of us all under the guise of protecting us from organised crime???

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We are having rolled out a PR campaign to justify all of this because the Government are attempting to force through more spy powers

The number of reviews and inquiries currently underway into the Government Communications Security Bureau and Security Intelligence Service make it a certainty spooks will remain in the headlines. They include a wide ranging review headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Michael Cullen and lawyer Patsy Reddy aimed at updating Cold War era legislation, an inquiry into allegations the GCSB spied on trade minister Tim Groser’s rivals for the top World Trade Organisation job, whether the GCSB spied on Kiwis in the South Pacific and any New Zealand links to the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices. A new GCSB director must also be appointed.

…Key is desperate for bi-partianship to get this through…

SIS review: PM aiming for bipartisan support from Labour

Prime Minister John Key says he will be trying to get bipartisan support from Labour for changes to the intelligence services in the wake of a review of their operations.

Mr Key confirmed today that the review, completed by former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Sir Michael Cullen and lawyer and professional director Dame Patsy Reddy, had been received by members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a statutory panel including Labour Party leader Andrew Little.

…the only ones happy with yesterday’s announcement will be the sleepy hobbits who believe anything National tell them, the secret intelligence agencies of NZ who are about to fulfil their franchise agreement with the NSA to be the first fully surveilled country in the world and the private prisons who will see higher profits with increased incarceration rates.

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Key is a dictator simply and will resort to any repressive measure to control power over us all and our freedom and rights are being stripped away as if we are in post war Germany, it is an undeclared war against the very people key should be protecting from intrusion into our lives and causing danger to every one who has no government protections now.

    Let the voter decide, as we go to the coming election and rid this evil caustic man and his authoritarian rule of suppression over us all.

  2. ‘Gang’ needs to be defined….and questions asked in Parliament by the Opposition parties…eg if it is a group of three or more can it mean the following:

    eg does it mean iwi?
    …does it mean a group who like motorbikes?
    …does it mean Maori ?
    …does it include Pakeha or people from other races?
    …does it mean mafia?
    …does it mean the ‘Women’s Institute’?
    ….does it mean a religious group/ cults?
    …does it mean a political group?
    …does it mean a media group ?

    ….does it mean an educational group?

  3. Gang bashing is all to common with those that need to be seeing to be doing something and be kept in the public eye for reasons of revelance to the nz sheeple especially when a leader of a political party could be retiring to Hawaii?
    History shows that police and politicians used the gang bash card as a political point scoring with the help of msm and a few dodgy statistics
    History also shows that one politician, a prime minister ,actually got off his arse and helped(not just repeating tired rhetoric ) those in gangs by getting amongst them visiting thier head quarters (yes Judith like to see you do this) and found these are people with social and financial needs and went about and set social policy to help
    This did reduce the gangs and set a lot of them into a more respectable life and it worked
    Sir Robert Muldoon was this prime minister unbelievable but true

    • Its true – I think it was Black Power.

      Muldoon might have been reviled in many things… but he still believed in the welfare state, a fair shake for the working man/woman …being brought up in an era of Keynesianism , his social democratic values shaped by the then current economic theory’s, – and a fierce socialist grandmother who didn’t let young Robert get too carried away with American Laissez Faire if she had anything to do with it…

      As well…he was adventurous enough to narrate the Rocky Horror Picture Show for years…

      A brash , abrasive man ,… but at least he generally let people know what he thought… unlike this current insipid little weasel we have in the PM’s office at the moment.

  4. Gang bashing is all to common with those that need to be seeing to be doing something and be kept in the public eye for reasons of revelance to the nz sheeple especially when a leader of a political party could be retiring to Hawaii?
    History shows that police and politicians used the gang bash card as a political point scoring with the help of msm and a few dodgy statistics
    History also shows that one politician, a prime minister ,actually got off his arse and helped(not just repeating tired rhetoric ) those in gangs by getting amongst them visiting thier head quarters (yes Judith like to see you do this) and found these are people with social and financial needs and went about and set social policy to help
    This did reduce the gangs and set a lot of them into a more respectable life and it worked
    Sir Robert Muldoon was this prime minister unbelievable but true

  5. Am I a member of a “gang” when I join a union, I wonder? First they came for the gangs, and then they came for ….

    • Don’t worry Mike, a group of three bankers constitutes a criminal gang so you and your union mates are small bickies! Year right!!

  6. So………. if I join a group which opposes say the TPP, Deep sea drilling, mining of Doc Lands/Northland, Selling off of State Houses, RMA reform or anything which may label me as “anti govt”, am I actually joining a GANG??
    Will I be subjected to surveillance and have all my data vacuumed up and collated in a special file?? Very Scary as the state machine ratchets up another notch.

  7. You missed the part of the new initiative that states they will be pouring millions of dollars through specialized community providers of support and assistance to gang families to help them break the cycle.

    The rest of it is just typical Judith Collins bluster aimed to deflect the fact that this is infact one giant welfare policy that will benefit the families of gang members the most.

  8. +100 Great Post

    Clearly there is a need to define ‘Gangs’ clearly …questions need to be asked in Parliament by the Opposition Parties as to what the real content of the definition of ‘Gangs’ is…as it stands the definition is all encompassing :

    eg … “(a) knowing that 3 or more people share any 1 or more of the objectives (the particular objective or particular objectives) described in paragraphs (a) to (d) of subsection (2) (whether or not the person himself or herself shares the particular objective or particular objectives)…” blah , blah…this can mean anything and everything

    …in reality does ‘Gangs’ really mean in practice just Maori organisations eg iwi or tribes or those opposed to jonkey nactional ?

    …does it really mean people who like motorbikes? ( more fascism…Australia is good at this)

    … it could mean the Country Women’s Institute? (now that is just weird)

    http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/object/18684/country-womens-institute-badge

    …does it mean religious organisations and cults eg the Catholic Church

    ….does it mean political organisations? …eg the NZ Labour Party or Mana /Internet Party or breakaway factions of Nactional…remember the Fish and Chip Brigade?…was this a gang under this definition?

    http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/5099/the-fish-and-chip-brigade

    …. does it include educational and social justice organisations?…the WEA?..the Waitangi Tribunal? …social worker organisations?

    …. does it mean academic organisations who do critical thinking and analysis?

    … does it mean internet chat groups?

    …and what about rock bands? eg. Green Day

    (really the definition of ‘Gangs’ and those to be spied upon needs to be clarified …otherwise we have the definition of a fascist state)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NLV24qTnlg

  9. yes and political parties are gangs, arrest them all, and that gang in Ngaruawahia handing out sandwhiches to kids, lord knows what they put between the slices, be gone with them, Senior citizen groups your being watched, Christians, it’s not only god watching everything you do,etc,etc,etc………..

  10. what about those gangs that illegally dig up precious Maori taonga treasured swamp kauri and send it out of the country for their own personal profit ?

  11. G…government
    A…associated, acknowledged, accepted
    N…not
    G…given
    S…sunlight…

    Let’s give some of them some real sunlight…….and see who slithers back into the shadows..

  12. According to Dr John Coleman’s book, Committee of 300, the drug dealers are The City of London and The Vatican. These two entities run The Club of Rome and according to John Key’s own statement, New Zealand is a member of the Club. I rather think it’s New Zealand Inc which is the member of The Club of which JK is CEO. Did some gang members not carry out their orders from The Club?

  13. kind of pointless when you consider the police already have informants in every gang in the country

    From the rank of “Prez” down to lowly “foot soldiers”

    maybe this is why the need the new intelligence center, The cops will always protect touts/informants and they need a work around

  14. Sorry to hear you had to endure such nonsense Martyn from the ego maniac and biased – mini brain – dirty player ==>> David Farrar.
    The NZ police and crusher Collins and the NZ govt. have made so many mistakes and showed such poor judgment over and over and then others pay the price. Our country is worse off with idiots at the helm.
    It is part of donky jonky’s agenda to take away peoples rights and sovereignty and this is all brought to us by his handlers and his puppet masters way above the dim light called our PM.
    His trainwreck govt. are not on the peoples side – they are on the lobbyists and criminal / greedy corporations and banksters sides – clear as a bell. Money – money – greed – greed.
    So there goes our rights and our privacy and our peaceful country and up goes the fear ; controlled media ; propaganda and surveillance whether we want it or not. We deserve better – wake up voters.

  15. If National or Collins had any interest whatsoever in eliminating the most harmful aspects of gang culture, they would legalize cannabis and decriminalise other drugs immediately.

    Of course, don’t expect the media to ask them why they are making this new push against gangs… jeezus.

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