THAT THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (SIS) has failed to protect the privacy of the people it has “vetted” is no surprise. Information is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information by which the power of the state is protected? It will take more than criticism from the Inspector-General of Intelligence to persuade the SIS to give up its role of keeping potential security threats as far away as possible from the Government’s door.
Ideally, the whole notion of security vetting would be insupportable in a nation whose laws prohibit discrimination on the grounds of political belief. That it still happens is proof that Capitalism remains more than equal to the task of defending itself.
If you’re one of those who find it difficult to accept that our civil service is dedicated to the preservation of the capitalist status quo, then try this thought experiment.
A left-wing coalition government is elected on a platform of enacting root-and-branch reform of New Zealand’s economic system. The new government’s overall goal is the eradication of social inequality through radical changes to the prevailing fiscal and workplace regimes. The government announces that a major purge of the civil service will be necessary for its reforms to succeed. Accordingly, all present and prospective members of the senior echelons of the civil service will have to submit themselves to a comprehensive vetting process. Senior bureaucrats found to have strong neoliberal sympathies will be dismissed from their positions immediately. Neoliberals seeking employment in the reformed civil service will be regarded as real, or potential, threats to New Zealand’s national security. Scores of senior civil servants are advised that, having failed the SIS’s vetting procedure, their services are no longer required.
Now imagine the outrage that such an announcement would precipitate. Newspaper editors would thunder their disapproval. Leading law firms would announce their intention to challenge the purge in court. Civil rights advocates would prepare to stage protest demonstrations against the Government’s “Blue Scare” tactics. All of the defence mechanisms of capitalist society would be mobilised to ensure that the system’s ideological guardians remained in place.
Clearly, it would be next to impossible to purge a capitalist society like ours of its official defenders without being accused of abandoning democracy altogether. And yet, we tell ourselves that democracy remains unimpaired in a society which actively discriminates against those who threaten to bring anti-capitalist ideas into the upper-echelons of the state bureaucracy. Why do so many of us simply accept that the SIS, having subjected such individuals to the most rigorous vetting, is justified in recommending they not be appointed to senior civil service posts?
That question was much easier to answer during the Cold War. (1946-1991) Back then it was entirely possible that state servants harbouring strong sympathies for the cause of International Communism and the Soviet Union might feel moved to pass on sensitive political and economic information to their ideological soul-mates. The national security implications of appointing such persons to sensitive positions could not (and were not) ignored.
National security concerns were also raised in regard to civil servants’ sexual orientation. While homosexuality remained legally, morally and socially unacceptable, gay civil servants were acutely vulnerable to blackmail.
In the twenty-first century, the use of prohibited substances and/or alcoholism can make state employees similarly biddable. It is, therefore, difficult to argue against some effort being made to uncover such vulnerabilities prior to appointing someone to a position where nationally important and highly confidential information is regularly circulated and discussed.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decriminalisation of homosexuality has, however, removed the most obvious justifications for SIS vetting. The background checks of today’s security personnel should, accordingly, be restricted to identifying drug and alcohol abuse. Discrimination based upon a civil service job candidate’s political beliefs is, surely, be a thing of the past?
Don’t you believe it.
Today’s civil service, and most of our society generally, functions in an environment of aggressively enforced ideological orthodoxy. Neoliberalism is, without doubt, the most pervasive and effectively defended ideology in human history. Not to be a neoliberal in the early twentieth century, especially in the upper echelons of the dominant public and private bureaucracies, is to risk career death. To openly espouse ideas hostile to neoliberalism is to make that career death certain.
The SIS stands as the last line of defence against the occasional incompetence of those specialist recruiting agencies entrusted with delivering short-lists of acceptable candidates for senior positions in the civil service. Personality tests, CV checks and exhaustive interviews with referees can usually be relied upon to filter out the ideologically inappropriate candidate. Should the commercial gate-keepers prove derelict in their duties, however, Rebecca Kitteridge and her team of “vets” stand ready to protect the key institutions of the capitalist state from the deadly virus of dissent.
From national anti virus service to national HR service. Can you get any more ridiculous.
Next up, national accounting service.
Cause you know there ability to catch Jihadi brides is poor
article is to the point,
one would not promote someone if you did not know if they had your back covered
Nz is a small town, everyone knows someone/everyone and this sort of stuff has been going on forever,
and sadly the weak, vulnerable and honest caring people get the scraps that fall off the table
and get told ha ha, get a life
I’m just wondering if Kitteridge can win a bar fight.
Every one has well laid thought out plans until you get punched in the nose.
NZ is leaking dirty money. P is flowing across the boarder UN opposed.
And Kittgridge is acting as an HR service to the 9th floor.
These people are just crazy. The PM and Kittridge have no clue where they are or what they are doing.
All these people are good at is spending borrowed money
Yes. The stasi is alive and doing well in our comfortable [for some] little south pacific tax haven.
“Information is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information by which the power of the state is protected?”
Yes the government will freely use the power to discredit anyone who tries to run up against their plan of subversion running up to the election and this equals the second round of “dirty politics.”
Best all opposition take out a court order challenge to seize the NZTA/RNZ assets or half for their freedom to rail against any dirty politics this time as the last election was lost because Opposition failed to have a balanced press cover to combat the second round of “Dirty politics folks or we loose again,
In case anyone thinks Chris is over-stating the case, think again.
In the mid-1980s, the SIS once interviewed me regarding a close friend who had applied for a job with the then-Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They asked questions about his politics (which were of a bland, middle-class variety) and his sexual orientation (no, he wasn’t homosexual – far from it).
I went along with the SIS interview (held at former-Pizza Hut, in Wellington’s Victoria St) through a mix of curiousity and wishing to assist my friend to get the job. I later related the full event back to him.
I recall mixed feelings on the event. Firstly, how ridiculous it all seemed that the SIS were playing “James Bond” with ordinary New Zealanders’ lives who had done nothing wrong.
But also a feeling of disquiet that we had our own version of the Stasi/AVO/KGB, that were quite prepared to intrude in our lives to such a degree.
I thought we were supposed to be “better” than our cuzzies in the former Soviet bloc? Isn’t that what the propaganda continually told us?
Know what you mean @ Frank. It might well have been a rellie that interviewed you unfortunately. In some ways it’s fucking hilarious, but after taking some breathe one should not laugh – it’s all fucking dangerous too.
This thread has a pik of dearest Rebecca. So far, I can only feel sympathy for her, and astonishment that such a competent and intelligent woman has been played like a fiddle – or badly tuned banjo
Disagree with Kittridges competence or intelligence. She is quite plainly an idiot.
It’s her good to keep SIS out of the headlines. There is only one rule. Don’t get caught. If you get caught in the headlines you are meant to take one for the team and quite or get fired.
It may well turn out to be Rebecca’s biggest regret. Key has played her like a fiddle, and a very badly tuned fiddle at that. Too bad, never mind! The price of being over-ambitious and constantly trying to find the best in people (including utter cnuts).
There’s always prozac I ‘spose, and failing that – a stiff G & T doncha know, twice daily with a trip around a few mates to egg you along (and watch them run like hell when it all turns to shit eh Becs?)
The country is certainly turning into a little fiefdom with a Stasi/CIA like intelligence service, I would love to know what type of people they employ as I certainly don’t know any of them. Spooks?
When we take back our country we could round up these riffraff and send them to a location of their choosing – no guarantees given:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20060071122
Chris may sense the real world, but has no answers to challenge the disastrous realities we face. Most are brainwashed to the extreme, that is what I observe every day, they will not even consider a change of system, as they feel they cannot wane off the drug called capitalism and selfishness.
That is the main problem, besides of biased media, self serving politicians and those that tow the line and willingly sign up with private enterprise, even if they only earn some morsels from it.
Most people are deep down cowards and mercenaries, they dare not challenge the system, that is one major issue the left or progressives have so far failed to address and offer a solution for.
Hunger, starvation and economic and social chaos are the only thing that will change things from the crap we have. Whether that happens soon is anyone’s guess.
I see the photo of Kitteridge, it is a FACE of EVIL that I see.
How do we know whether these people are snooping into our private lives?
JK mentioned in an interview once on TV that he had plenty of dirt on certain people, is he using this apparatus for political agendas?
He used the SIS and Warren Tucker to discredit Phil Goff prior to the 2011 General Election?
There appears to be high levels of paranoia within this Government at this present time, who are they afraid of and who is the enemy?
KETTERING AND ALL ARE JUST PAWNS OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF KEY,English, Joyce,IN’C USING OUR TAX MONEY TO KEEP THEM SAFE FROM US.
COWARDS ALL THE BASTARDS
What I think we need is a full definition of what the neo-liberal project is. Like institutional racism, the concept it is widely referred to by those who oppose it, but rarely explained. Probably, many of us have our ideas of what it may be, but I would be surprised if those views were universally harmonious.
Can we perhaps clarify the distinction between neo-liberalism, born-to-rule Toryism and avaricious financial selfishness and the unreasonable exercise of political power (although they may sometimes be fellow-travelers)?
I believe you, Chris, are the ideal man for the job, since conducting war on neo-liberalism (not necessarily a bad thing, of course) seems to have become your leitmotif.
After that, maybe we can have a holiday from the word and say what we really mean. I fear too many potentially sympathetic ears are turned away by this sort of esoteric code.
I wonder what would happen if the SIS and GSCB assisted A left-wing government attack and undermine its political opponants???
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