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

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.

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…

“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...

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???

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.