Dear NZ Police State – here is where I draw the line
I feel like I’ve done my bit.
Accepted this obscene amputation of my civil liberties.
Acquiesced to all public service announcements.
Self-curtailed my liberty.
And I’ve done it all completely willingly, I accept and acknowledge the urgent need to become a Police State overnight, I was calling for such measures from the beginning of this pandemic.
The strength of our liberal progressive democracy is that a well informed citizenship will in solidarity act for the common good even if that responsibility demands a personal sacrifice.
We have all paid our sacrifice while history was watching.
We should feel proud of how we have stood tall in the face of this unprecedented moment and that our Democracy worked when so many others have been left gasping and shortchanged.
What happens next however matters.
The moment the medical science agrees, we need our full rights returned with no lasting State power over us and I fear that out in the murk of trying to find a way forward things are being considered that need serious push back.
Two of those are mandatory testing and mandatory digital tracking.
Let’s just be very clear, and draw the line so that the Government understand those options are a goose step too far.
If people wish to be tested for the virus, they are more than welcome to, but mandatory testing with all the data that would require?
That’s an enormous amount of power being handed over to the State and I would argue that is simply too far of an over reach into people’s lives.
The other concern is the sudden intrusion of mass surveillance Nazgul, Peter Thiel, into the digital tracking arena.
Again, if people wanted to volunteer that information that is one thing, but to make it compulsory?
We aren’t seriously letting Peter Thiel anywhere near a mass surveillance tracking idea are we?
PALANTIR OVERSEAS
It’s been widely reported including by the Wall Street Journal and Forbes that Palantir has built an anti-Covid web app that began running at the US Centers for Disease Control in late March.
It looks very similar to the confirmed start-up in the UK of a Palantir platform called Foundry, set up to crunch anonymised data from the NHS – from hospitals, labs and so on – to predict where resources like hospital beds will be needed.
The UK government said Palantir was not in control of the data.
“Foundry is built to protect data by design. A G-cloud data processing contract is in place. Palantir is a data processor, not a data controller, and cannot pass on or use the data for any wider purpose without the permission of NHS England,” it said.
In the US, Palantir’s CDC project has, according to media reports, avoided controversy because it appears not to be ingesting information that could identify individuals.
But Bloomberg reported that Palantir’s pandemic pitch to governments in France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria included a tool called Gotham, best-known for helping intelligence agencies and the police track individuals.
CONTROVERSIAL IN NEW ZEALAND
In New Zealand, Palantir and co-founder Peter Thiel have both been controversial.
Two years ago, eerily prescient reports told how the Silicon Valley billionaire and his friends had begun buying property here – with central Otago a favourite – to use as boltholes in case of a global apocalypse.
Thiel has been a close ally of US President Donald Trump.
His citizenship here was fast tracked in 2011, though he had barely set foot in New Zealand. The previous government was forced to defend that.
As for Palantir, the NZ Herald revealed the company’s links to spy agencies the GCSB and SIS and the intelligence community, including multimillion-dollar defence contracts.
In the US, Palantir’s deep links to the CIA and National Security Agency have been widely reported on.
Just two days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Palantir got a jump on the virus, recalling its staff from abroad ahead of most companies.
RNZ has approached Palantir for comment, and will keep trying to get more information on this from the Health Ministry.
The GCSB told RNZ it was reviewing Covid-19 contact tracing tools to identify security risks and how to resolve those.
Brothers & Sisters.
We have been compliant with this Police State because we have universally agreed that the curtailing of our civil liberties was required to defeat the pandemic, however there are limits to our good will and consent.
Mandatory medical tests and an Orwellian mass surveillance tracking system run by a company with deep ties to the deep state need to be the lines in the sand we are prepared to draw.
Government assurances today that any testing or digital tracking is voluntary must not be allowed to move tomorrow.
Our consent to a Police State for a virus the vast majority of us won’t die or suffer from is not endless, and to believe otherwise is a grotesque misreading of our compliance.
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Agree 100%.
“Mandatory medical tests and an Orwellian mass surveillance tracking system run by a company with deep ties to the deep state need to be the lines in the sand we are prepared to draw.”
Mandatory testing and surveillance by anybody is unacceptable, and the government needs to know this right now.
A link to a bloomberg article about shonky’s buddy who brought NZ citizenship after a couple of weeks more or less in the country. A long read,but well worth the time to understand this enabler of mass surveillance.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
I am shocked that Jacinda is silent on this!!!
Does she condone this?
If so then I am doubly shocked.
Great reporting Martyn my brother.
No mass survielence must be allowed here.
We canot trust the ‘establishment’ here,
The government seem to be pushing this magic vaccine narrative as well via their media shills, probably with encouragement from the disease research community who make their living from medical funding. In this scenario citizens will not be safe until this vaccine is found and until then, the threat levels will always be present, always on the minds of citizens. The danger may ebb and flow but we will be kept on edge by declarations from government, health bureaucrats and police. Compliance with the pandemic narrative will be rewarded, rents and wages paid, token freedoms offered, food supply continued. Those questioning the actions will be ostracised via media reports, subject to propaganda using mechanisms such as divide and conquer, or will just be arrested without just cause. The disease commentary will last for months, we will receive daily updates of how the vaccine production is proceeding, we will hang on every word from every specialist beamed into our living room by the government’s media houses. All the while we will be told that the threat of catching the disease is imminent, that the death tolls will rise, that the situation will only get worse. Community heroes, industry leaders and a new societal order may emerge. We will happily trade our freedoms and privacy for protection from this invisible enemy. We will be safe in the bosom of the state.
Ardern’s counsel Austin Powell said people were subject to significant limits during lockdown, but had the autonomy to make decisions about essential travel.
“There is no requirement that you obtain permission in advance or that you report on your movements,” Powell added.Here’s what you can and can’t do while New Zealand is on lockdown, under Level 4 alert for Covid-19.
He said the Covid-19 alert levels imposed no demand people stay in their homes for a minimum number of hours each day.
“This doesn’t get far enough to be considered a detention.”
Justice Peters agreed that she did not consider the man’s family to be detained as they remained free to engage in many of their usual activities.
“In my view, the freedom to exercise whenever they wish, to go to the supermarket whenever they wish, to talk to whomever they wish, and to access the internet whenever they wish is quite different from being held in custody,” she said.
The ‘prol’s’ must unite according to our INGSOC leader
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/last-post-first-light/121221158/jacinda-ardern-asks-kiwis-worldwide-to-stand-at-dawn-for-anzac-day
It’ll be ok if we don’t do it this year. That’s just this year, and perhaps next year.
https://digit.site36.net/2019/09/16/german-federal-states-test-police-software-with-palantir-function/
Palantir is a very, very dangerous beast.
…..where does the name originate from:
“A palantír is a fictional magical artefact from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium. A palantír is described as a ball of indestructible crystal, used for communication and to see events in other parts of the world, whether past or future.”
“Government officials proposed suspending the Official Information Act during the coronavirus lockdown – a suggestion that was headed off after the intervention of the country’s official information watchdog, Newsroom can reveal.”
Another example again of …..”never let a good crisis go to waste”
The question remains. Was any of this unprecedented or necessary? Was this convenient crisis caused by an irresponsible media-inspired panic?
Our own Dr Simon Thornely tried to counsel caution. Epidemiologists all over the World did likewise:
https://tinyurl.com/y9szf5wz
https://tinyurl.com/y9jc6285
Now that the testing results are coming in, it seems they were correct:
“A month ago, we interviewed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya just as the COVID-19 crisis was shuttering the economy and governments were ordering citizens to shelter at home. In that interview, Dr. Bhattacharya mentioned that he himself would soon be conducting tests for COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, California, one of the most active hotspots in the country. Today Dr. Bhattacharya returns to discuss the results of that study and one currently under way in partnership with Major League Baseball……
Dr. Bhattacharya discusses his findings with Peter Robinson from Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Watch:
https://youtu.be/k7v2F3usNVA
“According to their new findings, the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is significantly lower than previously assumed. “If you take these new numbers into account, they suggest that the fatality rate for this new coronavirus is likely to be “in same the ballpark of seasonal influenza,” says Dr Ioannidis.”
https://youtu.be/cwPqmLoZA4s
Firstly: “social distancing”: this should be called “physical distancing”; if a virus can be airborne and it is dangerous to be near potentially infectious persons, one can stand a little further away, obviously, but polite conversation and small but meaningful social contact could and should be still achievable. Secondly: where are the facemasks? it would be a lot cheaper to issue every citizen wishing to make a public appearance with a facemask for the occasion, rather than paying a few hundred zillion dollars to an already outrageously rich person with some tracking software. Don’t tell me Palantir gives a damn about the ‘Privacy Act’.
Country Boy said most of it.
My view is that police are agents of the state. Watching Merata Meta’s film of Bastion Point and seeing columns of police marching up to the Point to deliver to Maori who are occupying their own land, tells us all.
Bob Jones once said that he’d drive on the wrong side of the road if he felt like it. Who respected his entitlement? (He was just a crafty lad from a state house – as was Key). We do hold to rules that protect our safety. Bomber you concede this was necessary to restrict the spread of covid-19, despite your loss of civil rights. CB has pointed out this notion of civil rights is pretty fluid. Now you extend the line/extend your case for civil rights into the scarey mass surveillance world of Peter Thiel. Already our state uses these powers. In Dick Scott’s book on the 1951 waterfront dispute, Scott publishes a poster that the Natz used as their election propaganda. It asks ‘was your phone tapped?’ This revealed state surveillance of unionists. It appealed to the ‘law abiding’ citizens who returned a Natz government.
This is a scarey world for those who don’t toe the line, don’t support the status quo, as Nicky Hager keeps telling us. It’s a world where capitalists and capitalism rule but in everyday life usually disguise their control, the iron fist.