Mainstream media finally catch up to mass surveillance concerns over beneficiaries
Folks, you can either see the issues of tomorrow here on this blog today, or you can wait a couple of months and see the mainstream media finally catch up.
TDB has been vocal since day one on this Government’s mass surveillance agenda and how they have warped that into spying on beneficiaries by demanding all information about them and it is good to see the mainstream media have finally started questioning why the Ministry of Social Development needs all this personal information on beneficiaries and are pushing back…
Ministry of Social Development doesn’t need all that data – Privacy Commissioner
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards says the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) policy that requires social service providers to disclose client information goes too far.
Under the policy, providers will have to give the client information to the ministry when they apply for funding.
Speaking to The AM Show on Thursday, Mr Edwards said it would put people off seeking necessary help.
“The experience you or I might have of an organisation like MSD – which is that everyone’s there trying to do their best for people, trying to help people in their tough times – that’s not the experience of a lot of people,” he told host Duncan Garner.
“Just seeing that on the form – if you access these crisis services, that’ll go to MSD – that’s gonna put some people off and maybe even stop them getting the help they need.”
In addition to that, it’ll worsen MSD’s data, with people dropping off the grid and becoming “invisible” to Government and policy-makers.
Mr Edwards said MSD had not clearly explained why it wanted the client data.
“I don’t think they need it from everyone for every service they access… They need to say what it is going to be used for and what it isn’t going to be used for.”
…Anne Tolley says that we need all this information to create the best most cost effective welfare system.
Bullshit.
I believe that the mass surveillance campaign that is being waged against beneficiaries serves a far darker agenda here. Government intelligence agencies around the world are attempting to work out how to sift through huge amounts of mass surveillance for real time use, that’s what Peter Thiel’s Palantir does.
What Government agencies want to know is how can they spy in real time over people and how far can they go in accessing peoples details. In NZ this desire takes the form of mass surveillance over beneficiaries because no one in NZ cares about beneficiaries and they have zero voice or power.
The counter productive problems with National’s mass surveillance of beneficiaries is that vulnerable people who are already too terrified to engage with any Government agency will actively avoid getting any help so that the neoliberal welfare state can’t track them down and punish them.
It sickens me that we have a welfare department that actively monitors beneficiary social media to try and catch them out in relationships. It’s like allowing the government into our homes to sniff the sheets like some sort of religious morality police.
This mass surveillance campaign against beneficiaries is a war against the poor and it has designs on being able to be expanded to the rest of us.
We need to stand up for the rights of beneficiaries to not be treated with such contempt by these agencies because they will be coming for us right after they’ve crucified the beneficiaries.
Just listening to Kathryn Ryan, if they want details, as she has said previously why don’t people have a number rather than their name and address, perhaps a suburb as well. But frankly I would never trust any of these people.
Yes it is bullshit that the government wants to know that people are getting what they are entitled to. How is that if you go to WINZ many times you don’t get what you are entitled to this has been proved over and over again by AAAP.
Not only that if you go back after 6 weeks off benefit you have to completely apply again from scratch even tbough all your information is still in their files.
The whole Msd system is total bullshit and as for their social media spying it is nothing but the nazi gestapo at work.
On the interview this morning and from Tolley’s statements I understand that gathering this personal information will enable the government to see how many agencies the person interacts with so as to take away some of it ostensibly to give some to the mythical person who is not accessing anything.
You are quite right, Susan. I heard the same saintly message, and nearly wept with gratitude for the socially benign policies that the altruistic National Party is pushing on behalf of their profit-gouging backers.
Well, the MSM will make it a brief news item tonight, I presume, and tomorrow it will be forgotten again, as they will ‘trust’ that MSD really means so well in gathering all the data they want, they will find a ‘legal’ and “fair” way to do it better in future.
For once the Privacy Commissioner did his job, but he will be very careful and diplomatic in commenting further on this or other matters, as he usually does, by avoiding to criticise the government.
Move on, what really matters is weather, weather porn, dairy robberies, smash and grab burglaries, what Prince William and Kate are wearing, when our All Blacks will play the Lions, and how much interest the banks charge for the mortgage.
Do not bother us with this ‘academic’ stuff, about the lesser people, who “bludge” off the taxpayer, thanks, that is what sadly so many out there think, and the government knows it.
I fear the next approach by MSD and WINZ may be to expect all clients to give consent to MSD directly, as a client, when applying for whatever benefit, to also ‘report’ on any services they may access, while being on a benefit, kind of as a condition for getting the humble “support” they get from WINZ.
That way they will pressure people to provide the info anyway, which they have tried the NGO service providers to supply under their contractual agreements.
WINZ already have a box on their forms where you’re supposed to give them any information about non-monetary “income” you might have received. Which is a bit weird, because surely if no money changes hands, then by definition, its not income, is it?
What they want to know is whether a friend let you crash on their couch for free (they gave $100 in avoided rent) or shouted you a meal ($10 in avoided food costs) or gave you a massage ($60 in avoided service fees) or sat and listened sympathetically while you sobbed over the existential horror of visiting a WINZ office for a probation… er… appointment ($100 in avoided counseling fees). In other words, in that little box, you’re supposed to reduce all the mutual support you get from social relationships down to monetary figures. It’s truly, truly, sickening.
Speaking of WINZ forms, I’ve never heard the Privacy Commissioner point out that the little box where they tell you to give the names of everyone you live with breaches the Privacy Act, and you don’t have to fill it in. I always just write something like “under the Privacy Act I cannot give you private information about like other people’s residential addresses without their consent” and they don’t like it, but they always accept it.
Hah, the Privacy Commissioner, I have had dealings with their office, and apart from the decisions made re one matter, none were of much help, no matter how much evidence was presented.
The Commissioner himself does also mostly not sign any of the decisions they make, as he has his underlings, who mostly see no reason to investigate bloody anything.
I was actually surprised that the Commissioner used some relatively firm and clear language in this report he presented re MSD’s treatment of private or personal information, by requiring such on clients from their contracted or funded service providers:
https://www.privacy.org.nz/assets/Files/Media-Releases/2017-03-06-Media-release-Inquiry-into-MSD-Collection-of-Individual-Client-Level-Data.pdf
But also of interest, showing how flexible they operate:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/324878/security-guards-seeing-personal-info-of-winz-clients
“The Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Joy Liddicoat, said the security guards were not breaking the law.”
By knowing the Privacy Act and the many unclear and even rather permissive provisions in it, I can only consider NZ privacy legislation to be pretty much a Swiss Cheese kind of legislation, where you can get away with much, without having to be accountable for anything.
@Mike I agree.
I believe the requirement should be changed to some kind of securely hashed version of the data – scrambled.
For example, if you type out your email or mobile or MSD client ID or IRD or whatever into this form: http://www.xorbin.com/tools/sha256-hash-calculator you can get a very securely scrambled version of the same.
This enables auditing later: if the MSD has a problem, they can take a random sample of records, re-run the sha256 hash, and check if it scrambles the same as first time.
Anne Tolley got a fair roasting from RNZ’s Guyon at morning report.
I think I heard her getting riled.
For those who are interested, here is a link to the media release by the Privacy Commissioner:
https://www.privacy.org.nz/assets/Files/Media-Releases/2017-03-06-Media-release-Inquiry-into-MSD-Collection-of-Individual-Client-Level-Data.pdf