Oh look at that – SIS are manufacturing ways to avoid scrutiny as National take over
I have been arguing that all the tools for a Police State are still lying on the table after the checks and balances over a SIS/GCSB merger weren’t finalised.
That someone as inappropriate for executive power like Judith Collins is the new Minister of the spies and former mercenary Mark Mitchell is the Police Minister, we have all the personalities required for s ratcheting up of police powers.
So I ask again, when will new powers against da gangs get misused against us because the evidence shows that these new draconian laws being targeted at ‘da gangs’ will be used against us immediately…
Last year’s independent report Making Gang Laws in a Panic– by University of Canterbury sociologist Jarrod Gilbert, who once spent five years with gangs – found that previous anti-gang laws had minimal impact.
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- Only two people had been charged under two new offences – habitually associating with a violent offender, and habitually associating with a drug offender – and one of them wasn’t a gang member.
- Allowing the removal of gang fortifications had been “scarcely employed” and, when used, “seldom” successful.
- A new criminal harassment offence resulted in an average of 71 people being charged annually, but only 9.5 per cent of them were linked to gangs.
- The only change that could be interpreted as a success was the charge of participation in an organised criminal group; 60 per cent of those charged were linked to gangs.
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“The legislation that was specifically created to target gangs has more often been employed as general law and order tools,” Gilbert said in his report, and while some of those may be useful, “it is clear that they have not had any meaningful impact on the gang scene“.
His report, commissioned by the New Zealand Law Foundation, noted Australian research that gang crime only makes up a “very small percentage of criminal offending”, and that anti-gang laws in Australia have mirrored those in New Zealand in their greater use against those who are not gang members.
…oh look at that, A new criminal harassment offence resulted in an average of 71 people being charged annually, but only 9.5 per cent of them were linked to gangs.
We already have the proof that these new harsh restrictions on liberty won’t just be used against ‘da gangs’ you sleepy stupid hobbits, it will be used against you as well!
Add to this is news that the SIS are actively side stepping the checks and balances…
The SIS is evading oversight again
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security released their annual report today. And it contains some rather worrying revelations about the SIS and their efforts to circumvent the restrictions on their use of intelligence warrants. When the government rams through new spy powers (typically under urgency, with no public input), it tells us that they are subject to oversight and therefore cannot be abused. But it turns out that the SIS is systematically evading that oversight. Which invites the natural conclusion that they are engaging in systematic abuse – otherwise, why bother to evade?
And this isn’t over little things – its about intelligence warrants, the core of their legal powers. An intelligence warrant allows a spy agency to do something illegal to collect intelligence. Typically that’s intercepting phone calls or internet traffic, or burgling somewhere to plant bugs or copy or steal documents. And when they do something like that which might affect a kiwi, they need to ask other people: both the Minister (who is a rubberstamp) and the Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants. These warrants are also reviewed after the fact by the inspector-General, who tends to be a lot more critical in their assessments than either of the other two.
Or at least, that’s how it used to work. But John Key’s spy law, passed in 2017, fundamentally changed the warrant system. Previously, SIS warrants had to be about a particular individual, and required particularised suspicion. Now, they can be about a “class” of people, and require only a generalised suspicion. Whether a particular person falls into the target class is up to the agency, and there’s no external review of that. So of course the SIS is doing everything under class warrants, despite the fact that they are almost always targeting particular individuals:
…so the spies are hiding behind ‘class warrants’ to avoid any accountability.
We are feeding a surveillance state that is growing increasingly authoritarian.
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The last picture was obviously Chucky and his Bride.
Despite all their surveillance and wire tapping and email hacking and tracing, our intelligence service have not been able to detect where the wave of bomb threats across the country have come from, except to say that the threatening automated phone messages and emails appear to be from the same source, and don’t appear to be serious threats.
Showing the SIS to be less than useless at their supposed primary task of protecting the country.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/11/24/bomb-threat-closes-schools-as-more-concerning-emails-received/
Let’s not blame the Nats for everything. Let’s blame the neolib mindset. Let’s not forget that under Labour we were advised to spy on the neighbours. Let’s not forget the comical list of suspicious-person indicators actually issued by the SIS itself. Let’s not forget that one head spook, the lady with the pearl earrings, suggested that her department would constitute an entertaining reality television programme. Let’s not forget that when AI rules, and algorithms replace working brain cells, the forest beckons.
Sorry, spying on neighbors? Can’t remember that instruction, maybe a little too much spin there. Unless you mean neighborhood watch.
For decades, successive New Zealand governments, irrespective of party, have regularly doled out increased powers to various law enforcement agencies.
And for decades, those same law enforcement agencies have been using those powers not as intended, not as specified, but as general enforcement tools aimed squarely at the citizenry at large.
When will the political class wake up to the fact that they’ve been played for suckers for all their working lives?
Parliament of muppets.
The real concern is not state surveillance of the public (to be safe, members of the public should just assume that the SIS knows everything they say and do) but that the security and intelligence services dictate crucial aspects of government policy, as demonstrated by “the Security Chiefs’ Memo” to Jacinda Ardern at the start of her term as Prime Minister.
Five years with a gang means you are a gang associate or a gang member. And Gilbert picking one offence charge to base all gang behaviour on is disingenuous, what are the total criminal charges brought against gang members and associates in one year?