The State Stasi have used corporate spies on beneficiaries as well, not just activists so who will the NZ Deep State spy on next?

There is an enormous amount of attention now on the State’s use of corporate spies…

Concern over surveillance links between police and Thompson & Clark
Amnesty International has backed demands for an inquiry into links between private investigators and the Government to be expanded to include the police.

A Stuff Circuit investigation, Unseen, revealed police weren’t part of the inquiry being carried out by the State Services Commission, and would not answer questions about surveillance of animal activists or Greenpeace.

In response, Amnesty International has launched a petition asking for police to be included in the inquiry looking into relationships between state sector agencies and controversial private investigation firm Thompson & Clark.

“The evidence is mounting that over the last decade police and private investigation firm Thompson & Clark have been involved in increasingly sinister activities directed at activists, including surveillance and spying,” says the petition.

…you would think that the Police have enough power right? The Search and Surveillance Act gave the Police vast powers…

• 3 day ‘fishing’ trips for the police who can spy on you with no warrant whatsoever
• No right to silence
• Domestic spying by 3rd parties
• The media losing their right to protect sources.

…it was retrospective legislation that was passed so that Police caught illegally spying on the so called Urewera ‘terrorists’ were able to get away without any prosecution. Rewarding Police who broke the law by making the laws they broke legal is bewildering but Key did the exact same thing with mass surveillance allowing the GCSB and SIS to legally spy after they were caught illegally spying on NZers.

Edward Snowden this week wrote about the magnitude of power we have  handed over to the Deep State

So news that the State has been outsourcing their spying to Thompson & Clark is remarkable when you consider how much unchecked power the State now has to break into your life and spy on you, but we would be foolish if we believed that the state have been using these powers against just activists, we have already found out that the State has been using these powers against beneficiaries for years. The public service scum who has called for the investigation of corporate spies, also used those corporate spies!

An ironic case of foxes and henhouses
The Government’s spooks and snoops have obviously been getting a bit cocky. But the announcement to investigate their use by government departments is highly ironic.

Because the guy calling the inquiry, State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes, was in charge of MSD when it was using private investigators. Particularly in court cases where the state was on the hook for serious liability. Like, say, when children in state care have been raped.

Hughes was the boss at MSD when the Crown defended the White case in 2007. The civil case was about many things but it was essentially a test case about the Crown’s liability for abuse of children in state welfare institutions. Crown Law and MSD chucked millions of dollars at defending it because they knew if they lost there were thousands of other victims they’d be paying out substantial damages to.

The Crown won on statute of limitations, although the judge accepted the allegations of sexual abuse by one of the main plaintiffs. This judgment set the precedent the Crown wanted and allowed the state to pay negligible amounts to claimants on terms that suited the Crown’s budget. If victims don’t like what they are offered, their only option is to go through the invasive interrogation of a QC acting for the Crown in a court, with little to no chance of winning. Despite a Royal Commission of Inquiry that’s still their only option.

The case received no media coverage, probably because of heavy suppression orders. But there were all sorts of details that didn’t appear in the proceedings.

…MSD HAD to win the 2007 case because they had been using so many corporate spies and mass surveillance powers in so many other cases, if they lost the 2007 case, it would have exposed them to multi-millions in damages.

So the person who was deeply involved in using corporate spies, is now all of a sudden reviewing what those corporate spies have been doing.

How convenient.

Was that out of a sense of duty to get to the bottom of corporate spy use by the State, or was that to ensure what was revealed wouldn’t expose their previous use of those corporate spies?

After seeing how Housing NZ destroyed lives based on a myth, after seeing MSD attempt to imprison and damage beneficiaries by defining loans as income, after seeing the cruelty of the state in dealing with the most vulnerable amongst us time after time after time – learning public service scum who controversially used corporate spies are now investigating the use of those corporate spies should be the final straw.

The Left look at the State as the great leveller of unregulated Capitalism, but what if the State is part the bloody problem in crucifying the poorest and weakest amongst us?

The neoliberal revolution that occurred in NZ changed our public services from being the instruments that facilitated egalitarianism into psychotic corporations focused on managing rather than doing.

The neoliberal welfare State is there to punish and damage the poor who are failed by the Free Market, it is not there to look after the welfare of those people.

The radical Left needs to consider targeting the State for an existential change because the right wing neoliberal public services are the problem now. Look at how those same neoliberal forces are moving to once again to destroy any remaining public service ethos.

I persoanlly have always found it fascinating that the whispering campaign against Clarke Gayford exploded in terms of amplification right after Jacinda ruled out all State agencies using Thompson & Clark.

How interesting.