Wait, what? There hasn’t been any oversight of our mass surveillance Intelligence apparatus since 2016?

You can never trust the spooks can you?

It was so weird that the Intelligence apparatus announced last week such a great panel to provide feedback that included amazing critics like David Fisher, Paul Buchanan, Thomas Beagle, Jon Stephenson, Deborah Manning and Nicky Hager.

It seemed too good to be true.

Now we find out it was.

The panel of critics was released as a softener up for the real news, which has come out today that since 2016 there hasn’t actually been any legal oversight of the mass surveillance state…

NZ intelligence and security agencies without layer of oversight since 2016

Intelligence and security agencies have been lacking a layer of oversight for almost two years.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security’s advisory panel was set up in 2014, to aid the inspector-general in her role as independent watchdog of the country’s intelligence and security agencies: the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) and The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

The idea was to provide another layer of oversight, and give the inspector-general “a sounding board” to help her determine whether the agencies were acting lawfully and “properly”. But no-one has been appointed to the panel since October 2016.

…and what is the excuse as to why there was no oversight of these most powerful of spy agencies?

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DMPC) has blamed the lack of appointments on the interruption of the 2017 general election.

DPMC security and intelligence deputy chief executive Howard Broad said the appointment process had been “ongoing”.

…the entirely predictable 2017 election that occurred at the end of 2017 was the reason the oversight lapsed in 2016?

Is that what we are supposed to believe?

How convenient for our spy agencies to not have oversight during an election. We know that prior to the 2011 election, the PMs Office and the SIS colluded to falsely smear Phil Goff in the run up to that election, it is completely conceivable that the Intelligence agencies were monitoring the 2017 election and feeding information, but we won’t know because there wasn’t any oversight.

The ‘oversight’ was always bullshit and now we know the bullshit was even less sincere than originally sold us.

These are spy agencies now with enormous power, the likes of which no state agency has ever had. We know that the state has spied on Euthanasia activists, anti-1080 activists, TPPA activists, earthquake survivors, Greenpeace and other environmental groups why would we trust them not get directly involved in politics?

National built a mass surveillance deep state, the supposed checks and balances to that deep state are a joke and mere window dressing.