What the media are not making clear regarding the new spy powers
The mainstream media have fallen over themselves to declare that the new spying powers by the GCSB are all fine and dandy.
It is not.
Last week the NZ Government announced vast new powers for the GCSB to be able to
-spy without a warrant for 24 hours
-launch its own investigations
-and jail for 5 years anyone revealing illegal spying by the Government.
It’s the second one of these that the media seem to have ignored.
The law change that Key rammed through Parliament misusing urgency allowed the GCSB to be tech support for domestic law enforcement. This was controversial because the GCSB is a counter intelligence agency and turning them on a civilian population is like using tanks to direct traffic.
What these new powers allow for is the bloody GCSB to launch its own investigation branch.
The 2014-2015 budget for the GCSB was $86, 843, 000. Their budget for 2015-2016 is $143, 568, 000. That’s almost a $60million dollar increase in one year – what other Government department gets a 75% increase in their budget?
We know these mass surveillance powers are always used against activists and not terrorists and Maori always seem to be on the receiving end of these terrorism claims. A report into the GCSB released under the official information act this year showed numerous internal complaints about an environment of sexist and racist jokes directed at those they were spying on. How can the public have any faith in the GCSB being able to launch their own investigations if that’s the kind of attitudes allowed there?
Fear plays a huge part in the justification for eroding civil liberties. In NZ, John Key has defended these new powers by claiming Islamic home grown lone wolves will attack us, when in reality, NZers have more to fear from cow feaces poisoning their drinking water than ISIS – frightened voters are easier to manipulate.
Our Government forced through legislation 2 years ago that forces all telecommunications companies to install back doors to our intelligence services and the power to gag those companies from telling their customers that they’ve been compromised, that means these new powers are anything but a mere tidying up of flawed law, it is a huge erosion of our civil liberties.
Without a critical media, NZers could sleepwalk into allowing this to become law like they did with the first mass surveillance laws.
No Government, Right or Left should be allowed this amount of power.
Truth is the MSM lost the plot long ago, and for the rest they will not report anything that will seriously challenge the government on spylaws. The populace has been conditioned through “fear incitement” and “fear reporting” on crime, terror and violence for years, so people actually demand more security.
The government, supported by a too willing MSM, have managed to set the narrative on this, and know, that people will agree to sacrificing privacy and rights, for “security”.
Hence most go along with it, will not raise issues, and fall for the slogan “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”. The collective dumbing down is working, and with biased reporting all those that are activists and those who live on benefits, they are treated as prime suspect all the time, can thus not be trusted, and must be kept and eye on.
Common sense no longer exists, that is for most, only a minority of us actually still care about what is the truth, instead of “truthiness”, and what matters and what rights we should have.
‘Truth is the MSM lost the plot long ago’
I disagree.
I believe the MSM have not lost the plot at all and are, in fact, working exactly to the script that was written in the early 1980s, perhaps before; it was in the mid-to-late-80s that commercialisation and dumbing-down really took off in NZ.
George Bush took the black-white narrative of George Orwell’s 1984 to an extraordinary level when, following the false narratives spun around the events of 9/11, he declared: “You are either with us or against us.” In other words you are either a mindless, compliant zombie who will automatically side with the 0.1% and their industrial-military-financial complex, or you are a ‘terrorist’; nothing between those extremes.
It was Bush, of course, who commenced the process of trashing the US constitution that Obama (remember ‘hope and change you can believe in’?) has put into overdrive.
There is absolutely no question about it: the greatest threats to the security and welfare of most New Zealanders -peak oil, abrupt climate change, financial Ponzi schemes, US military hubris etc.- are made worse by central government, city, district council and regional councils and ignored the police, courts, GCSB etc.
With the government making everything that matters rapidly worse and failing to address ANYTHING that needed to be addressed long ago, we should expect the slowly declining quality of life we have witnessed over the past four decades to start to really plummet a year or two from now.
Therefore, commensurate with that falling quality of life must come more propaganda, more surveillance, more repression etc.
More surveillance didn’t save the Americans from the Sept 11 attacks on the world trade center so what makes people think it will save us. In fact this attack made a mockery of the US govt and the billions of dollars spend on National security in America. Now like sheep we head down the same track under a dick head money trader who has been selling us short for 8 years.
Shocking!! Money would be better spent on surveillance at Havelock North waterways and rail public transport and housing in Auckland.
Considering that sheltering the identities of off shore trusts is the brain child of John Key, you have to ask where do the government’s priorities lie?
If you are rich and offshore, do not surveil, if you are the opposition, public servants the public etc then you need to be monitored and there is plenty of money for immature, racist, sexist GCSB workers to do what ever they feel like.
Is the money being siphoned off to another undisclosed “black” budget?