Dangerous Times

Where the Real Threats Lie

Several days ago we called attention to our own backyard example of state oppression of one of our citizens.  Mr Dotcom had fallen foul of US authorities because he represents competition for some very powerful US communications and media interests.  Big Hollywood players appealed to the US Vice-President who then concluded that Dotcom was a national security threat. What was a civil dispute suddenly morphed into a threat to national security--a kind of terrorism. 

Within a nano-second big monied interests (donors to politicians) were able to parley protecting private commercial interests into protecting national security.  Dotcom was spied upon, and New Zealand intelligence services became immediate willing parties to the illegal activity (due to our intelligence alliances with the US).  One small problem: the New Zealand intelligence agencies broke New Zealand law. 

Now the New Zealand government wants to change the law under urgency so that extensive spying can take place on any citizen at any time without judicial warrant.
  In other words what was formerly illegal would now be legal.  All in the name of national security.  We are sure that if passed the law will be manipulated to oppress anyone who steps out of line eventually, even as has happened already with Doctom.  Chris Barton writes on this pressing matter in the NZ Herald:

Dotcom claims a specific New Zealand example. "From the Court of Appeal we have seen the documents that confirm that the GCSB has inputted into Prism - the system that the US is currently getting heat for - my email address, my mobile number, my IP address and they received back from the US-based spy cloud all the information that the Five Eyes had gathered on me."

There are two problems with this situation. One is that our laws specifically state that the GCSB is not supposed to spy on New Zealand citizens. The second is that Dotcom may be a lot of things, but it really is a stretch beyond reason to call someone charged with secondary or contributory copyright infringement a terrorist or a threat to national security. In his submission on the proposed GCSB Bill, Dotcom says what he and his colleagues have endured over the last 18 months represents "an extreme present day example of what can happen when Government and intelligence agencies misuse or misunderstand their powers".

As the Kitteridge Report shows, the GCSB has been freely gathering metadata involving New Zealanders without a warrant for some considerable time because it assumed metadata was "not a 'communication' for the purposes of the prohibition expressed in section 14 of the GCSB Act." Kitteridge points out that assumption was wrong and metadata would indeed "be likely to constitute a 'communication'."

The government response to all this is to pass new legislation under urgency to make such illegal activity - spying on all New Zealanders - legal. The Law Society is among many groups which are not impressed. "The Bill empowers the GCSB to spy on New Zealand citizens and residents, and to provide intelligence product to other government agencies in respect of those persons, in a way not previously contemplated and that is inconsistent with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) and with privacy interests recognised by New Zealand law."

Tech Liberty also raises disquiet: "We are particularly concerned with the Bill's silence on the GCSB's existing practice of collecting and analysing metadata."

Another also not impressed is Dotcom's co-accused Matias Ortman, who told the Meagabreakfast audience: "As a German I'm very aware of German history. In the 1930s there were similar tendencies by the German government."

Perhaps what's most insidious about this extraordinary loss of freedom and encroachment on privacy is the public acceptance of the need for a ubiquitous watchtower's gaze. Our part in accepting such a state of permanent visibility under Prism's all-seeing, metadata eye is that we accept its control. We are compliant.  In such a world, where mass surveillance is the norm, we the inmates don't know when we are being watched, but we do know we can be singled out for inspection at any time. Under the promise of protection we surrender privacy.

Once given up, it's a freedom we may never get back.

If the despised Helen Clark had proposed what Prime Minister John Key is currently pushing, shrieks of outrage would have been heard from the Cape to the Bluff, and rightly so.  But because "Honest John" is pushing it, the people are somnolent and supine.  Until the day that Helen Clark Mark II arises and then we will see Leviathan reborn. 

Imagine what would have happened to the Exclusive Brethren (who had published some pamphlets critical of Clark and the Green Party) if Clark had at the time the powers that Key is now grasping after?  Those parodied in Parliament as the "chinless scarf wearers" would have become threats to  national security more quickly than it takes to say "Prime Minister".