More on That Spying Legislation

Immolating Trust

The NZ Prime Minister, John Key has got the matter of amendments to espionage legislation dead wrong.  Key's initial approach these legislative changes he was proposing is that they were relatively minor tweaks to remove vagueness and uncertainty of the current law.  That might have worked, and one could extend to him the benefit of the doubt on the matter. 

Then came Edward Snowden and the revelations about the US espionage establishment routinely spying on its own citizens via electronic media interception--contrary to law.  It has also transpired that it has been routinely spying on supposed allies.  New Zealand is linked into the US espionage establishment and works with it, in an operational arrangement called "Five Eyes".  Is New Zealand similarly involved?

Suddenly the issue has ratcheted up substantially.
  It is now moot--in the sense that we do not know--how must electronic eavesdropping the NZ espionage establishment routinely conducts on New Zealanders.  We do not know whether they collect "meta-data" without warrants.  We do not know how much spying we do on our own citizens on behalf of the other Five Eyes nations (US, UK, Canada, and Australia).  We do not know what protections and bright-line law is in place to prevent such things occurring.  Legal experts have told us there are none.


Recall that the US law did not exclude meta-data from the spying prohibition upon its own citizens, so the US government went ahead, without legal authorisation or specific Congressional oversight.  It turns out that meta-data--names, addresses, times, dates of electronic communication--is all you need to store permanently to get access to the actual content of communication, since most electronic data is never actually destroyed.  It can be re-captured, re-created.  At least that's what Mr Snowden is saying:

On how long data is kept by the NSA, Mr. Snowden said full text data “ages very quickly, within a few days.” If an analyst flags certain data, it is kept longer, but other material is deleted.  For metadata — gathered by the NSA’s Prism program — the communications are “stored forever.” Metadata on telephone calls identify who calls whom, when, where and for how long.  “Most of the metadata are more valuable than the contents of the communications, since in most cases the contents can be recovered if you have the metadata,” Mr. Snowden said.

So, suddenly we want to be assured that the NZ authorities are not involved in a similar duplicity and  subversion of the clear intent of the law here.  Not unreasonable, one would have thought.  As Herald columnist, Audrey Young has it:

Key is progressing the bill as if the world had never heard of Edward Snowden, Prism or metadata.  People are worried about metadata and Key has not addressed those concerns.

Quite rightly, the Prime Minister has said he wants bi-partisan support for the law changes.  But to say it, and to work at achieving it are two different things.  To be huffy and snidely suggest that the Labour Leader, David Shearer is disingenuous because he "has not picked up the phone" is not good enough.  Key has a phone too.  He should be working this assiduously, if indeed he genuinely wants bi-partisan support.

The Law Society has come out against the Bill.  So have tech experts and Internet service providers.  Now the Human Rights Commission has come out against the Bill.  None of these are politically motivated.  There is smoke here--and where there is smoke it's not unreasonable to suspect a fire.

Key is starting to show signs of being corrupted by power.  Hardly unusual.  But utterly wrong, nonetheless.  Here is Key just six short years ago--in fine fettle and with convictions and instincts that made him prime ministerial material.

Here in New Zealand we often take our democratic freedoms for granted. We think they will always be there. We have a Bill of Rights which is supposed to protect our right to freedom of expression. What on earth could go wrong?  I have a different view. I believe what Thomas Jefferson said - that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. There are times when we have to stand up for our rights, and the rights of our neighbours and friends, and indeed the rights of people we totally disagree with, or else these rights will begin to erode away.

I agree with these sentiments, absolutely. New Zealanders must stand up for their democratic rights when they are threatened, or they'll lose them.

Key is now burning through the trust of the electorate he built with speeches such as the one quoted above faster than a brushfire in the MacKenzie Basin at high summer.