New New Zealand News

[Pæs]

There's some beautiful stuff going down at the moment in upside down land. I'm going to post a quick ramble about it here because it's a clusterfuck.

Loads of controversy and rage about our involvement with AMURRICA's intelligence gathering as our gubbamints attempt to rush through a bill making it legal for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB, one of our two intelligence agencies) to spy on NZ citizens. This is seen by many as an attempt to retrospectively legitimise the illegal spying on Kim Dotcom back when MegaUpload was shut down and his mansion here was raided, which the government has caught a lot of shit for and much of which has been ruled as an illegal operation.

The head of the GCSB assured us that nobody else had been illegal spied on

A report into this group was conducted after the Dotcom fiasco and leaked to journalist Andrea Vance and it found that the legislation describing the GCSB's power isn't understood by anyone which results in the GCSB just doing whatever because, hey, they're spies and who is going to ask? It found 88 cases since 2003 in which the GCSB may have acted illegally (across a variety of laws), and says there are systemic problems with how the organisation works. Poor performance is tolerated because anyone they let go poses a security risk.
This is a brief breakdown of the report.

A formal inquiry into how this leak occurred was set up and this formal enquiry asked MP Peter Dunne for his emails. Peter Dunne's vote is the one set to let the GCSB amendment bill pass, giving them GREATER POWERS despite their total failure to observe any of the legal limits currently imposed on them. Peter Dunne declined this request, there was drama, he resigned. His emails were shared anyway! Andrea Vance's phone records are somehow provided to the inquiry. This has recently come to light and we've gone from "The records were requested but I assure you they were not provided" to the next day "I have learned that the records were provided but not requested, a low level contractor misinterpreted the request" to the next day "The head of Parliamentary Services authorised it" and "No he didn't" from different sources. There's no disagreement on the fact that her swipe card records were provided to the inquiry to establish her movements around parliament, despite assurances that the press have free movement around the government buildings. Most recent update is that emails between the MP and journo were accessed also, but "they had a weird file extension so we couldn't open them", because our forensic IT investigators are totally tech savvy.

Anonymous DDOS MP's websites in protest. MPs take to twitter with lines like "Hackers bringing down websites proves what they could do your bank accounts", "This is why we need this bill", justifying turning our country's intelligence apparatus on the people because of cybervandalism. Prime Minister John Key realises that this seems like poor justification, so tells the media "AL QAEDA IS OPERATING IN NZ, OKAY? THAT'S WHY WE NEED THIS. AL QAEDA IS SCARY."

NZ's political academics lol hard.

At the same time! It comes to light that journalists are classified as subversives and military threads in a Department of Defence manual, leaving the media feeling pretty unsafe. There's also a bunch of stuff going on at the moment about US intelligence along with NZ Defence Force spying on a journo working in Afghanistan.

So basically there's lots of illegal spying going on amidst attempts to legalise all of the frenzied spying. I love the future.

[Pæs]

I forgot to mention that the government appear to have made it illegal to complain about them to the human rights commission, but more on that later

[Cain]

This may be more a reflection of my own interests than having any basis in reality...but what is it with New Zealand and spying?

I mean, seriously.  Almost nothing happens down there, yet your spooks run around like the Soviets are preparing for a naval landing on the Hokianga Harbour and fifth columnists may be supporting them.

[Telarus]

  Seriously.

Good to know, thanks for passing this along.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

This may be more a reflection of my own interests than having any basis in reality...but what is it with New Zealand and spying?

I mean, seriously.  Almost nothing happens down there, yet your spooks run around like the Soviets are preparing for a naval landing on the Hokianga Harbour and fifth columnists may be supporting them.

NZ spooks don't want to be the last kids picked for kickball.

[Left]

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how many terrorist attacks has Kiwiland had?

I mean, you-all have just not oppressed enough people to inspire terrorism, yet.
HMMM....
Maybe New Zealand knows something they aren't telling us?
WHO ARE YOU PLANNING TO INVADE???