Govt to vote on cyber-surveillance act

Anyone see a connection with this and the new "porn filter"?
This is about 4 steps too far in terms of freedom.
Those that state that police will need a warrent seem to forget that they only need that if they want it to stand up in court.
The orwel comment isnt as silly as it sounds!!!!

Go to www.kiwisfirst.co.nz for a fine example of the corruption of our judiciary. So why would we want to give them even more powers????

Police minister Judith Collins is an elected member of parliament; she should represent the best interests of those who elected her. It is not in the best interests of New Zealanders that they live in a police state, the minister for police should ensure that while the police have the powers they need to apply the law; these powers should not be excessive. So far she has not represented the people’s interests and those of the police at the same time, she seems only to represent the interests of the police and that is not her job! Perhaps she does not fully understand her job; perhaps she does not understand the nature of fascism. If we look at her track record, she has never ever said we cannot make this law or that law, as it intrudes on peoples lives to much. It is always about giving the police more and more power and by extension the state. She was behind the initiative, or at least championed it, the crushing of people’s cars; she advocated longer sentences for attacking the police, axiomatically setting the police apart from the rest of us as a privileged class. Judith Collins wants to record your crystallized conversations and archive them, even though you have done nothing wrong and no warrant has been issued. Somehow Judith Collins works it out that this is in your best interests, all and every text message you send is recorded for posterity. I think we should have a referendum and do all we can to have this load of nonsense thrown out and Judith Collins along with it! Axiomatic= self evident Fascism= police state

Wouldn't a 'backdoor' open the entire country up to foreigners? Maybe ask them to do the spying instead or would the embassy need to get a warrant first? Privacy, harassment and sabotage will always be areas of concern.

thanks warren, we do agree on a number of the angles. I'd be worried too, and would join everyone with more than questions if it actually WAS every citizen. thats the asumption that i disagree with. the law isn't about monitoring every citizen or being able to. it only affects specific indivduals who they get a warrant for. this really is no remarkable change because their act says they can 'intercept comiunications' but the new one makes it more modern since there was no internet then and no one uses snail mail anyomore. its like in 1905 the police being able to stop someone on horseback but not being able to stop a car because the law hadn't kept up. it simply isnt about fishing or monitoring normal people.

Reply: "Coper 05 Jan 2010 7:48p.m. warren, i think jasons point is that no one is looking into your private life..."

I don't doubt that that was Jasons point exactly. I agree with him, most of us are insignificant. I started my original post with an above / below, true / false statement, its purpose was to show a paradoxical situation. He called Al and others like him paranoid, yet in my view all he, myself now and others were doing was questioning our Governments motives. I thought it odd that the questioning questioners were belittled, while the Governments paranoia over pushing through its 'right' to peek into the mostly boring and mundane lives of most of its law abiding citizens was viewed as acceptable? If a Government is so paranoid over its safety that it 'needs' to monitor every single citizen, then in my opinion that becomes a 'trigger happy' and thus dangerous entity.

To answer your final point, there is nothing wrong with questioning the questioners, in fact this is a good thing. However, the questioners have no power over us whereas the State does, thus it becomes more important that you understand the reasons and objectives for handing over power to spy on as stated a mojority of law abiding and boring people.

warren, i think jasons point is that no one is looking into your private life. That is why you don't have to worry. few people are that important. i agree its important to watch the watchers, but what's wrong with jason questioning the questioners?

The statement below is false. The statement above is true. Confused? I often feel confused after reading something like this, Quote: “jason 05 Jan 2010 10:39a.m. Warrants have always allowed for the...” To summarise, if you have done nothing wrong, what are you trying to hide? But, if we have done nothing wrong, why do organisations need to have the powers to peek into our private lives? If you look at the language used, I see an attempt to belittle anyone questioning the powers given to the state. I myself have used the words 'Police State', not in acknowledgment that NZ is a Police State, but that the actions performed by our Government seem to have some semblance of actions performed by controlling governments. I myself fear this as Historically speaking, Governments have been responsible for millions of peoples deaths. (Look up Democide) Part of our job as responsible and active citizens is to question the motives of our Government. Like my opening statements, we don't all know, with Truth having some of its foundations in History and some in Science and some in Hypothesis or Speculation how can we know what is Truth? I am just questioning the motives here, and I believe if there are enough others questioning, then there is enough uncertainty that laws such as this, whatever they are should not be passed. To point out some irony of a different perspective, Quote: “jason 05 Jan 2010 10:39a.m... claims (despite their tendency to mix fact with opinion, bias and fantasy) ironically proves the falsehood of their claims...” used after words like “...Trust me...probably...The budgets...small number...most...” etc, I guess at least he makes no attempt to quote any facts to throw into the mix? To end with a quote “Al 05 Jan 2010 1:25p.m...the government doesn't lie and never has ;)” and along similar lines, History does not repeat itself, never has, never will...

Ah what, next thing ya know they'll introduce surveillance cameras in public toilets to monitor vandlism..

Al, you lost it when you started with the conspiracy theory about 9/11. This is not the place to redress that issue but it demonstrates the point seeing shadowy puppet masters everywhere!

You are wrong about my point about banks. They know where you shop, where you travel, what you buy, how much you earn, who you pay bills to, who pays bills to you. They know who you live with, where you live, your phone numbers, email accounts etc. Between the banks (or any similar institution that we happily share info with without a second thought) they potentially know far more information about each individual average kiwi than the spooks will. At least the spooks have to look for it (and get a warrant), justify it and have strong laws about using, storing, protecting and destroying it (read some of the legislation, you might be disappointed by how straight it is).
If you read about overseas merchant data losses and the resulting identity theft, you would direct your privacy concerns to the next salesperson who 'needs' to enter your personal details "because the warranty programme requires it" Mate, compromise through negligence is far more likely than targeting by the state.

As for my dig at the paranoid. Paranoid is what they are. The Police and spooks simply do not care about 90% or more of NZers. Just look at size. Paul Buchanan (one of few academics 'specialising' in this area) says there are about 200 SIS. Even with fantastic technology, how many mum & dad kiwis do you really think they can interfere with?

Oh, and keyword internet trawling is just scare mongering.

As for being lucky we have "some semblance of free speech left", are you kidding? What is this? And I can guarantee if any of them read it, they'll be shaking their head in mirth, not shaking their fist in anger while they hunt you down. In fact there'd probably be some of them who'd agree about limits. Of course, they'd still find your movie bred estimatations of capability quite cute.