New Zealand Decides To Spy On An Awful Lot Of Your Online Activity
from the surveillance-society dept
The EFF alerts us to what appear to be rather draconian surveillance powers given to law enforcement in New Zealand to monitor all sorts of communications:In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications.Apparently, New Zealand is looking to help boost the market for encryption technology. In the meantime, defenders of this law throw out all the clichés:
Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity.
It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.
Police association vice-president Stuart Mills said the new capabilities are required because criminals were using new technologies to communicate, and that people who weren't committing criminal offences had little to fear.Of course, that statement makes no sense. Just because criminals are using a new technology to communicate it doesn't mean you should have a built in backdoor to monitor all of it. I believe some criminals have used paper to write each other notes. Should we force all pads to have carbon paper for making a copy of every note taken? As for the "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" statement, that's been debunked so many times, it's not even worth going there. Yet, if we must, would Police Association Vice President Stuart Mills object to a video camera being placed in every room in his house, recorded 24/7 and kept on file. We promise that no one will look at it without a warrant. He shouldn't object, right, because he's not doing anything wrong at home, so he has little to fear. Right?
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Filed Under: new zealand, surveillance
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wow, liberty killer
It's not about what you're doing wrong, and more about the right to privacy that shouldn't be able to be abused.
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Immoral argument
Two major flaws
1) We have to trust that they aren't doing anything wrong.
2) The argument, when analysed, reduces to "The end justifies the means" - which is known to be a deeply immoral argument.
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Re: Immoral argument
This isn't more or less than being able to tap a phone.
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Re: Re: Immoral argument
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Re: Re: Immoral argument
That's what we were told about all that newfangled eavesdropping in here in the US, too. As it turned out, that was only true in a technical sense, not in the sense of being actually, you know, true.
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Re: Re: Immoral argument
This is a bit more problematic than the current system.
It should be complicated for law enforcement to look into every detail of someone's life - that is part of what protects us from abuse of this type of monitoring. Asking a judge for a wire tap on someone's phone is a lot different than asking for taps on 4 phones, 2 cell phones, and their internet connection individually - something like that may make a judge take notice.
With what I am reading their new system does, they will automatically get access to everything. Someone suspected of say - downloading infringing music, should not be subject to a wire tap on their phones because law enforcement has gotten a warrant to monitor their web usage.
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Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
You'd have to be cripplingly naive not to think that this will get abused at some point, or see that the potential for harm is far greater than a simple phone tap.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
It has look since been proven that good wiretapping has huge potential good, and the potential abuse is very small next to it. In a free society, the public would not tolerate systematic abuses for very long, which would lead to a political uprising that would see changes in systems or significant penalties for abusers.
It would be a real shame if the potential to stop criminal activity was lost because of the often overblown fears of "abuse".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
Perhaps so, but in the society that I live in (the US), the public readily tolerates systematic abuses, then eventually grows accustomed to them and accepts them as normal.
You talk of "potential" good and harm, but I'm more interested in actual good and harm, and as near as I can see the actual balance isn't anywhere near as rosy as you claim. There can indeed be a way to balance the good and harm, such as having strong oversight and not expanding police power, but that isn't the direction we're going.
The fears of abuse aren't overblown at all, they're based on real world experience and history.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
Irony is funny, no?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Immoral argument
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Re: Re: Immoral argument
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Contradictory Kiwis
This is just my experience, but I think it has something to do with their views of the government. In America, we have a natural distrust of the government. There's no conflict between loving your country and viewing politicians as egomaniacal bastards that are more concerned about their own career than the welfare of their constituants. But -- again, in my experience -- New Zealanders and Australians seem to view their government in much more of a positive, almost paternal manner. In short, they seem to trust their government more. Maybe this explains the contradiction.
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Re: Contradictory Kiwis
At the risk of being cynical, they are both quite young countries and have yet to develop the general contempt and distrust of their politicians and authorities that most older countries have.
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Re: Contradictory Kiwis
Partially this is because we're the least corrupt country in the world, but also because we're small and unimportant - we don't bother other people and no one bothers us much, we don't have much wealth to thieve and no military industrial complex savaging our economy.
Also no one told us about this new law.
But even so it doesn't seem that much to get worked up about in so much as it's just putting in place the means by which to exercise a warrant.
I didn't get upset when the local cops bought a crowbar so they could exercise a warrant to enter my home (should they get one), why should their getting a splice prepared for 'entering' net comms upset me any more? Does anyone imagine the police aren't going to get such a thing, that governments are just not going to provide the police means to monitor online activity?
I could start using a VPN just as I could strengthern my door if I wished to take precautions.
I would worry a lot more if I lived in a country that disappeared people off streets into foreign gulags where they're tortured to death AND the intelligence services eavesdropped at will with no judicial oversight - like the U.S.A.
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If
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Hmmmm
Though you have to wonder what the hell are they getting so freaked about in NZ? Are the sheep attacking them?
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Re: Hmmmm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0779982/
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Re: Hmmmm
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Re: Re: Hmmmm
New Zealand's.
and possibly some of Antarctica's. (not sure about that bit)
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Not surprised
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good grief
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The advent of packet and IP based telecoms no longer require someone to physically open a switch cabinet. However, the laws have not been revisited to ensure similar protections enjoyed only a decade ago remain enforced.
Should they be revisited? Perhaps. But we are engaged in a war on Terror.
It's the reality we live in.
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Re:
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Hmm, Interesting...
Coincidence?
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No One’s Worried, Because It’s A Waste Of Time
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how bloody predicatable...
"Official papers obtained by the Star-Times show that, despite government claims that it was done for domestic reasons, the new New Zealand spying capabilities are part of a push by United States agencies to have standardised surveillance capabilities available for their use from governments worldwide."
another classic. *sigh* i don't even get why they keep TRYING to keep the USA happy. it's not like we actually Gain anything significant from it, that i ever noticed.
and later:
"FBI Director Robert Mueller III told a senate committee in March last year that the FBI needs "global reach" to fight cyber-crime and terrorism and that co-operation with "law enforcement partners" gives it "the means to leverage the collective resources of many countries"."
hold on a second here.
forgive me if I'm wrong.
but...
isn't the FBI supposed to be, you know, Internal?!
*sigh*
there are many reasons why i don't pay as much attention to NZ politics as i should. the shear headache inducing stupidity of it all is one.
can't even say our politicians are corrupt, or mouthpieces for lobbyists. they're not even stupid, Mostly... or all that ignorant, usually...
they just seem to have this total disconnect between cause and effect when the cause is (usually)ideology driven actions on their part and the effect hits anywhere other than their chances of getting reelected.
yay cross-spectrum incompetence. woo!
representative-democracy in action, folks.
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