Spy bills

I'm watching Phil Goff in parliament tearing shreds off the National government's spying legislation they are rushing through. The Nats have nothing to say. The latest knee-jerk reaction to the government finding out their spying was unlawful is to change the laws to make it all legal. The NZ Police and the government's 'intelligence community' - as laughable as that may sound - are using the Nat's conservative and authoritarian instincts to pass laws designed for themselves to do as they please without consequence.

These bills validate intrusive and prejudicial measures they have been employing already or contemplating all along. indeed the local security establishment have been considerably emboldened by the Dotcom overkill, instead of responding with any meaningful self-examination that should have been warranted following such a humiliating series of botches. And as these laws for the assistance of and/or at the insistence of the US are being rammed through parliament in Wellington I see the Attorneys-General of the white Anglosphere are gathered in Auckland today by either Masonic manifestation or cosmic coincidence. NZ is everyone's little bitch. Everyone knows it but the little bitch. NZ is a made-up country sitting on stolen land run on borrowed people, borrowed money and borrowed time. The apparatus of monitoring and suppressing dissent to maintain this order needs upgrading to industrial standards.

Two parallel bills are going through a truncated process: a telecommunications interception bill that Goff has outlined is fascist with wide and undefined powers of the GCSB and penalties for telcos who wont co-operate. The telcos were not consulted. The other bill, the GCSB and Related Legislation Amendment Bill, has all sorts of patches to justify the poor practices of the past. [that bill was passed 59-61 earlier.] It will be open-slather domestic spying on pretty much anyone and probably everyone. This is nasty, but the mainstream media have ignored it or backed it in editorials.

Sadly and shamefully NZ First and the Maori Party have just voted for it. [That's what I thought I heard, haven't checked the record. They did not vote for the earlier bill according to the NZ Herald]