NZ (under US pressure) monitors all private comm

[GunnyFreedom]

NZ's cyber spies win new powers
By NICKY HAGER - Sunday Star Times Last updated 09:10 03/01/2010
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New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone's online life.

The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.

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.

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 say in the year to June 2009, there were 68 interception warrant applications granted and 157 people prosecuted as a result of those interceptions.

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.

However, civil liberties council spokesman Michael Bott said the new surveillance capabilities are part of a step-by-step erosion of civil rights in New Zealand.

Police Minister Judith Collins responded to questions from the Sunday Star-Times about the new surveillance capabilities, saying: "I support the rule of law." In last year's budget she approved extra police funds to subsidise companies wiring surveillance devices into their telecommunications networks.

The measures are the consequence of a law, the 2004 Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act, which gave internet and network companies until last year to install devices allowing automated access to internet and cellphone data.

Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear had earlier 2005 deadlines, and new cellphone provider 2degrees installed the interception equipment before launching last year.

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.

more (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3203448/NZs-cyber-spies-win-new-powers)

[GunnyFreedom]

The law in NZ now requires that all private communication gets officially monitored, the justification is "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" the problem is that they have passed so many laws that it's impossible to not do anything wrong...

[phill4paul]

The law in NZ now requires that all private communication gets officially monitored, the justification is "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" the problem is that they have passed so many laws that it's impossible to not do anything wrong...

Sounds like America oughta make NZ an official territory.

[raiha]

Thanks for letting me know. :(
All i heard is that Obama is letting us play war games with you again. We were banned from playing with you after our people rose up and demanded that NZ be nuclear free. You stopped our war-games and major trade in retribution.

[Uriel999]

Sounds like America oughta make NZ an official territory.

Wait its not already? Quick get the bombers out! Get the tanks out get the tanks out!!!!

[kahless]

People like to knock the US but reality it seems there is no where else we can go to that is more free, certainly not NZ.

[idirtify]

the justification is "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear"

Actually the real reason was “because criminals were using new technologies to communicate”. Now there’s some brilliant logic! Consider that criminals also communicate using regular phones, letters, back yards, homes, cars, boats, bars, restaurants, and restrooms. So I guess it’s OK for government to constantly monitor of all those things too; all phones tapped, all letters opened and read, and all homes and private property and vehicles and eateries and restrooms bugged and videoed. Of course that would be too difficult, so the next step in “state-logic” would be to outfit every civilian’s body with permanent monitoring hardware that enables all activities and communications/speech to be transmitted to the government. After all, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about. Of course government officials and bureaucrats would be exempt from the requirement.

[UK4Paul]

Actually the real reason was “because criminals were using new technologies to communicate”.

Yeah, I bet Bin Laden now has high speed broadband in his cave in Afghanistan... or Yemen... or whichever country he's moved into [aka "the US wants to bomb"] nowadays.

< / scepticism >

[GunnyFreedom]

People like to knock the US but reality it seems there is no where else we can go to that is more free, certainly not NZ.

Yes, our iron chains in the US are gold plated, which somehow makes them easier to wear. That doesn't make the slavery itself any less oppressive though.When every other nation in a scale of 1 to 10 is a 1, being a 2 is not bragging rights.

[GunnyFreedom]

Actually the real reason was “because criminals were using new technologies to communicate”. Now there’s some brilliant logic! Consider that criminals also communicate using regular phones, letters, back yards, homes, cars, boats, bars, restaurants, and restrooms. So I guess it’s OK for government to constantly monitor of all those things too; all phones tapped, all letters opened and read, and all homes and private property and vehicles and eateries and restrooms bugged and videoed. Of course that would be too difficult, so the next step in “state-logic” would be to outfit every civilian’s body with permanent monitoring hardware that enables all activities and communications/speech to be transmitted to the government. After all, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about. Of course government officials and bureaucrats would be exempt from the requirement.

Of course they would, after all, the elites crimes are desired by the state, as they can be used as leverage to force pro-leviathan votes. We wouldn't want to do anything that would keep them from performing those needed crimes now would we? :mad:

[GunnyFreedom]

Yeah, I bet Bin Laden now has high speed broadband in his cave in Afghanistan... or Yemen... or whichever country he's moved into [aka "the US wants to bomb"] nowadays.

< / scepticism >

Well, they've started launching drone coverage over RPF's HQ in Houston...

[GunnyFreedom]

Thanks for letting me know. :(
All i heard is that Obama is letting us play war games with you again. We were banned from playing with you after our people rose up and demanded that NZ be nuclear free. You stopped our war-games and major trade in retribution.

Well, I guess we now know why Obama is willing to do business with NZ again -- it looks like the criminals and tyrants who have seized control of the US Government are turning NZ into the experimental model for the unobtrusive police state. :( I guess Obama figures if y'all help us figure out how to establish ubiquitous monitoring of the population without engendering the torches and the pitchforks, the demons will let you back into the power-games.

If it's any consolation, y'all still have the best movie backdrops, and the most attractive accents on earth. :(

Folks, we've gotta put a frelling STOP to this crap! :mad: :mad: :mad:

[raiha]

Glad you like our accents, nobody else can understand us. We mumble apparently. Not when we rise up though.:D
Our prime minister, John Key, is a good friend of the banksters:


In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. That same year he was promoted to Merrill's global head of foreign exchange, based in London, where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates.[3][8] Some co-workers called him "the smiling assassin" for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis.[4][8] He was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.[9] After which he started his political career.
And he is allowing all this surveillance crap to go down surreptitiously...

[TotalLiberty]

Great, NZ is turning into a police state too, not that it was free before, but they've had bouts with smaller government in the past.