If anyone else is opposed to National rushing in a piece of legislation that will give them the power to spy on ordinary New Zealand citizens without getting a warrant from a judge for it first, then please enter your submission in by midnight tonight! You can even use my text if you cant be bothered writing your own. Just upload it as a Word document. :) --- The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill proposes wide-ranging changes that compromise the privacy and civil liberties of New Zealanders, challenging our basic rights as citizens. It is wrong to create a law like this just to cover some very unlikely or rare future event. As Russel Norman said, these changes are draconian and anti-democratic. He goes on: Even the terminology in the bill is alarmist and inaccurate. [...] it claims to address the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters, but the target is not foreigners, but New Zealand passport holders. Privacy is the essence of freedom -- without privacy, individual human rights, property rights and civil liberties could not exist in a meaningful way. Surveillance is the antithesis of privacy. Take the USA as an example of what happens when Big Brother gets too much power: ranked among the five freest countries in the world from 1975 through 2002, the US has since dropped to 18th place (see the Fraser Institutes latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report). Evidence shows that trust in the government decreases as mass surveillance for national security purposes increases (Maras, 2012). People will only trust an authority to the extent that it is seen to behave in their interest and trust them in return -- the Key government has already betrayed our trust. Remember that the GCSB has been involved in 56 illegal operations involving spying on New Zealanders since 2003, and just the other day Key lied again and again about the findings of the Gwyn/IGIS report. To increase the governments power now, so that they can invade the privacy of New Zealand citizens not previously identified as a risk (without a warrant!), is just ludicrous. Rushing this bill through seriously undermines the governments remaining credibility. Even the NZ Law Society says this bill gives the government too much power in its current form. I think they probably know what theyre talking about, and I would listen to them. Reference: Maras, M. H. (2012). The social consequences of a mass surveillance measure: What happens when we become the others? International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 40(2), 65-81.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 09:11:12 +0000
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