Socitey | For and Against
A dilemma of the digital age
It’s been a while since a topic split New Zealand down the middle like the GCSB. People seem to be for it or against it, with very few found standing in the middle ground. This Springbok tour of 1981 for the digital age drew a line in the sand and everyone chose their side. While the heat’s evaporated from this particular case, the issue of digital eavesdropping isn’t going anywhere, so here are a couple of opposing viewpoints on the bill and its potential implications.
compensation case; citing legal privilege. Why not, if they have nothing to hide?
While the changes to our own spying laws may just be a timely coincidence, they have fuelled the apprehension and hostility aimed at the National Government and its, at least in this case, polarising head, Prime Minister John Key.
For By Melinda Collins
Would you like the government to spy on you through all your electronic data? Well of course not; nobody in their right mind would. But that is not the question which the changes to the GCSB law have put in question, a fact which the vast majority of the country doesn’t seem to have grasped. Let me make my position clear; I am against needless government spying. But I am for the expanding of government capability to do so when it’s in our nation’s best interest. Quite simply, I am for the GCSB’s increased capabilities, but in the name of national security and national security alone. I sleep better at night knowing that if someone puts the security of my country in question, the government has the means of risk discovery and prevention. I think both the families and friends of guerrilla terrorist attack victims throughout the world and those whose lives have been saved from impending attack due to electronic surveillance bringing down terrorist cells, might just agree. Fact is - prevention is always better than the cure. Revelations about mass surveillance by the United States’ National Security Agency in recent months have set alarm bells ringing worldwide. Public suspicion centres on whether the US is using the GCSB and similar agencies to harvest communications globally.
New Zealand has one of the strongest procedures for allowing access to its electronic data: surveillance of Kiwis can only be carried out under warrant, obtained through just cause, signed by the prime minister and the commissioner of security warrants who is a former Judge of the High Court appointed by the Governor General, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister upon consultation with the opposition leader. But who cares if we have the toughest rules surrounding electronic surveillance in New Zealand when, fact is, they have illegally abused these laws in the past? Simple, make the GCSB’s activities independently monitored so we can have the security without the invasion of privacy. Increase the transparency of the operation, with warrant data accessible through the Official Information Act and if and when an abuse of power takes place, ensure the government is held accountable. While I appreciate that, even in a democratically run country, what the government says goes, my greatest concern is this Government’s apathetic attitude to the public’s concern. The National Party should be concerned that the general public is so opposed to these law changes and if they truly have been made in the interest of the country, the party should be working to allay their fears, even if for the simple fact that the lack of confidence will be its parliamentary downfall. Overall, I do believe the public is greatly uneducated about the changes, not helped by the legislative language of such matters. In saying that, I also believe the government is ignorant of the concerns of the public. I am in favour of the diversifying of GCSB’s powers to include electronic information access, simply for the increased power this can and will afford our country. However, I am against National’s changes to the law and do not believe these have gone far enough towards ensuring the security of said information. Like many of National’s bills, these law changes have been rushed through against significant public backlash, so who knows, perhaps there is an agenda, I don’t know. What I do know is that the GCSB can operate to ensure the country’s security while in the interest of our privacy.
www.wizbang.co.nz
We didn’t get the motor car without the pollution and we’re not going to get the marvels of electronic tools without a trade off. Electronic surveillance is a necessary evil. It’s not a perfect world, but would you rather the alternative?
26 | November/December 2013 www.canterburytoday.co.nz
Double standards…
Against By Corazon Miller
Spying on locals in the interests of “national security” through the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is something, when I first returned to this land of the long, white cloud a couple of months ago, seemed to be a surreal, over the top concept. It seemed to be something that belonged more in a spy movie than in this country that many a foreigner innocently associates with green grass, frolicking sheep and Middle Earth. I had, I have to admit, been ignorantly unaware of the quickly unfolding GCSB saga, after many months of living overseas. However, a rough awakening in a busy radio newsroom quickly introduced me to the quickly incoming GCSB bill. For me it was a case of first impressions don’t last. When I first met with the idea, on its surface I thought: “sure, why not? It can’t really do any harm… ”. However John Key, happily smiling, waving the GCSB banner, claiming if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear – did nothing to reassure me. The cynic in me simply doesn’t trust someone who grins like the Cheshire cat. Especially when while all this furor over the GCSB was happening his own Justice Minister, Judith Collins, refused to release a stack of paperwork related to David Bain’s
I am neither in support, nor in opposition to Bain, but the Government’s actions in his case illustrate a divide between “them” – government – and “us” the people. A gap, I fear, will become even wider, thanks to the freedoms granted to state spies as a result of the greater powers granted by the GCSB bill. John Key continues to assert his beliefs that this GCSB is targeted against would be threats. But hold up – what exactly is a threat? Who defines what is important to hide and what isn’t? Just how will the GCSB use these “out of context” pieces of data it can now collect from us? It’s so easy to get things wrong without the greater picture. We’ve all been guilty of it – getting angry at a text we misread or missing the point of an email… context is vital. Can we really trust this “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” banner John Key has branded his GCSB campaign? Sure, for now, we live in a democracy. But can we trust that this won’t change? How then will this new free access to our own personal information change our ability to fight back? Our freedom of speech, our ability to freely communicate without fear of retribution is what has led to social change; look at Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King – communication played a key role in their fights for justice. Maori political activist Marama Davidson makes this point clear, illustrating just how this free flow of information can be turned against the powerless. “State spying is nothing new for Maori or indigenous peoples around the world,” she says. “The way state spying powers have been used to trample on innocent people around the world has always been an injustice… other groups often targeted by state surveillance include environmental groups, human rights and social justice activists, peace activists and those fighting for independence from oppressive rule. “Whether or not you even agree with the stances of such groups who have been targeted, they all have a democratic right to express themselves and associate them without fear of unreasonable search and seizure”.
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Some would argue; well the government will spy against such groups anyway – so let them – make it legal. But if it were kept illegal, it would at least ensure the government would have to toe a finer line. Illegal spying would discredit it, if the public ever found out about its actions. Legalising spying has simply turned the tide of power against the common people. Sure the GCSB can protect us, but then again it can also be used against us, to impede freedoms, to reduce democracy and grant full power over to those already in power.