A rather fascinating thing is happening at the moment in my country, and I thought it might trigger an interesting discussion about globalism. I apologies for the long post, but some background is needed to properly introduce the topic.
For those wanting to get to the meat of it, the brief summation is that, parallel with the US's current intelligence scandals, New Zealand is having it's own little intelligence scandal. The interesting thing is that the rhetoric being used in New Zealand is increasingly informed by, and invoking, issues that are more relevant to the US issue than the NZ issue.
Some background;
Like most western countries, New Zealand has a range of government organisations that perform different intelligence gathering tasks; the Security Intelligence Service (SIS - Counterintelligence and government security advisory) the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB - Signals Intelligence), New Zealand Police (law enforcement), and New Zealand Defence Force (military intelligence).
Also like many western countries, New Zealand has laws in place restricting the powers of these organisations, and in particularly limiting the circumstances in which they can conduct surveillance on New Zealand citizens and residents. Of particular relevance, the GCSB (our equivalent of the NSA) is prohibited from spying on New Zealand residents and citizens.
As a result of an ongoing extradition case in relation to Megaupload founder "Kim Dotcom" (who is a New Zealand resident) it was discovered that the GCSB has historically been providing intelligence support to other government agencies in the belief that their restriction on spying on NZ citizens and residents didn't apply if the work was being conducted for an agency that did have authority to spy on NZ citizens (such as the Police with a phone-interception warrant).
When this matter became public an investigation was held that identified 88 instances where the GCSB had supported other agencies. The investigation concluded that no other breaches of law had occurred (other than Kim Dotcom), but that the GCSB could not legally support other agencies based on current legislation.
The government suspended all such support, but has hurried through legislation amending the way the GCSB operates so that they will be legally able to conduct surveillance on behalf of agencies that are legally permitted to do so. The argument behind this is that New Zealand is a small country, thus it makes sense to share government resources. Otherwise the Police, SIS, and NZDF (all of whom, under specific circumstances, are permitted to conduct surveillance on New Zealand residents and citizens) would have to each invest in their own signals intelligence infrastructure, at considerable cost.
A lot of people are opposed to the legislation and/or opposed to the way it has been so quickly put together. There have been protests, and extensive social media campaigns as well as strong campaigns by the mainstream media.
Fair enough, no surprises there. We're a democracy, that's how it's supposed to work.
But
What's interesting is what many opponents have been saying, and what the rhetoric is that the popular movement is pushing out, and not just the general population, but opposition parties in government and leading academics, the mainstream media, and so on.
This issue in New Zealand is not one of mass surveillance or unwarranted surveillance. It's quite different to the various intelligence scandals currently stirring in the US, where the government has found to be trawling data on a huge scale, and is seeking to justify it.
Yet these are the concerns and issues that are too often raised in opposition to the GCSB law change. There is a common effort to try link the two issues.
To my mind, there's two possible explanations for this. Some opponents of the bill are simply ideologically opposed to surveillance in all forms, and will automatically oppose any intelligence-related legislation. I can see people with that sort of agenda deliberately misrepresenting the issue in an effort to spread suspicion and fear in the population. It is, in essence, a strawman, exploiting the much bigger issue in the US and trying to imply the NZ issue is the same.
But that doesn't explain the scale of misrepresentation. Those people described above are vocal, but they're still a minority. Most people understand a need for some sort of surveillance.
It almost seems that a large percentage of people don't seem to grasp that we're a different country to the US, and that their intelligence issues are completely unrelated to ours. There's a sort of blind assumption that it's the same issue, as if we're all a single giant monolithic entity. They're bombarded daily with international media covering the US intelligence issue, simultaneously with local media covering the NZ issue.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing in their country, where political or social issues in one country have been conflated with related (but distinctly different) issues in another country?
For those wanting to get to the meat of it, the brief summation is that, parallel with the US's current intelligence scandals, New Zealand is having it's own little intelligence scandal. The interesting thing is that the rhetoric being used in New Zealand is increasingly informed by, and invoking, issues that are more relevant to the US issue than the NZ issue.
Some background;
Like most western countries, New Zealand has a range of government organisations that perform different intelligence gathering tasks; the Security Intelligence Service (SIS - Counterintelligence and government security advisory) the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB - Signals Intelligence), New Zealand Police (law enforcement), and New Zealand Defence Force (military intelligence).
Also like many western countries, New Zealand has laws in place restricting the powers of these organisations, and in particularly limiting the circumstances in which they can conduct surveillance on New Zealand citizens and residents. Of particular relevance, the GCSB (our equivalent of the NSA) is prohibited from spying on New Zealand residents and citizens.
As a result of an ongoing extradition case in relation to Megaupload founder "Kim Dotcom" (who is a New Zealand resident) it was discovered that the GCSB has historically been providing intelligence support to other government agencies in the belief that their restriction on spying on NZ citizens and residents didn't apply if the work was being conducted for an agency that did have authority to spy on NZ citizens (such as the Police with a phone-interception warrant).
When this matter became public an investigation was held that identified 88 instances where the GCSB had supported other agencies. The investigation concluded that no other breaches of law had occurred (other than Kim Dotcom), but that the GCSB could not legally support other agencies based on current legislation.
The government suspended all such support, but has hurried through legislation amending the way the GCSB operates so that they will be legally able to conduct surveillance on behalf of agencies that are legally permitted to do so. The argument behind this is that New Zealand is a small country, thus it makes sense to share government resources. Otherwise the Police, SIS, and NZDF (all of whom, under specific circumstances, are permitted to conduct surveillance on New Zealand residents and citizens) would have to each invest in their own signals intelligence infrastructure, at considerable cost.
A lot of people are opposed to the legislation and/or opposed to the way it has been so quickly put together. There have been protests, and extensive social media campaigns as well as strong campaigns by the mainstream media.
Fair enough, no surprises there. We're a democracy, that's how it's supposed to work.
But
What's interesting is what many opponents have been saying, and what the rhetoric is that the popular movement is pushing out, and not just the general population, but opposition parties in government and leading academics, the mainstream media, and so on.
This issue in New Zealand is not one of mass surveillance or unwarranted surveillance. It's quite different to the various intelligence scandals currently stirring in the US, where the government has found to be trawling data on a huge scale, and is seeking to justify it.
Yet these are the concerns and issues that are too often raised in opposition to the GCSB law change. There is a common effort to try link the two issues.
To my mind, there's two possible explanations for this. Some opponents of the bill are simply ideologically opposed to surveillance in all forms, and will automatically oppose any intelligence-related legislation. I can see people with that sort of agenda deliberately misrepresenting the issue in an effort to spread suspicion and fear in the population. It is, in essence, a strawman, exploiting the much bigger issue in the US and trying to imply the NZ issue is the same.
But that doesn't explain the scale of misrepresentation. Those people described above are vocal, but they're still a minority. Most people understand a need for some sort of surveillance.
It almost seems that a large percentage of people don't seem to grasp that we're a different country to the US, and that their intelligence issues are completely unrelated to ours. There's a sort of blind assumption that it's the same issue, as if we're all a single giant monolithic entity. They're bombarded daily with international media covering the US intelligence issue, simultaneously with local media covering the NZ issue.
Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing in their country, where political or social issues in one country have been conflated with related (but distinctly different) issues in another country?
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=263198&goto=newpost
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