Posts by Thomas Beagle
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That was a good article and I generally support the idea of "more free speech". I think I'll have to read it again to pick out some of the arguments.
But one immediate comment I have is that I didn't really notice people proposing to boycott the advertisers on the Radio Live show. What I did see was more of a "Do you really want your company to be associated with these people's ideas?" and the advertisers responding, either out of cowardice or principle, "Actually, no, we don't want to be associated with this."
You could respond that this is just a question of semantics, that the impact is the same, but I think it's an important distinction because there was no threat to the advertisers.
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I'm still kind of annoyed that @techliberty got its highest number of retweets (55+) for linking to your article rather than from any of our own work. :)
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I guess the first part of the article nicely disposes of ex-GCSB head Bruce Ferguson's claim that the GCSB only provided assistance to Police by seconding staff to them.
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I suspect Key has also miscalculated in one other major way - this issue isn't going away. Normally when you pass a law the debate dies out and people move on. The electorate's memory is short, etc, etc.
But Snowden and Dotcom should keep the issue hopping along. (The TICS Bill should keep the technorati going for a while too.)
Snowden (or Greenwald) still apparently has a lot more documents to release. This should keep the issue of govt spying going in the international media - plus there's still a good chance that some of those releases might further explore the relationship between the NSA and the GCSB.
Kim Dotcom has proven he's good at getting media attention and he still has a high profile court case - plus various accusations against John Key, the GCSB and others. There's obviously a lot to go on with here.
Then there's TICS, various other little sordid spying stories like the Henry investigation, etc, etc.
Each time these issues come up the media will be mentioning the GCSB, and the electorate will be reminded that John Key and the National govt expanded their powers rather then trying to rein them in.
The opposition may find that spying is the gift that keeps on giving.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Mahal,
For people who get pissy, the best response is to use "that guy you're shagging".
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Hard News: A GCSB Roundup, in reply to James W,
Hi, you can get the Tech Liberty prepared submission from: http://techliberty.org.nz/gcsb-bill-oral-submission/
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Ha, there's a story about a guy in the very early days being paid a piece rate to write virus cleanup software.Unfortunately the supply of viruses dropped off and so did his income... so he took up writing viruses to ensure the money kept flowing.
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Crimes Act s252 (1) "Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years who intentionally accesses, directly or indirectly, any computer system without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised to access that computer system, or being reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised to access that computer system."
Did you get any legal advice before a) breaching the security of the MSD systems, b) putting up this post?
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Legal Beagle: Kim Dotcom: Questions and Answers, in reply to Sacha,
I believe you can get five years jail for commercial copyright violation, and that this would be enough to qualify for extradition.
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I suspect that this Police end-run around our law is part of a pattern of behaviour by the Police.
There is also some evidence to show that the Police are also using Customs extensive search-at-the-border powers to do intelligence gathering for them. We know that Customs allow the Police direct access to the CusMod computer system that they use to track and intercept people arriving at the border.
We also know that in the Switched on Gardener case, Customs often took and copied mobile phones that belonged to Quinlan (the owner) and his wife, presumably with a view to passing them on to the Police who were investigating them. (There is no suggestion that the Quinlans were breaking customs laws.)
It seems that the Police may be wilfully ignoring the restrictions placed on them by Parliament and taking advantage of powers granted to other government agencies to perform their own duties.