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New Zealand Government About To Legalize Spying On NZ Citizens
Flere Imsaho writes "After admitting they have illegally spied on NZ citizens or residents 88 times (PDF) since 2003, the government, in a stunning example of arse covering, is about to grant the GCSB the right to intercept the communications of New Zealanders in its role as the national cyber security agency, rather than examine the role the GCSB should play and then look at the laws. There has been strong criticism from many avenues. The bill is being opposed by Labor and the Greens, but it looks like National now have the numbers to get this passed. Of course, the front page story is all about the royal baby, with this huge erosion of privacy relegated to a small article near the bottom of the front page. Three cheers, the monarchy is secure, never mind the rights of the people. More bread and circuses anyone?"
sad news for you, the UK does not have a constitution; anything that Parliament makes law goes
New Zealand has constitutional documents (The Treaty of Waitangi, The New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act etc) just not a single Constitution because we copied England's system.
HAVING a constitution would be a good idea, then we could entrench things like protection from being spied on, environmental protection (including not mining conservation land) etc... Although we'd probably need to do something to stop the people like the current government from editing it under """urgency""".
No, no, no - the Queen has her morning constitution pretty regulalry, then wipes with Royal constitution paper!
The Constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of laws and principles under which the United Kingdom is governed.[1]
Unlike many other nations, the UK has no single constitutional document. This is sometimes expressed by stating that it has an uncodified or "unwritten" constitution.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
As a Kiwi I once heard some talk that the indigenous Maori were all for a New Zealand Constitution as it would enshrine the Treaty of Waitangi. However, someone pointed out that this would also limit the extent of the Treaty of Waitangi, whereas now it is kinda amorphous as to what it covers (Maori apparently had ownership rights of radio waves for TV and radio, and required compensation for the use of use). Note, I'm part NZ-Maori. I'm just pointing out something interesting I heard about the maneuverings of interested parties for a NZ Constitution and why one sector of society supported it and then dropped support. Perhaps what I heard was wrong - but it seems plausible to me.
I also heard that the multi-culturalists seem to think that Sharia is 'harmless' and should be recognized in a New Zealand Constitution. This is such a bad idea I'm surprised it had not been slapped down violently straight away - but the 'left' (Labour and Greens, in NZ political terms) is full of people who are staggeringly fact-free, and only think in the most 'woolly' of terms (let's hold hands and sing kumbaya with jihadis, eh?). Sharia has been trying to make inroads into NZ:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4366743/Sharia-decision-lets-baby-boy-into-NZ
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/politics/6406555/Collins-dismisses-call-to-establish-Islamic-tourism
Sorry to wander slightly off-topic in my response to post about the NZ Constitution. I'm just trying to point out to fellow kiwis that 'Godzone' is as much under threat by the Cultural Jihad of stealth Sharia as anywhere else (US, Britain etc) except that we have even weaker Free Speech protections than elsewhere.
New Zealand Governments are generally benign. Putting in spying on citizens with very few legal protections and hoping that the Government will always be benign is stupid. Hopefully someone will have a bright idea on how to stop this (anyone?).
This has already happened, except it ended up differently from how you envision it. Specifically:
NZ - I don't like this
FR - fuck off
US - sorry, but we need the passage rights anyway
NZ - you guys are both dicks, go away
US - but you must!
NZ - get stuffed
US - ok but don't call us when China comes to your door
NZ - zomg we're so scared
At the very least they already collect the metadata for all postage communications.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&