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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
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&