Some time back, The BFD reported on the extraordinary, interlinked programs of spying on its own citizens launched by the New Zealand state. As revealed by an OIA request, the the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s briefing, Strengthening New Zealand’s Resilience to Mis/Disinformation, and the initial working draft of the Strategic Framework for Strengthening New Zealand’s Resilience to Mis/Disinformation revealed an astonishing, near-total surveillance state being established.
Every single facet of New Zealand society, from government agencies, NGOs, academia, the private sector, the media, social media and big tech platforms and even everyday people — recall that NZSIS published booklets exhorting New Zealanders to spy on their family, friends and neighbours. Like the East German Stasi, where it’s estimated that one in every six people was an informer, the government wants to turn “the ‘whole of society’ into a spying, censoring and communications machine to police and control the flow of information”.
At first their snitches’ whispers on everything from Facebook posts to people talking at the gym were stored in a massive spreadsheet. But it appears that the sheer volume of snitching is such that the NZ government needs a big, new building to house their Ministry of Truth.
The Government has been secretly building a $300 million data centre at an air force base in Auckland since early last year, to house its most important information.
Defence and GCSB Minister Andrew Little said the first funding for data centre at the Whenuapai air force base in west Auckland was approved in 2019.
Which, coincidentally no doubt, is right about when the Ardern government began hatching its Stasi project.
The Government Communications Security Bureau would operate the facility on behalf of a broad range of government agencies that would use it to store data for at least the next 25 years, he said.
Little would not detail exactly what sort of information would be held and processed at the facility, but said it was “information that people could expect would be reasonably sensitive”.
Will that include personal trainers and science teachers talking about the pros and cons of Covid vaccines? Parents emailing links to medical studies to their children’s schools? Independent media “denigrati[ng… ] Labour Party policies and individuals linked to them”?
Will the Ministry of Truth building have a dedicated “Cam Slater Wing”?
“It’s information collected by a range of government agencies, including the intelligence agencies, but also Police, Customs, and others.”
That would “pretty much” be information that agencies held in the past, the difference being the Government would have its own facility so it could be confident that was being stored securely, he said.
I guess that’ll make it easier for China to steal if nothing else. Will they get Huawei to install the IT systems? Just asking…
Little emphasised the facility was a data centre and not a spy base, but acknowledged a potential for conspiracy theories.
”You can’t control what people with a fertile imagination will come up with.”
Stuff
That’s true. People are apt to believe the most ludicrous things: vaccine passports, “two-tier societies”, big tech companies conspiring to censor information in favour of certain political parties… oh, wait…
But I’m sure the government is telling the truth this time.
