What’s the difference between New Zealand and Australia? In New Zealand, the Stasi come to your door, and they ask before giving you a going-over with the digital rubber-hose.
You think I’m joking?
Australia and New Zealand have both slipped into police states without realising it. While our nations sat glued to daily covid propaganda broadcasts or spent lockdown snoozing through the witless adventures of the Kardashians, some very sinister stuff slithered under the radar.
If you thought Dan Andrews’ goons clubbing, tear-gassing and shooting peaceful anti-lockdown protesters was an aberration, and, hey, that sort of police state stuff couldn’t happen in New Zealand anyway, well, you’re sadly mistaken on both points, dear reader.
Australia recently passed a bipartisan bill, with little publicity and almost no attention from the media. The innocuously-named Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identity and Disrupt) Bill 2021 is an Orwellian piece of leglislation that allows the Federal Police to (covertly) add, copy, delete or alter data on your computer or on a network. They can also (covertly) take over your online accounts and pose as you, secretly monitor supposedly private communications, and hack networks with fake data.
Enter, New Zealand Police.
Police are trying to assume the online identities of suspects and defendants by taking over their social media and email accounts to gather information.
Defence lawyers concerned about their young and vulnerable clients alerted RNZ to a form the police are using, titled ‘Consent to Assume Online Internet Identity’.
The form asks people to sign away their social media and email accounts, allowing the police to “take control of and use my internet online identities”.
Those signing the document are asked to provide the passwords so that police can access the accounts and use the information stored on them.
“I consent to the use of my online identity and accounts for any purpose relating to an official investigation by the New Zealand Police,” the form says.
Those signing the form “relinquish all present and future claims to the use of these accounts” and are told police will change their passwords so they no longer have access.
But, hey, at least they ask first. Aw, isn’t that nice of them?
I’m sure, if you’re a young internet activist, hauled down the lock-up over your Facebook shitposts or YouTube videos criticising the Dear Leader, you won’t feel at all menaced into signing. It’s not like a kid is going to be terrified into signing anything, just to go home.
Defence lawyers contacted RNZ after one discovered the form by chance while working on a client’s file.
Criminal Bar Association president Fiona Guy Kidd said she was also concerned about the police tactic.
“It is often very vulnerable people who are being asked to sign these.”
Police were asking for broad and open-ended access to social media accounts which contained large amounts of personal information, she said.
“It allows them to pretend to be that person,” she said.
As always, when the state is caught out doing shady stuff, play the paedophile card. Hey, you’re not going to protect paedophiles, are you?
Detective Inspector Stuart Mills from Intercept and Technology Operations said the form was legal, and police had used it on a “regular basis” since 2012, primarily in child exploitation investigations.
Then comes the zinger:
The form was also used on other types of investigations, he said.
Asked if police could use an online identity indefinitely, Mills said “you could say that”.
NZ Herald
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m reassured.
At least the New Zealand Stasi are asking nicely before applying the digital alligator clips to your privates. I guess that’s that “kindness” thing, again.
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