NZ Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee hearings
Posted by Kate Dewes on July 4, 2013
Yesterday, Robert Green and Kate Dewes appeared before the NZ Intelligence and Security Committee chaired by the NZ Prime Minister. The government is trying to amend legislation to allow the Government Communications and Security Bureau to ‘legally’ spy on New Zealanders. We were able to show the Committee examples of opened mail in NZ, UK etc, and tell them about break-ins to our Christchurch home. Watch the Campbell Live TV3 feature on this website under news/reviews to see some of our presentation to the Committee.
peter norton said
The opening of postal mail, and private emails as well nowadays, has been done routinely in the UK. It has now, apparently, extended to NZ too. Any new law won’t stop that, of course, but will merely serve to legitimise the practice. In defence of this new law they’ll trot out the old saw that – ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear’.
But a weak government seeks to intimidate its citizens and, by that, control any THOUGHT of dissent from the establishment line. OK at a time of war when the ‘enemy without’ might gain aid from a fifth column. But – during peace time, can a democratically elected government claim to be AT WAR with its own peaceful citizens?
It was Margaret Thatcher, that unpunished political criminal, who invented the phrase ‘the enemy within’. She was describing the likes of Hilda Murrell and any other opponents to her tragic policies. And they were targeted by any petty criminal who found himself with a government contract…and the rest is history. And, she got her inspiration from her friend, that abductor of dissenting citizens, General Pinochet.
‘We have nothing to fear except fear itself’ is another old saw that we must try to bear in mind when we stand firmly against these corrosive intrusions…Bravo Rob and Kate.
Gordon Dale said
Kate Rob, you called us brave but you are the one’s who are very brave indeed.