I asked Redbaiter to have a drink with me. His response seemed genuine and polite to me. I suspect I'd find the same thing with him. Most people are just decent folk. You can't go judging them by their online persona, which is often more a representation of their frustrations than their whole person.

At least some of the Te Qaeda surveillance was done with a search warrant issued by a judge. Based on information presented to the judge which they presumably found at least moderately compelling.

Legally, when does the evidence seen by the judge, which... warranted the warrant, become public? Does anyone know?

No Ben, this "Ryan" character is just seeing what you know and what else you can tell him ... Can't be too careful these days.

Oh, I was just going to offer to fix his computer. Dot dot dot.

I wonder how much damage this has done to activism in exactly that sense - "can't be too careful these days". It could make people too wary of each other to become too friendly, reducing trust, etc.

On the other hand, it could cause a reaction where activism groups start operating as hierarchical tiers of secrecy, with new members not being told what's really going on until they've proven themselves, keeping activity of small groups separate from each other so neither knows what the other is doing, etc. Plus feeding even more of their "us versus the police" attitude - which is not always necessarily the actual case.

In other words, it could make them more of a Te Qaeda than they ever were before. And not just the ones hit by this recent bout of spying - it would have that psychological effect on all activism in New Zealand.

Ben Wilson,

What is "Te Quaeda"?

Well, I've had a few interesting discussions there. It's good to occasionally engage with people who utterly disagree with you on almost everything.

What if I'm both bored and masochistic?