Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Softly, softly, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Shoosh, Bart, enough with the logic and sensibility.
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I’ve been rather perplexed by the continued assertions in some quarters that the US has set Russia up in the Ukraine in order to have a pretext for war. A war over what, to what end, and with what US logistics train appears to have been rather overlooked, but there’s a determined section of the population who are convinced that the Americans are itching to get into a full-scale tanks-vs-tanks hot war with the Russians.
These are the people who were certain that the false-flag operation purportedly being engineered by a US military attaché and a Ukrainian colonel was absolutely true, on the basis of supposedly-hacked-by-Anonymous emails. They are not in the least bit willing to listen to any suggestion that Obama isn’t on the verge of sending some B2s to turn the Kremlin into the next parking lot for the Berlin Brigade (if you'll excuse the contextually-inaccurate historical reference).
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OnPoint: Budget 2014: Yeah okay., in reply to Sacha,
Is that related in any way to the loan for Auckland's new electric trains?
Nope. It's all for roads. The loan for the new trains was already handled in, IIRC, the 2010 budget, and that one's a loan to Auckland Transport which will end up as the owner of the new trains.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to FletcherB,
So maybe the reason for all the US “Don’t buy Huawei, it’s got leaks to the Chinese government” talk….
Is more about “Huawei doesn’t have leaks to us, so we don’t want you to install it” ??
There's also the "It doesn't ship from the continental US, which makes it that much harder for us to intercept and 'enhance'" factor.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to nzlemming,
Bang? Yes
No, my friend who can't talk about bits of the Snowden stuff.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Paul Campbell,
And presumably an actual declaration of war
No. "Engaged in hostilities" is very broad.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Which is why Peter Dunne was never charged: because he had committed no crime.
Peter Dunne committed no crime because the document he allegedly leaked was not subject to a national security classification. It was a public document that was going to be released in two days, so it was a broken embargo and nothing more. If the leaker had included the classified appendixes, that would have been at least a potential (but not definite) breach of the law. A “Confidential” classification ahead of public release, however, is never going to be seen by the courts as anything that might imperil national security.
As for your assertions about the work of the IG and the ISC not being covered by the Crimes Act, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. Section 78 can absolutely be interpreted to cover the ISC (a committee, established by statute, to assist/advise a minister) and the IG (a statutory officer). -
Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to nzlemming,
I assume you're meaning that as a clarification for others who don't understand my point?
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Idiot Savant,
“Telling the public stuff the government doesn’t want them to know” is no part of [treason].
No, but telling the world stuff that harms the defence of NZ is part of it if it's likely that al Qaeda or some other such group got to see that stuff. It's not the kind of material that's just lying around, but if you managed to get your hands on it you'd probably be doing a Snowden from a position of holding a TS clearance so there'd be no question about your owed loyalties.
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Hard News: Snowden and New Zealand, in reply to Idiot Savant,
And if the body whose information it is isn’t covered by the OIA e.g. the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, or the Intelligence and Security Committee – then its not “official information” and its total fair game.
That does not mesh with the wording of the section. "Official information" does not have to be held by "an organisation" to be covered, and the definition of what constitutes official information is very, very broad. The IGSI and the ISC are both covered.