Posts by SteveH
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
[Key] said he might respect the ‘loser’ if he’d come 6 months before, or after, the election with these revelations, not 5 days before.
I'd be more inclined to believe this if it weren't for Key's track record. Jon Stephenson made his allegations outside the election campaign and got exactly zero respect from Key anyway. In fact he got treated in the exact same way has Key has treated Hager and Greenwald.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to Dave Marks,
I just don’t understand why they need to bother tapping cables within NZ territory.
One answer could be that it's the GCSB that want the tapping here. That would give them primary access to the information beyond what gets shared through 5 Eyes systems.
Another answer is redundancy. Perhaps the NSA is confident of their continued ability to monitor the US ends of the cable. They have received a lot more heat over the Snowden leaks than the GCSB seems to have.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to B Jones,
Sexual assault is sexual assault, whether it’s supposed to have been done by the world’s greatest freedom fighter, or some ordinary shmoe, and there’s no reason Assange’s case shouldn’t be considered by the Swedish criminal justice system like any other accused person.
He claims he's willing to face the sexual assault charges. And he certainly should be tried on them. It's the threat of limbo in the US justice system (or outside it - Guantanamo Bay is still open, despite Obama's promises of five years ago) that he fears. I believe that fear is justified. Manning was not treated well and he was a US citizen.
Sweden should give him a guarantee that he will not be extradited. Yes, that's special treatment, but he is a special case - an asylum seeker. The fact that they won't give that assurance is suggestive of what they plan, IMO.
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Hard News: Vision and dumbassery, in reply to adam hyde,
The dots are not yet joined….
So NZ is a 5 Eyes partner but doesn't contribute data on NZ citizens or use data on NZ citizens provided by the other partners to spy on its own citizens by proxy. And the other countries happily go along with this because the input of the spy agencies of this country with half the population of New York is just so damn valuable. If you believe that then perhaps I could interest you in this fine bridge I happen to have for sale. It's simply not plausible.
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to Olly Buxton,
And just because we don’t like it, doesn’t mean the public at large don’t like it: judging by the (extraordinarily!) blase reaction of many New Zealanders, wholesale metadata scrubbing would probably not be politically controversial.
I can’t believe the public at large would be comfortable with the police recording (as a matter of course) all of their phone conversations, txts, letters, and the details of every trip they took outside their home. We’re talking about the digital equivalent of that. Except it’s worse because it’s not the police, it’s a shadowy government organisation with little or no oversight. I think the problem is that many people don’t quite understand what’s at stake or don’t have the knowledge necessary to judge the conflicting claims.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to kiwicmc,
Regarding tapping the cable – the PM says “We can categorically state that there is no such programme operating in New Zealand, and any claims that there is are utterly wrong.”
But again he seems to be talking about something else. He seems to be saying they haven’t cut the cable to insert any surveillance gear, which may be true. But surveillance capability could have been deployed in the cable landing station and/or the network operations centre (which is in Auckland).
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to kiwicmc,
Just reading the declassified documents from Cabinet – I’m struggling to see how these disprove that Snowden’s allegations that mass surveillance of NZ internet communications is happening.
Someone on Twitter rightly called it the Wookie Defence. It's a disingenuous straw man. Use the truth about something you could plausibly conflate with the real issue to hide the lies you've told about that issue. Some people will simply accept what Key has said. And if Key is caught in a lie he can simply say he thought Greenwald was talking about Cortex. It's the same tactic he tried when Dirty Politics first came out: "I haven't read it, but I'm going to refute it by addressing what I imagine the accusations are".
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
That said, Steve, I really don’t think anyone who was terribly keen to retrospectively amend under extreme urgency the Electoral Act to avoid a by-election nobody really wanted (or could afford to contest) could be characterized as “outsiders”.
By "outsider" I just meant that Key was not a career politician and therefore may not have the same respect for the process that someone who has focused on how the government works for a longer period might have. I see the use of urgency as a symptom of that.
Some of it was for election promises; they'd told us what they were going to do so there was some justification for just doing it, but the devil is often in the details and I believe following the process would have been wiser.
Of course there are legitimate reasons to use urgency, and some of this government's use of it probably is justified. Personally I think the test should be "is there bipartisan support for this?" If the answer is no then there would need to be pretty extreme extenuating circumstances to justify urgency.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Jake Starrow,
With Key, what you see is mostly what you get…
Key projects a nice guy, slightly goofy persona. That and his good looks do much for his popularity. But I'm not convinced. You don't get a nickname like "the smiling assassin" by being a nice guy. When challenged over anything he is dismissive (even with people clearly more qualified than he is to comment, e.g. Mike Joy) and sometimes downright nasty. There is an unattractive arrogance on display. To me when that happens it looks like cracks in the persona revealing his true personality.
I'm also of the opinion that he's lied to us. He hasn't been proven to have lied yet, but there has been far too much circumstantial evidence. The GCSB spying case, how much he knew of Kim Dotcom prior to the raid, how much he knew of Ede's actions, how much he knew of Collin's collusion with Slater (he's admitted to reading WhaleOil and talking to Slater, where did he think the stories were coming from?), the briefing over the Israeli spies. If he hasn't lied to us over these cases then he's dangerously ignorant of the behaviour of his underlings.
Before he was head-hunted to become a member of the parliamentary political party
One of the things I dislike about the Key government is the degree to which they've used urgency. I suspect it's partly due to Key being an outsider to the system. But it also goes back to the arrogance: "we know best and we're not going to bother listening to anyone else's opinion".
Despite his detractors claims and imaginary machinations, John Key has yet to be proved to be anywhere near as culpable of the duplicity and dark dealings that they would have us believe. ... People closer to Key than I ever will be report how angry and let down he feels over the dirty politics play-out
If he's not culpable then why was he so reluctant to condemn Slater's behaviour? Why did he back Collins so long? Why is the inquiry so narrow?
It's a pity he's angry about the dirty politics play-out and not the dirty politics itself.I'm sure you think I'm focussing too much on small negatives (no doubt Key would say I'm a screaming left-wing conspiracy theorist). Perhaps. I'd argue that you seems to have ignored the negatives entirely which is far worse. There are some things I've admired Key for, e.g. his stance on marriage equality, and the way he kept well clear of the Len Brown scandal.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Or Joyce. Or Bennett. Or Bridges. Or Brownlee. Or Smith…
Yup, and that list looks more or less in order of likelihood. Key has said he thought about quitting in mid 2012, I think the fallout from Dirty Politics will have him considering it again. Handing over around 12 months in is about the perfect time, it's not too soon and it still gives plenty of time for the new leader to establish themselves before the next election. I think English has the broadest appeal, despite his previous failure as leader (it was a decade ago, I doubt it will matter much), though here may be some personal bias involved as I much prefer him to Joyce or Bennett.