Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Somehow I think being on a wifi network would be the very last thing a serious terrorist would want to do. Especially not out in the bush when you're trying to keep radio silence.
The WiFi protocol would be quite hard to do direction finding on, I think, certainly compared to a VHF walkie talkie. It's spread spectrum and quite low power.
You could layer a fairly secure comms system onto WiFi. SMS style text messages, encrypted and sent as bursts (160 bytes at 54Mbits = 300ns of data) would be hard to intercept and locate.
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I'm assuming that Greg O'Connor is elected to his post in the Police Association and isn't just a self-appointed spokesman? If so, that would seem to indicate that there is a definite hard right tendency amongst cops.
Being a policeman in a society with a low-level terrorist campaign isn't very dangerous, and the more imaginary the terrorists the safer it becomes. Obviously peoples mileage varies, but a lot of securocrats do very well without exposing themselves to substantial risk.
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I think there's a clear difference between enforcing/witholding prosecution for political ends and deciding that the operations of the police should take account of community relations and national unity.
The police are not a great impartial body in this matter. Firstly, most individual cops are politically somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. Secondly, the interests of the police are to exarcabate tensions, not to diminish them. If a full-on terrorist campaign did kick off in NZ, they'd have more numbers, more pay, better equipment, improved status and more interesting work. (It's far more fun to be foiling shadowy terrorist campaigns than failing to control domestic violence).
I don't just base this on surmise and prejudice. A few years ago I spent some time travelling with a Northern Ireland cop. She was mortified at the prospect of the peace process ending her exciting, well paid (GBP30k) job.
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I can see such a network working well here in Point Chevalier: a contained, increasingly gentrified suburb
But is it a good idea that cheap, fast net access is only available for (relatively) wealthy urbanites in smart inner suburbs.
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But, why did we find this out the day after he was elected?
Surely, politicians seeking election should advertise their intended policies BEFORE the election? -
Bit late but:
Labour is actually pretty much hating this
So WTF don't they do something about it? Like telling the cops: "no, you can't dress up as ninja and invade school buses. Send the local bobby around to knock on Tama's door at a civilised hour and ask to check his guns. That's our decided public policy, and you'll abide by it. Please".
I sometimes think that NZ has no executive branch of government, just a legislature and an autonomous public service. I'm all for restraint on executive power, but we seem to have gone way out in the other direction.
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If a mobile telco or ISP has historic communications stored away, can an interception warrant access that data *before* the date of the warrant?
And can this be used to launder illegally collected information? E.g. NZSIS (or an overseas agency like GCHQ/NSA) listen to someones traffic and tell the police that they should be interested, then the cops get a warrant and intercept the traffic legitimately? (It's been widely suggested that the various agencies work to circumvent bans on domestic espionage by "taking in each others washing").
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I hate to defend Banks, but all he's doing is refusing to spend his voters money on Eden Park. And why shouldn't the voters of Auckland decide there are better things to spend their money on than subsidising the wealthy, corporate sponsored, NZRFU?
Incidentally, I'm English. We lost a rugby game at the weekend. I'm at work functioning normally. I don't require grief counselling. I don't think the rules of rugby need rewriting.
But then, we sent a bunch of rugby players and they lost. I guess it's different when you send
gods and they still lose. -
The Dom Post's lead story, apparently based on police evidence provided to the defence, says Iti and his mates were working off the IRA Green Book manual.
Until I followed the link I didn't realise that a (purported) Green Book had made the Internet.
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"so what were youse guys doing with napalm?"
Some people like big bangs.
This from Burning Man a few weeks ago40,000 people were watching that bad boy...