Posts by Matthew Poole
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Kumara Republic,
But Kiwis don't care about the GCSB. If that mix tape were about snapper, though...
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Richard Love,
Now who’s applying 2013 hindsight to things?
In what respect?
Your confident assertion that (what some claim is) clarity of illegality now, in 2013, was clearly illegal from inside the GCSB in prior years, based on what you think might be and should be the operating pattern. The only hard information we have, and I know that Sir Bruce is not impartial but he’s also not taking the government’s side, is what we’ve been told happened: secondment, with no reporting-back as to what went on during the secondment. On the basis of that hard information, I am very far from convinced now that there was illegality, never mind having been inside the GCSB at the time and getting confident legal opinions from people who were supposed to be qualified to give such opinions.
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Richard Love,
Now who's applying 2013 hindsight to things? Which is the problem with trying to discuss the issue at all: it's impossible to examine this without applying hindsight.
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
We do have 88 illegal spying incidents by the GCSB according to the report after all. Is that report wrong?
We do have 88 potentially illegal spying incidents. There's no ruling from a court, so it's not certain whether they were or weren't illegal. And what's been revealed by a former head of the GCSB subsequent to the report as to how assistance was actually rendered makes it that much less clear. It's not "2013-PR’d-to-death-by-National", unless you're suggesting that Sir Bruce (who has been extremely outspoken about his disapproval of this legislation) is part of the National spin machine?
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Russell Brown,
The Lange story after we withdrew from the nuclear club is instructive. He had a ton of shit poured on him.
Quite. And we weren't even a participating member!
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Hard News: So long, and thanks for all…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I think he'll make a fine foreign affairs or aid minister.
He would be a stand-out in the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs (which also encompasses the aid portfolio), particularly given McCully's destructive tenure. It'd give him lots of scope to be out of the country, keeping him out of the bear pit, and his background suggests he's got a real handle on how to run that kind of ministry.
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Ireland is not in Five Eyes, nor is (at least partly Anglophonic) South Africa. Neither of these countries have suffered any dire consequences as a result.
Fair point about the span of the Anglophonic world, but neither of them has ever been a member of Five Eyes. The consequences would be as a result of pulling out, not as a result of no longer being in. Paul's pretty persuasive, and it's an area he knows well.
As far as the NATO connection goes, the only country that really threw toys over the no nukes thing was the US. The Frogs were bombing annoying hippies, not NZ national assets. -
Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Richard Love,
The GCSB could not spy on NZers, but it could render assistance to police etc. Which is fine, these are not inconsistent statements. This just means that the GCSB (if it followed its legislation) could not spy on NZers in the course of rendering assistance to the police, etc.
And, again, if one reads what Sir Bruce said actually happened in the rendering of assistance, it was a secondment of specified personnel to the requesting agency with no reporting-back to the GCSB of what the secondment entailed. Which may or may not have been consistent with both the spirit and the letter of the law. Unless one is arguing that there was actual interception by the GCSB, not just by GCSB personnel seconded to another agency, and that Sir Bruce omitted that detail?
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Richard Love,
it was equally unthinkable, by non-radicals, that we could declare ourselves nuclear free.
Nobody said it's unthinkable that we could pull out of Echelon. What Paul said is that there would be severe consequences, and based on the reaction by the US to the anti-nuclear issue we can be quite certain that Paul is absolutely correct. All the more so when one considers that pulling out of Echelon means shitting on the rest of the Anglophonic world (and their Western intelligence/security partners), not just shitting on the US.
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Speaker: Naked Inside the Off-Ramp, in reply to Rob Stowell,
That’s the opinion of the courts, I believe.
Nope. It’s the opinion of the commentariat; it’s never been ruled on by the judiciary. And the absolute certainty of various commentators that it’s unquestionably illegal is not supported by what Sir Bruce told NetHui about how things really worked. It’s murky as all hell, and I would love to know how such a situation wasn’t explicitly clarified (in either direction) by the 2003 Act.