Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: eleventh-hour arguments, in reply to "chris",
I was dumbfounded reading that Kerre McIvor piece:
I couldn’t give a fat rat’s bum if they monitored my house and my life
The local perverati will be pleased to hear that she'll be dispensing with curtains forthwith, I take it?
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: eleventh-hour arguments, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
Waste of time. I wrote a similar plaintive missive to him before he committed to swallowing, and heard nothing more than the automated response from the parliamentary email system. He's not interested in doing what's right by NZ.
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Hard News: Fluency, ease of manner - and…, in reply to Russell Brown,
You might say “Well, the PM says that they won’t be doing this” to which I respond with “If they don’t want to do that, let’s remove the ability to do it from the bill.”
As I pointed out over here, it's all well and good that right now it's a politician that "you" (the non-inclusive, royal "you") trust with those powers, but what if the PM is someone you cannot abide? Winston? Or Hone? Or Banks? Or Russell Norman? Or Piggy Muldoon? What if it were Nixon?
As with all of these powers, don't worry about the-guy-I'd-have-a-beer-with who's in power now, worry about the power-crazed sociopath who you can't stand (instead of the one you'd have a beer with!) who might be coming down the corridors of power at the next election.
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
and actually *want* the government to spy on freaks, geeks and wierdos
The retort I conjured up for that lot is "Imagine that Winston is PM and Hone is the Minister of Police. How do you like them sweeping surveillance apples?"
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
And the children! They're thinking of the children! That's what these latest protection orders are about, along with allowing the GCSB to turn its collective beady eyes on paedophiles. The children!
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Hard News: The GCSB Bill: We at least…, in reply to Russell Brown,
They’ve clearly had a strategic rethink.
Decided to say to Campbell's face that Kiwis are more interested in snapper than the GCSB legislation, maybe?
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Something that had passed me by, and I think probably passed by just about everyone else, was Ferguson on a panel at NetHui where he explained the nature of the GCSB's assistance when he was director:
"I received a warrant signed and duly checked by the inspector of warrants and the head of either the police or Security Intelligence Service and the boss [the prime minister]. It comes to me and it asks specifically for help from the GCSB to spy on a specific target . . . they have to convince me in that warrant the reason why they're doing that and that means they have to show they have reason to believe that person is acting against the security of the state.
"They then have to ask by name for the people in GCSB who may be able to help them - the specific specialist by name. I then sign a warrant or agreement in that warrant to second those individuals. I second them to the asking authority, be it the SIS or the police. So I've now seconded them, as far as I was aware, to that organisation.
"They go across there, they do what is required by the SIS or the police and they finally finish the task and come back. At no stage . . . was I ever aware or made aware of the outcome. That wasn't my business."
Makes a hell of a lot of sense as to how GCSB was able to remain internally convinced that it was complying with the law. Very, very arguably legal, contrary to the assertions of clear illegality on the part of some. Also, however, something that could be tidied up with a handful of words in the legislation, in either direction.
Something like "For the avoidance of doubt the secondment of GCSB personnel to another agency for the purposes of providing technical assistance shall (not) be considered a breach of this section." (The not stays or goes depending what's intended) There, done. No need for sweeping expansions of the Bureau's power, no need for single-vote majorities on significant incursions into civil liberties, just a nice, neat, clear tidy-up which makes certain that everyone knows precisely where historic behaviour falls. -
the government’s insistence that not only does New Zealand want or need any further discussion of this striking piece of legislation
Perhaps you mean the government’s insistence that not only does New Zealand not want or need any further discussion of this striking piece of legislation?
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Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, and also they don’t control the hardware anyway.
The software does. These things are never implemented in ASIC, they're always done in software.
As for corporates outnumbering individuals, that's not necessary. Apple has a focus on gaining market share in business, which is why they provide superb "fleet" management tools with which corporate IT can manage their deployed iCult devices. Gaining mindshare in the 'C' suite is a good way to expand that share, and getting front-and-centre deals with government appeals to the suits who couldn't care less about individual liberties because pretty, shiny.
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Hard News: The Real Threat, in reply to BenWilson,
It’s hard to tell. I have pretty much zero faith that Apple will do anything that’s not a dick move just because the alternative is a dick move. They’ll do anything that’ll cement their iron grip over their users while growing market share. If that means implementing a technology that keeps the Feds happy in order to become preferred supplier to government, they’ll do it in a heartbeat, because that sells it to CEOs and CEOs sell it to IT who then sell it to the whole company.
A company with a better record of not being restrictive ass-hats might have a chance of convincing me that the patent was taken out so that anyone else who tries on such a tech is going to get nail. But this is Apple.
ETA: Yes, my opinion of what passes for Apple’s corporate ethics really is that low. It’s not that I think Google are better, it’s that I know Google can’t implement shit like this in secret because there are a dozen companies and hundreds (if not thousands) of individuals looking through the code of every release of Android to find undocumented features which can be hooked into to make a better user experience.