Dissident Solutions: What's Happening To Nicky Hager?

Targeted? The actions of the NZ Police in relation to Nicky Hager are deeply concerning. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the ability of New Zealand's foremost investigative journalist to do his job is being deliberately undermined.

 

MARTYN BRADBURY’S LATEST POSTING on The Daily Blog should give every member of the democratic public serious pause. The allegations levelled at the NZ Police are serious and deeply concerning. It is very difficult, having read Martyn’s post, to avoid the conclusion that Nicky Hager may be the victim of deliberate political persecution, and that among the principal agents of that persecution may be members of the NZ Police Force.

 

With the specifics of the actions taken against Mr Hager forming a significant part of active legal proceedings, it would be improper to rehearse them on The Daily Blog. What can be examined, however, is the enormous risk posed to the integrity of our democratic institutions by the merest suspicion that senior politicians, senior civil servants, senior policemen and senior jurists might be involved in an effort to both frighten and silence what used to be called, back in the days of the Cold War, “political dissidents”.

 

What distinguishes the “political dissident” from the more familiar “political activist” is their specificity. Activists may give public voice to generalised complaints against individuals and institutions, but dissidents sharpen such complaints by supplying the public with hard evidence of specific wrong-doing – often supplied to them by a whistleblower or, in Mr Hager’s case, a hacker. Alternatively, the evidence may simply have been uncovered by applying the techniques of good, old-fashioned, investigative journalism.

 

Liberal democracies have very little to fear from activists. Objections to government policy and/or corporate behaviour based on political ideology or religious belief constitute no real threat to the smooth unfolding of long-prepared strategies and plans. After all, the actions of powerful institutions – be they public or private – are almost always undertaken within the law and are, therefore, extremely difficult to stop. Indeed, it is only when the placard-waving (but otherwise ineffective) activists avail themselves of a lawyer or two that they graduate to dissident status – at least in the eyes of their opponents.

 

Lawyers, like the best investigative journalists, have ways of extracting information the powers-that-be would rather they, their clients, and/or the general public, didn’t see. In the hands of a good team of lawyers, legal discovery can be an immensely powerful weapon. The constitutional separation of powers means that the Judiciary can require the Executive Branch of Government, or a private corporation, to divulge all manner of secret material. Discovery cuts both ways, however, so those who go after the secrets of the powerful must be prepared for the powerful to come after theirs.

 

But if lawyers pose a genuine threat to the secret dealings of the powerful, they are also extremely hazardous to their client’s bank balance. This enables the State, by dint of having its very own “law firm” – Crown Law – and a practically inexhaustible supply of funds, to adopt a strategy of litigation attrition. By extending and multiplying the mechanisms of the Law, the Crown is frequently able to wear down or financially exhaust its opponents. If an out-of-court settlement is arrived at by the contending parties it will almost always contain a comprehensive confidentiality clause. The dissident and his or her lawyers may “win” their case, but the State’s secrets remain just that – secrets.

 

What truly terrifies the wielders of public and private power are processes of “discovery” that owe nothing to the operation of the courts. Edward Snowden was able to use his privileged access to the secrets of the United States’ National Security Agency, to expose its highly questionable (and in some cases illegal) activities to the whole world. The specificity of the information he released (that the US eavesdropped on the conversations of the German Chancellor, for example) produced the most acute diplomatic embarrassment. Likewise his detailed description of the architecture of mass surveillance.

 

Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, delivered an equally destructive blow to the secret world of right-wing influence peddling and political character assassination. The hitherto unseen architecture of political manipulation in New Zealand was laid bare in a way that caught the subjects of Mr Hager’s investigation completely off-guard. It was the same with his earlier publications: Secret Power, Secrets and Lies, Seeds of Distrust, The Hollow Men and Other People’s Wars. In every case those under scrutiny had no idea that their activities were about to be exposed.

 

This “ambush” strategy has been criticised by Mr Hager’s opponents as unethical and contrary to the “rules of good journalism”. What it achieves, however, is the unimpeded distribution of his publications. Had the subjects of Mr Hager’s investigations been alerted to the fact that a book was in preparation, or, about to be published, it is highly likely that they would have attempted to legally injunct its release. Rather than offer his subjects the traditional right-of-reply, therefore, Mr Hager exhaustively checks and re-checks his facts to ensure that there is no possibility of legal restraint. That he has never been successfully sued bears testimony to the thoroughness of this pre-publication scrutiny.

 

What does a government “do” about a dissident of such consistent effectiveness as Nicky Hager? How reassuring it would be if we could answer, simply, that the powers-that-be, both public and private, redouble their efforts to conduct themselves ethically and openly. The revelations contained in Martyn Bradbury’s blogpost, however, strongly suggest that their reaction has been very different.

 

It’s as if someone, somewhere, has echoed the anguished cry of King Henry II.

 

When confronted with further evidence of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, Thomas Becket’s, political and religious defiance, Henry bellowed: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!” Did Henry know that four of his knights had taken him at his word and were on their way to slay the Archbishop before his altar? We shall never know. He always claimed ignorance of his men-at-arms’ intent, and did penance for the crime his words inspired. At the end of the day, however, his problem had, actually, been solved.

 

Rogue elements in the Police Force? Or a carefully devised plan to bring down a dissident? Either way, the outlook for the democratic public is grim.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 13 July 2015.

Something To Listen To As We Head For "The Moment Of Truth"

 

 

ALREADY, the arrival of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Glenn Greenwald (a.k.a. "Kim Dotcom's little henchman") has afforded New Zealanders another disturbing glimpse of the man behind the Prime-Ministerial mask.

 

 Even more will be revealed tomorrow at the Auckland Town Hall.

 

Doors open at 6:00pm.

 

In the meantime, and in anticipation of Mr Greenwald's reporting on New Zealand's role in the "Five Eyes" global surveillance programme exposed by Edward Snowden, I've put up The Police's classic 1983 hit 'Every Breath You Take'.

 

Enjoy.

 

Video courtesy of YouTube.

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Wind Shifts: Auckland Town Hall, Monday, 19 August 2013

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" - Bob Dylan.

A SYMBOLIC VICTORY might have been won by John Key on Campbell Live last Wednesday, but last night, in the Auckland Town Hall, the victory won was very real. Last night, for the first time in decades, one of New Zealand's stately civic buildings found itself full-to-bursting with angry citizens.

You don't need a weatherman to tell you there's been a shift in the wind.

If the organisers of last night's event allow themselves to be guided by the quiet wisdom of Nicky Hager, it will go down in New Zealand political history as being not the end of a campaign against the GCSB Amendment Bill, but the beginning of a nationwide movement against New Zealand's continuing participation in the UKUSA/Echelon/Five Eyes Agreement.

Only amputation can sever New Zealand from the other four murderous fingers of the Anglo-Saxon fist. That will not be accomplished without pain, but when it is done this country will at last be free of American tutelage. Not even our anti-nuclear legislation could achieve that. No matter how angrily the Americans scolded us for denying entry to their warships, Waihopai kept on sending the signals intelligence to NSA headquarters in Ford Meade, Maryland.

Only by dismantling Waihopai, abolishing the GCSB and withdrawing New Zealand from the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing protocols can we finally proclaim ourselves to be a free and independent South Pacific nation.

The energy unleashed in last night's meeting in the Auckland Town Hall, if harnessed intelligently, can lead us to that long cherished objective.

We have 15 months to make it happen.

The New Zealand nationalist poet, Allen Curnow, looking forward to the day when his little country would finally cease bowing and scraping to its various imperial masters, wrote:

Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year
Will learn the trick of standing upright here.

Let that year be 2014.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

John Key Ducks And Weaves His Way To A Symbolic Victory

Smiling Assassin: In this televised clash of champions, it was the confident jut of the Prime Minister's jaw and his refusal to make even the slightest concession to the opponents of his GCSB Amendment Bill, that saw him emerge as the clear winner over TV3's John Campbell. Unfair, but indisputable.

 

IT’S SAD REALLY, this habit we have of treating politics as a contact sport. In other parts of the world the liveliest discussions and debates are generated by the ideas behind politics. Here in New Zealand there’s only ever one question: “Who won?”

 

We talk about our politics the way we talk about our Rugby. Which side got the most possession? Who had the better kickers? Which scrum proved the stronger? Who got up highest in the line-outs? We expect our leaders to outshine their opponents by running-in more tries and kicking more penalties. Ideally, the game of politics should produce a clear winner and a clear loser.

 

Last Wednesday’s noisy, but not particularly informative, interview between the Prime Minister, John Key, and TV3’s John Campbell, is a case in point.

 

Though the Government protested (some said too much) that the public cared more about the Snapper Catch than the GCSB Amendment Bill, the very fact that the Prime Minister more-or-less invited himself onto Campbell Live suggests a significant (and possibly rising?) level of public concern. Government supporters would, no doubt, respond that Campbell Live, by embarking on a journalistic road-trip to test whether Kiwis really did or did not care about the GCSB legislation, had itself become an major generator of that concern.

 

The scene was set for a lively encounter.

 

Much has been spoken and written about the stoush which ensued. The consensus seems to be that while the Prime Minister clearly got the better of Mr Campbell, his “win” owed a great deal more to the way he “handled” the interview than it did to any fair and dispassionate communication of the GCSB legislation’s content and consequences.

 

The word from Wellington (and it’s important to acknowledge here that all words from Wellington are best taken with a whole cellar-full of salt) is that with the screening of the first instalment of Campbell Live’s road-trip on Monday, 12 August, the men and women responsible for burnishing the Prime Minister’s image became seriously alarmed. The interviews recorded by TV3’s Rebecca Wright at the National Party’s annual conference in Nelson conveyed a disturbing message of Government arrogance, with the behaviour of the Prime Minister himself bordering on the downright contemptuous.

 

Not a good look.

 

By the screening of Tuesday’s instalment of the road-trip, the alarm of the Government’s spin doctors had grown considerably. Though the Prime Minister flatly denied the allegation when Mr Campbell put it to him on Wednesday night, other political observers have insisted that the National Party’s internal pollsters were already registering a shift in public sentiment against Mr Key’s ministry.

 

Something had to be done.

 

Getting Mr Key on to Campbell Live on Wednesday evening would, if nothing else, arrest the gathering momentum of the programme’s journalistic crusade. It might also lure Mr Campbell into an attempt to humiliate his guest, live, on nationwide television. The Prime Minister was thus given a chance to spring a trap on his adversary. If Mr Campbell could be the one humiliated, live, on nationwide television, then Mr Key could claim vindication – not only for himself, but for his government’s whole approach to national security in general and to the GCSB legislation in particular.

 

With so much now riding on the outcome of the Wednesday encounter, the two Johns had become, in effect, the champions of the opposing sides in the GCSB debate. “Champions”, that is, in the original and archaic sense of the word. Hardened warriors, the best either side has to offer, meeting to do battle, with the losing side vacating the field and acknowledging the victory of their enemy.

 

No pressure, then.

 

In France or Germany the clash would have been cerebral: a fascinating battle of intellects as the whys and wherefores, pros and cons, of the modern state’s growing need (desire?) for surveillance and security were teased out and debated.

 

But ours is not a nation that places much stock in virtuoso displays of intellectual prowess. What we admire is the confident tilt of a protagonist’s chin; the impudent glint in his eye; and the sheer, bare-faced cheek of his replies. The winner of such an encounter, at least in Kiwi eyes, is the player who ducks and weaves, who sells his opponent the dummy-pass and then slips through the floundering defence for yet another five points.

 

And that is what New Zealand saw on Wednesday night. When Mr Key was through with him, Mr Campbell resembled one of those panting, slump-shouldered, prop-forwards for whom the Ref’s final whistle brings nothing but blessed relief.

 

A symbolic defeat, then, for those opposing the growth of the surveillance state, but not, perhaps, for our democracy. Politics has always been a surrogate for organised violence. Better metaphorical blood on the TV studio floor, than real blood – in the streets.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 August 2013.

Kiwis Do Care About The GCSB

Inadequate Defence: Campbell Live's Rebecca Wright interviews Justice Minister, Judith Collins, on the GCSB Amendment Bill. Like so many of her colleagues, the Minister was unable to offer a cogent and/or accurate defence of her Government's legislation.

 

SOMETHING’S VERY WRONG when senior Cabinet Ministers cannot defend their own Government’s legislation. The spectacle of multiple National Party politicians struggling to justify the GCSB Amendment Bill to Campbell Live’s Rebecca Wright was more than a little disconcerting. Stuttering and stammering, none of them were able to draw together the rudiments of a convincing defence. Indeed, their uniformly uninspiring replies suggest a Cabinet characterised not so much by its intellectual acuity, as by its mental and moral vacuity.

 

Not that they care. From the Prime Minister to the lowliest back-bencher, the National Government appears to be driven by disdainful contempt, bordering on outright hatred, for practically every evidence-based and logically argued case submitted in opposition to its policies.

 

This has been especially evident in relation to the GCSB Amendment Bill.

 

In spite of the fact that he possesses no legal qualifications, the Prime Minister felt perfectly free to dismiss the New Zealand Law Society’s submission on the Bill to the Intelligence and Security Committee. The Society, he claimed, had simply misunderstood the legislation.

 

Unfortunately, Mr Key (unlike most reasonable people) did not feel obliged to demonstrate exactly how the Law Society got it all so badly wrong. The Prime Minister declaring its argument deficient was apparently all that was required for the submission to be set aside. Taking their cue from Mr Key’s response, the Prime Minister’s colleagues continue to treat the Law Society’s comprehensive deconstruction and condemnation of the Bill as if it were a C-minus undergraduate essay.

 

The same dismissive attitude is manifest in the Government’s response to the criticisms of Sir Geoffrey Palmer. In spite of the critic being a former Law Professor, Attorney-General, Law Commissioner and Prime Minister of New Zealand; and ignoring the fact that he, like Mr Key, at one time held ministerial responsibility for the country’s security services, Sir Geoffrey’s objections to the GCSB Amendment Bill are, apparently, as muddled and mistaken as the Law Society’s.

 

All the more puzzling, then, why the same National Party cabinet ministers and back-benchers who’ve been so quick to allege that all those who characterise the GCSB amending legislation as a vast, unwarranted and potentially dangerous expansion of the State’s ability to pry into the private affairs of its citizens have got it wrong, become so utterly incoherent and/or obfuscatory when asked to set us right.

 

And how reassuring it has been (at least to those of us who still believe in the virtues of democracy) to hear coherent arguments, both for and against the GCSB Amendment Bill, coming from the mouths of ordinary New Zealand citizens. Whether it be the young Maori man in Kaitaia’s main street, who had been following the issue closely on the Internet, and who was eloquent in his condemnation of the Government’s expansion of the security services’ powers. Or, the Four Square store proprietor who was pleased to know that the Government “had his back” when it came to the threat of international terrorism.

 

These responses, captured by the irrepressible John Campbell and his team, as part of a week-long, televised, opinion-gathering road-trip from Cape Reinga to the Bluff, are also rather puzzling. Because, according to the Prime Minister (and just about his entire caucus) nobody out there cares about the GCSB – or its amending legislation.

 

What they do care about, says the Prime Minister (and, again, the National caucus nods its collective head) is the recreational Snapper catch-limit. (As if Kiwis can only be concerned about one issue at a time!)

 

But as Campbell Live (demonstrating with considerable élan just how vital a free media is to the processes of democratic government) has shown us, emphatically and indisputably, the Prime Minister’s claim is untrue.

 

From Northland to Southland, ordinary Kiwis have been paying close attention to their Government’s plans to expand the GCSB’s powers. Most are uneasy. Some are frightened. Practically all of them do care – a lot – and, unlike Mr Key’s Cabinet, are perfectly capable of telling us why.

 

John Key vs John Campbell: Game, Set and Match to the Prime Minister. (And, unlike his interlocutor, he did it all without notes!)

 

POSTSCRIPT: Goaded into action by the power of Campbell Live’s reporting, the Prime Minister agreed to a live interview with John Campbell on Wednesday night. The latter gentleman discovered to his cost that while National’s Cabinet may have struggled to defend the GCSB Amendment Bill, the Prime Minister was made of considerably sterner stuff. Even opponents of the legislation, watching the exchange, agreed that it was Game, Set and Match to the Prime Minister.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 August 2013.

Democracy versus The Majority

Those Ain't The Torches Of Liberty, Springfield! But is it even possible to argue for democracy against the will of the people? What if the majority just isn't that keen on liberty and justice for all?

IT’S EVERYWHERE: coming at you, confusingly, from both the Right and the Left. The former express their views emphatically, as fact: “Nobody gives a damn about the GCSB – or Andrea Vance. It’s a media beat-up!” The Liberal-Left convey their scepticism in question form: “Does the public really care about all this state surveillance and freedom of the press stuff? I mean, seriously? If they did, then surely National would be suffering in the polls? And they’re not.”

 

How should we respond to these responses? How does one argue against the expansion of the state’s surveillance powers, and the violation of a journalist’s privacy, when the reaction of the overwhelming majority of the population is either bland indifference, or (even more alarmingly) active support for the Government’s position?

 

Is it even possible to argue for democracy against the will of the people?

 

It’s a question of particular relevance to New Zealanders because, historically-speaking, we have never, as a people, been particularly interested in either recognising or upholding the civil and political rights of minorities. Majoritarianism is the strongest of our political traditions. Indeed, the idea that the shape and purposes of society can only be legitimately determined by a majority of its population has been the driving force behind the evolution of New Zealand’s informal constitution.

 

It is worth elaborating on this point a little.

 

Many, if not most, New Zealanders either do not know (or have forgotten) that their country once had two houses of Parliament. There was the House of Representatives, elected by universal suffrage, and the Legislative Council, whose members were appointed for seven years by the Governor-General on the advice of his ministers (i.e. by the government of the day). The “upper” chamber had the power to amend, review and delay legislation sent up to it from the House of Representatives. Its acknowledged purpose was to act as a check upon the majority derived and driven demands of the “lower” house.

 

The lower house did not care to be “checked”. In 1950, just three years short of its centenary, The Legislative Council was abolished by the First National Government.

 

Nothing now stands between the House of Representatives (and the governments drawn from its members) and the individual citizen. In New Zealand, a parliamentary majority cannot be gainsaid by anyone or anything. Lacking the “supreme law” of a written constitution, the legislative acts of Parliament cannot be challenged in the courts or struck down as “unconstitutional” by judicial fiat. About the only force capable of staying the hand of a government in possession of a solid parliamentary majority is the force of public opinion – and, even then, there are limits.

 

New Zealand parliamentarians – along with just about every other legislator in the world – are driven by one great desire: to be re-elected. This renders them particularly sensitive to shifts in public opinion – especially those shifts strong enough to make people change their electoral allegiances.

 

Think about the “anti-smacking bill”. The passage of this bill was sufficiently resented by Labour’s core voters to cause a significant number of them to either transfer their support to another party, or abstain. Labour’s failure to understand the mood of its supporters thus contributed materially to its 2008 defeat. National, by contrast, was confident that although a majority of its supporters (and, indeed, of all electors) were opposed to the anti-smacking legislation, they were not opposed enough to vote for National’s enemies.

 

And this is where I believe New Zealand public opinion currently stands in relation to the GCSB Amendment Bill, and the apparent, state-sanctioned, invasion of journalists Andrea Vance’s and Jon Stephenson’s professional and personal privacy.

 

If directly challenged on these issues, I suspect most Kiwis will come out unequivocally for the protection of their own personal privacy and, rather less enthusiastically, for the freedom of the press. What they remain to be convinced of, however, is that the GCSB Amendment Bill constitutes a serious threat, either to themselves or people like them.

 

So, a few political activists will have their “metadata” analysed and their e-mails intercepted. So what? It’s probably prudent to keep a watchful eye on such people. And, as for the rights of journalists? Well, for these exploiters of personal grief and political misadventure, the public has only one question: “How does it feel?”

 

Labour and the Greens have come out swinging on behalf of the public’s right to privacy and the freedom of the press because their MPs know that the people who vote for them care passionately about such things and expect them to take a strong stand in their defence.

 

National MPs, by contrast, are quietly confident that the Centre-Left’s concerns are minority concerns. Mr Key’s majority support is not about to abandon his government for left-wing activists, or journalists. At least, not any time soon.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 6 August 2013.

The Contagion Of Evil

The Black Prison: The United States new detention facility on Bagram Airbase a few kilometres north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Recent revelations concerning the behaviour of the NZDF in that country - most particularly its use of US surveillance facilities to monitor the activities of freelance war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, raise real fears that the evil represented by Bagram's torture chambers is on the point of infecting New Zealand.

 

THE BAGRAM DETENTION FACILITY was a dark lake of evil, its opaque depths constantly replenished by a thousand tributaries of officially-sanctioned moral depravity. Behind the razor-wire and watch-towers; beyond the foot patrols and guard-dogs; far away from the searchlight-beams and the constantly turning CCTV cameras; deeds were done in the name of our “very, very, very good friends” that only the sickest kind of sadist could observe with equanimity.

 

To the people of Afghanistan, the innocent as well as the guilty, Bagram became a byword for terror, torture, and the exercise of all the other brutal forms of utterly unaccountable American power.

 

In March of this year the Bagram Detention Facility, located within the sprawling American airbase of the same name, was handed over to the Afghan Government. It is now known as the Afghan National Detention Facility – proof – according to the American commander of the International Security Assistance Force, General Joseph Dunford, of ISAF’s success in building “an increasingly confident, capable and sovereign Afghanistan.”

 

Shortly before the formal handover, however, an undisclosed number of prisoners were allegedly moved to a new US-controlled facility – still located within the perimeter wire of the airbase – and known simply as the “Black Prison”. Former detainees also report that US personnel continue to have “access” to the prisoners (or what’s left of them) being held under Afghanistan’s putative authority.

 

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) still has military intelligence personnel stationed at Bagram Airbase. A former NZDF resident describes it in terms of a small American town uplifted in its entirety and relocated within sight of the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush. She did not reveal the purpose of her posting.

 

But now, thanks to the extraordinary investigative journalism of Nicky Hager, we all know what at least one of New Zealand’s military and intelligence personnel was doing at Bagram Airbase. He or she was spying on another of this country’s extraordinary investigative journalists (and our only war correspondent worthy of the name) Jon Stephenson.

 

Jon’s stories from Afghanistan, stripped of all their incidental detail, have been about only one thing: the contagion of evil.

 

Over and over again he has revealed how sending good-hearted New Zealand soldiers to Afghanistan, a war that was, most probably, initiated illegally, and which has, most certainly, been conducted immorally, was bound to result in their slow but certain corruption.

 

The most vivid confirmation of evil’s contagious effect came in Jon’s award-winning Metro magazine article, “Eyes Wide Shut”, in which he detailed how New Zealand’s troops had repeatedly been obliged to hand over prisoners to US and Afghan authorities, in whose custody, the Kiwis were reasonably sure, they would be subjected to assault and torture.

 

It was through the increasingly desperate attempts of the NZDF to deny that these events ever happened, and then to discredit the journalist whose detailed and highly accurate reportage constantly undermined those efforts, that some of Bagram’s evil began flowing into the bloodstream of the New Zealand body politic.

 

Nicky Hager’s story reveals an NZDF so rattled by Jon Stephenson’s investigative reporting that its own security manual included “certain investigative journalists” among its most dangerous antagonists. Or, in Mr Hager’s own words, putting probing journalists up there “on the same list as the KGB and al Qaeda.”

 

Both affronted and alarmed by Jon Stephenson’s unrelenting reportage, the NZDF turned to the Americans’ vast intelligence-gathering operation for assistance. They also enlisted the aid of New Zealand’s principal security and intelligence gathering agency, the SIS, to root out the journalist’s contacts and sources.

 

To the NZDF, Stephenson was no longer simply a conscientious journalist attempting to inform his fellow citizens of their government’s actions and hold it to account. He was now regarded as a “subversive”: someone determined to “weaken the military, economic or political strength of a nation by undermining the morale, loyalty or reliability of its citizens.”

 

Here we see the contagion of evil in all its chilling menace.

 

Telling the truth has become a subversive act. Informing the public that their soldiers are at risk of becoming embroiled in acts contrary to international law – to war crimes – is now tantamount to aiding the enemy: to treason.

 

And so, drop by drop, the Bagram poison enters our system. Our Government, determined to avoid further embarrassment by “certain investigative journalists” intends to empower our own Government Communications Security Bureau to assist the NZDF in tracking-down and identifying their sources.

 

As they did in Afghanistan, they will use the latest intelligence-gathering technology to acquire “metadata” – landline and cellphone logs, e-mail and text traffic - to identify the likes of Jon Stephenson’s and Nicky Hager’s friends and associates; contacts and sources.

 

Among them will be my own name and telephone numbers.

 

Bagram will have come home. The contagion of evil will be at my door.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 July 2013.

Through A PRISM Darkly

Geek Chic: NCIS-LA's winsome techies 'Eric' and 'Nell' are so busy capturing the top-rating show's viewers' hearts that their constant breaching of citizens' civil rights and privacy passes, if not unnoticed, then, at the very least, unreproved. These, after all, are the people who stand between us and the 'evil-doers'. Against such powerful inoculations of popular culture, CIA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden's, revelations about the PRISM surveillance system are unlikely to spark outrage from more than the usual civil liberties suspects.

 

EDWARD SNOWDEN knows his geopolitics. Where better to seek refuge than in China – the nation most likely to shatter the five fingers of the Anglo-Saxon fist? For the moment, however, the former CIA technician and whistle-blower must be hoping that Hong Kong can hide him from the Anglo-Saxons’ five-eyed “PRISM”.

 

No easy task – as Mr Snowden himself admits: “I could be rendered by the CIA, I could have people come after me, or any of their third party partners – they work closely with a number of other nations … You can’t come forward against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk. Because they’re such powerful adversaries that no one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you – they’ll get you in time.”

 

All of which makes The Bourne Identity read more like a handbook than a thriller. And why Nicky Hager, the man to whom so many of New Zealand’s whistle-blowers have taken their secrets, describes Mr Snowden as “a brave man”.

 

But, does any of it matter? Will the world even be surprised – let alone shocked – at the extraordinary reach of the US National Security Agency’s panoptic surveillance app – PRISM? Isn’t it possible that the citizens of the Anglo-Saxon powers: the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; far from applauding Mr Snowden’s courage, will condemn him for choosing not to stand with us – but with the terrorists?

 

It is, after all, the Anglo-Saxon nations which provide the biggest audiences for television series like 24 and NCIS. The heroes of these top-rating shows (both of which grew out of post-9/11 collaboration between Hollywood and the US national security agencies) are presented to us as the exemplars of courage and decency.

 

Whether it be 24’s Jack Bauer or NCIS’s Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, the message delivered to Anglo-Saxon viewers around the world is simple and compelling: “The US Government has got our back. These are the good guys who stand between us and the evil-doers.”

 

In every episode we witness these “good guys” – or their geeky side-kicks – routinely hacking into people’s computer hard-drives and tapping into their phone conversations/records. Indeed, these techno-savvy youngsters seem to inhabit a global panopticon from which nothing and no one can hide. Every CCTV camera is at their disposal and every GPS micro-chip ready to turn state’s evidence.

 

The simple cry of “Federal Agents!” grants these heroes warrantless entry to anybody’s property. When outraged suspects demand their rights, our good guys exchange knowing glances and ask them if they’ve read the Patriot Act. And, for those who refuse to co-operate there is always the failsafe threat of a one-way ticket to sunny Guantanamo Bay.

 

Fifty years ago, any agency wielding such totalitarian powers would have been listed among the enemies of freedom. That Americans are now quite comfortable with fictional good guys who sound and act like Soviet-era thugs is a measure of just how much Al Qaida took from the United States on 11 September 2001.

 

And not only from the United States. Thirty-six years ago Rob Muldoon’s plans to expand the surveillance powers of the Security Intelligence Service were met with huge demonstrations in all the main centres.

 

No such protests greeted the legislation which has, over the course of the last 12 years, dangerously extended the surveillance powers of the state. It’s as if agents Bauer and Gibbs have convinced us that: “If we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear.”

 

But, as Mr Snowden says: “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded ... [I]t’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody – even from a wrong call. And then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinise every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to derive suspicion from an innocent life.”

 

Because, as the civil liberties lawyer, Tim McBride, observes: “[W]e do have something to hide, not because it is criminal or even shameful, but simply because it is private.”

 

The details of our lives belong to us – not the GCSB. We surrender the right “not to be known against our will” – at our peril.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 June 2013.