Saturday 8 December 2012

New Zealand: TPPA protest and other matters

More from free media when it comes to hand....


"While I deplore violence it seems fitting that the word "stomped" is chosen to report this incident. Our rights, sovereignty and future are being stomped on in plush meeting rooms with catered lunches. The real problem is that the police are stuck protecting these corporate dictators. The are many heads more deserving of stomping inside this conference".

---BL

Officers 'attacked' at anti-free trade protests
Police say a female protester allegedly stomped on a constable's head during a violent protest in Auckland this afternoon.




8 December, 2012


A crowd of up to 300 anti-free trade activists descended on Sky City where the trans-Pacific trade talks are being held.

About 50 police faced off with the protesters who thumped against the Sky City doors, then set a series of boxes on fire. Fire officers dowsed them.

Protester Jax Taylor said the march was initially to present a petition protesting the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations to officials, but it quickly escalated out of control.

She said the group wanted to present the 750,000 signature petition to the head negotiator but when he refused to come down things got heated.

Police moved in and arrested several people. "It was nasty," Taylor said. "They were being very rough."The group then decided to burn the "symbolic" petition boxes brought with them in the middle of the street.

Fire were called to put out the blaze while police officers formed a line to push the protesters away from Sky City's front door.

"It was a bit dangerous," she said. "But if they'd just done what they said they were going to do by accepting the petition it wouldn't have got to that stage."

"All we want is transparency and accountability in the negotiations."

Police said that when they moved in, two officers were separated, attacked and kicked "numerous times".
Two arrests were made. One of these arrests was a female that allegedly stomped on a constable's head.

Police said they were extremely disappointed at the reckless actions of some of the protesters.
Witness Nick Shar said the protest was extremely frightening.

"The protesters were really aggressive they were trying to break down the doors, using the f-word an saying f*** the TPPA."

He said they also burnt an American flag.

"I've never seen anything like that. It was very very scary."

The Auckland meeting is the 15th round in the international trade talks involving 11 countries aiming to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.

Inside Sky City are 500 negotiators from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, the US, Vietnam and New Zealand.

The talks have attracted controversy because of their secrecy and concerns a deal could extend corporate power into areas seen as national interests.

One issue causing alarm in New Zealand is how the TPP could affect the operations of public drug buying agency Pharmac.

Another key issue being debated and causing widespread concern is new intellectual property rules. The protest wound up at about 4pm. Police said there had been around 300 people present.

Organisers said the group was made up of several factions including Aotearoa Is Not For Sale, It's Our Future, the Occupy movement.


Cops laughing all the way to the bank



Kiwibank


Indymedia,
6 December, 2012



NZ banks readily hand over confidential information to the police - all they need to do is ask.



On Saturday, the NZ Herald reported that it is common practice for banks to hand over confidential customer data, including account balances and transactions, to the police without the police producing a warrant.


This is possible due to a rather vague clause in the Privacy Act which states that banks (or any other organisation that holds people's private information) can be exempt from the requirement to keep private details private when the cops say that they need the information for "the maintenance of the law". Once they have the information, the police are then free to pass it on to other agencies, such as WINZ or the IRD.


The extent of this practice was revealed in connection with the Kim Dotcom case. Dotcom was denied a $4 million loan shortly after the cops had asked Kiwibank for his account details. Independently of the question why someone as filthy rich as Dotcom needs to apply for a bit of petty cash from Kiwibank, the bank denies that this was the reason for withdrawing his already approved loan. Instead their spokesperson Bruce Thompson engages in a linguistic tight-rope act, saying that a police request "does not influence the bank's position one way or another but is taken into account".


An often cited example for the need for this regulation is the case of a missing person. The police want to establish if the person is still alive by finding out if their bank account has been accessed and may not have time to obtain a warrant. 


However, Dotcom was not missing and it is hard to believe that the police had no time to get a warrant to get his account details that way. It is more likely they couldn't be bothered explaining their case to a judge. It also doesn't account for Kiwibank's statement that "police sought information from banks on a daily basis".


The worrying thing is that the banks appear to have the same laissez-faire attitude to privacy as the cops have. It is important to understand that releasing confidential customer information without being presented with a search warrant is entirely at the discretion of the banks.


The Herald quotes the Banking Association's policy as: "We have a strict duty to protect the confidentiality of all our customers' and former customers' affairs. We are also obliged in our dealings with our personal customers to observe and comply with the Privacy Act 1993."


How that is reconciled with Kiwibank's admission that they release information "on a daily basis" remains a mystery.


To add insult to injury, according to the Herald, the police refuse to elaborate on the extent of this practice citing privacy reasons. And Banking Ombudsman Deborah Battell is quoted as saying that she has never had any complaints about this issue – which is hardly surprising given that the practice has only now been revealed and banks don't usually tell their customers when the cops come knocking.


A surprisingly critical Editorial in the Herald raises the issue that the police may be routinely using this practice to go on fishing expeditions, resulting in the effected people having their loans declined. Of course having a loan declined by one bank is something that will have to be declared when applying for a loan with another bank.


So far only Kiwibank has been named as eagerly breaching its customers' privacy, but it would be foolish to assume that other banks are different.
Nor is this problem confined to the banks. Operation 8 has revealed the willingness of both Telecom and Vodafone to hand over cell phone call data (including the content of SMS messages) to the police. In some cases the request was done via an informal email, on first-name basis and with the promise that the search warrant would be supplied later.


However, the auction site Trademe has topped this dubious list by providing the details of up to 10,000 users to the police who were investigating 18 people. The police did have a warrant, but Trademe's eagerness to comply was extraordinary.
It all comes down to the question of where an organisation sees itself in society – whether its obligation is to protect its customers who have trusted them with personal information, or to serve the state who might want to prosecute those customers. The actions clearly reflect the loyalties.


And some government agencies don't even need to be prompted by the cops – they simply send confidential client records as email attachments, as the various ACC cases this year have demonstrated.


The Dompost reports, that this year alone, government agencies and private companies have voluntarily reported 71 privacy breaches to the Privacy Commissioner, i.e. they have dobbed themselves in. How many other breaches have taken place is a matter of speculation, although a spokesperson is reported as saying "My guess is by and large most agencies are upfront about this. There's not a lot of subterfuge or malevolence going on in the background with this." A statement that seems odd given that ACC tried to prosecute the person who revealed their initial blunder.


The Privacy Commissioner has received 1142 complaints in the year to June 2012 – almost twice as many as five years ago. The Commissioner has also conducted a poll on privacy issues. One of the results is that 88% agreed that ‘It's extremely important that businesses tell me what they are doing with my personal information’. A similar number (87%) said the same thing about government agencies. Overall people are increasingly worried about their privacy being eroded (67%, 8% more than the previous year).


Also interesting is the regional breakdown: Wellingtonians are more concerned about privacy than people in other areas. Maybe this is due to the physical proximity of certain government agencies.



Surveillance By Default: There's A Lot of Information on Everyone Out There



Cop_photo 0__15700287_401_00



Indymedia,
2 December, 2012



Earlier this year a New Zealand police officer said that 'the police have a lot of information on everyone'. He said it matter-of-factly whilst giving evidence in a court-case.



A brief round of laughter rippled through the court in response to his statement, but the fact is he was not joking and he was not exaggerating. There is a lot of information about everyone held in various places – available to not only the police and other government agencies but also private companies.


It may be that private companies hold even more information than the police do. 


Every day as we go about our daily business, the majority of us unwittingly give out a lot of personal information. It seems like we have to give more personal information out about ourselves when buying a ticket through Ticketek for a football game, than what we used to have to give out to get a passport. And that is done unquestioningly.


We can even give information unwittingly. A person recently bought a Snapper card with an Eft-pos – no information was given in the transact, just one swipe of the card; one week later an email arrived offering the new Snapper card holder discounts. We leave traceable electronic footprints everywhere.


Many of us also share stories and personal information on Facebook that we would never swap with a stranger on a bus. People publish photos of their children, lovers and partners for all to see, giving personal details about family life and habits.


We joke about Google, Facebook and Twitter keeping tabs on us, but it runs much deeper than that. Surveillance is becoming increasingly overt and commonplace by default. The concept of privacy is disappearing.


But when we try to talk about it, it sounds like paranoia.


State surveillance and other spies


To have our daily actions recorded and noted is nothing new. We are already aware that a significant amount of covert spying occurs by the police and other state security agencies.


In recent history, US agents came to Wellington in 1973 to train police in surveillance tactics of both 'criminals and terrorists'. In the mid-1970s New Zealand police officially began an undercover police-officer programme. One of the first officers, Andy Bell, published his autobiography in 2007 (Adrenalin Rush). 

In it he talks about one of his jobs being to infiltrate the Wellington Resistance Bookshop and HART. He formed relationships to get into a position of power within the Wellington activist community.


Another police officer, Tom Lewis, also talks about surveillance in his autobiography (Cover-ups and Cop-outs, 1998). In the 1970s and '80s, as a CIS officer (Criminal Intelligence Service), Lewis had to 'work in close liaison with the SIS.’ In preparation for royal tours the CIS had ‘to update dossiers on radicals, anti-monarchists and extremists.’ In the book, Lewis says that, ‘the compiling of dossiers on people became ridiculous…. they were kept on people because they belonged to groups or organisations not because of anything they had done. It became difficult to distinguish between dissenters and criminals….’. Lewis also admits that Dunedin CIS officers used to pretend to be 'radicals' and made bogus threats in order to get more funding to continue surveillance.


It was also in the 1980s that then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon released an SIS list of allegedly radical and subversive people involved in the 1981 Springbok Tour protest organisations. The SIS must have been doing some surveillance to name those people, even if they did have incorrect facts.


There has been other coverage over the years of SIS spying on groups and people, or asking others to spy on their behalf. But there was a lot of media coverage following the SIS's brief period of 'glasnost' in the mid-2000s. In 2006 Warren Tucker became the new director of the SIS and announced a more open policy. People were able to apply for their SIS files, and if they were no longer a 'security threat' or under active surveillance, their file was released.


What became public was the amount of spying and gathering of information the SIS appeared to do on anyone slightly involved with the 'left'. Some of the more notable files brought to light were that of Maire Leadbetter and her brother Keith Locke. The spying on both began before they were even teenagers – they were children of activists. Other more minor files included one on a woman who happened to buy a communist magazine twice.


The period of glasnost did not last long, and by 2009 more and more people were denied their files. The SIS seems to have sunken back into its closed-door policy.


Other than the spying done by the police and SIS, spying by private companies also received some media coverage in the late 2000s.


It was news in 2007 when it was confirmed that Solid Energy had employed a private security company to help them in their 'security'. Christchurch man, Ryan Paterson-Rouse, had been employed by Thompson and Clark to spy on the 'Save Happy Valley Coalition'. Another person employed by the same security company was law student Somali Young – her job was to report on various Wellington groups.


Other spying that was considered newsworthy, was the unmasking of Rob Gilchrist in 2008. He was employed by police for more than a decade to spy on both individuals and community groups. Among the groups he spied on were the Green Party, unions and student associations.


Rob Gilchrist was also mentioned during the trial of the so-called 'Urewera 4', the only four people who ultimately ended up in court as a result of police Operation 8. It was during that court case that the police officer said police here 'have a lot of information on everyone'.


Surveillance was an issue in the police raids of October 15th 2007.


During the trial it became clear how much private information police had collected on individuals by using data readily available to the police from bank accounts, cell phone accounts, 'Trade Me' records and computer logs.


Surveillance normalised


It was a reminder that eft-pos purchases, credit card swipes, cheques written, internet sites visited, emails sent and received, chats on the computer, comments written on the net, SMS texts sent and received, phone numbers dialled and received – all are recorded and can be accessible to security agencies.


But there is other private data readily available out there too. Shopping cards, such as Fly Buy, Foodtown and Farmers, retain information about people – where they shop, what they buy. Library cards also hold a lot of information about people.


Cameras placed inside and outside shops also video us. But for the most part, we are immune to the numerous CCTV cameras up and down the country that record our movements and other details, such as what we are wearing, with whom we are talking. Many people don't give a second thought to the use of automatic number plate recognition technology on the Northern Motorway, and there was not much of an outcry when it became known that they were also in use on the Auckland motorway system.


Surveillance is becoming normalised and acceptable. What once existed in only science-fiction such as 'Minority Report' or George Orwell's '1984' is now becoming a reality.


Even a billboard can be taking note of you. Electronic billboards can track people. Using facial recognition programmes to scan passer-bys for age, gender and ethnicity, this data is then used to make conclusions about shopping habits and the billboard can change adverts to reflect the 'needs' of the majority of people on the streets.


Westfield, New Zealand's largest shopping mall chain, announced on 14th March this year, that they are investing $1.4billion in electronically tracking shoppers in their malls. Just within the last week there was an article in the Dominion Post about 'smart shop dummies' also being created to track customers in stores.


But people will not only be tracked by bill-boards. As RFID chips become increasingly common, billboards are being adapted to be able to scan for them. This means billboards reading all the smart devices you happen to have on your person. You walk past and your smart credit card, cell phone, passport, and anything else you have with an RFID chip, are all automatically scanned. All that information is retained in some computer file somewhere.

A US ski-field using RFID technology excitedly proclaimed this year, that from each individual they “have a treasure trove of addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, along with skier habits.”



Drones are also becoming more common. They were used in the 2012 London Olympics and have been trialled already by some English police stations. Within the next few decades they are meant to become common place. Drones will ostensibly be used for such benign things as finding lost trampers, crop and farm monitoring, and shipping and road surveillance. By 2015 the US want them to also be a normal part of life. Drones are already made in New Zealand.


In Europe Project Indect is steadily becoming more of a reality. Indect aims to 'comprehensively monitor urban areas' through integrated CCTV video surveillance, drones and monitoring of phones and computers. The idea is to have constant surveillance of public areas which means 'illegal' and potentially 'criminal' behaviour can be detected and stopped before it happens. Pre-emptive policing can occur and people be detained and questioned on the basis of data from a computer programme which labels their behaviour as suspicious.


Britain is introducing legislation to allow the British intelligence agencies, police and other security services to monitor in real-time all email and social media.
Surveillance is now embedded in our daily lives and we are becoming increasingly oblivious to it. Privacy is becoming an out-moded quaint relic of the past.


The police officer in the Urewera 4 Trial was only partially right – yes, the police do have a lot of information about a lot of people. But combined with the data held in private hands, there is enough information out there for police to construct whatever story they want to about us.


We do have something to worry about. We should be paranoid.

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