New Bill in Britain

The British government has introduced a draft bill to introduce total digital surveillance. Details about every email, phone call or text message in the U.K. (sic) would be logged — and they say that those  worried about the program are all either criminals or conspiracy theorists.

If (or when) this Bill becomes law, providers would collect IP addresses, the details of customers' electronic hardware, and subscriber information including names, addresses, and payment information.

Physical communications would also be monitored: Address details written on envelopes would be copied and parcel tracking information would be logged as well.

The state would be able to keep all the data up to a year, or longer if it was the subject of legal proceedings.

The monitoring will be done without the need for the police or agencies to apply for a warrant. No one will know the extent of the monitoring, its effects, nor the conclusions that the authorities may draw from the data.

Search and Surveillance Bill Passed

The Search and Surveillance Bill was passed on 22nd March. Now it just needs rubber stamping before it becomes law.

When this Bill becomes law, the range of opportunities for legal surveillance available to police and various State agencies increases dramatically. That also means, the 'illegal' activities that those same forces do, shift laterally and also widen.

When this is law, there will be a lot more warrant-less searches and surveillance and warrant-less use of spies, or HIDs - Human Intervention Devices. Road blocks like those seen on 15th October in Ruatoki could become the norm, and increasing use of detention on mere belief that a 'crime' may be committed.

The right to silence and the right not to self-incriminate are also attacked under this law.

March 22nd was not a good day in history. Let's hope that somehow this Bill is never rubber-stamped.

S&S Bill May Be Decided Tuesday 20th March

The Search and Surveillance Bill most probably comes out of Committee on Tuesday 20th March. It will then be voted on and could be law by April 18th.

It will be a sad day.

Search and Surveillance Bill to be Law by April

Judith Collins, Minister of Justice, has announced that she intends that the Search and Surveillance Bill is law by mid-April this year.

Mid-April is when the 'temporary Video Surveillance law' expires. That is the law rushed through parliament to retrospectively legalise illegal police action. An action described by many lawyers as 'abhorrent' and even 'repulsive' and not needed. It is (or was) already law then, that any evidence gathered (whether legally or illegally) can be presented in court under the Evidence Act, at the discretion of the court, depending on the seriousness of the evidence.

New Zealand is one of the only lands where law can be changed retrospectively on the whims of government.

Once the Search and Surveillance Bill becomes law, we will be even more on the road to becoming one of the most heavily surveilled countries in the world.

There will also be fundamental changes to 'law and order' - the right to silence will be gone, as will the right to not incriminate oneself. And the law has a catch-22 phrase to legalise all future surveillance developments before they have developed.

This Act, hand-in-hand with other law changes going on, mean so-called 'rights' such as the right to a jury trial, the right to be present for your own court case, are being written out of law.

The Search and Surveillance Bill needs to be stopped now.