Defense
I wonder how long before 4chan makes an "I'm wearing a scarf" meme.
New Zealand's proposed revisions to the laws that govern its Government Communications Security Bureau have provided a venue for political theatre by Kim Dotcom, who choppered into Wellington to speak against the bill. With only 15 minutes to speak to a parliamentary hearing into proposed spy laws in New Zealand, Kim Dotcom …
In the same way that only criminals have guns in defenseless populations, only criminals have privacy in shepherded populations. It takes just a few minutes for criminals to setup encryption and/or a Virtual Private Network, minutes that the average citizen cannot be bothered to spend.
Clearly, the purpose of all this shepherding of the sheep is not to police criminals.
"It takes just a few minutes for criminals to setup encryption..."
I think you mean serious and organised groups. Amateur-hour crims and terrorists don't know or don't bother, so tend to get caught by surveillance states. The real concern has always been that the really dangerous ones will have unbreakable crypto, whatever the law says and whatever the sigint people do.
It really only requires a Google search, an a few minutes to install a package. So really only, the truly dumb not particularly threatening criminal is countered by mass surveillance, whilst the rest of the world loses all privacy. In addition, millions of bureacrats are employed to sift through the masses of data. A truly spectacular lie and stupendous waste of money is behind this scam.
this Guardian story about UKUSA 5 eyes collaborating with all EU nations in data retention and surveillance was actually pulled from their website. (a comment link & related article here http://www.examiner.com/article/nsa-story-spiked-journalist-and-former-govt-employee-censored )
Sounds like the late 1990's STC/ILETS and EU nations memorandums of understanding with the FBI/NSA are still relevant & sensitive documents.
I don't know where the UK Guardian 'disappeared' article currently is and/or whether its true that another DA-notice was used to make it go... i only know what I'm allowed to read in the press.. even transitorily..