Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Thursday, March 5, 2015

Customs wanting passwords: Why Search Warrants Are An Important Democratic Protection.



The whole notion of our individual inalienable rights, including to be left alone by the state if we are harming no one, was such a quaint one, but still, I liked it. So now we find New Zealand Customs want the right to demand the passwords of our laptops, tablets, et al, as we are slowed further into bottlenecks from getting in or out of our airports while officials look at our family snaps, testicles and boobs on the teenagers devices, and for we grownups, our private documents. They don’t plan to have a warrant, and their wish is for three month detention, jail, for those of us who rightly will tell them to bugger* off. Worse:


Customs says it wants to move with the times and align our law with "comparable countries, such as Australia, the US, Canada and the UK." It sees inspecting an electronic device potentially becoming part of a routine bag search.


Apparently, we have to join the Big Brother Police State club in all its abuses.

And once the principle will be created, as it inevitably will be, there is nothing left. Why aren’t we, for example, compelled to leave our house keys with a state official each day as we go to work so they can inspect our premises to make sure our conduct and chattels are to the state’s approval; hell, there might even be a few of ‘those’ plants out back that though legal in an increasing part of the enlightened world, aren’t still in this kindy of a country.

And what’s so special about Customs? If they think it in the nation's common-good that Big Brother State inspect what’s on our hard disks, then along with the WOF for the car, why not a mandatory annual check by a government department of all our information storage devices? Indeed, Orwell has it right: just plug each house into the State mainframe. There’s plenty of departments that can line up with expertise and experience: Customs, Internal Affairs, GCSB, IRD … There is no difference between this and mandatorily inspecting my hard disk at the airport; other than resources required, the principle is identical.

Whether the officials like it or not, the requirement of them having to get a court issued search warrant is a crucial process protecting the freedoms of a democracy: however, IRD no longer require them for work-place raids, yes, raids, and haven't for a long time; Customs now want out of requiring them so they can turn computer harddisk searches into routine ... see what's happening here? We are losing basic freedoms, because we are losing basic protections from the state, due only to convenience for the bureaucrats; that evil word governments use to increase their power over us, pragmatism.

And the hilarious thing: most Kiwis won’t even realise how appalling this is.

I hate these bureaucratic bastards: all of them. And ZB’s Larry Williams can go to hell also on this one.

(* Please note bottom of this post for why I swear in my blog so much nowadays.)

6 comments:

  1. While its a bit off topic you mentioned the US in passing so I just thought I'd toss in the comment that an accountant friend in Hong Kong made to me about privacy the other day. That comment related to not investing in anything that required payment in USD. The US tentacles are obviously fairly long and they catch and tell.

    3:16

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    1. Definitely. It's called FATCA, which is supposedly about US's citizenship based tax (one of only two countries that have such a tax base), but is about being able to locate assets of every US citizen for search and seizure outside American mainland.

      One of my most read posts in here was the sell-out of our politicians over FATCA:

      http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/fatca-nz-officials-report-crime-that.html

      And now NZ officials about to sign up to GATCA which will be the automatic sharing of financial information of ALL foreign nationals within OECD. Appalling.

      (Nice to not be crossing swords over this one 3:16 :) )

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  2. Thanks for the mention of FACTA - I will now look at that out of curiosity but gather the US look at currency transactions exiting NZ and pass info on. The US is not a friend of liberty and privacy as we knew it so recently.

    Your posts reveal a lot about your world view as would be expected but my responses reveal only a little about mine. We are far closer on the fundamentals than I suspect you realise.

    3:16

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    1. Not just the US. Under Judith Collins last (obnoxious) Money Laundering and Anti-Financing of Terrorism Act - not exact name, though there's a post in here somewhere on it - all financial institutions in NZ have to report certain transactions in and out of NZ: including regular transactions down to $1,000: all transactions over $10,000 are likely referred onto authorities.

      Worse, every time I have to sign as independent trustee on a client trust property transaction, I now have to have a solicitor witness my signature, even if I'm in Sounds (6 months of year now) and that involves a whole day trip to Blenheim and back. Needless to say I'm trying to get out of all my independent trusteeships

      Could be worse though, in Argentina and Brazil they've trained dogs to smell money, so they can catch people taking it out of their airports.

      The whole world is basically one big Police State heading for a multitude of Big Brother gulags.

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  3. Apparently Auckland airport has money sniffing dogs. Man's best friend my arse.

    3:16

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    1. Really? Even with my pessimistic outlook, I wouldn't have thought it that bad in NZ. How depressing.

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