How Many Ways You No Longer Have a Private Life:

Two days ago I said this:

IRD operates above our Privacy Act: it can raid my business premises without warrant; it will never be denied a warrant to raid my home; it can demand my bank statements from the bank and my bank will acquiesce without my knowledge; I have no right to remain silent when an interview is 'requested' by IRD; and as a taxpayer the burden of proof is turned against me - unlike for an accused murderer, burglar, et al, I am not innocent until proven guilty before the tax courts, IRD can simply assess me and I have to prove my innocence, so breaching a fundamental tenet of a free society.

Some years ago I wrote how the Revenues around the world routinely snoop on social media for thought crimes - if you look at the footnoted update, you'll see IRD read that post.

Yesterday I wrote on how your bank is now required to snoop on you under Judith Collins’ Anti-Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism Act:

RIP the economy (and any privacy you ever had). This National government is generating more red tape than the previous Labour one did. To capture a minor subset of transactions, every single commercial and private transaction, be it financial (where your bank has to report you to police if irregularities are found), or property, are being delayed, and weighed done by cost on cost on cost on penalty of the snitch society. God I want out.

Over the weekend Rodney Hide wrote a chilling piece on the investigation on him by the Official Assignee, covertly targeting his friends and family:

The interesting thing for me is how upsetting it has proved to be. I have nothing to hide. I am well used to being in the public spotlight. It was once part of my life to have others talk about me in less than flattering terms.

I would have thought it no big deal to have a state agency do similar.

But I have found it extremely disturbing to have friends and colleagues compelled to appear under threat of arrest and answer questions about me and my family put to them by a private investigator under contract to the Government.

Oh, and to have those friends and colleagues warned not to tell me what they were asked.

 It's extremely invasive and sinister. It's what we expect of totalitarian regimes, not free and democratic societies such as ours.

So of course today we find the police have taken their pointless war on drugs to your Facebook page:

The monitoring has been exposed by members of a blackmarket Facebook group, who complained of receiving letters out of the blue from police, warning them they were being watched.

One unidentified user received a letter from the Canterbury Organised Crime Squad, dated July 15, warned that their membership of a group suspected to be aiding illegal drug deals had been noticed.

There are no parts of our lives not being surveiled and intruded upon. From a letter to the editor of today’s Press, penned by no other than Sir David Hay:

ECan employees who screen for smoke from wood burners invade our domestic lives and put people who try to heat their homes affordably at risk of a $750 fine. The invitation for neighbours to inform on neighbours reeks of a totalitarian state.

But hey, the sacrifice of our private lives is justified: we’re catching the tax evaders, we’re catching the money launderers, we're catching the polluters to ensure they don't heat themselves, and we’re catching the druggies.

No.

For freedom lovers, the price has been too high. Those who’ve read George Orwell’s 1984 will remember the proles thought everything largely fine in the prison cells of their minds, it was only those who had foot-tripped over the State who figured out the nature of the entrapment, and the total loss of liberty that defined them. Which explains why the below photo is not from that novel, it’s from a street in England, courtesy HMRC – though I think I know what they’re using as their manual:

Next time you’re updating your Facebook, you be careful out there. Don’t go thinking you’re living in a free country. That, and we all live in the snitch society now. Forget the threat of external terrorism, we have an internal surveillance state which is far beyond the bounds of what a free, western society should have settled for without (at least) civil rebellion.