$1 Billion To Tinker With a Bit of Out-Of-The-Box Stasi Software | Women MPs Go Walk About

Looks like it’s an early Christmas.

IRD think they'll be able to bring their software upgrade in for about NZ$1 billion.

Unfortunately for your private life, this will necessitate re-writing, again, the powers of their access to your private data and the further weakening of tax secrecy [to allow sharing of your information with a range of government departments, including police, but also because I suspect they want ultimately to be able to conduct public shaming campaigns.] And this despite admittedly such ongoing maintenance-tinkering with the minutiae of your life is small cheese on top of their current powers of warrantless search and seizure raids, unlimited and unfettered access to your financial life – which is your life – and the Godlike ability to operate totally above our Privacy Act.

This ‘bargain’ is impressively below the original estimate of $1.9 billion, because, quoting NBR:

‘…it discovered it can use Colorado-based Fast Enterprises' out-of-the-box software …’

I look at the $300 (no more zeroes) out-of-the-box MYOB cashbook software Mrs H. uses for our business, and am scratching my head a bit. Indeed, per my comment on the NBR piece, noting I’m sure someone called Bruce will disabuse me if I’ve got my figures wrong:

So if I've got this right, after the currency conversion, for the same cost that IRD can tinker with a bit of software, $1 billion NZ dollars, Elon Musk can launch 11 Falcon rockets into space, thus advancing private space flight and the human condition, including soon the ability to mine the asteroid belt for resources, and building a human base on Mars.

I'm ecstatic.

In other news, the women opposition members of Parliament stormed out in a hissy fit today because the Prime Minister used a word: namely, 'rape'. Umbrage taking and victimhood rules in the Fortress of Legislation under its governing identity politick: so in case you've forgotten, the debate was about human rights of the detainees at Christmas Island ... But apparently, to borrow a meme, it's not all about them. And albeit the undying principle of this blog is an individual's right to do whatever they damn well like, so long as they do no harm, and that the use of force is anathema to the free society, meaning sexual assault is despicable, as is the state's unchecked invasion of our private lives, I am no doubt cast, regardless, as a rape-culture enabler - to which my defence is, bugger off. And that means you too Allan; Stephen Franks is right:

Another Rape Culture elder opines https://t.co/PnEVojF5bX

— Allan Moyle (@moylea) November 11, 2015

Re:

No - excluded for hysterical demands that others not debate their point of view in respect for claimed victimhood  https://t.co/86i3Xtdivn

— Stephen Franks (@franks_lawyer) November 11, 2015

Female members of New Zealand's parliament kicked out after sharing their sexual-assault stories https://t.co/11jTm3hbQd

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 11, 2015

Thank God – said atheistically – for Lindsay Mitchell:

Several female opposition MPs declared that they are victims of sexual abuse, presumably to stake their credentials for a parliament walk-out today.

The day I declare myself a victim is the day I lose control of my life.

Update 1:

If you want to know what’s wrong with this idiot identity politick conception of the world, then George Lawlor sums it up beautifully – remembering the Cultural Feminists hold I can’t even use that word – in this piece – hattip Liberty-Scott:

You see, alongside my article, I attached an image of myself [white man] holding a sign that read, ‘This is not what a rapist looks like’. The social-media reaction to that picture was revealing. In fact, many people chose to not even read my article and instead focused entirely on that image of me with the sign, scoffing, cursing and abusing me for my ignorance. I was called classist, racist and all the other debate-ending names. And, of course, I was portrayed as a pantomime-like villain for all the internet to shame, from Twitter to Tumblr.

The tragedy of all of this isn’t necessarily that I was shamed in an almost medieval fashion for having the audacity to defend myself as someone who already understands the meaning of consent – that’s a different discussion to be had. No, it’s that people so wildly missed the point of the picture.

When they looked at that picture, they didn’t see George Lawlor. They didn’t see the human being who is scared of spiders, who enjoys the work of BB King, and who only recently discovered that he can’t sing. Instead, they saw a white, middle-class, university-educated male just emanating privilege – the face of centuries of tyranny. Yes, I may fall into some of those categories, but the problem was that I wasn’t seen as an individual. I was labelled and put into a box, and that repulsive reductivism lies at the root of many of our world’s problems.

[Snip.]

There’s no doubt that certain demographic categories of people were abused and oppressed throughout history, but the best way to deal with those injustices now is to put an end to the malicious practice of seeing people superficially, in terms of their sex or skin colour. Rather, we need to treat people as individuals with unique talents, fears, beliefs and values. I don’t want my children to grow up in a world where they will be wrongly seen as symbols of oppression or victimhood. I want them to grow up in a world where my son can look up to Aung San Suu Kyi, and my daughter can look up to Frederick Douglass, and both can become inspirational individuals, freed of the chains of identity.

My Questions to IRD Deputy Commissioner, Greg James:

NBR run a weekly piece Ask Me Anything, where readers can ask a selected person questions. This Monday it will be Greg James, Deputy Commissioner of Inland Revenue.

Unfortunately I don’t read instructions, and took the Ask Me Anything as the literalist I am, and sent the below in. However, reading the body of the post (afterwards) I see respondents are only allowed a single question, I suspect that question should he related to IRD’s current $1.9 billion expansion of its digital dominion, and queries must be from verified users.

I couldn’t give  a toss about the computer upgrade, nor becoming a verified NBR user, despite I actually pay an online sub (I might have thought would be enough) and on the rare occasion I do comment on NBR anymore, I’m one of the few who post under my own name.

Which is a long way of saying my questions probably won’t pass moderation (my fault, not NBR’s). So, below is what I would have liked the Deputy Commissioner to answer if the world were the perfect one it’s not. (I would particularly have liked to see answered my questions on that abomination of US tax imperialism, FATCA (which I’ve written at length on here). In fact addressing myself to Chris Keall from NBR, if you read this (I’ll tweet you), perhaps you could consider putting my second question(s) below up – and no, I can’t be arsed editing my original submission.

[Update: my questions below were published to the NBR story online, however, NBR has moved this feature to NBR Radio; unfortunately NBR Radio has no way to jump forward, so you have to listen to every question, and after two attempts and wasting an hour of my life, I find my questions were never put to the Deputy Commissioner. I don't recommend you listen, the questions and answers are boring, irrelevant drivel; the important questions never asked. So to hell with it.]

* * *

[I have] two sets of questions which are more important than any technical queries you [Deputy Commissioner] will be asked about our over-complicated, hotch-potch mess of tax law:

1.     Powers of IRD:

IRD operates above our Privacy Act: it can raid business premises without warrant; (will never be denied a warrant to raid a taxpayer's home - and that taxpayer won't know about it, as they won't know about IRD lifting all their bank statements direct from the bank); I have no right to remain silent when an interview is 'requested' by IRD; plus 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.

Given this, how do you, Mr James, philosophically reconcile your job with a fair, healthy, and free western society?

Do you think about these powers, or do you see yourself as merely following orders?

2.     FATCA: Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

The complete abrogation of an individual's right to be left alone by the state if doing no harm, as explained above, is legally explicated by the IRD's role to collect the New Zealand tax take. And that is the only role that justifies it.

However, over the last year under the IGA [Inter-Governmental Agreement] signed with the US government, our government, in order to circumvent what would otherwise have been an embarrassing breach of our privacy legislation, is using the power of IRD to operate above that same privacy legislation to collect information from all financial institutions about all dual US citizens in NZ in order to supply that information to the IRS, so the US can operate its dreadful act of tax imperialism known as FATCA: that is, an IGA that demands IRD run roughshod over an individual's right to be left alone by the NZ state, for a purpose that has nothing to do with the NZ tax take.

How is that function (and that IGA) not a breach of the powers that IRD have and an abuse of the power of state by the politicians who signed up to it without referendum or ‘good-faith’ consultation?

Are you concerned that if a government can use your powers above the Privacy Act for this purpose unrelated to the NZ tax take, then they can use your powers for any matter in the future where it is convenient for them to skirt around privacy issues?

Do you understand that people like me are justifiably concerned given IRD officials assessing submissions against this IGA rejected every single privacy concern put to them by the public? [Every damned one!]

Can you cite instances where IRD Policy has involved itself in questioning the rightfulness of these immense powers the department holds? Or do you, and Policy, see your role as simply grabbing as many powers for your department from the politicians as possible in reckless pursuit of the tax take at all costs?

Please note that if in any of your replies you refer to either ‘the social contract’, or the ‘common good’ then understand you will be using the excuse of every tyrant in history that would use the force of state to crush individual liberty and volition. I await your replies in anticipation.


Incidentally, the photo at the top of this post is not from George Orwell's 1984, it's from a street in England. Sadly, human societies again, under the auspices of the tax surveillance state, are organised under the snitch society trope.